In article <CB5080.HtI@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> Jacqueline.F.Keeler@Dartmouth.edu
(Jake) writes:
>
>I would like to see more discussion by knowledgeable people on issues
>pertaining to Native Americans.
>
>Water rights is, perhaps, the issue facing the people.
I recently proofread for the University of Arizona Press a forthcoming
book, INDIAN WATER IN THE NEW WEST, ed. Thomas McGuire et al. It
should be in print soon if it isn't already. It's a collection of
essays by a variety of people from legislators to water-policy experts
to tribal attorneys and chairmen. I'd say that the tribal perspective
is somewhat underrepresented, but there's an enormous amount of
information on the history of water claims, state and Supreme Court
rulings, and a number of negotiated settlements. Like any history of
water rights in the West it's pretty depressing, but in general the
contributors agree that the last two decades have seen a powerful
swing toward acknowledging and enforcing Indian water rights. (Though
theory and practice are two different things. There's a chapter
co-authored by the chair of the San Xavier District of the Tohono
O'Odham Nation just outside Tucson, and the disgusting thing is the
amount of groundwater depletion caused by mining and agriculture on
the boundaries of the reservation, which has yet to be reversed.)
-- David Sewell "Where the earth is dry, the dsew@lion.ccit.arizona.edu soul is wisest and best." dsewell@violet.ccit.arizona.edu --Heraclitus