Over generations, isolation and assimilation pressures have threatened the self-sufficiency, health and cultural survival of Navajo Nation – an area the size of West Virginia with more than 250,000 residents on the Arizona-New Mexico border. Resource management problems of various kinds require urgent attention. Ineffective law enforcement has left the community divided over important land use and energy development questions and susceptible to manipulation by outside forces. In order to rebuild unity and address the most pressing sustainable development concerns, leaders within the Navajo Nation are attempting to apply traditional peacemaking practices in new ways.
Join us for a lunchtime discussion with Harvard and MIT graduate students who visited Navajo Nation in January 2008 to learn about peacemaking traditions, their overlaps to western-style ADR, and the environmental conflicts impacting the Navajo tribe.
Bring your lunch — drinks and dessert provided.
