Environmental Justice has been defined by our community as “our commitment to honor and protect the rights of ourselves, our habitat and the fair treatment of all living beings.”
Through the EJ Program, we build community engagement to recognize Water as our First Environment (building on Katsi Cook’s concept of Woman as First Environment), and the interconnections between environmental and reproductive justice as well as the unique impacts on those most vulnerable in our Native communities.
Program Goals
We work with tribal, local, national, and international networks and coalitions to:
- Amplify the strengths of Indigenous women, their families, and land-based peoples to grow Beloved Community
- Protect our homelands from ecological harm
- Facilitate reconnection with our everyday relational-tivity to land, air, and water as sacred aspects of our collective wellbeing
- Engage in dialogue and activism on nuclear abolition, human rights, and the rights of Nung Ochuu Quiyo, Our Earth Mother, while integrating Tewa values and spirit-rooted environmental justice advocacy, policy change, and community education
We do this by:
- Community education that supports environmental health and climate change adaptability through the creation of community gardens (such as the Española Healing Foods Oasis), heirloom seed libraries, non-GMO seed exchanges, traditional agriculture, bio and mycoremediation practices
- Creating shifts toward decolonization by upholding the values of sharing and abundance; nonviolence; economic, social, and gender equity
- Advocating for Nava To’I Jiya (Tewa: Land Worker Mother) as the universal standard for environmental protections.
- Advocating for government and corporate accountability to populations who live downwind and down river of the nuclear war weapons industrial complex that occupies our sacred Jemez Mountains
- Increasing community capacity to engage in public advocacy for environmental justice issues and carrying the voices of our communities into national and international networks
- Providing a forum for networking and education on environmental justice issues between members of impacted communities and decision makers
