Growing up in Tesuque Pueblo, Jade Begay cleaned the acequias in the spring and took part in ceremonial dances to draw ample water for harvest season.
The old ways tied to this centuries-old riverfront farming village became deeply embedded in her identity and drove her to environmental advocacy.
Begay, 30, is one of two New Mexicans chosen for the new White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which has 26 members from around the country.
“I really attribute what I do and who I am right now to being a Pueblo kid, growing up in that community, really immersed in my culture, really immersed in my traditions,” said Begay, climate justice campaign director for NDN Collective, an Indigenous rights group.
Begay said she believes she can bring not only her life experience to the advisory council but centuries of wisdom from an Indigenous people connected to nature.
Richard Moore, 74, was picked to co-chair the council.
He is a co-coordinator for the Los Jardines Institute, an Albuquerque-based activist group that works in the fields of social, economic and environmental justice.
Moore said he has been an activist for 54 years and was battling for environmental justice before the term was coined.
He believes the institute’s activism and the causes to which he has dedicated his life caught the attention of White House officials.
“We’ve been raising hell, and we’re going to keep raising it,” Moore said. “We’re serious about the life-and-death situation in our communities.”
The council, made up of volunteers, was formed as part of President Joe Biden’s Jan. 27 executive order on tackling the climate crisis.
Tucked within the executive order are edicts to bolster environmental justice — a concept that emerged in the early 1980s with the aim of stopping poorer communities of color from taking the brunt of industrial development and pollution, as is often the case.
The council was created so a diverse set of voices — activists, scholars and environment leaders — to advise the chairman of two other White House councils on how to correct historic environmental injustices and prevent future ones.
Among the advisers is Robert D. Bullard, a Texas Southern University professor known as the father of environmental justice.
Begay said she feels honored to be recruited based on the climate and community activism she has done since she was a teenager.
“It’s just a great affirmation that the work I’m doing is being acknowledged,” Begay said, adding a stark example of environmental injustice in New Mexico is in the Navajo Nation, which has suffered from the effects of uranium mining in the area.
She said these communities should receive reparations for the pollution and also help through the American Jobs Plan to replace the mining jobs that have disappeared.
“A lot of our people in Navajo Nation suffered severely from economic dislocation after the collapse of the uranium industry,” Begay said.
But the investment should be in creating safe, clean jobs, so the people don’t have to depend on toxic and polluting industries, she said.
Building much-needed water infrastructure on the Navajo Nation would create jobs, as would developing solar and wind energy systems to replace the coal-powered plants traditionally used there, Begay said.
She plans to make these sorts of recommendations through the council with the hope they reach Biden’s ears.
Moore said for the environmental justice movement to really evolve and work, it’s important to have direct communication with the White House.
This new advisory council should accomplish that, he said. Although their suggestions first head to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, he said, “they go straight to the top.”
Begay said this council has a broader scope and more direct link to the White House than the one overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council was established in 1993 and is more focused on the agency’s effects on communities.
Moore said he chaired the EPA’s advisory council through five presidents, which is a big reason he was chosen.
Given the time required to co-chair the White House advisory council, he will insist on seeing substantial results or else he’ll resign.
“The administration said, ‘We’re serious about this, we want to do something about it,’ “ Moore said. “And that’s going to involve some hard work on the part of the administration. And it’s going also involve hard work from us, because we’re going to ask people not only ‘What is your issue?’ but ‘What’s your
solution?’ ”
Begay said she sees this council as another step in empowering Native people. Indigenous people are being invited to a table that did not exist for them before, she said, adding she wants to take advantage of this opportunity.
“I want my people to be able to thrive,” Begay said. “I want my people to be able to continue their life ways. We can only do that with a safe climate.”
