abstract: Societies seeking sustainability are transitioning from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources to mitigate dangerous climate change. Energy transitions involve ethically controversial decisions that affect current and future generations’ well-being. As energy systems in the United States transition towards renewable energy, American Indian reservations with abundant energy sources are some of the most significantly impacted communities. Strikingly, energy ethicists have not yet developed a systematic approach for prescribing ethical action within the context of energy decisions. This dissertation reinvents energy ethics as a distinct sub-discipline of applied ethics, integrating virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism with Sioux, Navajo, and Hopi ethical perspectives. On this new account, applied energy ethics is the analysis of questions of right and wrong using a framework for prescribing action and proper policies within private and public energy decisions. To demonstrate the usefulness of applied energy ethics, this dissertation analyzes two case studies situated on American Indian reservations: the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Navajo Generating Station. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Sustainability 2019

Navajo students who attend residential schools that are located off the reservation and hours away from their homes, communities, and tribes may experience issues with development of a meaningful cultural identity. The purpose of this study was to better understand and identify key themes related to how Navajo students' cultural identity may be affected while living in an off-reservation residential hall. Phinney's ethnic identity development theory was used to explain the psychosocial process of developing industry and identity in adolescents. The primary research question addressed how former students' experiences of living in an off-reservation residence hall affected their development of cultural identity. A qualitative case study design was used. A purposeful sample of 12 Navajo former students who lived in a Bureau of Indian Education off-reservation residential hall between 2010-2014 was interviewed. The interviews were coded, and 7 themes related to loss of native language ability, yearning for native language and culture, tutoring, supportive teachers, responsibility and independence, generational legacy, and culture were identified. Based on the findings, a professional development plan was developed to train board members, administrators, and staff at the study site about how to promote students' development of positive cultural identity while living in a residential hall. With this knowledge, residential hall leaders and staff may be better able to ensure that Navajo students in their charge achieve successful educational outcomes and retain their tribal culture, practices, and language, to ensure that Navajo students can achieve successful educational outcomes and a positive cultural identity.

Previous literature indicates the opercular bone as a useful tool for the determination of age and growth of fish. The reliability and validity of this method is tested for two populations of Utah chub. Age and growth are calculated for 222 Utah chub collected from Panguitch Lake and 212 Utah chub collected from Navajo Lake, southern Utah, in 1952-1953 from both scales and opercular bones. Scales are measured with the aid of a projector. Opercular bones are measured directly. The center of growth of the opercular bone is posterior to the posterior lip of the fulcrum. Correction for curvature is necessary in opercular bone measurements. The body-scale relationships for both populations are linear. The body-opercular bone relationships for both populations are slightly curvilinear. Agreement of dominant age classes for successive years, agreement of empirical length-frequency modes of young fish with calculated length-frequency modes of lower age classes, agreement of ages as indicated by scales and opercular bones, agreement of age with sexually immature fish and an increase in length with an increase in age are accepted as evidence for both methods. Opercular bones have less variation for calculated lengths in older age classes while the scales have less variation in the younger age classes. The scale method is a generally more efficient method for determining the age and growth of the Utah chub.

Dropout rates among American Indian students have not shown significant improvement since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. While extensive research exists on the dropout phenomenon, no studies were found that addressed why some Navajo girls leave school and the role education narratives play in their decision. Accordingly, this study examined the narratives shaping federal and Navajo education policies in order to understand how these influence school programs. The research questions dealt with three elements that could induce Navajo girls to leave school, the institutions and programs offered by federal and tribal government entities, and the dichotomies between school and home environments. The narrative policy analysis, grounded in social construction theory, included provisional and secondary coding of the NCLB of 2001 and the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act of 2005. Interviews with administrators from the Department of Diné Education, and a young Navajo woman who had left school, supplemented the documentary analysis. The data were triangulated and a modified network analysis conducted to glean areas of convergence and discrepancy between federal and Navajo policy constructs, based on problem statements and proposed solutions. Results indicated that school programs aligned with federal imperatives might not engage or interest many Navajo girls, leading them to abandon their studies early. The implications for social change include the need to develop programs that increase self-direction and engagement among Navajo girls, and granting indigenous peoples autonomy in deciding which educational approaches most closely align with their cultural norms and long-term objectives.

The Navajo reservation located in portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah is rich in low sulfur coal deposits, ideal for strip mining operation. Presently, the Navajo Nation has entered into extensive coal leases with several large companies and utilities. Contracts have committed huge quantities of Navajo coal for mining. The present research has been directed to evaluate the shadow prices of Navajo coal and identify optimal coal extraction. An economic model of coal resource extraction over time has been structured within an optimal control problem has been formulated as a discrete dynamic optimization problem. A comparison of the shadow prices of coal deposits derived from the dynamic model with the royalty payments the tribe receives on the basis of the present long-term lease contracts indicates that in most cases the tribe is paid considerably less than the amount of royalty projected by the model. Part of these discrepancies may be explained in terms of the low coal demand condition at the time of leasing and due to greater uncertainties with respect to the geologic information and other risks associated with mining operations. However, changes in the demand for coal with rigidly fixed terms of royalty rates will lead to non-optimal extraction of coal. A corrective tax scheme has been suggested on the basis of the results of this research. The proposed tax per unit of coal shipped from a site is the difference between the shadow price and the present royalty rate. The estimated tax rates over time are derived.

Salt water is produced from the Ferron Sandstone Member of the Mancos Shale in central Utah as part of the production of coalbed methane (CBM) and is disposed of by injection predominantly into the Navajo Sandstone between 4,500 feet to 7,300 feet and is considered to be a hazardous waste. Local government agencies are concerned about the potential impacts on shallow groundwater because of this disposal method. Water samples were gathered from four shallow water-supply wells, and nine salt water disposal (SWD) wells to compare hydrochemistries as an indicator of potential mixing. Shallow water-supply wells are likely recharged by local precipitation while the source of CO2 is from atmospheric and/or soil CO2 gas and comparatively, are low in total dissolved solids. Carbonate mineral dissolution is the source of CO2 in the SWD wells and is exceptionally high in TDS. The SWD water appears to be old water and displays an evaporative signature. A geologic analysis was conducted for the Drunkards Wash gas field using 479 digital gas well logs. Three subsurface faults were identified with one fault in the north and the other two in the central part of the gas field near the eastern and western flanks. These faults were further confirmed by comparing average monthly gas and water production from the first 24 months in these faulted areas to adjacent control areas. Areas near faults reveal two to six times greater gas production than that of the associated control areas, and water production is greater by nearly an order of magnitude. This difference is likely due to the fracturing associated with the damage zone near the faults allowing for increased flow of gas and water. Due to the high injection pressures the vertical hydraulic gradient has been reversed from downward to upward. However, due to the thick sequences of shale separating the disposal aquifers and the shallow aquifers the estimated time required for the disposal waters to migrate to the surface would be at least 2,000 years. I conclude that the saline waters produced from the Ferron Sandstone are being safely sequestered in deeply buried, extensive and geologically-sealed aquifers.

Straddling the Continental Divide, from the Chuska Mountains to the San Juan and Little Colorado rivers, mostly in Arizona, but partly in New Mexico and Utah, lies 23,574 square miles of desert; home to the estimate l75 to 90 thousand Navajo Indians. Unable to more than eke out a bare existence in a barren land where almost 30 acres of range are needed to sustain one sheep, unprepared after generations of isolation and neglect to leave this reservation for areas where a descend standard of living can be had, the Navajos, since 1950, have been the object of a "crash" program of rehabilitation by the United states Government.

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This study examines the impacts of the United States federal policy Public Law 93-531, the Navajo Hopi Land Settlement Act, which was passed by Congress in 1974. P.L. 93-531 forced many Navajo families and their children who had resided on their traditional homeland for generations to relocate elsewhere. Today, Navajo residents who were minors when they relocated with their parent(s) find themselves dispossessed of their cultural heritage. Basically, P.L. 93-531 dispossessed and displaced the Navajo minors (now adults) from their inherent traditional homelands, thus creating a second generation of Navajo relocatees. The relocation plan was not inclusive of second generation Navajo relocatees as stakeholders, leaving them in an indeterminate legal, economic, political, and social state. The primary questions addressed are these, 1) How has the relocation experience, due to Public Law 93-53, impacted the lives of second generation Navajo children, now adults, living in towns or cities off the Navajo Nation? What have been the perspectives and challenges of the participants after relocation? 2) What has the federal and Navajo government’s role been in the lives of Children of Relocation? The study utilizes a modified theoretical framework, Peoplehood Matrix, which encompasses the components of, language, ceremonial cycle, land, and sacred history, with the addition of livelihood. The components of the modified Peoplehood Matrix are interwoven and dependent upon one another which contribute to a group or individuals identity (Holm, Pearson and Chavis 2003). Qualitative and quantitative methodologies of collecting artifacts, a Q-method survey, and in-depth interview are used to study the second generation Navajo relocatees as adults living away from the Navajo Nation to document the challenges they experienced as a result of compulsory relocation. Although few studies address Navajo adult relocatees, there are no significant studies addressing second generation Navajos relocatees.