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MOENKOPI, Ariz. — On the dry plateau where the Hopi people have lived for over a thousand years, Robinson Honani pulled his truck to the side of the dirt road and pointed to a carrion.
“This is where cows come to die,” said Mr Honani, manager of the Hopi Field Management Office, when he saw the remains of another cattle rotting in the sun one morning in September. It was at least the 10th dead cow Hopi farm officials have found in recent weeks.
Concerned by two decades of drought that has dried up resources, withdrew crops and killed cattle, the Hopi Tribal Council in August ordered farmers to cut their herds to conserve water sources and avoid the persecution of larger deaths.
However, an outcry from Hopi cattle breeders, who said they were providing families with locally grown food, forced the council to rescind its edict; This decision sparked a heated debate about which traditions should be preserved in a time of climate change. Tensions include farmers who need water to grow crops and farmers who need water for their cattle. Some Hopi leaders say the tribe must do everything it can to protect it dry farmingA tribal tradition in which crops grow despite insufficient rainfall through drought-tolerant seeds, small fields, and terraced gardens.
Farmers and ranchers alike seem to agree that the hard choices were unfair for the Hopi, who are thought to be descendants of some of the Southwest’s earliest inhabitants. They said they had to feud over the restrictions, while at the same time cities in Arizona were experiencing overpopulation and depleting the state’s resources. tense reservoirs.
“Why doesn’t the governor cut off the water supplies to southern Arizona?” asked Clark Tenakhongva, vice-president of the Hopi Tribe in the northeastern part of the state. “Cut the pools. Cut out water recreation areas. Cut the golf courses and you’ll start solving some of the problems the state of Arizona is currently looking at.”
But as Arizona’s rapidly growing population consumes more water than ever before, the blazing heat in one of the state’s poorest corners has revealed how the drought, among the most severe in recorded history, has caused unequal suffering in the West.
On a parched land where the Hopi have developed their water harvesting methods over the centuries, the tribe estimates there are about 2,200 cattle on the reservation consuming about 66,000 gallons of water per day.
Supporters and opponents of herd reduction agree that they argue about farming on a scale that is overshadowed by large cattle operations elsewhere. legendary king farm for example in South Texas, 30,000 heads cattle
“I only had seven heads before I reduced that number to three because of the drought,” said engraver Makwesa Chimerica. kachina figures Kim lives in the village of Hotevilla. He said he was stunned when authorities ordered him to sell or slaughter his remaining cows.
“I grew up on the farm with my grandfather,” said Mr. Chimerica, who is also a dry farmer. “This is the future I want for my two sons.”
Still, pushing the cattle-reduction countermeasure that farming was started by colonial powers, Hopi officials said, churro sheep It was brought in by the Spanish in 1540 before cattle became more common in the 20th century.
“The Hopi see themselves as farmers first and foremost,” said Priscilla Pavatea, director of the tribe’s Department of Range Management. “The farm comes after that. We must take urgent steps to save our land base.”
Outsiders may have trouble understanding how the Hopi harvest from small farms without using ditches or modern irrigation methods on soils that traditionally receive only about 8.5 inches of rainfall per year.
But over the centuries Hopi farmers have developed techniques and seeds adapted to the dry climate. They abandoned pesticides and focused, as Hopi says, on oasis-like mesas, which are arable floodplains, moisture-retaining soils, and water sources. katsi suphelawta, or “the perfect place for life,” according to archaeologists Wesley Bernardini and RJ Sinensky.
The Hopi long resisted this tradition, refusing to submit to modern agricultural techniques. But the drought that has gripped the Southwest since 2000 is thought to be worse or worse than any drought in the region in the past 1200 years.
Researchers believe that human-induced climate change contributing largely depends on the severity of the drought. At ground level in the Hopi Reserve, such conditions are reflected in disappointing crop yields and lost resources.
“The dunes don’t stop growing,” said Curtis Naseyowma, a 58-year-old Hopi farmer who raises cattle near the village of Moenkopi. “I see it with my own eyes because I’m there with my cattle every day.”
Mr. Naseowma said it is possible to farm sustainably even in times of drought. He said that before the tribal council’s order, he had reduced his herd from 23 to eight on his own since the beginning of the year.
“I understand where they are coming from, but I don’t understand why they don’t talk to the farmers first,” said Mr. Naseowma. “All this mess could have been avoided.”
The dispute has drawn troubling comparisons over how federal officials pressured both the Hopi and their Navajo neighbors to reduce their sheep herds due to drought and overgrazing after the Great Depression, wiping out a crucial source of income.
While some Hopi later switched to raising cows, supporters of downsizing the cattle ranch say the tribe now has no choice but to take forceful action to conserve water supplies for farmers struggling to grow crops like maize, beans and squash.
“We are not the dry farmers of 20 years ago,” said Mr. Tenakhongva, vice-president of the tribe and running for reelection this year. “Maybe I’ll get less farmer votes,” he added, “but animals come and go. Egypt is our lifeblood.”
Others on the reservation say the tribe is now too. grappling with the legacy of mining operationsIt pumped billions of gallons of water from the aquifer that both the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation rely on for drinking water. For decades, coal giant Peabody Energy has used the water to mix the slurry needed to generate electricity for cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix.
A report This year, the U.S. Geological Survey found an average of 40 feet of drop in water levels below the 5,400-square-mile Black Mesa region over 50 years, where the aquifer is the primary groundwater source; Water levels also decreased in 15 of the 18 wells measured in the area.
Still, some officials argue the tribe must face relatively new problems, such as rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns that are squeezing water supplies. “This is not a Peabody thing,” said Ms. Pavatea, range management manager. “This is climate change.”
An unusually strong monsoon season during the summer did little to improve the fortunes of Hopi farmers, and in some places made things worse. Water levels remain dangerously low even after flooding fields on parts of the reservation.
At the same time, the drought reignited some tensions between the Hopi and the Navajos. Tribal nations speak radically different languages and have a number of different cultural traditions, but they have lived side by side for centuries, often amicably.
The borders drawn by the US are feeding some of the unrest. Spanning 27,413 square miles, the Navajo Nation completely surrounds the 2,532 square miles large Hopi reservation. The population of the Navajo Nation is also wider, on and off reservation, with over 399,000 registered members, compared to the Hopi Tribe’s 19,000.
The ancestral migration routes, obscured by the mists of time, also left their own legacy. Some Navajo creation stories suggest that their ancestors entered the world at a sacred site in northwestern New Mexico, while other accounts suggest that Navajos arrived in the Southwest sometime between 1100 and 1500. Atabaskan immigration from current canada.
This makes the Navajos relatively newcomers compared to the Hopi. “The Hopi say about the Navajo, ‘They just arrived yesterday’,” said Mr Honani, Hopi range management official.
As the drought continued, herds of wild horses emerged as another point of contention in both regions. Like cattle, horses consume water resources coveted by farmers and households.
Horses dying of thirst have also been found on the Hopi reservation recently, leading to more finger marks as to whether non-reservation neighbors have left diseased horses on Hopi lands.
“The Navajos know we’re going to get rid of them,” said Mr. Honani, explaining how the Hopi Tribe occasionally collects horses and sells them for anywhere from $10 to $50 to a buyer in Gallup, NM. I aimed to buy this number of animals.”
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