Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative is making a difference
Kalle Benallie
The Navajo Nation is largely a desert, but some say it's even a food desert.
There are 13 grocery stores on the Navajo Nation which spans 27,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. And in the western area of the reservation, in Tuba City, Arizona, there is on grocery store within a 75 mile radius.
Navajo citizen Starlena Nez, 33, would like to see a different future for the generations.
She and farmers in Kerley Valley, just outside Tuba City, are working together as the Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative to provide future generations access to healthy food and a prosperous economy with the hope of having an organic grocery store, slaughterhouse and farmers market on the Navajo Nation.
"I would like to see this 50 years from now when I'm old. I like to see an organic grocery store and know where the food source is at, know that there is no food pesticides and know that my grandkids won't get sick because they have to take diabetes medication," Nez said.
Nez, 33, is the executive director of the Miss Western Navajo Organization who is partnering with Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative.
A study released in February 2021 by the Native American Agriculture Fund found 49 percent of the American Indian and Alaska Native population experienced food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Navajo citizens dealt with grocery stores being emptied out and people bulk buying items at border towns. Initiatives like "Seeds and Sheep" were launched to help families grow their own food.
But Bijiibah Begay, community organizer and liaison for the farmers, said that even after the help they received from charitable organizations during the pandemic, they still needed help.
The Bikooh Agricultural Cooperative was created as a co-op business in order for it to be locally owned, own their assets and be locally controlled for the people. Eight families make up the co-op.
"This grocery store represents an opportunity for us to be who we are as traditional people. If we can control our food, we can control our lives. We get to say what we want to move forward with and what we don't. It's about self determination, being able to feed ourselves and not having to negotiate around food," Begay said.
Susie Martin, secretary for Bikooh Agricultural Co-op, recently, within the past few years, began farming again because of food price inflation and to show the younger generations its importance.
"The food (has) gone up. We need to get back into farming and get young kids, other people, get connected with their traditional stuff and be able to start farming again," she said.
Martin, Navajo, grew up west of Tuba City. Farming and ranching has been in her family for generations.
"Farmland is sacred to us. We recognize through generations, our grandparents are telling us our garden, our corn field is a holy and sacred place," she said.
Bikooh Agricultural Co-op hopes it will boost economic development and growth, address health disparities across the nation, support and promote agriculture, food sovereignty, food security, cultural traditions in tribal food systems such as the cultivation of corn, a sacred crop for the Navajo people that's used in ceremonies and traditional dishes.
Robert Miller, professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law in Phoenix, said he's fully behind this idea. He's been writing about economic development issues and advocating for the development of private sector economies on reservations for 25 years.
"The number one thing we need in Indian Country is private sector jobs, and an economy. We need to make our own goods and services and sell them on our reservations to keep our money on the reservation," Miller, Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, said.
He describes it as a basic issue in economics called leakage and the contra of it as the multiplier effect. The leakage in the economy on the Navajo Nation is people have to drive to border towns like Gallup, New Mexico or Farmington, New Mexico to grocery shop.
He said they lose about $200 million in sales tax from Navajo Nation consumers buying products from retailers in border towns around the Navajo Nation reservation.
"This leakage is our money leaving the reservation and we don't spend it in our communities," Miller said. "The opposite of that is the multiplier effect. An economist says that every dollar should stay in a city or county for like five times to get spent four, five, six times before it spins off and leaves the area."
The multiplier effect from Bikooh Agricultural Co-op would be from employing Navajo citizens to selling to Navajo citizens, creating financial abundance.
"This is a win-win situation for the Navajo economy and Navajo people," he said.
For over 40 years around 1.5 million acres, which Tuba City sat in the middle of, was banned from development. It was enacted in 1966 by Robert L. Bennett, commissioner of Indian Affairs, as a result of the land dispute between Navajo and Hopi people.
Homes, businesses, roads and schools could not be developed. Structural maintenance and the construction of gas and water lines were also prevented.
There were two exceptions to the ban that were allowed: the placement and development of water wells, which had to be approved by both tribes, and development could only occur in administrative safe zones — Tuba City and Moenkopi, Arizona.
In 2006, the Navajo Nation and Hopi tribe settled the dispute in the Navajo-Hopi Intergovernmental Compact.
It wasn't until 2009 when the ban was lifted by President Barack Obama. Federal funding could be now used to rehabilitate the area.
"There's no economic development within that whole time. So there's no water infrastructure, there's no electricity, there's no roads. They're deprived of all of that," Starlena Nez said.
Farmers in Kerley Valley have to work on the water infrastructure of the land by digging irrigation lines by hand to create flood irrigation.
The Navajo Nation has different plans for the farmland
On July 3 the Navajo Nation Resources and Development Committee approved the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority to build a surface use lease for 7.4 acres of Navajo Nation land located within Kerley Valley, Coalmine Canyon, Arizona to be used for a water treatment facility.
The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority is a tribally-owned enterprise that operates electric, communications, natural gas, water, wastewater and generation and off-grid residential solar services for the Navajo people.
Legislation sponsor and Council Delegate Otto Tso said the facility is to accommodate growth of Tuba City.
"The Tuba City community is made up of people from many chapters. This project is based on the anticipated growth of Tuba City, the school district, and possibly a new hospital. This sewer treatment plan has been proposed since 1980," Tso said in a press release.
ICT could not reach Tso for comment.
Rex Kontz, deputy general manager of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns over the already existing Tuba City facility. Kontz said utility authority will bring the site into compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.
"The current site faces violations stemming from total suspended solids, pH and ammonia levels, and proximity to Moenkopi Wash," Delegate Claw said. "For far too long, we've taken the word of enterprises. We need to ensure that this project will be in compliance and that NTUA is abiding by federal regulations."
Nez said the wastewater treatment facility puts the communities at risk and farmers want it to be moved elsewhere.
Danielle Williams' family have been farming in Kerley Valley for generations. Her parents are farmers and founded the Bikooh Agricultural Co-op. Her mother Rose Marie Williams is the president of the co-op.
Williams, Navajo, said the plant will impact them negatively — culturally and economically.
"It's very disheartening because it disrupts what's currently been built there. It greatly impacts the environment and the other issue is not everyone has access to farming, not everyone has accessibility to farmland," she said.
And she said it's inevitable that it will contaminate soil or water.
"Should anything happen in terms of leak or any kind of irregulation when it's built it's not a matter of if something happens, it's a matter of when something happens," she said.
Williams said they plan to protest the approval of the facility and create more awareness to the local community.
She added that it seems like a backdoor process.
"A process that wasn't a full on due process through a legislative process that it should have been," she said.
They also don't reject the facility, just the location of it.
"We don't want to have a wastewater facility being built, we just don't want it on farmland. There are other locations where it can be built," Williams said.
