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Ernesto Yerena Montejano, currently a Boyle Heights resident and originally from Imperial County, and his team of fellow artists Arlene Mejorado and Ayerim Leon — complete with friends and families" painted the mura.

It belongs to the Imperial Valley, but was one of 14 California commissions art projects as part of a collaboration between the Governor's Office, CA Dept of Public Health and The Center at Sierra Health Foundation. The commissioning program aimed to raise awareness about Covid19 within the State's hardest hit areas. Each an governmental agency stakeholder in the project along with curators who selected the artist for this mural.

The building's owner, which appears to be a someone poised to sell it soon is also a stakeholder and most importantly, local resident are active stakeholders as they began adding names of family members who died because of Covid on the western corner of the mural unprompted and without explicit instruction or permission.

The mural is located at 739 N. Imperial Avenue in El Centro. It is precariously positioned because although the current owner of the building has promised to protect it for the next 6 months (per Jun 10, 2021), the next owner of the building may cover over the mural. The mural was completed over 1 week by 5+ painters under the direction of  the artist Ernesto Yerena Montejano on May 30, 2021.

It brings together community members to commorate the toll Covid 19 has taken on the community. It provides a public service message to continue masking and thereby taking care of the community. And it adds an element of beauty and artfulness to what was a run-down building exterior

The mural covers the entire side of one building. The background is painted in purples, blue and yellow. One side of the wall is painted "Protege A Nuestra Comunidad!"|"Protect our Community!"

The centerpiece of the mural both figuratively and literally is a beautiful woman (anywhere beteween 20-40yo) in traditional dress with two long strands of brown braided hair holding a bouquet of colorful flowers tied together with a yellow sash. She is wear a face mask to back up the Covid-19 theme.

The flowers she holds is both a reference to the business--"Cynthia's Flower Connection" which has since moved as well as a tribute to the community and their deceased members who died of Covid. One indication is that community members began adding names to the side of the mural as a tribute to lost family members.

This mural is a public-works project commissioned by the State and agencies. It was created by an artist who has ties to the area. It is also meant to be a public health message, another way to reach local residents who have been "locked in"

“Right away we saw how powerful the mural was in bringing people together, especially after this year where we've been locked in and it's been hard to communicate with our community,” he said. Per David Varela, “People are slowly making their way to the mural and are able to mourn a little bit too,” Varela said. “It's really healthy to mourn and I think people are getting a chance to do that through the mural. I knew we'd not only get a beautiful mural, but a powerful message.”

I am wondering how the book's central concept,  "landscapes of power,"  can be used to think about energy and infrastructural projects outside the Navajo context? The four modalities of power that make up this landscape are deeply influenced by your ethnographic data, and throughout the book you emphasize the need to pay attention to the particularities of places and communities. Thus, I would surmise that other landscapes of power would consist of different configurations of modalities of power? If so, how would you advise research into these other landscapes? What would should scholars pay attention to?

What motivated the structure of the book and the use of the interludes in particular? I'd like to learn more about the decision to include them as interludes. What was the idea behind these moments of reflection that both supplement and bring a brief pause to the argument?

How has the book been received among the communities that you work with? What have been the consequences, if any, for those actors and organizations who were featured in your analysis?

I believe one of the most important aspects the book highlights towards the end of Chapter 4, through Chapter, and within the Conclusion is the idea of false environmentalism that emerges from skewed (i.e. false) science reports. Just as much as the business representatives boasting their environmentalism when building the water dam in the Philippines had hired a group of scientists to report the positive effects of carbon emissions (against those of coal), certain energy governance entities focus on similar false science. The book seems to incite a revolution in the way energy is conceptualized and governed as specifically related to the unique psychosocial, social, and traditional attachments populations have to places (Powell, 2018:160; 237; 239). In other words, building energy plants and governing them should not come at the expense of the populations who reside there (i.e. populations should not be relocated).

1. What recommendations do you have for studying vulnerable populations? What should be the focus and of what should one be careful, specifically?

2. What would you say makes the Dine and Navajo communities particularly vulnerable to government exploitation by green jobs and what would you say are some appropriate solutions to the foregoing as particularly related to the concept of the 'double whammy’ or the 'double bind'? 

3. How are, do you believe, households vulnerable to policies surrounding transformations of governance in weatherization and construction practices (if known)?

More than suggestions, I believe this text draws great parallels for discussing the interconnectedness of economic investments, energy activism, what Dr. Powell refers to as 'greening capitalism', and the right to pollute (Powell, 2018). Power is taken out of its rightful host and appropriated by larger institutions of colonization, where Indigenous nations work to produce power but don’t have the grid to use that power and are, thus, dependent of agents of capitalism in energy production (Powell, 2018). We can think about a transfusion of power moving from energy systems that exist today, to distributions of grid vulnerabilities, to the discrepancies in energy production within the Navajo nation and against their minimal consumption (Powell, 2018). In a broader outlook of the transfusion of power in energy systems, politics, and land, we can think about the process as compounding health and social vulnerabilities that affect energy and climate justice. 

"The complex “double bind” facing movements—at the same time that it faces tribal leadership—who because of colonial logics and legacies, must work both within and against the constraints of the state." (Powell, 2018: 137). This quote is particularly significant because it draws upon the previous accounts of the sovereign powers of the Tribes whilst also accounting for their interdependence on outside entities like the DOE, and other Federal institutions. It evokes the still colonial nature of the ruling entities in the United States and a consequent false sense of independence. This false sense of independence can seemingly be drawn from the disconnected and isolated energy systems present in the Navajo Nation, specifically where Dr. Powell highlights the Nation has lacking adequate access to water, electricity, paved roads and other opportunities (Powell, 2018: 115-116). The foregoing speaks quite directly to many in the Navajo Nation being energy vulnerable and lacking access to reliable utilities, day-to-day necessities, which also bridges the connections between energy vulnerability and energy rights.

The publisher is Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement. The article is initial contribution by Jean-Marc Biquet and refer to Andrea Binder.

NGO report, and Revues.org which is a platform for journals in the humanities and social sciences run by the CLEO.