Page 10 - the NOISE June 2012

10 • JULY 2012 • the NOISE arts & news magazine • thenoise.us
part one
Water rights have always been a point of contention for the Navajo Nation. Mostly, the conflict has consisted of the Navajo fighting federal, state and local governments
and private enterprise for the tribe’s fair share of the water flowing through reservation lands.
It is a battle lasting generations, through court cases, treaties, military confrontation, changes in Navajo gov- ernment structure; but almost every time, it seems to end in frustration for the Navajo people, whether by broken promise or blatant disregard for legal outcomes and man- dates.
The latest water issue to spark conflict is the Navajo-Ho- pi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Agree- ment, which has the Navajo pitted against their own, on top of the usual stakeholders.
Supporters of the measure, which include many of the Navajo Nation’s key political leaders, say the measure does something that no government action in the past has been able to accomplish: it guarantees Navajo rights to a huge portion of the Little Colorado’s surface water and unlimited rights to key groundwater aquifers, while pro- viding infrastructure that will help supply thousands with running water and create economic stimulus in the form of development and jobs.
Navajo President Ben Shelly spelled out his support of the agreement in a June 11 statement. “I support the Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights settlement because the benefits of the settlement far outweigh the risks of continued litigation,” Mr. Shelly wrote. “This settle- ment preserves and firmly establishes our water rights and guarantees the right to use all Little Colorado River water flowing under, over, or through the Navajo Nation.”
But the opposition — which includes former Navajo leaders, backed by a vocal group of Navajo citizens, who have seen federal dealings blow up in their faces before
— say the agreement is a confusing, 400-page document, full of doublespeak with one intention: to circumvent in- digenous claims to the Navajo’s own resources and let the government off the hook for infringements the Navajo people have fought against or may need to fight in the future, selling out their ancestors’, descendants’ and their own rightful claims to the Navajo’s most precious resource.
Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald Sr. says the agreement amounts to a trick, duping the Navajo into giving up its sacred and sovereign rights over its land and water, a holy provision to the nation, granted by its Creator.
“We have a permanent covenant with the Holy Ones, with anything within the Four Sacred Mountains, to pro- tectit,preserveitandtouseit,”Mr.MacDonaldsays.“That’s the Navajo traditional and cultural position.”
Mr. MacDonald cites the US Supreme Court case Winters vs. United States, 1908, as the basis for declaring the tribe’s legally sanctioned rights over water on Navajo land. The decision — a response to settlers damning and allocating water upstream from tribes, leaving reservation land dry
— said that since the purpose of placing Native American tribes onto reservations was to create self-sustaining com- munities, Native Americans have first rights to water flow on their land.
Mr. MacDonald compares the current Little Colorado agreement to begging a four-horse thief for one horse back by promising no claim to the other three horses. “The agreement is designed in such a way that the water be- longs to the surrounding states and none of it belongs to the Indians,” Mr. MacDonald says.
The fray is heading toward a confrontation that will have the tribe exploring its own cultural direction for the next 100 years. And with a political climate that provides only a small window for passage of the agreement, the Navajo
Nation’s self-examination is quickly forming into a fast- moving political skirmish.
Water and the navajo
Navajo country is a vast territory of more than 17 million acres spanning parts of northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico and southeast Utah, making it by far the largest American Indian tribe in geographic size. Its membership enrollment tops 300,000 with nearly 60% residing on the reservation, according to the 2010 Census.
The Navajo have a deep cultural bond with the land and assert a spiritual and indigenous claim over the land and resources within the tribe’s traditional boundaries, the Four Sacred Mountains. Navajo tradition holds that the Creator placed the Navajo people on the land bound by what is now known as Mount Blanca in San Luis Valley, Colorado; Mount Taylor near Laguna, New Mexico; Mount Hum-
phreys of Arizona; and Mount Hesperus in the La Plata range of Colorado. “It is sacred and it is the holy land of the Navajo people.” Mr. MacDonald says.
Mr. MacDonald says the water is the Navajo’s most valu- able, sacred and necessary resource, pointing out that most of the traditional history, prayer, song and dance of the Navajo are based on it. He says he and others who oppose the deal believe the nation is giving away its right to assert claims on the water through the Little Colorado agreement, or any other agreement, jeopardizing every- thing the Navajo have been fighting for since the arrival of Europeans into Navajo territory.
He points out the agreement calls for the Navajo to give up all past, present and future claims on the injustices the tribe has suffered at the hands of the United States Army, the Arizona Rangers, and various corporations, both public and private. “Why do that? This is really an attempt to legitimize all their theft that has gone on,” Mr. MacDon- ald says.
But the current leadership also says it has the best inter- ests of the people at the heart of its support for the agree- ment. Erny Zah, spokesman for Mr. Shelly, says the tradi- tional beliefs of the Navajo will also be lost if the younger generation continues to leave the reservation in search of economic wellbeing.
“What are we going to teach them about Navajo tradi- tion, who are we going to teach it to, when they’ve left the reservation because there are no jobs,” Mr. Zah says.
Arizona lawmaker, Rep. Albert Hale, D-St. Michaels, a former Navajo president, also supports the agreement. “It is incumbent upon leadership to find new sources of water for its people,” Mr. Hale says.
Support for the agreement, which is in the form of a bill now in front of the US Congress, is almost exclusively lim- ited to the Office of the President and Vice President, Tribal Council members and Council Speaker Johnny Naize, who is the council sponsor for the agreement, and Mr. Hale, according to Mr. MacDonald.
Mr. Zah says it is difficult to accurately gauge the over- all public opinion because the most vocal opponents at a short series of public discussions attended more than one meeting. “We were seeing the same people over and over who didn’t support it, and we didn’t know what the community thought,” Mr. Zah says.
Mr. Zah also hopes tribal leaders can help clear up what he says is confusion about the agreement’s language, caus- ing misconceptions of what the bill does. He says leaders have held more outreach events to explain the document’s stipulationsparagraph-by-paragraph,inWindowRock,the Navajo capital. Although the meetings were open to the public, they had limited seating, according to Mr. MacDon- ald, who also contends the short burst of meetings is not enough to cover 400 pages of legal language the average citizen may find confusing and deceptive.
Another opponent of the agreement is former Hopi Chairman Ben Nuvamsa. As the Hopi Nation is completely surrounded by the northeastern Arizona parcel of the Na- vajo reservation, it shares many of the water interests cov- ered in the bill and its tribal council is preparing for conflict similar to the Navajo, as it too is in the process of approving the measure.
Mr. Nuvamsa spent last week holding strategy meetings with those opposed to the measure. “The Navajo and Hopi tribes are being exploited, and their natural resources are being exploited, by corporate America and big govern- ment,” Mr. Nuvamsa says.
deeper StipulationS
The Little Colorado agreement came about as a last- ditch effort by Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain, who seek to settle some of the major Navajo and Hopi water claims that have developed over the last century, when Arizona’s largest cities and private water companies began growing at exponential rates, then plunging their stakes ever deep- er into aquifers running through tribal land.
The agreement provides about $200 million to the Nava- jo to develop groundwater delivery systems and pipelines, serving sections of the Navajo Nation still without running water, and cities like Window Rock, which is at a threshold of full capacity. Mr. Zah says it also allocates nearly 73% of the Little Colorado’s surface water to the tribe. As it is now, tens of thousands of Navajo haul their water from faraway sources or filling stations that charge by the gallon.
An $800 million 2010 deal agreed upon by the Na- vajo and Hopi — but abandoned by Congress for being too pricey amid budget cuts — included the Little Colo-