#SupremeCourt rules against #Navajo Nation in water supply case

The court pointed to treaties signed in the 1800s to support its decision. The #NavajoNation suit comes as water from the #ColoradoRiver is scarce and states in the arid southwest are tangled in disputes over water allocation.

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN, Jun 23, 2023

"The suit comes as water from the Colorado River is scarce and states located in the arid southwest are tangled in disputes concerning water allocation. The tribe claims that while the average person on the Navajo reservation uses seven gallons of water a day, that national average is 80 to 100 gallons.

"The nation, which extends across #Arizona, #NewMexico and #Utah and lies within the drainage basin of the Colorado River, has signed two treaties with the United States. In 1868, the United States promised the tribe a permanent homeland.

"Shay Dvoretzky, a lawyer for the Navajo Nation, told the Supreme Court: that the Navajos 'made clear' that they understood the 'promise of a permanent homeland' in the 1800s to include 'adequate water for agriculture and raising livestock. Hauled from miles away, water can cost up to twenty times more than it does in neighboring off-Reservation communities,' he argued. "

#WaterIsLife #RespectTheTreaties #NativeAmericanNews #WaterRights

Read more:
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/supreme-court-rules-against-navajo-nation-in-water-supply-case/1547711

Sami protesters, Greta Thunberg, end demonstrations against wind turbines

By Victoria Klesty and Nora Buli, March 3, 2023

"Hundreds of Indigenous and #environmental campaigners, including #GretaThunberg, blocked the main road to #Norway's royal palace on Friday as they ended their nine-day protest to tear down wind turbines built on reindeer pastures used by #Sami herders.

"Demonstrators had urged government action after Norway's supreme court ruled in 2021 that 151 turbines erected at Fosen in central Norway violated Sami rights under international conventions, but remained in operation 17 months later.

"Saying that a transition to green energy should not come at the expense of Indigenous rights, protesters blocked access to several ministries, putting the centre-left minority government in crisis mode."

#IndigenousRights #GreenEnergy #RespectTheTreaties #EnvironmentalRacism

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sami-protesters-greta-thunberg-end-demonstrations-against-wind-turbines-2023-03-03/?taid=640249966fe5c700010586d2

Native Americans seized #WoundedKnee 50 years ago. Here's what 1 reporter remembers

by Rachel Treisman, February 27, 2023

"It's been exactly 50 years since hundreds of #NativeAmerican activists seized the #SouthDakota town of Wounded Knee, kicking off a monthslong occupation that helped galvanize the movement for #IndigenousRights across the U.S.

"On Feb. 27, 1973, some 200 members of the #OglalaLakota tribe, led by members of American Indian Movement (AIM), occupied the #PineRidge Reservation village — which was also the site of the 1890 massacre in which federal troops killed as many as 300 #Lakota men, women and children.

"The activists set out to protest #corruption in tribal #leadership and highlight the U.S. government's failure to honor Native treaties. They went on to hold the town for 71 days, in what the U.S. Marshals Service calls the 'longest civil disorder' in its history."

#RespectTheTreaties #LandBack #Genocide #NativeAmerican #USA #History

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/27/1159630250/wounded-knee-occupation-50th-anniversary

Background: Environmental Justice Case Study: The #YuccaMountain High-Level #Nuclear Waste Repository and the Western #Shoshone

"The U.S. government has set aside an area of the Western Shoshone Nation, Yucca Mountain, as a final repository for high level nuclear waste from the U.S. nuclear industry. At present, the Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting a scientific investigation of the site that will cost $63 billion and will allow for the repository to be opened by the year 2010.

"Although they are still investigating the area, the DOE is no longer looking for a site elsewhere. The tribe is extremely concerned about observed health and environmental effects on its members, but currently the federal government has not initiated or implemented any official health studies, remedies to the environmental pollution, programs for early detection of environmental disease, or disease surveillance programs.

"Authorities such as the Bureau of Land Management, Forest and Park Services, Fish and Wildlife, Atomic Energy Commission, Department of Defense, and Department of Transportation, now have control over 90% of Shoshone land. This is in direct violation of the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1866, and later upheld by President Grant in 1869, that recognizes Shoshone territorial #sovereignty. "

#NativeAmericans #RespectTheTreaties #NoNukes #NoDumping #EnvironmentalRacism

http://websites.umich.edu/~snre492/kendziuk.html