Hoopa Valley Tribe: Settlement gambles with our water rights

Many thanks to Indian Country Today Media Network for bringing much needed attention to the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and S. 2379 the legislation to implement it. The Federal government’s role in the KBRA should be alarming to any tribe that prizes the sovereign values of self-governance and self-determination.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe is one of only two Indian tribes who legally own the Indian allocation rights to fifty percent of the Klamath/Trinity fishery resources that are protected by treaty, Executive Order and federal law.

S. 2379, introduced on May 21 by Senators Wyden, Merkley, Feinstein and Boxer, will effectively bind the United States to abandon its fiduciary duty to protect our fishery from the effects of the Bureau of Reclamation’s management of the Klamath Irrigation project. S. 2379 would authorize this provision in the KBRA:

The United States, acting in its capacity as trustee for the Federally recognized tribes of the Klamath Basin, hereby provides . . . Assurances that it will not assert: (i) tribal water or fishing right theories or tribal trust theories in a manner, or (ii) tribal water or trust rights, whatever they may be, in a manner that will interfere with the diversion . . . of water for the Klamath Reclamation Project.