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Electricity Across the Navajo Nation

Electricity Across the Navajo Nation

Full Title: Electricity Across the Navajo Nation
Author(s): Kristin Ziv, Daniel Cardenas, Richard Luarkie, Debabrata Chattopadhyay, and Morgan Bazilian
Publisher(s): The Payne Institute for Public Policy at Colorado School of Mines
Publication Date: October 10, 2024
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):

Many Navajo Tribal members, some 13,000 households, living on the Nation’s reservation still lack access to electricity services. These Navajo households make up most of the 17,000 native American tribal homes without electricity, according to the US Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Affairs. Want of electricity harms public health, education, and economic development outcomes.

The Navajo Nation Reservation includes about 170,000 people dispersed over 22,537 square miles and was established by treaty in 1868. It is the largest Native American population – a total of roughly 330,000 across the US – and the Reservation is about the size of West Virginia. Living mostly in northeast Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and a small section of southeastern Utah, far from population centers and power stations, many Navajo are poor and are subject to overlapping political fiefdoms and Byzantine regulatory regimes.

The Nation is governed in part by a tribal council with over 100 chapters, one for every 1,700 citizens. But, except for carve outs that are peculiar to Native American history, state and federal laws also apply.

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