When Suffering From Drought, Being Inspired by Nature Can Lead to a Solution
That’s why a group from the tribe is looking to the beaver (yes, the animal) to get things flowing again. They call themselves Mni which means “water,” and they’re working to rehydrate the land and their lives.
Fifteen years of on-and-off drought has left the soil in the region very dry, so now, when it experiences steady rainfall, the ground is too dry to absorb the water. The rainwater runs off the land and into the creeks along the Mississippi River causing flooding but no quenching replenishment of the land.
The Mni’s plan? To build thousands of beaver-like dams in creeks and gullies all over the reservation, which will slow the rainwater long enough so that it can be absorbed into the ground. Beavers have been the ones controlling the water flow for centuries, so Mni is looking to the experts.
This is so close to being good news. A tribe that imitates what beavers do naturally to keep water on the land. A tribe that knows not allowing water to soak into dry land means creating land that is unable to hold the precious water when it finally comes. Just keep in mind that it uses humans to build these dams, and not any actual beavers.
Don’t be silly, not even the Lakota tribes will tolerate actual beavers.
I’m reminded of a passage from Terry Tempest Williams in her book ‘Finding beauty in a broken world.”
In 1950, government agents proposed to get rid of prairie dogs on some parts of the Navajo Reservation [in Arizona] in order to protect the roots of sparse desert grasses and thereby maintain some marginal grazing for sheep.
The Navajo elders objected, insisting, “If you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.”
The amused officials assured the Navajo that there was no correlation between rain and prairie dogs and carried out their plan. The outcome was surprising only to the federal officials. The desert [on the affected parts of the reservation] became a virtual wasteland. Without the ground-turning process of the burrowing animals, the soil became solidly packed, unable to accept rain. Hard pan. The result: fierce runoff whenever it rained. What little vegetation remained was carried away by flash floods and a legacy of erosion.
I suppose next the tribe will be digging holes like prairie dogs?
