[ Emergency healthcare, mail delivery, broadband internet,
government-issued IDs, and the right to vote often require a physical
address. ]
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DELIVERING ADDRESSES (AND ACCESS) TO THE NAVAJO NATION  
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Peter Yeung
August 25, 2023
Yes Magazine
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_ Emergency healthcare, mail delivery, broadband internet,
government-issued IDs, and the right to vote often require a physical
address. _

Navajo Mountain, a Native American settlement in Utah’s San Juan
County named after a sacred, 10,000-foot-high sandstone peak, Photo by
Peter Yeung

 

About five miles north of the Arizona border, drive straight along a
sand-swept road as it snakes through brush-covered foothills, keep
going beyond a row of barns with rusting reddish roofs, make a left
after a gray boulder, and the road will eventually lead to a
cul-de-sac lined by two dozen homes. This is Navajo Mountain, Utah.

The tiny Native American settlement is named after the sacred,
10,000-foot-high sandstone peak that dominates the craggy skyline. It
has been inhabited for centuries. It is in one of the most remote
parts of the Beehive State, and in turn, the entire continental United
States.

Monument Valley, a red-sand desert region along the Colorado Plateau
in southeast Utah marked by enormous sandstone buttes. _Photo by
Peter Yeung_

 

“Everything on Navajo Mountain is scattered and isolated,” says
Dalene Redhorse, who was born in the town of Mexican Waters, around 60
miles to the east. “There are many off-roads with just one house.
It’s not like a city here. Everything takes time.”

Redhorse is one of two “addressing specialists” at the
nonprofit Rural Utah Project [[link removed]] who,
since 2019, have been going door-to-door visiting every home in the
western half of Utah’s San Juan County, which includes Navajo
Mountain. Her goal: to connect off-the-grid residents with essential
services that they have often been denied.

Across Navajo Nation—the largest and most populous
[[link removed]] Native
American reservation in the country, spanning 27,000 square miles
[[link removed].] and
three states—formal street addresses are a rarity. Out of the more
than 60,000 structures, fewer than 500 are on roads with names and
house numbers, according to the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission
[[link removed]].

The culture of the Navajo, who are also known as Diné, is ancient
[[link removed].],
but modern American governments have imposed a systematized, Western
concept of territory onto these communities. This has effectively
erased their holistic relationship with ancestral lands and created
staggering inequality. More than 40%
[[link removed]] of
the Diné live in poverty, 48.5%
[[link removed]] are unemployed, 60% lack
broadband, and 40% don’t have running water at home. Those
structural issues played a role when Navajo Nation at one point
reached the highest COVID infection rate in the U.S.
[[link removed]] (though thanks
to community mobilization
[[link removed]] it
also achieved a far higher vaccination rate than the national
average).

The Diné say they have suffered because fundamental services and
amenities such as emergency healthcare, mail delivery, broadband
internet, government-issued IDs, and the right to vote often require
having a formally recognized address. 

“I had to describe landmarks to direct the ambulance,” says Gordon
Folgheraiter, 66, recalling an incident when his brother once cut his
head after falling off a truck in Navajo Mountain. “I said: ‘Go to
the end of the highway, continue for two miles, pass a house on the
left with a red roof, and then turn right,’” adds Folgheraiter,
who was then told by the dispatcher to stand outside wearing bright
clothing to flag down the vehicle.

But steps have tentatively been made in the right direction. Last year
Folgheraiter had a bright blue plaque mounted on his front door after
Redhorse visited. All of the 800 or so residents of Navajo Mountain
now have one.

Each sign is embossed with a plus code (e.g., 859F365C+W2
[[link removed]]) in bold white lettering. This acts
as a physical confirmation of the home’s location for deliverers,
emergency services, and visitors. These fixed, simplified, 10-digit
versions of traditional geocoordinates pinpoint a location to within
three square meters. 

The open-source Plus Code tool, developed by Google
[[link removed]], allows codes to be
generated anywhere on the globe and instantly located on Google Maps.
“It helps everyone get on the same page,” says Patricia Blackhorn,
chapter president of Navajo Mountain
[[link removed]]. “People can just look
it up.”

The technology is simple, but the ability to easily communicate a
location without a street address could have a transformative impact
on the world’s most marginalized populations. Beyond the sparsely
populated expanses of remote Utah, creating addresses for informal
spaces could bring change to densely packed urban areas that also lack
addresses, such as in Lagos, Delhi, and Rio de Janeiro. One billion
people lived in informal settlements in 2018, according to the UN
[[link removed]], and by 2030 that
number will triple.

The Rural Utah Project is focusing on Navajo Nation, where it worked
to obtain buy-in from local officials. The project is also deploying
plus codes in other San Juan County communities such as Bluff, Mexican
Hat, and the White Mesa Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. Separately, plus
code projects are at various stages of deployment by other
organizations in dozens of other countries, including India, Egypt,
and Brazil.

For Folgheraiter, it means he no longer has to drive 50 miles to the
post office to pick up packages from certain delivery companies. In
San Juan County, there are countless uses—to buy vehicles, to locate
ceremonies in remote areas, and, as one young student needed: to prove
her residency for in-state tuition rates. The Utah Navajo Health
System [[link removed]] uses plus codes for patient home
visits, and during the pandemic they proved invaluable for delivering
supplies to those in need.

In addition to the technology, another crucial ingredient has been
painstaking human labor: Initially, Redhorse and her colleague spent
months scouring satellite imagery on Google Maps, zooming in over the
arid landscape to locate homes. They identified 5,600 potential
structures across San Juan County, but when they went to confirm each
one in person, which involved long days of driving (the county has
fewer than two people per square mile on average), many turned out to
be rocks or abandoned houses—only half were occupied homes.

During her visits, Redhorse explains to residents how to use plus
codes with emergency services, and also updates household voter
registration and provides nonpartisan information about elections. The
Rural Utah Project identified voting as a key target because flawed
registration of rural, remote households has had a significant impact
on democratic rights of the Diné: Research by the nonprofit found
87.7% of Diné residents were registered by San Juan County at the
wrong location and a quarter in the wrong precinct
[[link removed]]. 

“That was a massive problem for democracy,” says TJ Ellerbeck, the
organization’s executive director. “There had never been a Navajo
majority on the County Commission even though there is a majority
Navajo population in the county.”

Willie Grayeyes, a longtime resident of Navajo Mountain who helped
establish the Bears Ears National Monument, was elected as a county
commissioner in 2019, boosted by a higher Native voter
turnout. _Photo by Peter Yeung_

Since plus codes were deployed in San Juan County, which now accepts
them as a valid address for voter registration, democratic
participation has reached historic highs. Analysis by the Rural Utah
Project found turnout in majority Native precincts has rocketed from
52% in 2014 to 87.6% in 2020. Along the way, Willie Grayeyes and
Kenneth Maryboy were elected as commissioners in 2019
[[link removed]] to
form the first-ever Native American majority on the County Commission.
Plus codes are considered a major factor in that rise, alongside the
switch from mail-only voting and the provision of polling places with
interpreters
[[link removed]],
as well as a redistricting of county seats
[[link removed]] after
a court ruled they were gerrymandered against the Diné
[[link removed]]. 

While turnout dropped in 2022, a midterm election, it was still the
highest-ever overall number of midterm Native votes cast in the
county, only slightly behind the historic high of 2020’s
presidential election.

The home of Willie Grayeyes, who, before Plus Codes, was relying on an
Arizona mailing address despite living in Utah, due to the fact the
postal system did not recognize his location. _Photo by Peter Yeung_

Before plus codes, Grayeyes, who is a longtime resident of Navajo
Mountain in Utah but was relying on an Arizona mailing address,
was temporarily removed
[[link removed]] from
the ballot after a complaint was filed against his residency
eligibility. “I threw my hat into the ring and then sparks started
flying,” says the 77-year-old, who helped establish the Bears Ears
National Monument
[[link removed]].
“All this time, Native Americans have been disenfranchised and our
lands have been taken,” he says. “But we won. We were rewarded for
persisting.”

Despite the benefits plus codes have brought, however, they have
limits. While UPS and FedEx recognize them, the United States Postal
Service (USPS) and Amazon don’t. For Diné representatives,
there’s exasperation at a system that continues to disenfranchise
them. “The norm does not factor in places such as Navajo Nation,”
says Leonard Gorman, executive director at Navajo Nation Human Rights
Commission [[link removed]]. “It impedes our
people’s human rights.”

A spokesperson for the USPS said plus codes are “not consistent with
the sorting and delivery operations used by the Postal Service”
since the company is limited to “what is considered a traditional
address format.” Amazon said in an emailed statement that it uses
the USPS “as our source of truth for U.S. address information.”

In addition, the broader issue of mapping Indigenous lands has led to
skepticism due to the historic and ongoing exploitation of Native
Americans by outsiders
[[link removed]].
“Some residents have been worried about being numbered, placed,
exposed,” says Redhorse. “Even my grandfather used to say:
‘Don’t let the white man map your homes.’”

But plus codes are only given out to those who want one, adds
Redhorse, and increasingly Diné are proactively reaching out to
request them. 

Google developed the open-source software so anyone can generate a
plus code for any location in the world. It’s free and instantaneous
and no data is collected. The Rural Utah Project is using the tool
(along with its ground-truthing teams) to confirm the location of
homes and install the signs. 

Google says the company’s only involvement is to provide the signs
for free. “We wouldn’t have designed Plus Codes if it wasn’t
open source,” says Doug Rinckes, its creator. “An address is
official, but nobody owns it. For me, an address is something that you
are assigned, but not something you have to pay for.”

The entrance sign to Navajo Mountain, or Naatsis’áán in
Navajo. _Photo by Peter Yeung_

The Navajo Nation Addressing Authority
[[link removed]] is taking a different, longer-term
approach: naming the streets. A team of three is working with the
reservation’s chapters to create road names, which must be
translated from Navajo into English—Naatsis’áán means Navajo
Mountain, for example—before they can produce street signs. About 20
of the 110 chapters of the territory have put up signs since 2010. 

“Plus codes are only a supplement to what we’re doing,” says
M.C. Baldwin, who oversees the authority’s rural addressing
activities. “The part that’s missing is the physical address for
the people that live out there. If we had a physical address for every
house on Navajo Nation, it would be postal-compliant.”

So while Baldwin’s efforts and plus codes are making a huge
difference for some residents and their representation, these
solutions only touch on a fraction of the stark challenges across
Navajo Nation: limited cell signals and grid
electricity, contaminated water sources
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and the threats of infrastructure development. But a new generation of
Diné sees the technological advance as an opportunity to empower
themselves and transform their homeland for the better. 

Shandiin Herrera, a 26-year-old Navajo living in Monument Valley who
used her Plus Code to receive satellite internet. _Photo by Peter
Yeung_

Shandiin Herrera, 26, lives in Monument Valley, a red-sand desert
region along the Colorado Plateau marked by enormous sandstone buttes.
After a lifetime without internet at home, she used her plus code last
year to sign up for the satellite-powered internet provider, Starlink
[[link removed]].

“I tried every other internet service, but none of it worked because
I needed to enter an address,” says Herrera. “But I just tried my
plus code on Starlink and it zoomed straight into my address. I was so
excited. I can even watch Netflix now.”

A public policy graduate of Duke University and a fellow with Lead
for America [[link removed]], Herrera has also used
the tool for the betterment of her community. When the pandemic hit,
Herrera became the leader of the Utah Navajo Nation COVID-19 response.
Her team delivered food, medicine, and PPE to more than 1,500
households.

“The biggest challenge was finding people’s homes,” she says.
“We’d hear: ‘Take the third dirt road, go past the brown house,
and look for a place with a red car outside.’ For us, plus codes
were easy. It was a luxury. But not everyone has one yet.”

For now, though, Herrera feels that after years witnessing the
maddening difficulty in tracking down homes on the reservation, and
often having lost ambulances turn up at her house asking for
directions, the way forward might finally have arrived. 

“People always told me you need to get off the Rez to be
successful,” says Herrera, leaning against her wood-paneled home; a
tiny speck on the sandy horizon. “But I’ve always been proud of
being Diné. I believe we can rewrite our own future.”

_Peter Yeung is an award-winning freelance journalist, covering a
broad range of beats including climate, global health, migration,
human rights and cities, often through a critical,
solutions-orientated lens. He specialises in on-the-ground reporting
about under-covered issues involving and giving a voice to the
world’s most marginalised groups, filing stories from across Europe,
Asia, Africa and the Americas, usually with a camera, drone, and new
piece of tech in hand. As much as possible, his work includes data
analysis and visualisation._

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