The Cheyenne River Youth Project® Will Feature Movies and Keynote Speakers Throughout the Month, With Events Scheduled for May 1, 8, 15 and 22
Diminished snowpack in the Rocky Mountains. Plummeting aquifer levels beneath Great Plains grasses. Ominous bathtub rings in Southwestern reservoirs. A dusty, barren, toxic wasteland where the Colorado River delta once kissed Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.
There’s no question that the North American West, like many other places around the world, is facing a water crisis — and it’s one that is being exacerbated by increasing numbers of stakeholders fighting over a finite amount of fresh water. Farmers and ranchers want it for agriculture and stock. Industry demands it for hydraulic fracturing (also known as “fracking”). And countless individuals and businesses continue to use vast amounts of it as they pursue their daily lives in a naturally dry environment, made even drier through the current drought.
This spring, the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation wants to focus on these issues, and much more, in the three-day Mni Indigenous Water Summit on the Cheyenne River reservation in north-central South Dakota. Organized by Candace Ducheneaux, Linda TioleuWiŋ Bishop and Karen Ducheneaux, the summit is scheduled to take place Wednesday, May 22 through Friday, May 24 in the Cheyenne-Eagle Butte High School gymnasium. Indigenous leaders and community organizers from North and South America, also known as the Eagle and Condor nations, are invited to attend.
In keeping with the “Water is Life” theme, the Cheyenne River Youth Project® has proclaimed that May will be Water Month at the CRYP campus. Special events include weekly movies and speakers at the Cokata Wiconi teen center in Eagle Butte.
Each Wednesday from May 1 to May 22, community members and interested visitors will be invited to CRYP to hear a guest speaker at 5:30 p.m., followed by a movie on Cokata Wiconi’s big screen at 7 p.m. The events are open free to the public, and CRYP staff and volunteers will provide refreshments.
On May 1, CRYP has invited Karen and Candace Ducheneaux to speak, and it will be showing the 2010 film “Gasland” on the big screen. The movie addresses natural gas drilling and the process known as “slickwater fracking.”
On May 8, Karen and Candace Ducheneaux will return to Cokata Wiconi, and the featured films will be the student film “Fractured Land,” which explores Canada’s “Carbon Corridor,” and the 2009 film “Tapped,” which deals with the bottled-water industry. On May 15, Linda Bishop will speak, and audiences will watch the 2008 documentary film “Blue Gold: World Water Wars.”
The final Water Month event at CRYP will take place on Wednesday, May 22. The 4- to 12-year-olds will watch the 2011 Academy Award-winning computer-animated film “Rango” at The Main youth center, while the 2012 documentary film “Green Gold,” which addresses the rehabilitation of damaged ecosystems, will be the featured presentation at Cokata Wiconi. Joseph Ducheneaux has been invited to speak.
“Since May 22 is the opening day of the Mni Indigenous Water Summit, we’re hoping that we get quite a large, diverse crowd, with representatives from a variety of nations,” said Julie Garreau, CRYP’s executive director. “All of us at CRYP are looking forward to doing our part to support the summit and the next steps we need to take as a community to protect our water supply for future generations.
“This will be a wonderful experience for our young children and teens, as well,” she continued. “They are active participants in planting, caring for and harvesting our 2-acre, naturally grown Winyan Toka Win garden, and even at their ages, they already understand the challenges in capturing water and getting it to our plants. It’s clear that the time to address water safety, security and sovereignty is now.”
Candace Ducheneaux concurred. According to many researchers, she said, water scarcity in the American West is imminent.
“It’s a far more serious problem than fossil-fuel depletion or climate change,” she explained. “They estimate that, unless humanity radically alters its course, clean water resources could completely disappear in the next decade.” The Mni Indigenous Water Summit will offer a global platform for indigenous nations to promote water sustainability and attain water justice on tribal lands through the protection, restoration and management of freshwater resources. It has been designed to bring together environmentalists, scientists, policy makers and community organizers to examine the current water crisis from three perspectives.
“We’re going to look at water safety, security and sovereignty during the summit,” she said. “Through these three perspectives, we hope that the leading minds from our indigenous communities in North and South America can effectively tackle the urgent challenges of water scarcity and contamination and work together on developing sustainable water solutions. We owe it to Mother Earth, and to our future generations. Without water, we are without a future.”
On the first day, the summit will address water safety by bringing awareness of the imminent dangers that threaten access to clean water. These dangers include depletion, pollution and the usurping of freshwater supplies. “Every tribe, from Canada to the Amazon, has its own story about struggling to keep water pure,” Ducheneaux said. “We’re going to talk about fracking, mining, oil pipelines, pesticides — all the major threats to a safe water supply.”
The second day will be devoted to water security, which means finding solutions to restore natural climate, freshwater sources and sustainable ecosystems. In particular, attendees will learn about rainwater retention systems and how to repair the natural water cycle.
“Our lands are desertified, and our short water cycle interrupted,” Ducheneaux said of reservation lands in the West. “Our watershed isn’t healthy. When we do get rain, it instantly runs off because the trees and plants aren’t there to hold the moisture. So we want to talk about watershed restoration methods, including rain harvesting and specific techniques to recharge ground waters and aquifers.
“We anticipate that repaired short cycles will help to repair the longer water cycle, and that in turn can help us recover from climate change,” she continued. “We have to heal the climate, but we’re rapidly approaching the point of no return. That’s why we’re in a hurry to have this summit, and to include as many indigenous leaders as we can.”
Finally, on the third day, participants will address water sovereignty. Organizers hope that the attending nations can reach a united position on the management and governance of indigeous water rights, which will involve specific water management plans, poposed legislation and, most of all, solidarity.
“In just our Lakota Oyate, our seven sacred council fires, we have 5 million acres of tribal land that could be put into water restoration,” she explained. “We’re all going to have to take unprecedented steps toward massive rehabilitation efforts and make the commitment to use tribal land for the benefit of all. We firmly believe that water will bring productivity back, and our people then will have a way to sustain themselves.”
The Mni Indigenous Water Summit will be a unique opportunity for global politicians, water experts, tribal leaders and indigenous youth to work together and pursue a sustainable future. It won’t all be speakers, discussions, workshops and videos, however. Ducheneaux said the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation also would be arranging entertainment and socializing opportunities for all the attending delegates — these activities will include drum groups, storytelling and special movie nights.
“It’s all part of healing our lands, and healing our peoples,” she said.
To learn more about this year’s Mni Indigenous Water Summit, please contact Candace Ducheneaux at (605) 733-2148 or candacedx@yahoo.com; Linda TioleuWiŋ Bishop at (605) 850-4966 or lakota_ethnobotanist@hotmail.com; or Karen Ducheneaux at 605 200-0044. Also, please visit the summit’s Facebook community at www.facebook.com/Mni.Water.
To learn more about the Cheyenne River Youth Project® and its programs, and for information about making donations and volunteering, call (605) 964-8200 or visit www.lakotayouth.org. And, to stay up to date on the latest CRYP news and events, visit the youth project’s Facebook “Cause” page. All Cause members will receive regular updates through Facebook.
The Cheyenne River Youth Project®, founded in 1988, is a grassroots, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing the youth of the Cheyenne River reservation with access to a vibrant and secure future through a wide variety of culturally sensitive and enduring programs, projects and facilities that ensure strong, self-sufficient families and communities.