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The Making of Drought: Dams and Indian Water Rights along the Colorado River and its Tributaries
For the last few years, residences in the Colorado Basin have been confronted by drought narratives. We are told that water is scarcer and we need to cutback and reallocate rights to water. The narrative pit urban residences in places like Phoenix and Tucson, Denver and Salt Lake City, against large rural farms who rely on water for livelihood. Missing from this picture is the consideration of Indian water rights, particularly the 30 federally recognized tribes whose homelands intersect with the river and its tributaries. In this presentation, Curley demonstrates how the current water crisis on the Colorado River is a colonial crisis, linked to abstraction of water, damming of water, and displacement and undermining of Indigenous water governance.
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