Jun 12, 2024
Phoebe Suina grew up on Cochiti and San Felipe
Pueblos in New Mexico, where she learned about land, water, and
cultural values and practices from her extended family and
community. With advanced degrees in engineering and management from
the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, she returned
to New Mexico to found High Water Mark, a Native
American, woman-owned project management and environmental
consulting company with a specialty in water resources. She works
with local, state, and federal governments and agencies, private
entities, and industry to restore landscapes after disasters like
wildfires and floods, and to do planning, management, and disaster
prevention. What sets her company's work apart is that they use a
holistic approach that focuses not just on engineering solutions,
but instead takes into account the entire landscape––including
people. Favoring distributed, low tech solutions that communities
can maintain over the long run, and working with the forces and
flows of nature, they seek to foster resilient watersheds and
landscapes, and to do so with the values of humility, respect, and
cooperation. She uses and teaches consensus-based planning, a
technique that involves deep listening and coming to agreement
across differences of opinion and interests. And she works on legal
and policy issues with tribal and state governments.
With her partner and children, Suina also farms seven acres, using
no-till, traditional practices to grow food for her family and
community––including the wildlife that in turn fertilize the
land.