Work in Solidarity with Nihi K'é Baa'

Nihi Ké' Baa’ is a collective of grassroots Diné organizers working to remediate their homelands to create a healthy and viable future rooted in ancestral knowledge.

Dine youth organize mutual aid
for relatives.
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Current Project: Love on the Land

“We are firm believers that how we treat the land is how we treat ourselves. When we heal the land, we heal ourselves. We yearn for that healing and want to continue to create innovative ways to heal for the ones before us and future generations.”

Nihi Ké’ Baa’ is designing and building an off-grid community hub on Diné Bikeyah (Navajo Nation) comprised of two sustainable structures constructed using site-appropriate alternative building materials; a multi-use building with kitchen and meeting spaces; and a ceremonial hogan. The project will bring experienced workshop leaders to actively engage community members, organizers, and builders in participatory workshop-builds to share knowledge and develop local, traditional skills in sustainable homebuilding. The hub will act as the pilot project to form a traditional hogan-building society. At every stage of its creation the community will be invited to come, learn, share feedback, and pass on the knowledge to keep sacred traditions vibrant and present.

Once complete, this hub (located near Window Rock) will be a source of nurturing and support and a space for collective visioning, planning, education,practice, and ceremony. A resilience hub for times of crisis, it will provide a sustainable solution to the urgent infrastructure needs of mutual aid networks, including spaces for ceremony, a communal garden for traditional food growing, and continued soil remediation. It will house and make accessible various resources that Nihi Ké’ Baa’ has gathered, including a complete mobile kitchen from an Indigenous-led camp at Standing Rock; art, printing, and direct action supplies; an apothecary; and a seed bank.

Act in Solidarity Today!

Donate specific tools or materials needed for the builds.

Click below for the list of what's needed.

Donate money to be used for tools and materials.

Click below to donate.

Be A Camp Volunteer.

NNM SURJ is sending a support team for the strawbale build week (5/29 - 6/4) near Window Rock, and we're looking for more folks to join us. Our focus is supporting the camp infrastructure, kitchen, and supply runs so that Nihi Ké’ Baa’ and their guests can focus on building! Email us if you are interested in coming for all or part of the time.

Come to a Solidarity Build.

If you have a skill to share or just want to get your hands dirty, attend one of the Solidarity Builds happening throughout the spring and summer. (These build weekends are separate from the strawbale weekend.) For details, send a direct message to the Nihi Ké’ Baa’ Instagram account @forourrelatives.

About Nihi Ké’ Baa’

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Nihi Ké' Baa’ is a collective of grassroots Diné organizers working to remediate their homelands to create a healthy and viable future rooted in ancestral knowledge. Since 2015, founding members Kim Smith and Makai Lewis have been organizing mutual aid projects and using art to bring awareness to issues across their homelands of Diné Bikeyah (the Navajo Nation) including ancestral food reclamation, watershed restoration, and direct support for unhoused relatives. They have also worked in solidarity with other Indigenous communities at direct action camps and events across so-called North America and south of the colonial border, forming a wide network of support and community. In 2018-2020, Kim and Makai acted as citizen scientists and conducted in-person household surveys in both Diné and English to complete a comprehensive Health Impact Assessment, the first study to assess the true toxic legacy of the San Juan Coal Plant and extractive industry in their communities. In 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, they shifted focus back to providing mutual aid, serving over 9000 households, as well as unhoused relatives, with ongoing life-sustaining support. Nihi Ké’ Baa’s current project on Diné Bikeyah is Love On the Land, the formation of an off-grid community hub and a traditional hogan-building society.