Kelvin Long discusses ecological imbalance and interconnectedness of all people and all life, and the "Save the Peaks" campaign, a project of ECHOES.
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Kelvin Long, of Navajo Nation Clan Bitter Water, is the director of ECHOES (Educating Communities while Healing and Offering Environmental Support), based in Flagstaff northern Arizona. In this interview, Calvin Long discusses ecological imbalance and interconnectedness of all people and all life, and he urges everyone to take personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Long speaks of the "Save the Peaks" campaign which is a project of Echoes. It's an effort-- largely on the part of indigenous North Americans-- to save from corporate desecration a circle of 4 mountains in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. These four Mountains are held sacred by 22 nations of the Southwest. Long says that the sacred mountain of the West, San Francisco Peaks, faces a particularly foul threat. It stands surrounded by deserts and maintains a delicate ecosystem. The company Arizona Snowbowl owns a ski resort there and it intends to expand the resort by making artificial snow with reclaimed wastewater and then dump it on the mountain. Reclaimed wastewater contains endocrine disruptors, which have been found to cause mutations and gender shifts in plant and animal species. Long says this wastewater would throw off the natural bio-harmony existing on the mountain and endanger much of the flora and fauna, including a few specimens found nowhere else on Earth. The effects of soaking the entire mountain with these toxins would not only poison the life on the mountain, but the toxins would also find their way into the bodies of human beings. He believes also that if the scheduled desecration takes place, the young people will likely not consider the mountain as a sacred living symbol, and will lose touch with the cultural stories relating to this symbol of the circle of 4 sacred mountains. This, he says, could serve to destroy the cultures of 22 indigenous American nations which have historically held this circle of mountains sacred for so long. Because of the serious consequences of the actions of Snowbowl ECHOES is taking the company to circuit court over this matter.
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