Through that, studying economics and doing studies on the capacity for Indigenous land management techniques to promote the growth and the abundance of resources in Indigenous communities. I also started to get involved in conversations around renewable energy, what does energy independence for tribal communities mean, what does energy independence mean for communities in general. Most communities in the United States do not have access or the ability to interact with the institutions that determine how they procure their energy, how they utilize energy and the cost of energy to their community and the capacity of that energy industry to provide jobs for them. That was something that kind of drove me to when the city of Madison started to make progress on its renewable energy goals, to commit to Net Zero to combat climate change, I was very interested in going back to my home community where I grew up and putting some of my skills to the test, putting some of my skills to use in making sure that our community could benefit from these actions that we were taking on climate change and making sure that people of all types and backgrounds in Madison were able to feel the benefits of taking action on climate change and making sure that is how we move forward on climate change.”

Jones grew up in Northern Arizona where she and her family split time between Phoenix where her parents could find work and the children could find opportunity and the Navajo Nation, the center of their cultural universe. It was on the reservation that Jones gained an understanding on the energy and sustainability needs of the Navajo people.

“As I went home, as a younger child there, I observed that we didn’t have any electricity in our hogans,” Jones recalled. “There was no access to reliable electricity for my grandparents. My grandmother relied on coal to heat her home. Just seeing that there was a lack of infrastructure and even in my teenage years not having any cellular service made me want to do something. Broadband has improved recently, but you have really bad service on the reservation. And it’s only four hours away from Phoenix, probably less than two hours from Flagstaff, the neighboring border town for the reservation. Through these observations, I decided that through my education, I wanted to go back and be able to provide renewable resources.’

Jones started her undergraduate work at Arizona State University where she majored in mechanical engineering and American Indian Studies.

“I participated in AICES, which is The American Indian Science and Engineering Society,” Jones said. “That’s a national organization. I’ve been a part of it for about 10 years now. And AICES coming in and promoting STEM to me and providing a space where I could connect to faculty, industry leaders and mentors from all over Indigenous lands helped support me. I spent six years in undergrad. I took a gap year to apply for grad programs because after about five internships in engineering, I realized it’s not just designing and creating the technology. It’s actually understanding the political implications, the societal concerns of my community. And so I decided to go back to school and do my master’s degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. That was my move to the Midwest to focus in on interdisciplinary work with the tracks sustainable systems and environmental justice.”

At Michigan, Jones learned some of the best in the field of environmental justice.

“I went to Michigan to connect with leaders in energy justice, a terminology that I learned from those doing the research,” Jones said. “I wanted to work with Dr. Tony Reames at the university who primarily works for Black institutions and communities to provide an understanding of what it means to have reliable energy, what it means to have equity with regard to electricity and understanding where your electricity comes from within those communities.”

From there, Jones was lured to work on her Ph.D. at the Nelson Institute where she has been for the past 2-3 years. And during the past year, Jones has ventured forth outside the campus of UW-Madison.

“I’ve networked and met Gab through a colleague at the university,” Jones said. “Currently I am also a tribal engagement fellow for Renew Wisconsin, which is a non-profit focused on educating about energy policy and trying to understand the realm of tribal energy independence, energy sovereignty and how can we support the tribes here in the state of Wisconsin with developing their own utility markets or how can they understand federal funds and opportunities like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help support their development in the electricity realm.”

Saiz was attracted to his position as Madison’s sustainability program manager because of Madison’s holistic approach to sustainability, one that takes into consideration the impact od the city’s sustainability efforts on all of Madison’s citizens.

“What sustainability meant within the city government initially had to do with an integrated approach to all of the different things that makes our community have well-being intergenerationally into the future without sacrificing the well-being of current generations,” Saiz said. “That’s what sustainability means from an academic standpoint and how we were viewing it. And that really took the form of within the capacity of the city, looking at our energy usage and looking at these different ways of measuring sustainability. There is LEED and other ways of measuring sustainability. How do our city’s facilities embody those kinds of certifications and understanding sustainability? Few people have access to transit when they are going to these different places.

Is the environment around the facilities conducive to good mental health and good environmental health? And are facilities using energy in a way that doesn’t cost residents a lot of money, doesn’t increase the energy bills and taxes that we have to put on the city’s residents to pay for our energy bills. But it is also moving us towards a Net Zero future. Are we using less energy and are we using renewable energy to power the facilities?”

While Saiz’s position is in the mayor’s office, sustainability is technically listed in engineering.

“The design of our facilities and the way that our facilities are designed impact sustainability,” Saiz said. “Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway was really a champion of climate and the interconnectedness of our community with what is climate change and what is becoming more and more of a problem, And understanding that with the history of environmentalism in Madison and Wisconsin in general, there was a large capacity for the city of Madison to be a leader in local actions to combat climate change.”

Madison is looking to become a national leader in sustainability. And that means paying attention to all of the factors that impact sustainability.

“That meant figuring out the nuts and bolts of not only our city’s facilities getting down to Net Zero, but also making sure that the community as a whole could be Net Zero by 2050,” Saiz said. “What does that look like in terms of the way that we are interacting with MGE and other utilities in Madison? What does that look like with the way that we interact with Focus on Energy, the statewide energy efficiency organization? What does that look like in the way that we interact with the federal government? And what does that look like when we interact with all of these different nationwide institutions that measure a community’s ability and leadership on energy efficiency and renewable energy? That’s the kind of approach that we have taken, a leadership on renewable energy and how we can interact with renewable energy and energy efficiency as well.”

Next issue: The Indigenous impact on sustainability