<big>On March 20, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Arizona v. Navajo Nation, in which the Navajo Nation argues that the U.S. has a treaty-based duty to plan for and protect its water interests. The justices’ decision — due this summer — is likely to have far-reaching implications, whether it’s a narrow ruling that applies solely to the Navajo Nation or a much broader one that could affect tribal water rights across the U.S.</big>
Given the case’s significance, tribal nations, water organizations and nonprofits — as well as one anti-Indigenous group — have filed almost a dozen amicus, or “friend of the court,” briefs to assist the justices in their deliberations. One of the briefs, filed on behalf of the Diné Hataałii Association, an organization of over 200 medicine men and women from all five regions of the Navajo Nation, focuses on a core tenet of federal Indian law: that treaties must be interpreted as tribal signatures would have understood them at the time of signing….
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<big><big>T</big>he protest encampment was easily visible from Highway 40 going West from Needles, California — a cluster of olive-green Army tents that stood out from the low-lying creosote bushes and sagebrush that cover the expanse of Ward Valley. At its height, the camp held two kitchens (one vegetarian, one not), a security detail, bathroom facilities and a few hundred people — a coalition of five tribal nations, anti-nuclear activists, veterans, environmentalists and American Indian Movement supporters. They were there to resist a public-lands trade between the federal government and the state of California that would allow U.S. Ecology, a waste disposal company, to build a 1,000-acre, unlined nuclear waste dump that threatened both desert tortoises and groundwater. “It became like a little village, a working village,” recalled David Harper, a member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes who was a tribal spokesperson at the time.</big>
The Bureau of Land Management had announced it would start evicting the protesters at midnight on Feb. 13, 1998. But that day, tribal elders decided that they would not leave. Federal officials and tribal spokespeople met to negotiate at a blockade on the highway overpass. The leaders of the standoff were committed to nonviolence, but the atmosphere felt tense and uncertain. At a press conference, elders in ribbon dresses and beadwork sat under the sun in folded chairs, backed by tall banners that read, in part, “Save the Colorado River.” “We can no longer stand by, as people, to allow this to continue to happen to us,” said then-Fort Mojave Tribal Chairperson Nora McDowell, her black curls framing her face and her voice quavering at times….
- February 1, 2023 <big><big>What does the nation’s commitment to tribal co-stewardship mean for public lands?</big> The Biden administration’s policies signal a shift in lands management, but a sea change is yet to come.</big>
- March 13, 2023 <big><big>Bringing co-stewardship to Wyoming’s Red Desert</big> A Q&A with the Indigenous Land Alliance of Wyoming’s Yufna Soldier Wolf.</big>
Yufna Soldier Wolf saw a problem. The Department of the Interior, under Secretary Deb Haaland, has actively encouraged the co-stewardship and co-management of public lands by tribal nations across the West. But so far, no such partnership has been formed in the state of Wyoming.
Soldier Wolf is the tribal conservation advocate for the Wyoming Outdoor Council and Indigenous Land Alliance of Wyoming (ILAW). About a year ago, the Wyoming Outdoor Council started ILAW to better serve and communicate with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho, as well as the many tribal nations across the West whose ancestral ties to the land long predate both Wyoming and the United States. With ILAW, Soldier Wolf is now leading the first effort to establish a co-stewardship relationship between the tribes of Wyoming and the Bureau of Land Management. The first two places she submitted for the BLM’s consideration — Boars Tusk and Indian Gap Trail — are located in the Red Desert, a vast high-altitude stretch of red rock, sagebrush and sand south of the Wind River Reservation. The land was part of the territory ceded by the Shoshone-Bannock and the Eastern Shoshone in the 1863 Fort Bridger Treaty. An estimated 36 tribes maintain ancestral ties to the area.
- March 27, 2023 <big><big>Jackson as a safe haven in [HBO’s] ‘The Last of Us’ is science fiction</big> Only the extremely wealthy might survive the Apocalypse in today’s western Wyoming town.</big>