*THE STAR* : ARIZONA'S PRIDE SCHOOL*

IN THE HEART of Navajo country, pupils work for greener future.

In the heart of Arizona's high desert one of America's greenest schools is protecting the planet and its endangered culture by drawing inspiration of Native American values.

Classes at the STAR  School, on the edge of the vast Navajo Nation reserve, are divided between  English and - when the fast-paced curriculum allows -the local native language known as dine.

In Kindergarten, a teacher shows a handful of toddlers traditional weaving, while the children/students of elementary school age, some in traditional braids, discuss the rudiments of fiction writing or computing.

''I like this school because I have many family members here,'' one softly-spoken but happy girl, 11 year old girl tells AFP.

The school's stellar name an acronym for  ''Service to all Relations'' - emphasizes the Navajo philosophy that every living thing is connected from one smallest plant to the largest mammal.

''We teach children traditional peace making. We haven't had a fist fight in eight years,'' says the school founder Mark Sorensen.

''I've been a principal for 40 years and I can tell you, it's extraordinary.''

The  STAR, which caters to pupils of up to the end of middle school, generates all its electricity from two wind turbines and 30 solar panels.

It is an initiative born of ideology but also necessity , with no power grid out in the sticks, some 25 miles - 40 kilometers - from the nearest city, Flagstaff.

''It has been estimated that between Arizona and Nevada deserts [solar] panels could power half of the country,'' says Sorensen, an ecologist who has been ''off the grid'' for years.

Historical Trauma : He founded the Star school 17 years ago with his wife, paying for the first building with his own credit card.

The campus is now home to 130 students and has added a gym and a greenhouse, where students grow vegetables and herbs that are used in the canteen,

They learn to live in ''renewable mode''  but also become familiar with techniques in cultivating vegetables that have almost disappeared from dinner tables in the remote region where food is scarce.

The Navago community, plagued by poverty and rife with drug addiction, domestic violence and health problems such as diabetes, still suffers from ''historical trauma'' as the locals term it.

In the mid-19th century, about 9,000 Navajos were driven off their land by the US military, deported on foot and marched hundreds of miles to be interned at Fort Summer in New Mexico.

A treat was signed in 1868 authorizing them to become part of a federally recognized protected area, the Navajo Nation reservation.

The children were sent to boarding schools, where they were bullied and their language proscribed.

''It's a model that we used all over the world, with the aborgine people of Australia, everywhere,'' says Sorensen.

''Schools were this place where psychological violence was made to the people and the culture.'' [Agencies]