Chris Clements

Three out of four open seats on the Montezuma-Cortez RE-1 school board have candidates who are running unopposed in this month’s election. A few of those candidates have said they might refuse to follow statewide education policies if they conflict with their personal values.

A new store that sells potable water has opened up in Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. About a third of the roughly 170,000 people who live on the Navajo Nation do not have access to clean, reliable drinking water, according to the tribe’s Department of Water Resources. Many Navajo citizens regularly have to drive for miles to haul water back to their communities. Elijah Bitah is a co-founder of Tó Water Company, which celebrated its grand opening in Shiprock on Saturday. Bitah says that he and his family were inspired to start Tó, a Navajo word that means water, after visiting a similar drinking water business in Gallup. They also saw a need for residents of Shiprock to have access to clean water after the Gold King Mine Spill in 2015, which caused wastewater containing heavy metals like arsenic and lead to flow into the Animas and San Juan rivers.

Early in-person voting for the 2023 election is already underway across Colorado. More than 324,000 Coloradans had voted as of Monday. Most polling places and ballot drop-boxes will be active between now and November 7. Locally, voters in the Four Corners are being asked to weigh in on several school board races and statewide ballot initiatives. Adriana Stimax is a resident of Mancos and a candidate running for one of three open seats on the Mancos RE-6 school board. Stimax, the education director for San Juan Mountains Association and a former teacher, says rural school districts like Mancos RE-6 often don’t have the same access to funding as other districts in the state, and that that can have a number of different consequences.

Elections are underway for three open seats on the Mancos RE-6 school board. Craig Benally is a resident of Mancos and a candidate vying for one of the open positions on the board. Benally, who is Navajo, grew up in southwest Colorado and previously served on the Mancos Board of Trustees for four years. If elected, he says he would focus on being a representative for Native American students in the district. Earlier this month, he spoke at a candidate forum in Mancos hosted by the school board. This week, the city of Cortez will host open house events to hear from the public as it works to update its land use code. City officials say they are trying to improve affordable housing options for those looking to move or build homes in Cortez.

Former President of the Navajo Nation Jonathan Nez has announced he’s running for Congress in Arizona’s 2nd District. The seat is currently held by freshman Republican Eli Crane, who joined with a group of far-right defectors to oust former-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. The 2nd Congressional District is also home to 14 of Arizona’s 22 federally recognized tribes. Nez, a Democrat, would be the first Native American representative from Arizona in Congress. Nez says it will likely be a tough race – the district has 30,000 more Republican voters registered than Democrats. He says he plans on focusing on issues that matter to everyday Arizonans, like inflation and lowering the cost of childcare. And Colorado voters will decide next month if the state should be allowed to keep more of the money it gets from tobacco and nicotine.

On Friday, Montezuma Land Conservancy will screen a documentary film on Native American food sovereignty and the harvest season at KSJD’s Sunflower Theatre in Cortez, followed by a panel discussion. The film – called "Gather" – will also be shown in Towaoc, on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk is a former Ute Mountain Ute tribal council member and the cross-cultural programs manager for MLC. She’s helping organize the screening, and will speak on the panel afterwards. She says the traditional harvest season for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe begins in springtime, in connection with the spring Bear Dance celebration. Tribal members will sometimes first harvest juniper trees to build the lodge for the Bear Dance, and later in the season, different berries, cedar trees and sage.

On Saturday morning, Mesa Verde National Park hosted viewing events for the public during the annular solar eclipse. Hundreds of visitors poured into the park in the early morning hours to secure a spot to see this extraterrestrial event. NASA scientists and park rangers were nearby to answer questions. Tim Livengood is an assistant research scientist at NASA. He says there’s an important reason the crowd is here at Mesa Verde to watch the eclipse, as opposed to a different location in the Four Corners. And this week, county clerk and recorders will begin mailing ballots to all registered voters in Colorado in preparation for the November 7 election.

A rare solar eclipse dimmed the skies above Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park this weekend. NASA scientists and park rangers were on hand during this celestial event as a resource for the public.

This weekend, Colorado’s Department of Transportation says it expects towns and public lands in southwest Colorado to be inundated with visitors coming to see the solar eclipse. The eclipse will be visible in the U.S. early on Saturday along a path starting in Oregon and eventually passing over Mesa Verde National Park, and the Four Corners region. Lisa Schwantes, a regional communications manager for C-DOT, says that hotels in the area have been booked for months, and that Mesa Verde itself expects to see tens of thousands of visitors for this celestial event. Schwantes says it’s also important that people driving on highways this Saturday don’t pull over to the side of the road to view the eclipse, and instead find a designated area. And a grassroots organization in Arizona is pushing to remove the state's right-to-work statute in an attempt to strengthen unionization.

On Saturday, a community organization held a walk in protest of the White Mesa uranium mill on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation. It’s the only one of its kind still operating in the U.S. About 40 people attended the walk, which began in White Mesa, in southeast Utah, and ended at the driveway of the uranium mill. Manuel Heart, Chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, led the protest and spoke to supporters about the need for more regulations from the state of Utah on how the mill uses its wells. Heart says that the Tribe ultimately hopes the state regulatory agency won’t renew the uranium mill’s application for a groundwater discharge permit later this winter. In 1999, samples were collected that indicated a plume of chloroform was present in the groundwater table underneath the mill facility on their property.