Owen Lammers, Glen Canyon Action Network

Owen Lammers is the executive director of Glen Canyon Action Network, a one-year-old Colorado River advocacy organization based in Moab, Utah. In the 12 years before he co-founded GCAN, Owen was the executive director and vice president of International Rivers Network, based in Berkeley, Calif.

An unusual alliance of environmentalists and Native American traditional and spiritual leaders gathered east of Farmington, N.M., today for the decommissioning of Navajo Dam, and for healing ceremonies for the San Juan River. This site was chosen as the second stop in our five-state "Sustainable Water Project Tour" of the Southwest.

Activists joined leaders of the Dine Medicineman's Association and the Peace & Dignity Spirit Runners to grieve the loss of many sacred sites that were inundated by the waters of Navajo Reservoir following construction of Navajo Dam in 1962. Over the course of the day, DMA President Thomas Morris, Jr., of Window Rock, Ariz., conducted three ceremonies calling for the restoration of ecological and cultural resources along the San Juan River and throughout the Colorado River basin.

"I came here early in the morning today to pray for the river, earth, and sky, and apologize for what has been done to harm them," Morris said. As a young man, Morris visited the sacred area now flooded beneath Navajo Reservoir with his grandfather, also a medicineman. "The costs we have been forced to pay for the convenience of storing all this water are only now being accounted for." Ancient archaeological and ceremonial sites, as well as the entire town of Santa Rosa, N.M., were submerged beneath the rising waters of the reservoir almost 40 years ago.

Costs for the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project near Farmington are still rising 30 years after the project was supposed to have brought prosperity to the Navajo people. Water from Navajo Reservoir is used by the Navajo Nation to grow mostly low-value crops, such as alfalfa and potatoes. Recently, the Tribal Council approved a $10 million bailout for the troubled program.

Prior to our 1:00 p.m. ceremony, we had been notified that law enforcement officers were occupying the site at the dam, so we chose instead to conduct the service at an undisclosed site downstream of the dam. We met on the banks of the San Juan River to pray for the river's release and to allow the river to flow unimpeded to the sea.

While the riverside ceremony was underway, law enforcement officers left the area, thinking the event at the dam's crest had been cancelled. Once the natural calm had been restored, we caravaned to the dam where we conducted the last ceremony of the day. After a series of traditional prayers, songs, and drumming, we concluded by pouring a symbolic donation from Navajo Reservoir into the tour's water tanker truck. The truck accepted the water donation for delivery downstream in demonstration of the need for restoring water flow to the river's delta in Mexico.

We departed Navajo Dam in high spirits, heading south for the next stop on our tour, Albuquerque, N.M. There we will rally at City Hall at noon on Wednesday, calling on the city to give back 1 percent of its contracted water from the San Juan River diversion to help keep the Colorado River Delta alive.