PR from Sandia National Laboratories News 13 December 2005,

Light-bringer Debby Tewa provides advice about solar power to people on Indian reservations:
Most lived without electricity like Tewa did growing up

Debby Tewa spent her first 10 years living without electricity, water,
or a telephone in a three-room stone house in an isolated area of the
Hopi Reservation in Arizona.

Today, as a contractor to the Sandia National Laboratories Sandia
Tribal Energy Program, she provides technical advice about maintaining
photovoltaic (PV) units to people on Indian reservations who live remotely
like she did. For many, it’s the first time they’ve had electricity
in their homes.

“I can identify with the people I’m helping,” Tewa says. “Many
live the way I grew up, and I fully appreciate their excitement in having
electricity and light at night.”

As part of Tewa’s job, she and program director

Sandra Begay-Campbell
offer technical advice to tribal governments, which receive Department
of Energy (DOE) tribal energy grants. Her work also includes teaching
Native Americans how to use and maintain photovoltaic units, supporting
project management plans, and helping people learn from each other about
their photovoltaic systems. In addition, she is enhancing DOE’s PV
Reliability database with off-grid system information that includes
Navajo PV systems maintenance data.

Tewa and Begay-Campbell work closely with the Navajo Nation with which
Sandia signed a memorandum of understanding in 2000 to encourage further
collaboration. The Navajo Utility Authority, through DOE funding, has
installed photovoltaic units at more than 300 homes on the reservation
since 1993.

This would be the same Navajo nation that has

banned uranium mining on their reservation.
They think solar is cleaner.

-jsq