As the American Southwest struggles through a regional “megadrought”—the worst of its kind in 1,200 years—states continue to battle for nature’s most abundant, yet most precious, resource. Southwestern state governments are particularly concerned about who should get Colorado River water, with each state striving to funnel a portion of the limited supply to itself. These enduring negotiations over water allocation, however, have largely ignored a critical population in the region: the Navajo.
Covering an area larger than West Virginia, the Navajo Reservation is home to over 170,000 people, close to a third of whom lack access to reliable running water. Although present conditions are astonishingly dismal, this crisis has been decades in the making—and the federal and Arizona governments have been anything but helpful in solving it. Ever since the Navajo were forcefully removed from their ancestral homelands and subsequently returned to a fraction of their territory, they have struggled to survive in the face of US complicity. To address the resource crisis on the Reservation and rectify historical wrongs, states should look beyond their own needs and collaborate with the federal government to deliver water to the Navajo Nation.
The scarcity of water on the Reservation impacts nearly every aspect of daily life. Even before the drought, families on the Reservation reported having to drive miles to reach water stations where they could fill up their storage tanks. For those without outhouses, the lack of running water means getting in the car and driving to the nearest toilet each time they need to use the restroom. Even Buu Nygren, the Navajo President, described resorting to using “windmill water that is supposed to be for livestock.” State governments stood by as the lack of water made adequate hand-washing impossible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cases and deaths on the Reservation skyrocketed—the Navajo infection rate was higher than that of New York, and their Covid-19 mortality rate surpassed that of any state in the country.
Moreover, the water that the Navajo can access is often tainted by irresponsible government projects: Some of the Navajo Nation’s already scarce groundwater sources have been rendered unusable by uranium mining projects that contaminate surrounding areas with radioactive particles. Stricken by both drought and a lack of viable water sources to begin with, access to clean water remains a priority for the Nation. Like most governments in the Southwest, the Navajo are looking to the Colorado River to resolve their current crisis.
The question of whether Indigenous tribes have the right to water from the Colorado has already been settled—116 years ago, to be exact. In its 1908 Winters v. United States decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that the United States must guarantee Native populations the water required for their operations to fulfill its side of the 19th-century treaties that created the reservations. Although this was a landmark affirmation of Indigenous rights across the country, the case did not explicitly determine how the tribes would secure their allotted resources.
It was not long before Southwestern states began rolling back the advancements made by Winters. In 1922, states in the Colorado River Basin ratified a compact to settle the river disputes in the region. A provision in the agreement denied that the United States held any obligation to assert or protect the water rights of tribal governments. Instead, one by one, each tribe in the region has been forced to make separate compacts with the states in which they are located.
Over 80 years later, federal inaction sanctioned by state governments has left the Navajo Nation negotiating alone with the state of Arizona to obtain the water resources it needs. Arizona has hurled numerous obstacles at Navajo attempts to secure a fair water allotment: Decades-long court cases and drawn-out hydrological assessments have nullified any progress made during negotiations. In a show of state superiority, Arizona has even tried—albeit unsuccessfully—to leverage the tribe’s casino license to force a favorable settlement for Arizona citizens. The fight is rigged, and the power dynamic between Arizona and the Navajo Nation has made it difficult to reach an agreement that comes out fair for both parties.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, a century after Winters v. United States was decided, the Navajo returned to the Supreme Court to demand their rightful access to water via federal authority in 2023. In its Arizona v. Navajo Nation decision, the Court denied the tribe’s request to get the federal government involved, claiming the treaty that created the Reservation did not mandate the federal government to actively protect the tribe’s water access despite the federal government maintaining authority in state-tribal relations. The majority opinion further argued that “Indian treaties cannot be rewritten or expanded beyond their clear terms.” What good is a treaty that provides dry land to a tribe if the water necessary for survival does not accompany it? Justice Neil Gorsuch, siding with the Navajo in a striking dissent, described their situation best, writing that the Navajo have been “told repeatedly that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”
Despite another blow from the federal government, all hope for an agreement with Arizona is not lost. In February, the Navajo Nation released a summary of a current proposal in the works with the state, expressing confidence that a settlement will be reached soon. The proposal will affirm Navajo claims to water in the Colorado River Basin. Yet even with an agreement seemingly on the horizon, there is little confidence that this century-long impasse will be overcome. The Navajo need water now, but some of their court hearings for resource adjudication are not even scheduled to begin until 2027.
Furthermore, even if an agreement is struck with Arizona, congressional funding for key water infrastructure projects—vital for ensuring that the allocated water actually gets to the Reservation—is not guaranteed. In 2010, talks between the Navajo and Colorado River authorities resulted in a consensus, but the agreement was shut down by Congress. The federal government thought that the burden of the $800 million infrastructure projects included in the compromise outweighed the dire situation on the Reservation.
Just last year, testifying in front of the United States Senate, President Nygren asked the body to fund key infrastructure projects that would bring water to the Nation from the San Juan River. Nygren said that the Navajo had been too occupied “worrying about basic essentials of life” to focus on “moving forward” and “building [themselves] up.” It is time that the federal government upholds its duty to “secure the permanent prosperity and happiness” of the Navajo people, as stated in its 1849 treaty with the tribe. The Navajo need enough water to drink, bathe, and nourish their fields—only then can they meaningfully grow as a nation.