(Hopi language song playing) (Introduction)
(Music playing)
Water is important to everybody.
We've come to respect that it's not a luxury and we
can't take it for granted because one day it's there
and one day it's not.
Water is a very essential part of life.
One of the main purposes of the Forest Service is
to provide clean water.
Native Americans feel that man has a role in nature,
that humans should be taking care of the
landscape.
This is exactly the same mission as the National
Forest Service.
We all need to continue to respect, restore,
manage and be stewards of our natural resources.
One, two, three, up...
I believe that we do have shared goals.
There's not end to the opportunity that we have
to work closely with tribes in achieving goals
that we share.
Wanted to start out today...
The project we're working on now is actually the
idea of one of the Hopi elders that we've worked
with a long time.
We visited some springs that were heavily impacted
and in need of restoration and he made the statement
we need to be working on these together and we need
to get the young people involved,
we need to have elders and young people and Forest
Service staff out here on the ground doing this work
together learning from each other and that was
really the catalyst for this project.
I've had a lot of different activities.
Each year I try to get creative and do something.
We've never attempted anything off reservation.
This is the first time we've attempted an off
reservation activity.
Our Cultural Resources Advisory Team,
our Hopi elders wanted the youth to do something in
this setting to promote the importance of water.
We incorporated the educational aspect to
promote higher learning and education to get to
employment opportunities within the Department of
Natural Resources, Forest Service.
We were asked to come up here to interact with the
youth to get them interested in protecting
their own resources and to teach then what we do so
possibly they would move into our career path.
You know it's really an exciting time to be able
to work with youth of the tribes.
We work with youth in many different arenas here
across the forest and we're always interested in
educating youth around the, the work we do,
the management of the National Forest.
Even more exciting though because we have tribal
youth here who are really in some cases just
learning about some of these resources.
This site receives direct sun light...
In this process we're looking at two springs and
those two springs have very different management
needs.
One is a, a hanging garden hill slopes spring,
very steep slope, there's no trail to the source and
the water is captured up at the source so in order
to prevent erosion of the hill slope, we need a trail
up there.
At Castle Spring, it's kind of a complex landscape.
It's a rock shelter spring, a wet meadow,
it's been very much altered for livestock
purposes.
The idea of balancing both the ecological integrity
with the goods and services like providing
water for wildlife and livestock can be combined
here but it's going to take a little bit of work
to remove the old fencing, to reconfigure the flow of
water.
With the spring work that we have been doing here, we
were actually removing invasive plants that have
come in forcing out some of the native plants
especially some of the ones that would have been
used by native cultures.
I am having tons of fun restoring the spring.
We had to like clean around,
take out certain type of plants that don't belong
here.
It's fun, it's a good experience and you get
muscles.
(Giggles)
We chose Castle Springs because it does have a lot
of water flow to it and it does have a good overhang
where it will be protected from the elements.
We're using our traditional Hopi methods
of how we maintain our springs.
We noticed that the area was covered with graffiti.
Once we cleaned off the graffiti, we began to see
some of the petroglyphs in the wall that tells us as
Hopi what clans migrated through the area.
Working with friends, learning new things,
knowing that our ancestors had been here.
Our children, we have the youngest at 16 years old
up to 18 years of age and there's 17 students.
They're thankful for being here,
they just couldn't wait to get up the next day to go
see where they're going to go and where they're going
to end up at and we've had a lot of hard workers
yesterday that they really showed us a lot of
interest in what they were doing and we even tried to
stop them from working and they're like, "no we're
going to do this" and so we just, "okay go for it,
go do it" and taking out the fence poles they
really had a good workout but they enjoyed it and
they were laughing and joking around.
(Laughing)
We're making steps.
Before this area was just nothing but a slope,
like it was just sliding so we're trying to
stabilize it.
I've always known that your land is sacred.
It's just important to keep the ecosystem and
nature as it should be.
The Spirituality Springs
are actually worth a lot.
I wish there were other springs we could actually fix.
Doing the work, it's fun, you know, tiring but it's all worth it.
I may be a youth but you know somewhere along the
line 30 years maybe 40 years, my kids can come
back and I can tell them, "yeah I did this".
Well I'm very honored to be here bringing this back
to life.
Springs like this are very important.
This is the kind of work that we should be doing
everywhere because this is our mission with the
Forest Service to work together to manage this
wonderful landscape.
Forest Service folks, to tribal members,
specialists about...
The cooperation between the Forest Service and the
Hopi Tribe and the natives for that matter, any
indigenous group is very important.
What I saw yesterday, the crew had done a great job.
They were now getting back to giving this living
spring a face lift it deserves the work that the
crew has done.
It was a lot of work putting this together.
I feel good about how everything has turned out.
I see it as already being a huge success.
I don't know if I can accurately express how
pleased I am with the way this project is going.
We've got a lot of different partners that
have shown up to all contribute.
We've got a lot of different moving parts and
a pretty ambitious objective as far as what
we want to accomplish out here it's just going along
great.
Seeing the elders and the youth all working together
it's really satisfying.
My hope is that next year or two years from now
we'll be implementing another project that is
born out of this project.
Excellent!
Alright!
(Music Playing)
Before we did this Spring Restoration Project, this
area was accessible to domestic livestock and
they were drinking right from the spring source,
trampling what vegetation there was, so it was in a
state of disrepair.
What we did was we created a pool that now impounds
more water than we originally had on site.
We installed a livestock exclosure fence so that
now domestic livestock cannot enter the spring
source area and we removed invasive weeds.
It's been about a year since we completed this
Spring Restoration Project so now we're at the
monitoring and stewardship phase.
Basically we're monitoring water quality,
we're making sure that the impoundment continues to
hold water, we continue to address the invasive
species issues as well as maintaining and inspecting
the livestock exclosure fence.
I'm very enthusiastic about continuing to do
spring restoration on the Kaibab National Forest and
to continue to work with the Hopi.
Their knowledge has been a big benefit to us in
completing this project and I think it's important
as we move forward to continue to work towards
restoring these cultural landscapes.
What I think this project has shown is we need to do
more projects like this one because it allows us
to share information with the Forest Service and it
allows us to also restore our ancestral lands but
most importantly it allows our Hopi elders to teach
the youth because if we can reach one youth, we
have done our job.
(Hopi language song playing) (Closing Credits)