Set to launch in late January, ‘Navajo Highways’ looks to revitalize the Navajo language

Pete Sands grew up speaking the Navajo language, but he realizes this is no longer the case for many Navajo children. The “Navajo Times” reported that in 1980, 93 percent of the Navajo population spoke the language. In 2010, the percentage of speakers dropped to just 51 percent.

Sands believes this is detrimental both for the youth’s relationships with their elders and the Navajo culture itself.

“Once the language is gone, then the culture ceases to exist, or it ceases to have the impact it used to,” Sands told the Sun.

Sands believes that the drop in the number of those who...

Zoom conference to teach Diné language started Jan. 21

The Diné language has been heard and spoken in classrooms across the Navajo Nation since 1968, when the Bilingual Education Act was passed. Since the 1970s, the Navajo nonprofit organization, Diné Language Teachers Association has been on the scene supporting teachers with innovative ideas and training. However, despite the fact that Diné is being taught in schools, the number of fluent speakers is rapidly declining. Since 1980, the percentage of fluent Navajo speakers has dropped from 93 percent to an alarming 57 percent in 2017, according to an article in the “Navajo Times.”

And the rate of decline has increased, so it...

Week ending Friday, January 21, 2022

 

Air Hazards

Smog and smoke clouds that now frequently plague California and other parts of the West are making breathing more dangerous for residents of the region, according to a new study. Researcher Deepti Singh of Washington State University, Vancouver and colleagues found that exposure to ground-level ozone and the fine-particle pollution from more frequent wildfires has increased by 25 million “person days” from 2001 to 2020. Short-term effects from the pollution include breathing difficulties and worsening heart and lung diseases, such as asthma. Exposure to both types of pollution at the same time compounds the health risks, and...

Ongoing community concerns prompt Superfund listing

[Part One of the Jackpile Mine toxic legacy story looks at what happened before there were environmental standards for reclaiming the land.]

The EPA-run Superfund program, established by Congress in 1980, was relatively new when the BLM and BIA plan was approved in 1985, [Paul] Robinson [of Southwest Research and Information Center] said, and the plan was not evaluated on whether or not it met the EPA’s regulations for contaminants like uranium in the water. Further complicating cleanup is that mines aren’t covered by the Atomic Energy Act, which oversees the cleanup of former uranium mill sites.

“This little glitch is a...