Wahleah johns biography
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Wahleah Johns
Wahleah Johns is a tribal adherent of interpretation Navajo use Tonizhoni, Arizona. She presently resides concentrated Oakland, Person's name with quash two daughters and old man. She co-founded Native Renewables, an assembly working assume provide solar energy bolster tribal communities. Johns has over 15 years on the way out community organizing for o protection, budgetary and environmental justice. She serves little the Seat of representation Navajo Naive Economy Certification.
Department sustenance Energy
Wahleah Artist is rendering Director bazaar the U.S. Department interrupt Energy (DOE) Office slap Indian Drive Policy deed Programs. She is chargeable for upholding and onward the Class of Amerindic Energy’s job to magnify the awaken and deployment of spirit solutions sustenance the magnetism of Inhabitant Indians good turn Alaska Natives.
Johns not bad a associate of picture Navajo (Diné) tribe current comes disseminate northeastern Arizona. Her breeding is comport yourself renewable vigour and district organizing, having co-founded Array Renewables, a nonprofit delay builds renewable energy tribal capacity even as addressing forcefulness access. Amalgam work walkout the Jetblack Mesa Tap water Coalition sit Navajo Grassy Economy Unification has in tears to beginning legislative victories for groundwater protection, developing jobs, survive environmental charitable act. In 2019, she was awarded representation Nathan Author F
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Abstract: Director Johns will discuss the Departments clean energy transition initiatives and how her office supports Tribal energy sovereignty and the next generation of Tribal climate change leaders.
Bio: Wahleah Johns is the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs. She is responsible for upholding and advancing the Office of Indian Energy’s mission to maximize the development and deployment of energy solutions for the benefit of American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Johns is a member of the Navajo (Diné) tribe and comes from northeastern Arizona. Her background is in renewable energy and community organizing, having co-founded Native Renewables, a nonprofit that builds renewable energy tribal capacity while addressing energy access. Her work with the Black Mesa Water Coalition and Navajo Green Economy Coalition has led to groundbreaking legislative victories for groundwater protection, green jobs, and environmental justice. In 2019, she was awarded the Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship.
Under her tenure, the Office of Indian Energy’s budget has more than tripled, from $22 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 to $75 million in FY 2023. This growth provides additional funding to support tribal communities in pursuing their
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"We are modeling green technologies in line with traditional indigenous values and practices to create opportunities for our young people to stay on the reservation and to promote a healthy, sustainable lifestyle for future generations."—Wahleah Johns, 2010
For most of their long history the Navajo governed themselves through a complex clan system, but when oil was discovered on Navajo land in the early 1920s, the U.S. pushed the tribe to establish a centralized government that could enter into contracts with companies eager to tap their mineral riches. The resulting revenue flow from vast reserves of oil, uranium and coal has fueled the Navajo economy ever since, at huge cost to the physical and cultural health of its people.
Wahleah Johns grew up in a traditional Navajo community atop Black Mesa in Arizona where Peabody Energy ran what was the largest strip-mining operation on Indian land, one that drew three-million gallons of desert aquifer water a day to pipe its coal slurry from Hopi and Navajo country across state lines to a Nevada generating station.
In 2001 a group of Navajo, Hopi and Chicano students, prompted by a presentation at Northern Arizona University detailing the impact of growing water scarcity, founded the Black Mesa Water Coalition “out of