Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation - Hardcover

by Dana E. Powell (Author)

In Landscapes of Power Dana E. Powell examines the rise and fall of the controversial Desert Rock Power Plant initiative in New Mexico to trace the political conflicts surrounding native sovereignty and contemporary energy development on Navajo (Diné) Nation land. Powell's historical and ethnographic account shows how the coal-fired power plant project's defeat provided the basis for redefining the legacies of colonialism, mineral extraction, and environmentalism. Examining the labor of activists, artists, politicians, elders, technicians, and others, Powell emphasizes the generative potential of Navajo resistance to articulate a vision of autonomy in the face of twenty-first-century colonial conditions. Ultimately, Powell situates local Navajo struggles over energy technology and infrastructure within broader sociocultural life, debates over global climate change, and tribal, federal, and global politics of extraction.

Author Biography

Dana Powell is Associate Professor in the Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine at Taipei Medical University, Affiliate Faculty in the College of Indigenous Studies at National Dong Hwa University, and Research Associate at the Institute for Environment, Energy, and Economics at Appalachian State University.