The Haury Program Announces Inaugural Tribal Resilience Leadership Awards

The Haury Program is honored to announce the recipients of the 2020 Tribal Resilience Leadership Inaugural Award: Mr. James Adakai, Division of Community Development, Navajo Nation Capital Projects Management Department, and Captain David Harvey, PE, MPH, Division of Sanitation Facilities Construction, Indian Health Service.

Mr. James Adakai and Captain David Harvey are the inaugural recipients of the Agnese Nelms Haury Tribal Resilience Leadership Award. This annual award was established in 2020 to recognize exceptional contributions to the promotion of Tribal Resilience. The annual award honors exemplary leadership displayed to assure Native and Indigenous communities have access to safe water.

The Haury Program and its Donor Advised Fund Board are providing this award to Mr. Adakai and Captain Harvey to recognize their joint outstanding leadership of the Water Access Coordination Group (WACG), and the heroic, collaborative, and effective work it has performed to complete the mission of constructing transitional water sites on the Navajo Nation and providing culturally respectful communication about the location and use of these sites during the COVID-19 crisis. The WACG constructed 59 transitional water sites, which added to the existing permanent water sites provides safe drinking water to nearly 100 percent of the 110 Chapters of the Navajo Nation, a vast land area the size of West Virginia.
 
The UArizona Haury Program has been privileged to be part of this collaborative team, along with UArizona water experts Dr. Karletta Chief and Dr. Vicki Karanikola, and their colleagues.  We also acknowledge the leadership of Mr. Jason John and Dr. Crystal Tulley-Cordova of the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, as UArizona and Haury seek to build on the WACG work to promote ongoing outreach to other universities, funders, government agencies, and nonprofits committed to furthering the water resilience goals of the Navajo Nation.

The WACG is a model of tribal engagement and of genuine partnerships that respect tribal sovereignty and traditional ecological knowledge.