Water Rights

Competition over Water

While ceding vast quantities of land and natural resources to the United States, American Indian tribes agreed to live peacefully on smaller reservations of land and, in many cases, take up agrarian lifestyles. For its part of the bargain, the United States, through the secretary of the interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, agreed to protect tribal self-government by, among other things, providing services to tribes and representing them in legal actions to defend Native American rights. The relationship between the federal government and the tribes, known as the “trust relationship,” imparts a high duty upon the government to [Page 1380]deal fairly with Native Americans and ensure that important tribal resources are protected.

In 1902, the limits of the government's obligations to tribes were tested with the passage of the Reclamation Act, which authorized the secretary of the interior to construct massive water projects to benefit non-Native settler communities in the arid West. Many of the new dams were built upstream from Indian reservations and caused catastrophic damage to tribal resources. In many cases, crucial spawning grounds became inaccessible to traditionally hunted fish species, and tribal fisheries dried up. In others, hunting and fishing spots, sacred sites, and agricultural lands were inundated. In the very worst circumstances, entire villages were flooded.

The situation on Pyramid Lake Reservation in Nevada provides a particularly relevant example of the disastrous impacts of federal reclamation projects on tribal resources. From time immemorial, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe had depended on two species of fish from Pyramid Lake for their subsistence: Lahontan cutthroat trout and cui-ui, a species unique to the lake. After construction of Derby Dam upstream from the lake on the Truckee River in 1905, water levels in Pyramid Lake dropped precipitously. The loss of vital spawning runs for the lake's fish ultimately resulted in the extinction of the Lahontan cutthroat trout in the 1940s and the listing of cui-ui as an endangered species in 1967. In addition, low water levels and increased erosion caused high salinity in Pyramid Lake, making general use of the lake hazardous to the tribe. The situation sparked decades of litigation and negotiations between the tribe, the federal government, and non-Native water users and has only recently been resolved through a series of settlements. The most notable results of these settlements have been stabilized lake levels, the provision of sufficient in-stream flows to maintain tribal fisheries, and the creation of an economic development fund to meet future needs of the Pyramid Lake Reservation.

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