Rewatering Black Mesa: A Native-led grassroots team is determined to bring back the springs to Diné and Hopi land

Stacking rocks. That’s how Diné and Mexican rainwater harvester Carmen Gonzales plans to rewater the high desert of Dziłíjiin, or Black Mesa, the roughly 256,000 acres of juniper-and-pinyon-dotted hills of northwest Arizona that span Diné and Hopi lands.

Through her organization, Indigenous Water Wisdom, Gonzales implements low-tech erosion control structures that draw on ancestral techniques and permaculture designs. These structures often look like stacks of rocks laid across desert washes in swirls, bowls, and waves, all designed to slow the flash floods that wash out main roads and carve arroyos into canyons.

Gonzales returned to her Diné homeland to lead an erosion-control workshop in July, kicking off a water restoration project that will last decades. Bringing water to a desert may seem impossible, but historically, seeps and springs bubbled up to water sheep herds, households, and farms. She intends to recharge the shallow springs across the land.