‘The U.S. dammed us up’: How drought is threatening Navajo ties to ancestral lands
Over the last three decades, the Navajo Nation – the largest Indigenous nation in the U.S. – has felt the impacts of a warming planet much earlier and more dramatically than other communities in the Southwest that have well-developed municipal infrastructure and abundant financial resources. Although people living in the reservation border towns of Flagstaff or Winslow have taken steps to cope with climate crisis by converting their yard to desert landscaping and installing air conditioning, [Candice] Mendez and many other Navajo families are in a full-on struggle to protect their livelihoods and traditional connections to their homeland.