Each week here at EcoSalon, I beg my favorite bloggers and designers to hand select a beloved green product, whether it’s a finish, furnishing, or accessory. The end result? An endless anthology of aesthetically perfect products for your perusal.

This week we will meander to India with Gagan from Of Peacocks and Paisleys. Gagan was born and raised in India, where she grew up with an innate sense of appreciation and value, and an early distaste for waste upon moving to the United States (in India, nothing that can be repaired or salvaged is ever thrown away).

Gagan has selected a handful of Indian handicrafts that she wants to bundle up and carry home with her during her next trip to India, “because they pack so much color in light, fold-able, and carry-able sizes.” These gorgeous items are handmade with materials on hand by Indian artisans. The gorgeous Wildflower Wonderland wall hanging (detail shown above) is woven of sari and kurta borders (click here for a glimpse of the full patchwork tapestry).

The lovely Gagan couldn’t leave India without a couple of Indian folk art paintings. Vidushini’s United Forever II depicts the union of the creative forces in the universe in the unique Madhubani style (on the left). Brajeswar Pattnaik’s Sailing II (on the right) is painted in the traditional Patachitra style (crushed stone colors on tussar silk).

If you want to peruse a little more Indian folk art, this website will satiate your craving. You can catch up with Gagan at her blog (don’t miss her graciously hosted, beautiful home tours).

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Imagine your village’s water supply was about to be contaminated by nuclear waste from a nearby dump and the federal government simply offered to put a fence around it. If you were the Hopi Nation, you’d sue.

In the 1950s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs created an unlined, unrestricted dump a few miles from a uranium mill on Navajo and Hopi land. Everything from uranium tailings to medical waste has been dumped there over the decades. The dump was closed – covered over with sand and dirt – in 1997 and the Hopi and Navajo people have been fighting for a cleanup ever since.

Studies have confirmed that groundwater near the dump contains levels of uranium, arsenic, chromium and more that far exceed what is considered safe. What’s the “safe” level of uranium, anyway? And after years of watching government agencies hem and haw over the issues (yes, even offering to simply build a fence around the dump), the Hopi Nation is fed up. They plan to take serious legal action.

And they’re not just suing as a matter of principle, but because a uranium-contaminated water plume is headed directly for the Hopi water supply. Drinking water is a precious commodity, especially in the Arizonan high desert, and it was governmental mismanagement that led to the problem in the first place.

It’s hard to believe that anyone could sue the government itself and succeed, but with President Obama’s more sensitive leadership, maybe this major law suit (which includes the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency) will make the United States government pay better attention to the real and ongoing saga of Native American affairs.

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