Healing Gila River
A Fight for Environmental Justice on the Rez
Photo Essay by Charisse Domingo

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I was anxious stepping off the plane at the Phoenix airport, wondering whether or not I would recognize Lori. But when she and her fiance drove up baggage claim in the Suburban with the big Saguaro cactus on the roof, I knew which car came for me.

I am here at the Gila River Indian community in Bapchule, Arizona to take photos of Romic, a toxic waste plant located in East Palo Alto that has its second site at the Gila River Indian reservation. Romic is a multi-million dollar toxic waste facility that recycles, stores, treats and disposes of hazardous waste from all over the world. I have been fighting Romic in East Palo Alto for eight years alongside young people and elder residents of the community. Six of those years, I lived in East Palo Alto. It’s only been in the last year and a half that we have made connections with the Akimel O’Otham People, in particular Lori Thomas-Luna.

I went in thinking it was Romic itself that linked our communities together, and I left realizing that it was the very struggles of both our communities against the burden of Romic was what ultimately binded us in a legacy of environmental justice.

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