<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:14pt"><div>http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry.html <br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 19px; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; "><div class="article articleComponent" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(63, 66, 69); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="component-article component-standard clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; margin-bottom: 1.667em; "><h1 class="standard-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.333em; margin-left: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 40px; color: inherit; text-rendering:
optimizelegibility; font-size: 33px; ">Drought hits harder in already parched Indian Country</h1><div class="standard-containerByline" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">by <span class="standard-byline" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; "><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/profiles/t/kevin-taylor.html" title="Kevin Taylor" class="standard-byline--link" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Kevin Taylor</a></span> <span class="standard-dateTime" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; color: rgb(187, 187, 187); font-size: 12px; "><span class="date separator" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; ">March 19, 2014</span> <span class="time separator" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; ">5:00AM ET</span></span></div><div class="split70
standard-containerDescription" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 440px; float: left; position: relative; clear: none; "><div class="standard-componentDescription" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1em; ">Concerns rise over failing fish populations, meaningless water rights and pushback from other governments</div><dl class="standard-topics topics visible-desktop" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; display: block; line-height: 16px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; position: relative; "><dt style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; font-weight: bold; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px;
">Topics:</dt> <dd style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-left: 0px; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/event/drought-usa.html" title="Drought USA" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Drought USA</a></dd> <dd style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-left: 0px; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/issue/american-indian.html" title="Indian Country" style="box-sizing: border-box;
color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Indian Country</a></dd> <dd style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 18px; margin-left: 0px; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/issue/weather.html" title="Weather" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Weather</a></dd></dl></div><div class="split30 standard-containerSharing" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 188px; float: left; position: relative; clear: none; "><div class="standard-sharing sharing-abvr" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div class="share" id="share-5447449292659681559_gig_containerParent" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div id="share-5447449292659681559" class="shareDiv sharing"
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background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; vertical-align: bottom; white-space: nowrap; zoom: 1; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="parsys mainpar" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(63, 66, 69); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="adaptiveImage section" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; margin-bottom: 1.667em; "><figure class="image" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; width: 629px; "><div data-picture="" data-alt="drought USA, Indian Country, California, Hopi, Yurok" data-class="" class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div
data-src="/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry/jcr:content/mainpar/adaptiveimage/src.adapt.480.low.1395183390239.jpg" style="box-sizing: border-box; "></div><div data-src="/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry/jcr:content/mainpar/adaptiveimage/src.adapt.768.medium.1395183390239.jpg" data-media="(min-width: 481px)" style="box-sizing: border-box; "></div><div data-src="/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry/jcr:content/mainpar/adaptiveimage/src.adapt.960.high.1395183390239.jpg" data-media="(min-width: 768px)" style="box-sizing: border-box; "></div><img alt="drought USA, Indian Country, California, Hopi, Yurok" src="http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry/jcr:content/mainpar/adaptiveimage/src.adapt.960.high.1395183390239.jpg" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; vertical-align:
middle; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; width: 629px; "></div><div class="image-info" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; "><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Trinity Lake is one of the largest reservoirs in California, and much of its water goes to the Central Valley and its agriculture. Reservations are often left dry.</figcaption><small class="image-credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.41675em; color: rgb(187, 187, 187); margin-left: 0.5em; ">Tim Reed/USGS</small></div></figure></div><div class="text section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;
margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; "><i style="box-sizing: border-box; ">Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series examining how drought affects Native Americans and their communities.</i></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Drought maps this winter have shaded swaths of the American West in oranges and reds to signify severe, extreme and even exceptional levels of drought.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">And exceptional drought gets attention, especially when it hits America’s vegetable basket, California’s Central Valley.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px;
font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Speaker of the House John Boehner in January stood in his shirtsleeves in a dusty, bare field in Bakersfield. He supported a state bill that would quash salmon restoration in the San Joaquin River delta, joining the cry that scarce water should go to farms, not fish.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">President Barack Obama, a month later, stood in his shirtsleeves in a dusty, bare field in nearby Fresno, offering $183 million in aid and announced an initiative on climate change to address larger issues affecting the three-year drought.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">But living in the dry is nothing new for Native Americans in the West. Nor is being overlooked.</div><div
style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">In wet years as well as dry, many American Indians live in chronic droughtlike conditions, thanks to decades’ worth of dams that hold water back or divert it from reservations which were usually sited on already marginal land.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“We are definitely one of the overlooked groups of people in the U.S.,” said Margaret Hiza Redsteer from her office in Flagstaff, Ariz. A member of the <a href="http://www.crow-nsn.gov/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Crow Nation</a>, Redsteer is a geologist with the<a href="http://www.usgs.gov/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38,
119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">U.S. Geological Survey</a> and has been monitoring 18 consecutive years of drought conditions in the Southwest, primarily on Hopi and Navajo lands.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“The California drought is getting a lot of attention right now, and I keep thinking ‘You know, we’ve been facing this problem for a while now’ … [but] we don’t supply the food to the rest of the country, so people haven’t noticed,” she said.</div></div><div class="subHeading section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><h2 class="subHeading-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 9px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.84210526em; margin-left: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 28px; color: rgb(39, 39, 39); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;
font-size: 19px; ">The dry side of reservoirs</h2></div><div class="text section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Her concerns are echoed in the Great Plains — where reservoirs behind federal dams have displaced Indians — and in Northern California, where once teeming salmon streams shrink as water is diverted south.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">During the last century, the California constructed a massive system of dams, reservoirs, tunnels and canals to funnel water to the Central Valley, which has become an industrial agriculture wonderland. According to the <a href="http://ca.water.usgs.gov/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185);
text-decoration: none; ">USGS California Water Science Center</a>, Central Valley agriculture is a $17 billion per year industry that supplies a quarter of America’s food, including 40 percent of its fruits and nuts.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Lettuce, carrots, tomatoes and fruit take tremendous quantities of water, and the dry fields where Obama and Boehner were standing during their media events are often irrigated with water that comes from far away.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">In fact, 557 miles to the north, amid the forested ridges that outline the sinuous <a href="http://cdec.water.ca.gov/river/trinityStages.html" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185);
text-decoration: none; ">Trinity River</a>, Rod Mendez reflected about being on the dry side of the Central Valley Project dams.</div></div><div class="pullQuote section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div class="pullQuote-box" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-top: 2em; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; border-top-width: 3px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(88, 88, 92); border-bottom-width: 3px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(88, 88, 92); "><div class="pullQuote-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.75em; padding-right: 2em; padding-bottom: 0.75em; padding-left: 2em; font-size: 20px; line-height: 34px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(219, 78, 0); text-align: center; "><i class="pullQuote-l" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 0; "></i>People need to keep in mind, as [drought] legislation is drafted, that farms can be bailed
out but fish populations can’t.<i class="pullQuote-r" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 0; "></i></div><div class="pullQuote-attribution" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.667em; padding-right: 0.75em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; padding-left: 0.75em; border-top-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(201, 201, 201); text-align: right; background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); "><div class="pullQuote-attributer" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; font-weight: bold; ">Dave Hillemeier</div><div class="pullQuote-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; color: rgb(170, 170, 170); ">fisheries manager, Yurok Tribe</div></div></div></div><div class="text section"
style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“For the most part, the Hoopa Indian Reservation is kind of in a drought situation all the time anyway,” said Mendez, who is writing an emergency drought plan for the <a href="http://www.hoopa-nsn.gov/we-are-natinixwe" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">tribe</a>. “We have a lot of dams in the area. They control the flow of the river whether we’re in a drought year or not. We’re not getting the flows we were getting before the dams.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">A half-century of lesser flows has reduced coho salmon runs to the point they are on federal and state endangered
species lists. Officials with both the Hoopa and <a href="http://www.yuroktribe.org/culture/history/history.htm" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Yurok tribes</a> say they are concerned that California’s declaration of a drought emergency in January will make things worse by loosening environmental protections known as CEQA, <a href="http://resources.ca.gov/ceqa/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">California Environmental Quality Assurance</a>.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“We’re concerned because during the process the tribes really haven’t been consulted with,” said Hoopa Valley tribal chairwoman Danielle Vigil-Masten. “All this legislation that’s getting put through really
fast. They have legislation to increase water flows into the Shasta Reservoir. They have other bills to do with the Trinity River. We have to constantly go online and look and try to understand what the information is that we are reading. We have our attorneys on it.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“People need to keep in mind, as [emergency drought] legislation is drafted, that farms can be bailed out but fish populations can’t,” said Dave Hillemeier, fisheries manager for the Yurok Tribe. “Once you lose the genetics that make up your fish population, they’re gone.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Salmon returning from the ocean last year faced such obstacles as low flows in the Trinity and Klamath
rivers, higher water temperatures, algae blooms from agricultural runoff and even dewatering — stretches that were sucked dry by irrigation or consumption.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">"Too much water has been allocated to too many people,” said Konrad Fisher, executive director of<a href="http://www.klamathriver.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Klamath Riverkeeper</a>. Along the Scott River, an important tributary of the Klamath, Fisher said, “an 18-mile stretch … was completely dry,” because of overappropriation of water rights.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Dry stretches strand returning salmon, keeping them from reaching spawning
grounds.</div></div><div class="subHeading section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><h2 class="subHeading-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 9px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.84210526em; margin-left: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 28px; color: rgb(39, 39, 39); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; font-size: 19px; ">Talking to the elders</h2></div><div class="text section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Pressure on Northern California water may be especially dire this year. According to the California Water Science Center, “2013 was the driest calendar year for California in 119 years of recorded history.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size:
14px; line-height: 22px; ">Foreshadowing <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/17/calif-governor-declaresdroughtemergency.html" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">a bone-dry 2014</a>, snowpack in the north ranged from 22 percent to 25 percent of normal by late February. Snowpack provides about one-third of the water used by California’s cities and farms, the center says.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">In the Southwest, “It’s a year without a winter here,” Redsteer said from her USGS office in Flagstaff. She has chronicled the worsening scarcity of water by setting up her own weather stations and interviewing up to 100 tribal elders about changes they observed during their lifetimes, which included winters without snow, summers without
monsoons and vanishing streams, plants and animals.</div></div><div class="parbase textimage section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div class="image_left" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div class="textimage-box clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; margin-bottom: 0px; "><figure class="textImage-figure image" id="cq-textimage-jsp-/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry/jcr:content/mainpar/textimage" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin-top: 0.833em; margin-right: 1.667em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; width: 300px; float: left; max-width: 300px; "><img src="http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2014/3/19/drought-is-nothingnewinindiancountry/_jcr_content/mainpar/textimage/image.img.png" alt="drought, Indian Country, Hopi, Crow, Navajo, USGS" class="cq-dd-image" style="box-sizing:
border-box; max-width: 100%; height: auto; vertical-align: middle; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; width: 300px; "><div class="image-info" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; "><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">One of the ways USGS geologist Margaret Hiza Redsteer tracks climate change is by talking to Navajo and Hopi elders.</figcaption><small class="image-credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 11px; margin-bottom: 0.41675em; color: rgb(187, 187, 187); margin-left: 0.5em; ">U.S. Geological Survey</small></div></figure><div class="text" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px;
margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Streams on the Navajo reservation have dried up one after another. Without moisture in the ground, perennial grasses don’t grow. Without grass cover, sand dunes begin to migrate and advance on dwellings, roads and grazing land. Dry riverbeds release fine sediment to the winds, and the airborne dust settles on the snowpack of the southern Rockies. Dust absorbs more heat from the sun and melts the snow more quickly.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Is it climate change? “That’s the $10 million question, and frankly it’s a question I don’t think you’ll ever be able to answer. It’d be like trying to claim which cigarette gave the person lung cancer,” Redsteer said.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em;
margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">What can be said, she added, is that drought conditions are intensified by warmer temperatures. Plants don’t remain dormant in winter anymore. They germinate and use up scant moisture. Higher temperatures increase aridity, which steals water from plants through evapotranspiration.</div></div></div></div></div><div class="subHeading section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><h2 class="subHeading-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 9px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.84210526em; margin-left: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 28px; color: rgb(39, 39, 39); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; font-size: 19px; ">Use it or lose it</h2></div><div class="text section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em;
margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">But haven’t indigenous cultures in the Southwest long adapted to arid climates?</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“First of all, the traditional way of adapting to dry seasons was to move,” Redsteer said. These days, “If you have a reservation, and the reservation is established where there are the most limited water resources in the region, the odds of you being able to make it through dry seasons are stacked against you.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Indeed, she said, census data shows the reservation population in decline even as there are more Navajo. “There is a notable emigration from the reservation and mostly it’s young people who are
leaving because they can get jobs in cities,” she said. This is due in part from the limited, land-based economies on the reservation.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“There’s not a lot of alternatives out there,” Redsteer said.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">When it comes to drought planning, she praised the Navajo and Hopi tribes but added, “What is it that we do after the first 10 years?” Redsteer asked. “People on the reservation use one-tenth of the water that people in Phoenix use every day. How do you conserve when you are already using so little? They don’t have lawns, they don’t wash their cars on a regular basis. It’s hard to say, ‘Well, we really need to conserve now,’” she said
with a laugh.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">And Phoenix, a desert city that glimmers with emerald golf courses and backyard swimming pools when seen from the air, highlights the archaic nature of water laws.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“One of the real ironies is that western water law is ‘use it or lose it’. Phoenix … to keep its Colorado River allocation, has to use that allocation or it will lose its rights to it. So in some ways there’s a disincentive to conserve,” Redsteer said.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">The aftershocks of dam building resonate throughout Indian
Country, even on the Great Plains.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“It is no coincidence that the major dams on the Missouri are on Indian reservations,” added Gary Collins. Collins is a member of the <a href="http://www.northernarapaho.com/" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">Northern Arapaho Tribe</a> who has spent much of his career in natural resource and water issues.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“Actually, the tribes on the Missouri didn’t get the dams, they got the reservoirs,” said Bob Gough, secretary of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy, based in Rosebud, S.D. “When the dams were built for flood control, it
actually means the tribes were permanently flooded and someone else is in control. That’s what ‘flood control’ means if you are an Indian.”</div></div><div class="subHeading section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><h2 class="subHeading-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 9px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.84210526em; margin-left: 0px; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 28px; color: rgb(39, 39, 39); text-rendering: optimizelegibility; font-size: 19px; ">An ugly history</h2></div><div class="text section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Collins and Gough recently attended a drought-planning conference in Nebraska sponsored by the<a href="http://www.drought.gov/drought/content/what-nidis" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box;
color: rgb(38, 119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">National Integrated Drought Information System</a>.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Collaboration among tribes and federal and state agencies is welcome but is fraught with ugly history such as Indians being flooded out by dams. “It was forced displacement, and that provides the mistrust tribes have with the government,” Collins said.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Some tribes, such as those on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, have fought for more control by having their water rights adjudicated — which clarifies how much water a user has a right to use and who has priority during times of scarcity.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em;
margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“It was 37 years in the courts,” Collins said. “We are constantly having pushback from non-Indian society wanting more of the tribes’ assets.”</div></div><div class="pullQuote section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div class="pullQuote-box" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-top: 2em; margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; border-top-width: 3px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(88, 88, 92); border-bottom-width: 3px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(88, 88, 92); "><div class="pullQuote-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.75em; padding-right: 2em; padding-bottom: 0.75em; padding-left: 2em; font-size: 20px; line-height: 34px; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(219, 78, 0); text-align: center; "><i class="pullQuote-l" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style:
normal; line-height: 0; "></i>Tribes are first affected and most affected. They are the ones on the ground who sustain themselves with subsistence hunting and fishing and gardening.<i class="pullQuote-r" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; line-height: 0; "></i></div><div class="pullQuote-attribution" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 0.667em; padding-right: 0.75em; padding-bottom: 0.5em; padding-left: 0.75em; border-top-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(201, 201, 201); text-align: right; background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); "><div class="pullQuote-attributer" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: 20px; line-height: 24px; font-weight: bold; ">Gary Collins</div><div class="pullQuote-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;
font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; color: rgb(170, 170, 170); ">Northern Arapaho tribe</div></div></div></div><div class="text section" style="box-sizing: border-box; "><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">With drought, Collins said, “Tribes are first affected and most affected. They are the ones on the ground who sustain themselves with subsistence hunting and fishing and gardening.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Gough is among the lead authors of a chapter on the effects of climate change on indigenous people — the first time they have their own chapter — in the forthcoming third edition of the<a href="http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(38,
119, 185); text-decoration: none; ">National Climate Assessment</a>.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Among the observations: “A significant decrease in water quality and quantity caused by a variety of factors, including climate change, is affecting Native Americans’ and Alaska Natives’ drinking water supplies, food, cultures, ceremonies and traditional ways of life. Native communities’ vulnerabilities and lack of capacity to adapt to climate change are exacerbated by land-use policies, political marginalization, legal issues associated with tribal water rights and poor socioeconomic conditions.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">It often comes down to poverty, Gough said. “When you get to Indian Country,
you see that these reservations have already been beset upon with with all sorts of vulnerabilities.”</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Poverty often means that even if tribes have senior water rights, “they don’t have a lot of money for infrastructure to actually get the benefits of those water rights,” Redsteer said. It’s not uncommon for tribes to bargain away some of their rights to have water returned via someone else’s pipes.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“It doesn’t do any good to have water rights on paper,” she said.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">Meanwhile, as they
prepared for the predicted dry summer, people enjoyed the few days of late-winter rain that spattered Northern California.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“I love the rain. I went out and took a walk in the rain,” Yurok chairman O’Rourke said.</div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; ">“I love the smell of rain,” Hoopa chairwoman Vigil-Masten said. “It seems that when it rains, we are all happy, really. Because you can see the water in the river start to increase.”</div></div></div></div></div></body></html>