Alaska Fairbanks | US Environmental Policy Student
Donna Yellowhorse, a professional Navajo weaver in her sixties, grapples with worsening mobility issues on her daily five-mile drive to collect water, traversing a steep dirt road–on muddy days, she’s forced to take a 35-mile detour or just walk. In the Navajo Nation hamlet of Dennehotso, 71-year-old Irene Yazzie travels 16 miles to pump water for her family, 18 cows, 15 goats, and two horses1. Nearby, 36-year-old mother and Navajo Nation resident Willena Begay appreciates the value of living close to the Earth, residing in a hogan, a traditional dome-shaped log structure. But on cold winter nights walking to the nearest well with her young children, she too wishes for running water. The lived experiences of these three women represent the over 30% of the Navajo Nation reservation that lacks access to running water in their homes2.
Stretching across parts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, the Navajo Nation reservation comprises 400,000 tribal members inhabiting 16 million acres of land; despite being the largest reservation in the U.S., the Navajo Nation encompasses just a sliver of the Navajo’s ancestral homeland3. The Navajo have acted as patrons of the Colorado River for dozens of generations4. Nonetheless, they have faced myriad challenges in the past century for securing equitable access to the river’s water. Navajo lands and resources endured severe exploitation from the coal and uranium mining industries beginning in the 1940s-60s, contaminating local aquifers and waterways. In July 1979, a spill from the United Nuclear Corporation uranium mill dumped 94 gallons of radioactive sludge into the Puerco River, a tributary of the Colorado River feeding Navajo settlements’ irrigation and drinking water. After decades of mining inactivity, uranium from ponds, waste, and tailing piles left behind continues to leach into Navajo drinking water, heightening the risk for kidney damage, hypertension, and autoimmune disease5. The grievances of the mining industry, coupled with a history of federal inaction towards the resultant Navajo health crisis, have fostered a “deeply rooted mistrust” of the federal government among the Navajo people6.
This legacy of mistrust has continued to build as the Navajo are repeatedly denied accessible sources of safe, clean drinking water. Hope does exist on the horizon–about a month ago on March 12, new legislation tilted The Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement was introduced in Congress. This bill, led by Representative Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ) and Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), targets the necessity of equitable water access for the Navajo. Federal involvement in the designation of Navajo water rights has existed for over a century, but efficacy has been limited. A landmark 1908 Supreme Court ruling, Winters v. United States, has acted as the first major foundation for tribal water rights. Under this decision, when Congress creates a reservation, the water necessary to fulfill the reservation’s purpose is implicitly reserved7. Yet in a more recent Supreme Court case closed in 2023,
Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the court ruled against the Navajo. Two decades prior in 2003, the tribe had sued the federal government in a dispute over access to the Colorado River system, arguing for a federal responsibility to reassess the tribe’s water needs and develop a plan to secure the needed water. Seeking to protect their own water rights, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada intervened as defendants. The Winters ruling, as well as the Navajo Treaty of 1868 that established the Navajo Nation as a tribal homeland, were called upon by Navajo plaintiffs8. However, this notion of an implicit federal duty to ensure water for the Navajo was disputed by a five-judge majority. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the case’s majority opinion, in which he declined the federal government’s obligation to “take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajo”9. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s dissenting statement more closely reflects the sentiment shared between Navajo residents, especially Navajo women like Yellowhorse, Yazzie, and Begay. He emphasizes the Navajo Treaty of 1868’s promise of making the Navajo Nation a “permanent home”, asserting that “no people can make a permanent home without the ability to draw on adequate water”10.
The contentious nature of water rights disputes like Arizona v. Navajo Nation is exacerbated by prolonged drought conditions distressing the Colorado River Basin. Defined as a “megadrought”, the past 24 years have been the driest period on record for the American West. Climate change has accelerated evaporation from reservoirs and melting of snowpack, leading the average flow of the Colorado River to decline by 20% since 200011. Two of the largest reservoirs in the U.S., Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border, have fallen from 90% capacity in 2000 to a record low of 25% capacity in 2023, now settling at 35% capacity in 202412. Demand for water consumption will continue to outstrip supply in the Colorado River Basin–projected temperature rises predict further reduced river flows of 10-40% by 2050, stressing the necessity of reaching equitable allocation agreements between the seven states and 30 tribes surviving off of the Colorado River13.
Considering these severe conditions, the salience of the aforementioned Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement is undeniable. The bill provides much-needed certainty for the Navajo, Hopi, and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes by securing water rights through a settlement agreement with Arizona. It also creates an economic opportunity for the Navajo and Hopi to lease their water and authorizes $5 billion in federal funding to build and maintain essential water infrastructure on tribal land14. Representative Greg Stanton, who co-introduced the legislation alongside Representative Ciscomani, shares Justice Gorsuch’s aforementioned belief in a federal duty to support tribal water access. Stanton praises the Water Rights Settlement’s progress toward “at last uphold[ing] long-neglected federal trust obligations to tribes by ensuring access to a clean and reliable water supply”15.
As the effects of climate change continue to pressure the allocation of the Colorado River’s waters into heated debates, legislation like the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement is increasingly imperative to provide the Navajo tribe with a fair seat at the negotiation table. Heather Tanana, a law professor at the University of Utah and citizen of the Navajo Nation, aptly summarizes the consensus of the Navajo people as their fight for water security persists. The rights of the Navajo, she asserts, are “valid rights that should be enforced”, and as the long-standing caretakers of the Colorado River Basin, the Navajo are more than deserving of “play[ing] on the same level with every other stakeholder in the basin”16.
1Tyrone Beason, “Indigenous nations approve historic water rights agreement with Arizona. It now goes to Congress,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2024, https://www.latimes.com/environment/indigenous-tribes-cement-water-rights-deal-with-arizona (accessed April 9, 2025)
2Bill Donahue, “What Will It Take to Tackle Water Scarcity on the Navajo Nation?” NRDC, September 26, 2024, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/what-will-it-take-tackle-water-scarcity-navajo-nation (accessed April 9, 2025)
3Bill Donahue, “What Will It Take to Tackle Water Scarcity on the Navajo Nation?”
4Jacqueline Keeler, “Colorado River: The Navajo’s ‘Forever Home’ Is in Crisis,” The Frontline, March 22, 2023, https://atmos.earth/colorado-river-navajo-supreme-court/ (accessed April 9, 2025)
5Carrie Arnold, “Once Upon a Mine: The Legacy of Uranium on the Navajo Nation,” Environmental Health Perspectives (2014), https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.122-a44 (accessed April 9, 2025)
6Paola Rodriguez & Katya Mendoza, “Broken Promises, Contaminated Waters: Uranium mining on the Navajo Nation,” AZPM, October 9, 2024, https://originals.azpm.org/broken-promises-contaminated-waters-uranium-mining-on-the-navajo-nation/ (accessed April 9, 2025)
7Cynthia Brougher, “Indian Reserved Water Rights Under the Winters Doctrine: An Overview,” Congressional Research Service, June 8, 2011, https://nationalaglawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/crs/RL32198.pdf (accessed April 9, 2025)
8Bill Donahue, “What Will It Take to Tackle Water Scarcity on the Navajo Nation?”
9Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Rules Against Navajo Nation in Water Rights Case,” New York Times, June 22, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court-navajo-nation-colorado-river-water (accessed April 9, 2025)
10Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Rules Against Navajo Nation in Water Rights Case.”
11The Nature Conservancy, “A River in Crisis,” Nature.org, August 28, 2022, https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/colorado-river/colorado-river-in-crisis/ (accessed April 9, 2025)
12David F. Gold, Rohini S. Gupta, & Patrick M. Reed, “Exploring the Spatially Compounding Multi-Sectoral Drought Vulnerabilities in Colorado’s West Slope River Basins,” Earth’s Future (2024), https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024EF004841 (accessed April 9, 2025)
13The Nature Conservancy, “A River in Crisis.”
14“Kelly leads Reintroduction of Bipartisan, Bicameral Legislation to Ratify and Fund Historic Navajo Tribes Water Rights Settlement,” Kelly.senate.gov, March 11, 2025, https://www.kelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/kelly-leads-reintroduction-of-bipartisan-bicameral-legislation-to-ratify-and-fund-historic-navajo-tribes-water-rights-settlement/ (accessed April 9, 2025)
15“Ansari Joins Effort to Ratify Historic Navajo Tribes Water Rights Settlement,” Ansari.house.gov, March 12, 2025, https://ansari.house.gov/ansari-joins-effort-ratify-historic-navajo-tribes-water-rights-settlement#:~:text=The%20Northeastern%20Arizona%20Indian%20Water%20Rights%20Settlement%20(NAIWRSA)%20Act%20 (accessed April 9, 2025) 16Becky Sullivan, “The Supreme Court wrestles with questions over the Navajo Nation’s water rights,” NPR, March 20, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1164852475/supreme-court-navajo-nation-water
Hi Alaska, your blog about water insecurity issues that Navajo people face is a great example in the context of the broader environmental justice movement. I agree that this problem must be swiftly addressed, and the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement is necessary action to achieve basic rights for these people. Unfortunately, I believe there are many implicit and explicit complications that make achieving this solution difficult. For example, the concept of the “Ecological Indian” has been perpetuated across the United States for nearly a century. This concept attributes the ideas of environmental protection through conservation and spiritualism to native people. While this idea can provide these people with agency and recognize their relationship with the landscape around them, it often dehumanizes and diminishes them. People expect that all indigenous peoples in the United States are greatly concerned with protecting the environment at all costs and it creates a one dimensional image of them. Furthermore, corporations use this image as a marketing tactic to describe their product as ecologically friendly and ethical, but look down on Natives who try and take advantage of our capitalistic system. Ultimately, I believe this may be a central reason as to why these people still cannot attain running, clean, safe water. People expect that if Native Americans are “supposed” to be in touch with the land around them, they would prefer to live in rural areas without modern technologies. Therefore, these marginalized groups have little voice in the face of the dominant culture. Furthermore, people consider it to be hypocritical for the Navajo people to desire these technologies while still taking part in their traditional practices.
I really loved how you detailed the lived experiences of Navajo women to highlight not only the logistical difficulties but the emotional and physical toll of lacking basic water infrastructure, espeically for elders and mothers. I learned so much from this post, and the statistics you provided such as the 94 gallons of radioactive sludge dumped into the Puerco River and the nearly 60% fall in reservoir capacity were striking. Though it is incredibly saddening, it is also unsurprising how decades of mining have left a legacy of helth risks. Coupled with federal inaction, it is also no surprise that there has been a deep mistrust of the government among the Navajo people, underlining the intersection of environmental, legal, and social justice battles.