For over a century, Native American tribes along the Colorado River have seen other entities take water that had nourished them since time immemorial. With the depletion of this vital source for the American West, Indigenous leaders see an opening to right a historical wrong.
For over a century, Native American tribes along the Colorado River have seen other entities take water that had nourished them since time immemorial. With the depletion of this vital source for the American West, Indigenous leaders see an opening to right a historical wrong.
Today, we check in on one tribe doing just that. Read the full transcript here.
Host: The Times senior producer Kasia Broussalian
Guest: L.A. Times water reporter Ian James
More reading:
Colorado River in Crisis, Pt. 1: A Dying River
Colorado River in Crisis, Pt. 2: The Source
Inside the water crisis: A journey across the Colorado River Basin
Gustavo Arellano: So the Colorado River…it's in crisis right now with climate change and overuse really affecting this major water source, THE major water source for the American West.
Gustavo Arellano: And to help listeners better understand this, we've gone on this journey over the past few weeks down the river.
Today … we’re going to hear from one of my senior producers, Kasia Broussalian, about our next stop.
So Kasia, where are you taking us this week?
Kasia Broussalian: Hey, Gustavo, So today…we're going to the very tip of Nevada, right where the river cuts through the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation. It's this place that the tribe has called home … for centuries now.
Gustavo Arellano: Awesome, Kasia. Well, we can’t wait to listen.
SOUND ID EP 4: The transition that has taken place in the Colorado River Basin is astounding. The Colorado River Basin is in its 23rd year of a historic drought, and the compact that was signed a hundred years ago is based on a climate that no longer exists. It says in Article 7 of the Compact that the compact does not apply to tribal sovereigns.
SOUND ID EP 4: We're gonna still voice for our people. We’re still gonna voice for the river, all the tribes that have the water rights should have a seat at that table.
Kasia Broussalian: For the last few months, I've been working with my L.A. Times colleague Ian James on this series about how the Colorado River is drying up. If you've heard earlier episodes, you know that we've talked to cattle ranchers up in Colorado.
They're like food, more food.
Kasia Broussalian: River guides in Utah.
John W: Getting a little rougher here. Woo. All right.
Kasia Broussalian: And more scientists than I can count.
Brad Udall: So let's roll.
Kasia Broussalian: But one part of our journey that I've been looking forward to talking about is how Indigenous communities have felt the impacts of this crisis.
Linda Otero: We are that river, immersed of that river. There's so much about the river, in our creation and our creation stories.
Kasia Broussalian: There are 30 federally recognized tribes that live in the Colorado River Basin, and collectively they have established rights to a whopping 25% of the river's average water supply.
Kasia Broussalian: That means that their involvement is crucial to solving the current crisis. But for many years, tribes have been mostly just shut out, not only from discussions about the Colorado River but also in fully exercising their rights to its water.
Kasia Broussalian: I'm Kasia Broussalian. You're listening to the “Times Essential: News From the L.A. Times.” It's Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.
Kasia Broussalian: Today in Part 4 of our series on the Colorado River – how Native American tribes were excluded from a key agreement more than a century ago, and how now they not only want a say in how to deal with the current crisis, but also an opportunity to develop the water rights that they finally have.
Kasia Broussalian: Ian joins me today to talk about all this. Hey, Ian, how's it going?
Ian James: Hey, Kasia.
Kasia Broussalian: So this actually isn't my first time covering the Colorado River. I spent quite a bit of time documenting an earlier version of this same crisis, but back in 2009. But I'm realizing now that I don't remember a lot of people talking about tribes back then.
So, why have these groups been excluded from the conversation until now? Especially if they control such a big percentage of the river?
Ian James: It's a long, complicated history … one that’s been rooted in structural racism and it’s made it very hard for tribes to secure their water rights.
If we go back to 1908, there was a Supreme Court case called Winters vs. United States, and what the decision said was basically that tribes are entitled to sufficient water supplies for their reservations.
Ian James: Then in 1922, when the seven states got together and signed the Colorado River Compact, leaders of tribes weren't there. And the agreement only says it won't affect the U.S. government's obligations to tribes. And for many years after tribal water rights were in limbo, they had rights recognized, but in many cases, they weren't quantified.
Ian James: And it took a series of court decisions and acts of Congress to resolve these water rights claims. And in fact, even now, there are some tribes that don't have their water rights quantified, and Indigenous leaders say it's long overdue, that the federal government has an obligation to make sure that those tribal water rights are finally affirmed.
Kasia Broussalian: And what does it actually mean to have your water rights quantified?
Ian James: Having water rights quantified means determining how much water a tribe is entitled to use on its reservation. What's the quantity of water going to be? How much will they receive and be able to use? And some tribes are still waiting for their water rights to be figured out so that it's clear how much they have rights to take from the Colorado River and other rivers.
Kasia Broussalian: It sounds like tribes have had rights to the water for a while now but it took forever to actually establish those rights, and, meanwhile, the river has been losing water and tribes just want a say and how to deal with that.
Ian James: Exactly
Daryl Vigil: You know, we don't have an ability to participate anywhere. There is no structuralized place to engage in the policy-making process.
Ian James: I called Daryl Vigil. He's the water administrator for the Hickory Apache Nation in New Mexico.
Daryl Vigil: And I'm also co-facilitator of the water and tribes initiative.
Ian James: He has been a vocal and passionate advocate of more involvement for tribes and discussions about the Colorado River.
Daryl Vigil: And I've been saying that for so long to deaf ears in terms of like, well, what do you want, how are you gonna do this?
What are those values that are gonna drive what's going on into the future, into the policy-making process? And it absolutely is pushing the conversations of equity and inclusion that we weren't a part of in 1922.
Kasia Broussalian: This lack of inclusion. It goes back to this really pivotal document that Ian mentioned, the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
Daryl Vigil: It says in Article 7 of the compact that this compact does not apply to tribal sovereigns.
Kasia Broussalian: You've probably heard us talk about this compact a few times now in the series. It's the one that divided the river between seven western states and then eventually Mexico, and it's the reason that tribes find themselves in the position that they're in today.
Daryl Vigil: You have the foundational law of the river, saying that it doesn't apply to us, but here we are a hundred years later, absolutely being impacted and being held hostage to that foundational law that says it doesn't apply to us in the first place.
Kasia Broussalian: Ian, If the tribes around the river were excluded from the 1922 compact to begin with, how did they end up getting their water rights quantified?
Ian James: Well, for each tribe, it's really been a different road and a different process. And right now, most of the 30 tribes in the Colorado River Basin have their rights quantified. Now they all have rights and they're very senior water rights, but back in the early 20th century. Their rights were largely ignored.
Ian James: And then came the 1963 Supreme Court decision in a case called Arizona vs. California. And in that case, the court adopted a standard to quantify the rights of tribes with reservations along the lower stretches of the Colorado River.
Ian James: So that was a real watershed moment in terms of starting to follow through and say how much water each tribe would be entitled to.
Kasia Broussalian: So you mentioned that there are still some tribes that don’t have access to their water rights … and I looked it up and it’s actually 12. So not an insignificant number of tribes still have unsettled claims. So what problems are they dealing with?
Ian James: Right. These tribes still have unresolved water rights claims, and that means in places like the Navajo Nation an estimated 30% of people or more are living without running water because they're dealing with a severe lack of basic water infrastructure. And for the Hopi, some people on their lands have no running water, so as a result, people are relying on community water sources where there's a spigot that they go and fill up at, or they find whatever solution they can, you know, filling up tanks and bringing the water home. And many people also have water contaminated with toxic arsenic, and so the real lack of water infrastructure creates major problems for these tribal communities.
Daryl Vigil: You know, we're a hundred years behind in water policy, but we're also a hundred years behind in most areas of governance, and so we're at that tipping point. We need this resource.
Kasia Broussalian: What Daryl and Ian are talking about, how a lot of tribes are still not fully using their water. It brings up this problem. You see, we need to make these massive cuts in water use here in the West, and these cuts need to happen across the board. Really, everyone needs to be involved, but as Daryl put it to me and Ian, tribes are just in no position to do that.
Daryl Vigil: And so when you're talking about conservation too, well, what are tribes you doing to conserve? Well, maybe hook up a house to water, and then we can talk about what conservation can look like, but we're not there yet. Meanwhile, unused tribal water has been utilized as the basin's piggy bank for a long time
Ian James: One issue that Daryl says is a real concern is that some tribes haven't fully developed their water rights, and the tribes don't get credit or compensation for that water that flows downstream.
Ian James: And so he says that's something that really needs to be rectified.
Daryl Vigil: And it's coming to that point where it can't be sustained anymore.
Daryl Vigil: Just like the whole structure itself. But there could actually be somebody in the lower basin who's utilizing unused, undeveloped tribal water in the upper basin and being compensated to conserve it.
Kasia Broussalian: So it's not like the water was just sitting unclaimed in some reservoir. It‘s just being funneled downstream to the next user, like a state or a farm or something like that?
Ian James: That's right. It's a situation that I think many people agree is long overdue to change.
Daryl Vigil: Oh, my God. It needs to be recognized … we need to be made whole, and then we start from that baseline.
Kasia Broussalian: Coming up after the break we traveled to Laughlin, Nev., to hear how one tribe views the Colorado River and how they want to change the system that manages it.
Kasia Broussalian: Welcome back.
Kasia Broussalian: After speaking to Daryl Vigil, Ian and I wanted to learn more about the perspectives of indigenous people and how they view the river and its water. So we went to Nevada to visit one community, the Fort Mojave tribe.
Ian James: There's the beach for the casino,
Kasia Broussalian: Yeah, she must have been talking about this road. Hmm.
Kasia Broussalian: The Fort Mojave Indian Reservation is located near Laughlin, about an hour-and-a-half drive south of Las Vegas.
Ian James: Well, it's a beautiful morning. We've lucked out with some clouds, and it looks like we've got some rain on the way.
Kasia Broussalian: In 1989, the tribe secured their water rights after a really long legal battle. Ian and I met up at a casino owned and operated by the tribe.
Kasia Broussalian: it was a Thursday in the beginning of September. It wasn't really that busy, but you wouldn't be able to tell by how much noise the slot machines were actually making.
Kasia Broussalian: The Fort Mojave tribe has a deep connection to the Colorado River. It's part of their origin story, making the tribe's location really central to its identity.
Ian James: This is the Fort Mojave tribe’s lands here, and the reservation runs along the Colorado river, in California, Arizona, and a little piece of Nevada and the tribe is using a portion of its water…
Kasia Broussalian: So Ian, the first thing that I noticed driving into the valley where the Fort Mojave tribe is, is just how the Colorado River cuts immediately right through it.
Kasia Broussalian: You come in from these hills and you kind of drive down this winding highway, and it's basically all desert all around right until you get to the center of the valley. And there, there's a bunch of farmland.
Ian James: Yeah, it's a beautiful setting. The Colorado River runs past a casino and there is a beach there, but as you look out across the valley, there are mountains in the distance. And the farmland spreads out across these flat lands, which really is the historic floodplain of the river back in the days before dams, when the flooding river would just fill this valley with water
Nora McDowell: Good morning. Hi, how are you? Good.
Kasia Broussalian: At the casino, we met up with one elder and former chairperson of the Fort Mojave tribe, Nora McDowell.
Nora McDowell: Finally.
Ian James: Yeah.
Nora McDowell: I'm Nora.
Ian James: I'm Ian. Nice to meet you.
Nora McDowell: Nice to meet you.
Ian James: And this is Kasia.
Nora McDowell: Hi, how are you?
Kasia Broussalian: Nice to meet you.
Kasia Broussalian: Nora took me and Ian out to this really scenic spot on the Colorado River.
Ian James: Ooh, flock of birds just passed probably about a hundred birds there.
Kasia Broussalian: And standing there, looking out over this valley, it didn’t take long for us to realize that this river … it’s more than just a vital resource for the tribe.
Ian James: The tribe has a very strong connection to the river. It's part of their culture, it’s part of their history, and really at a spiritual level, they are connected to it.
Nora McDowell: We are the water. We come from the water, our name Aha Macav means people of the river. And for us, you know, the creator created us here. He created the land, he created the river,
Ian James: Nora explained how they see themselves as people of the river as immersed in it, really in their history and how they are put on this land to protect it.
Nora McDowell: For us, you know, this is just our way of life. This is how we live. And we coexist, you know, with the river and everything.
Ian James: The river has certainly changed a lot, and Nora has seen those changes in her lifetime as well.
Nora McDowell: So throughout this whole valley, the river used to run from one end of the mountain range to the other. And so it was just, you know, wide and deep and free flowing back then.
Ian James: She told us about growing up along the river and playing in the water. She would go down there and catch tadpoles and …
Nora McDowell: Build, um, what we used to call galluut galluut. And it was using the fine sand from the river and we'd build these castles and houses and that was our doll house, our Barbie house and so we would play in those…
Ian James: When she was growing up, they didn't have air conditioning, they had swamp coolers and sometimes it would just get too hot, and so her family, they would come out and sleep by the river to cool down.
Nora McDowell: Cousins, brothers, sisters. Obviously the older brothers and sisters had to take care of the younger ones. So we got to go, but we all, that was just family.
Kasia Broussalian: Standing on the banks of the Colorado… It's really easy to imagine a bunch of little kids spending their summers and playing in the water. But there’s a dark history here.
Ian James: In the 1800s white settlers came in
Nora McDowell: They came after our people and they tried to make us leave here.
Ian James: And part of the colonization was sort of finding these key crossing points on the river.
Nora McDowell: This was the main corridor and it tied into the Mojave trail, which is on that side, that goes further and over the Hills.
Ian James: A military fort was established there in the mid-1800s to guard over these crossings,
Nora McDowell: They took what they wanted, you know, they took what they wanted and what they needed at that time.
Ian James: Later on in the early days of the reservation, that fort became a boarding school.And that's a painful period in the tribe's history when kids were taken away from their parents and forced to assimilate, forced to speak English.
Nora McDowell: They more or less kind of punished us because we didn't leave.
Ian James: She indicated that at that time as white settlers were moving into the area, the U.S. authorities wanted the Mojave people to move south off of these lands. But they resisted.
Nora McDowell: We stayed, we said, we're not gonna leave. This is what the creator gave us. This is our home. You know, why would we leave? And so that's why we're still here today.
Ian James: It wasn't until 1924 that Congress extended U.S. citizenship to Native Americans by passing the Indian Citizenship Act.
Kasia Broussalian: But even after citizenship, Indigenous tribes had very little support or respect for their rights. Coming up after the break, how the Fort Mojave tribe finally won their right to the river and how they're navigating the current crisis.
Kasia Broussalian: So Ian, before the break, we were talking about how the Fort Mojave tribe, against all the odds seems like … held onto their lands. But how and when did the tribe finally settle the rights to their water?
Ian James: Remember that Supreme Court case that I mentioned earlier, Arizona versus California from 1963?
Kasia Broussalian: Yeah.
Ian James: Yeah. A decision in that case settled this long running dispute between the two states.
Ian James: And the federal government also said as part of that case that the five tribes along the lower Colorado River also had rights to water. And the decision laid out how those rights would be determined. Now, the Fort Mojave tribe was one of those tribes, but it took years for the Supreme Court to finally approve a settlement specifying how much water the tribe was entitled to use.
Kasia Broussalian: Yeah. And wasn't Nora's father really involved in that process?
Ian James: Yes. her father, Sanford McDowell, was on the Tribal Council in the 1970s, and he was involved in pressing for years for the tribe's water rights, along with other leaders of the tribe.
Nora McDowell: I was a young girl, but I remember him always talking about it, you know?
Nora McDowell: And then at the time I didn't think nothing of it, but later on in life, it came back to me what they were talking about – you know, it was the water for the tribe and you know, how they had to go and go meet with senators, congressmen, with the Department of Interior.
Ian James: And then she became the elected chairperson. She was involved for a number of years until she finally went to the Supreme Court, went to Washington and saw it reach its conclusion, and they finally had their water rights secured.
Nora McDowell: And so for us, you know, it meant everything. And for my dad to be there, and for others that, you know, started this effort in the early ‘60s, felt pretty good, still feels good to this day.
Kasia Broussalian: Today, the Fort Mojave tribe has rights to 132,000 acre feet of water per year. Across the valley the water is used to irrigate alfalfa fields and other crops. Water gets pumped from wells into people's homes, to the casino, and to a couple of golf courses.
Kasia Broussalian: Having access to their water rights has helped the Fort Mojave tribe develop economically. That’s benefited not only the members of the Fort Mojave tribe, but also the surrounding community. And that development? it was hard won.
Nora McDowell: Our elders always told us, you know, land without water is nothing, you know, and that we have to protect that. And so we heard that from the elders, and it's part of our oral history. And so we're gonna continue to do that, to protect it.
Ian James: Their parents and grandparents told them that land without water is nothing and that they should continue to put their water to use. Now, Nora is also very worried about the situation of the river, and she explained her concerns about the mindset that has governed how the water is used and the system that's doled out all the water as if it were property.
Nora McDowell: Nobody should own that river, but the way they did it a hundred years ago, you know, that's the story and the legacy that we've lived with and we continue to live with to this day, you know, not having an input on having a say still. But yet, you know, our water isn't being treated right either. We need to find that balance within ourselves and the way to do, you know, through the river, respecting the river, treating the river different, being aligned with it, you know, connect to it, get in it, feel it, let it, you know, just envelope you, and …
Kasia Broussalian: To me, there was this sort of catch-22 that I thought about while we were talking to Nora… She understands that the river is in crisis. She sees it and she wants to remedy it. Yet, on the other hand, tribal elders have really made it clear that future generations should hold onto that water. So the Fort Mojave tribe, it actually doesn't have any plans to cut their water usage.
Ian James: Well, they use a substantial amount of water, but there are other water users that use a lot more and have the ability to contribute substantially larger amounts of water, both water districts and other tribes. And so I think I interpreted it as this is something that they fought long and hard for, to have these water rights, and they don't want to lease or sell their water.
Ian James: They want to continue putting it to use. Now each tribe has a different situation, and there are some other tribes such as the Hilo River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian tribes that have been contributing to conservation and have pledged to do more of it to try to deal with the shortage. But in the case of the Fort Mojave tribe … they say that how the river is managed should change and that the tribes should really have a central role in that. That it's long past time, that they have a seat at the table and have that involvement in determining how to change the way this river is managed.
Nora McDowell: I think we just need to be there at the table, listen to what they're thinking and what their plans are, and have input into that, at least have a say. So as to, you know, what they're thinking. A relationship like that hasn't occurred in a long, long time.
Kasia Broussalian: Ian, thanks so much for chatting with me today and for taking me with you on your reporting journey.
Ian James: Thanks very much for having me, I’m glad we were able to tell this story together.
Gustavo Arellano: And that's it for this episode of “The Times: Essential News From the L.A. Times.” Kasia Broussalian and Denise Guerra were the Jefas on this episode. Mark Nieto mixed and mastered it. Jazmín Aguilera and Heba Elorbany edited it. Series theme music composed by Mark Nieto.
Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo, and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Robert Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Heba Elorbany, and Shani Hilton, and our theme music is by Andrew Eapen .
I’m Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Monday with all the news and Desmadre. Gracias