Workmen plant electricity poles in the rust-orange earth of the Navajo Nation and run cables to Christine Shorty's house -- finally giving her power against the searing Arizona desert heat.

It will be a luxury in the vast Native American reservation, the largest in the United States, where more than 10,000 families are still without electricity and therefore air conditioning.

"It's climate change. It's getting hotter," Shorty tells AFP.

"This would be easier for us with the fan and maybe air conditioning. And we look forward to that."

In her 70 years, Shorty has seen her isolated, tiny hamlet of Tonalea, a dot in the enormous area of the reservation, change dramatically.

Summer monsoon rains are rarer,

and temperatures can touch 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in July and August -- previously unthinkable in the hamlet, located on a plateau at an altitude of 5,700 feet (1,730 meters).

The area's seasonal lakes are drying up, and in some years the livestock are dying of........

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