Haury award honors team behind Navajo Nation water resources library preservation project

By Navajo Times

WINDOW ROCK – A University of Arizona librarian, a law library administrator and a Navajo Nation water resources official will receive the 2026 Haury Indigenous Resilience Leadership Award for their work preserving and organizing the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources’ historic and contemporary document collection.

Jessica Ugstad, the head of collections at the Daniel Cracchiolo Law Library at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, Maurice Upshaw, a GIS supervisor and team project manager with the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Water Management Branch, and Teresa Miguel-Stearns, the associate dean at the Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, were named this year’s recipients by the Agnese Nelms Haury Program, part of the Arizona Institute for Resilience at the University of Arizona.

The three have played key roles in the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Library Preservation Project, which the partners say recently concluded its fourth year. The project focuses on preserving, digitizing and cataloging the department’s library collection, a set of materials documenting the water history and geography of Navajo Nation lands spanning more than 27,000 square miles of the Southwest.

To read the full article, please see the March 5, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.

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