THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH vs. Leona Morgan (Part One)

THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.2, ISSUE#24, JUNE-AUGUST/2017

Leona Morgan (Diné or “Navajo”) is a community organizer focusing on environmental justice work around the dangers of uranium mining to indigenous peoples in the Southwest of the United States. Morgan’s activism against ‘nuclear colonialism’ involves popular education and social advocacy for the protection of water, environment, human health, and cultural resources. In 2014, Morgan co-founded Diné No Nukes, an initiative dealing with the deadly impact each stage of the nuclear fuel chain has upon the Diné Bikeyah (Traditional Diné Homelands).

Brotherwise Dispatch – How would you describe the scope and intentionality of your activism?

Leona Morgan – Initially, I started organizing as a college student about 15 years ago with no idea where it would take me. Without a clear campaign or issue, our little group knew that the work we were doing was crucial to the future of indigenous rights at the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque) not just for the quality of life and education of native students, but the overall campus culture. Our task was to rebuild a temporarily defunct organization that was first charted at UNM in the early 1950s, but we knew its origins preceded that. The student-led organization named “Kiva Club” had strong roots in activism; it was directed by the needs of the indigenous community, both on and off campus. It held a unique space in the Southwest as a place for students to push on the administration and the State of New Mexico to create and fund a Native American Studies Department, a weekly radio program on the college station, and a non-governmental organization for native youth—all of which still exist today half a century later. Kiva Club was quite active in the 70s, spurred by the Civil Rights and American Indian movements, and not just as a student or academic endeavor. It had the flexibility to provide the means for radical change in the region, as well as the resources to provide a safe place for students on campus, whether culturally or scholastically. However, the social dynamic of Kiva Club is always historically mediated by UNM, an institution that was not created for people of color to feel safe or to excel in the western world.

During my years as Kiva Club president, we were struggling to re-establish ourselves in every way, and when we succeeded it was time to graduate; so we did not actually get to work on the things that really needed attention at UNM (such as a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech or hate crimes). I may have been so focused on Kiva Club, it was like I had blinders on to the “real world”. So much so, that at the time, I was not even aware of UNM’s purpose as a national nuclear research facility.

My involvement in this student organization opened doors for me, not just to other work, but also internally. Kiva Club helped to connect me to former Kiva members from past generations who are still actively working on their various struggles. Many of them have shared stories with me about their own past and present fights. It was a former Kiva member and my Diné clan brother, Robert Tohe, who introduced me to much of the Kiva Club’s history. At the time, he was an organizer for the Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice (EJ) Program and invited me to an EJ training in 2004. Ironically, my introduction to Southwest EJ organizing, sacred sites protection, and contemporary indigenous rights’ fights was through the Sierra Club (which itself is part of the mechanism impeding indigenous liberation). Robert became a mentor to me and helped me to understand the balance between western organizing and the real work of protecting cultural resources for future generations.

During college, I had also worked part-time for an indigenous non-profit called Sacred Alliances for Grassroots Equality (SAGE) Council that was working to protect a sacred place west of Albuquerque called the Petroglyphs. Like in Kiva Club, I was not able to acknowledge then what I was doing for lack of understanding about the sacred, about intentionality, and about making radical change. The individuals, organizations, and coalitions that SAGE Council introduced me to are still valuable to me to this day as resources and as my elders in this work. They invested in me, and to them I am grateful. However, I do admit that I wasn’t 100% invested myself. My supervisor/mentor told me one day that my work was “OK”, but that there was something missing, that I was lacking “ownership” of the issue, which was preventing me from moving forward. I had no idea what she meant. In the meantime, I finished school in 2006 and SAGE Council did not hire me on full time. I spent a year doing random meaningless jobs.

In May 2007, Robert Tohe called me up and invited me to attend a meeting with him regarding uranium mining on our sacred mountain Tsoodził (Mt. Taylor), near Grants, New Mexico. After learning about the issues of uranium mining, the history, and political landscape, I jumped into that fight without foresight into what it entailed. All I knew was that my grandmother, a non-smoker, had died from lung cancer at UNM-Hospital in 2001. I visited her during her final days between classes and she had no idea how she had developed this type of cancer. After learning about the health impacts from radioactive contamination and exposure to ionizing radiation, I was and still am 100% positive that she was a victim of the uranium industry, the nuclear industry, “Nuclear Colonialism”, and ultimately the imperialistic hubris of the United States. Nobody should ever die not knowing the reason or the source of what led to their death, and those responsible should not be left unaccountable or allowed to continue to cause more death and destruction.

In 2012, Robert brought me to my first national anti-nuclear-focused conference in Washington, DC. He was invited to speak at a rally, scheduled as one of the last speakers. Just before his talk, the organizers ended the rally and hurried everyone into a congressional briefing, something dealing with nuclear power plants. Everything was pretty new to me: the people, the issues, the language, and the process. I didn’t like it. I still think it was the worst conference I have attended thus far; however, it did help to connect me with some of my current colleagues and best friends. They didn’t care for the conference either. In a “fishbowl” session, I publicly vented about how the conference was not inclusive of people of color or issues dealing with the front-end of the nuclear fuel chain, and not accessible to front-line communities. Overall, I came to learn that the anti-nuke movement in the U.S. overall, is all of those things (more or less). It is not sustainable and especially shortsighted when dealing with the reality that nuclear waste will out-live western societies as a whole.

This path for me was nothing I was born into, per se; yet it is inherited by every indigenous person alive today. No one chose me or groomed me to join Kiva Club, or to challenge the nuclear industry. My parents were not activists, and influenced by their own dealings with assimilation and oppression, they did not instill in us the lifeways lived by traditional Diné. But through organizing, moving back to the rez (reservation), and developing my own politics; I have come to know my culture and my purpose. For me, the work to prevent any further risk of exposure to radioactive contamination by humans and sacred places means to stop new uranium mining and processing altogether. It means to stop the transport of all radioactive materials from every part of the nuclear fuel chain, and ultimately to stop production of uranium for its uses in nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

I know as one person, I cannot do much alone. Even though most of us “anti-nuke” activists work in isolation. Most organizers in rural locations and those specialized in very specific areas and cultures all work in isolation. Unfortunately, as I get older, I have become part of the problem: to focus on the dilemma of the day, and not looking into the future, to become disconnected from our youth.

Moving forward, I have no concrete, “one size fits all” solution on how to stop the nuclear monster. I can only help to educate and inspire those yet to come. The work I do is focused on putting out small fires, prevention, and addressing legacy issues left from World War II and Cold War-era nuclear experimentation and proliferation. But how do we really tackle the root problem and not just the symptoms?

As naïve as I was doing student organizing, I feel the same way, that this arena I am in has yet to reveal itself fully to me… that in my old age, I will be laughing at my own lack of understanding now. Just like in Kiva Club, there is something in my gut that tells me this is important, even though I may never see or fully realize the fruits of my labor in this lifetime; that it is necessary to lay some foundation, to renew and rebuild.

Uranium mining is the beginning of the nuclear fuel chain. It either leads to what some erroneously think of as safe or renewal energy, or to nuclear war. From mining to every place the uranium goes, it leaves radioactive waste and contamination, it leaves health problems, and death. Because the majority of uranium mining worldwide happens on indigenous lands, it will impact the lives and cultures of all those indigenous relatives, and their future identities. When our sacred places are harmed, it’s like weakening our shield of protection against any and all harm.

As an indigenous organizer or activist, I’m not here as an environmentalist. Our sacred places are not akin to national parks or historical places. They are not just cultural resources, rich with medicines and creation stories; they are themselves alive. It is hard to articulate or describe what my intentionality is, when working for entities beyond my human grasp of comprehension. All I know is that the seeds I am planting here need to be accessible to those who will come after me, and balanced culturally and strategically between the contemporary and each of our ancestral ways of knowing. I focus mostly on education. Education and awareness is the first step to any and all types of actions.

In order to move forward, I have much to learn about my peoples’ history and our place in the universe, and then to apply that to how I organize. As a Diné, there are teachings that have existed since time immemorial, there exists purpose and guidelines for all facets of life: in our thoughts, planning, in our words, how we live and act, and in our hopes for the future and how/what we leave behind—all toward attaining balance, harmony. We call it “Hózhó”.

There is of course, the opposite of balance, the opposite of harmony that is always our downfall. For now, I admit my work is somewhat imbalanced, more focused in the paper world of these western constructs. We spend so much time responding to permit requests and renewals and engaging in court battles, without equal time being invested in the next generations who will carry on this work. With the projects I’ve helped to develop, all of them have started as a response to some issue, but hopefully will evolve to create a consciousness within our youth to understand the why and how to move forward without relying on uranium extraction for a job or to further the oppression of our relatives for the advancement of some government.

The scope of my work is to connect one cog of all anti-nuclear activism to the whole and to connect the people working on each part, with a special focus on first nations and indigenous peoples—to stop the nonsense of nuclear proliferation and nuclear colonialism. The intentionality of my work is to assist our future generations, in the work and in general; so that our future sacred sites protectors and land defenders have a clear path of what they are doing, what needs to be done, and why. At the end of the day, all of what I do and hope to inspire is for the sake of Tó (water) and Nahasdzáán Nihimá (our Mother Earth).

(this interview of Leona Morgan for THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH was conducted by A. Shahid Stover through email correspondence that began on June 11th 2017 and will continue with part two of our interview . . .)