I played keyboards, and co-produced this album with Joseph. I had Steve Kimock come in and play on a couple of tracks. Joseph is an amazing singer songwriter with a very cool band. He lives with Ethno-Botanist Phyllis Hogan in a sustainable house he built in Flagstaff, Arizona. I sometimes sit in with his band when I get down to his neck of the woods with “Moonalice”. Joseph played on the same bill as Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman who I was playing keyboards with in Sedona…I also played a few songs with Joseph.
He and Phyllis have also been closely connected with the Hopi and Navajo, and helped them fight Peabody Mining Company who had been pumping water from the underground Navajo/ Hopi Aquifer in a slurry pipeline operation to transport extracted coal to the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada. The Navajo Aquifer is the main source of potable groundwater for the Navajo and Hopi tribes, who use the water for farming and livestock maintenance as well as drinking and other domestic uses.
The pumping of water by Peabody Energy has caused a severe decline in potable water and contamination of water sources in the area.
Both tribes, situated in an arid semi-desert, attach religious significance to water, considering it sacred, and have cultural, religious, and practical objections to over-use of water. The Peabody mine, a coal strip mine, used the slurry to pump its coal through pipes 273 mi (439 km) away, where the coal could be filtered and used in the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada. The generating station produces energy for the southern parts of California and Nevada.
This was the only coal slurry operation in the country and the only plant that used groundwater in such a way.
The Hopi/Navajo finally managed to shut down the operation which, for 40 years had been steadily pumping pristine drinking water from a depth of 2,000 feet below the surface at an astounding rate of 2,000 to 4,500 gallons per minute. Just to force coal through pipes for hundreds of miles. The wells were simply drying up on the reservations.
I was also on the board of N.A.S.A.F.O.N.A., a joint Hopi Indian and University of Arizona based organization, working to restore ancient garden terracing on the Hopi reservation in Arizona. — with Joseph Langham and Steve Kimock.