“Our Winters’ Rights”: Challenging Colonial Water Laws

Andrew Curley

doi:10.1162/glep_a_00515

Abstract

Much of the scholarship on Indigenous water rights in the United States focuses on legal and political rights awarded or denied in water settlements. This article highlights the voice of settlement opponents within Diné communities over the proposed Little Colorado River Settlement in 2012 between the Navajo Nation and Arizona. Using interviews with key actors, observations of water hearings, and a mini focus group with settlement opponents, my research finds that the proposed water settlement produced contradictory logics, practices, and frameworks that combined two “traditions of Indigenous resistance,” one rooted in the language of self-determination and sovereignty and the other in emerging notions of decolonization. This hybridity of seeking increased water recognition within colonial law, while advocating for decolonial waterscapes, speaks to the complicated and fundamentally entangled political landscapes of Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, in opposing the water settlement, Diné opponents and community members demonstrate that they seek to rectify the injustice of ongoing settler colonialism and realize their collective capabilities as nations, not “Indians,” “tribes,” or “minorities” within and against the authorities of the colonial state.

Highlights

Much of the scholarship on Indigenous water rights in the United States focuses on legal and political rights awarded or denied in water settlements
On April 5, 2012, US senators Jon Kyl and John McCain from Arizona met with Navajo Nation Council delegates in the western Diné community of Tuba City
The settlement established the terms by which the Navajo Nation would forever “resolve” its collective claims to the river in exchange for small water infrastructure and remaining waters after upstream diversions are taken into account

Summary

Methodology

I base my findings on interviews and observations with tribal organizers, activists, community members, and lawyers. These interviews were conducted in 2012 during the settlement debate. After the debate was concluded and the political outcomes were certain, I conducted a mini focus group with opponents who translated their work against the settlement into a new campaign to defend “the confluence” of the Little Colorado River and Colorado River. It was through this process that I was able to identify the difference in frameworks and understandings of the actors involved in constructing the meaning of the settlement

Water Rights and Water Colonization

Construction of Colonial Water Laws