This Is Our Land to Protect

Window Rock AZ

This isn’t just a story, it’s how I feel when I look at what’s happening around us.

I see companies coming into Diné land, wanting to take what we have, pulling from the ground without thinking about the people who live here. They don’t see what we see. To them, it’s resources. To us, this is home. This is where we live, where our families are, and where our children and grandchildren will continue to live long after they are gone.

When the land is disturbed, it’s not just the ground, it’s everything. It’s our water, our animals, our way of life. It’s something deeper than that. It’s something we were taught to respect.

We were given these lands by the Holy People. That comes with responsibility.

Sometimes it feels like people are not paying attention, like we are forgetting what is at stake. But we can’t stay quiet. We have to stand up and protect what we still have.

This is not just for us, it’s for the next generations.

We are fighting so that one day, our children and grandchildren can still live on these lands the way our ancestors intended.
— Diné young woman wishing to be unnamed, April 2026

We Forgot What We Knew

Tsé Daa’ Kaan, NM

The difference between how we lived before and how we live now, you can see it in something as simple as this (points to a soda can). Processed foods, fast food… we eat it every day. It tastes good, but it’s changed us.

Now we sit more. We eat and don’t move like we used to. You can see it in our young kids more weight issues, more health problems. We go to the doctor, and they tell us to eat better, to cut back on sugar and salt. We hear it but we don’t always listen.

Back then, we didn’t have those kinds of foods. We planted and grew what we ate, even in the desert. We didn’t say it couldn’t be done. We made it happen. We prepared our food, stored it, and made it last through the seasons. We watched the moon, the sun, and the stars they guided us. They told us when to plant and when to harvest.

We gathered plants, bundled them, and stored them. We had cellars for our food, our own kind of refrigerator. We dried our meats and saved them. We planned ahead.

When people got sick, herbalists would go out and gather medicine from the land. That was our pharmacy. Those were our remedies for colds, coughs, and more. It came from what was given to us.

Now, we don’t do that the same way. We go straight to the hospital, take what we’re given, even when we don’t fully understand it.

I’m not saying everything from today is wrong but we’ve forgotten what we knew.

We were taught how to take care of ourselves from the land, from the seasons, from our own knowledge.

That’s something we need to remember.
— Darlene Etcitty, Tsé Daa’ Kaan, May 2026

This Is How We Stayed Healthy

Sanostee NM 

When I was younger, winters were different. Snow would start in October and last into May. I remember in my junior year of High School, 1980, everything was clear on May 5th, but the next morning we woke up to a foot of snow. There were no “snow days” back then. The bus still came down the dirt roads, and we walked half a mile to meet it, snow or sunshine.

Our parents would wake us up before sunrise, telling us to go run. We would run in the dark, calling out so the Holy People would hear us. That was part of staying strong and living a long life.

In the summer, our family went to the mountains to gather berries and plants. In the fall, we collected juniper, piñon, oak, and roots. We boiled them like tea that was our medicine. We didn’t depend on clinics the way we do now. We knew how to take care of ourselves.

Today, I see things differently not just from experience, but from the work I’ve done. I’ve been working with grazing and land management since the early 2000s, and one thing is clear: if we don’t take care of the land, it won’t take care of us.

I’ve seen what overgrazing can do. I’ve seen how water sources affect everything grass, livestock, and our way of life. But I’ve also seen change. When people work together and pay attention to what’s being shared policies, plans, and knowledge we can restore balance.

Everything is connected land, water, animals, and people.

What we knew back then wasn’t just tradition, it was a system of survival and wellness. That’s something we need to remember if we want to move forward.

— Alonzo Cohoe, Sanostee, May 2026