Delphine Red Shirt. Photo by Rich Luhr / Flickr
Water as the Next Gold
By Delphine Red Shirt
Lakota Country Times Columnist
www.lakotacountrytimes.com Most tribes on the North American continent view water as sacred, steam in sweat baths as important for good health, and everything associated with water as gifts Wakan Tanka has given us. Recently a student graduating from the university I work at wanted me to read his honor thesis. The student is from a reservation in northern California called a “Rancheria." The federal government’s termination policy had closed most rancherias in the 1950’s and 60’s, as it did some reservations, later restoring them in the 1970’s. The student who wrote the paper on water rights researched his tribe’s rights to water in the state of California. What he found was the biggest users of water in California were almond growers and marijuana growers in the state. The interesting thing about almonds, according to the student, is the amount of water it takes to grow one single almond; roughly a gallon of water to produce one almond per tree. Where for a marijuana plant it takes roughly six gallons per plant per day, where over a 150 day growing period, one single plant would use about 900 gallons. The government produces numbers that show how California’s national forests are illegally used to produce marijuana (70% grown in the US) where 80% is grown on public lands like National Forest Service lands." The student concludes that marijuana grow sites damage the natural environment that his tribe wants to preserve (often growers divert water); as well as access to water in a drought prone state like California where the state is experiencing an extreme drought currently. When we consider that everything that pertains to us, as people(s) has to do with the federal government with whom we signed treaties to give up rights to our homelands, we have to look at the federal courts to determine our water rights and one case, Winters v. United States that was determined in 1908, sought to define our rights to water. Many of our reservations, and this includes rancherias, have rights to water or “sufficient water to fulfill the purpose for which the reservation (rancheria) was created”. What is called the Winter’s Doctrine allows tribes to manage their own natural resources.
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As we consider what these are, water becomes a central issue. We need to begin asking questions about water use on our reservations, including Pine Ridge. Whenever a new lease is signed or new uses for land are considered, we need to monitor how that affects our rights to water. Many issues have come up in the past with contamination of our drinking water, etc. and now the consideration to grow plants that may require more water than other plants. The prediction is that drinking water will become like gold as water resources world-wide become scarce. Already, California is going even deeper into the earth to identify where deeper water reserves are. We like many other tribes need to look closely at what the future holds for our people living on rural reservations and like the rancherias in California, that are close corporation run (almond producers) food baskets in the United States. In the end, consensus wins in a just world, and what the student concluded was that it was a choice between food sources and marijuana a substance that benefits maybe a few. What would the Indigenous people of California chose for their children (and their own future)? (Delphine Red Shirt can be reached at redshirtphd@gmail.com) Find the award-winning Lakota Country Times on the Internet, Facebook and Twitter and download the new Lakota Country Times app today.
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