American Indian water rights in the western US: litigation, negotiation, and the regional planning process

Thesis/Dissertation · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1984

OSTI ID:5788506

Burton, L Jr

American Indian tribes are now locked in combat with non-Indian adversaries in about fifty major water rights disputes in courtrooms throughout the western US. The amounts of water in controversy are huge, as are the financial benefits accruing to whatever parties eventually win. The first and still most significant case articulating this conflict is Winter v. US, a 1908 decision in which the US Supreme Court held that the creation of Indian reservations by treaty or Congressional enactment also impliedly reserves water resources sufficient to fulfuill the purposes for which the reservation was created. As trustee for Indian interests and legal titleholder to all their resources, it was the US Government's responsibility to perfect and defend Indian water rights from the data of the Winters decision onward. But from that time until the 1960s, the federal government represented those interests in only a handful of cases, while it otherwise acquiesced in the allocation of western surface waters to non-Indian interests in accordance with state water rights doctrines. By not adequately asserting Indian reserved rights during a period when it was actively participating in the full appropriation of all surface waters by non-Indian interests earlier in this century, the federal government now finds itself in the paradoxical position of trying to restore unto Indian tribes the water resources it earlier helped give away to others under state law.

• OSTI ID: 5788506
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290400* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Energy Resources
520600 -- Environment
Aquatic-- Regulations -- (-1989)
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AMERICAN INDIANS
HUMAN POPULATIONS
INDIAN RESERVATIONS
LEGAL ASPECTS
MINORITY GROUPS
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
POPULATIONS
REGIONAL ANALYSIS
RESOURCES
STATE GOVERNMENT
WATER RESOURCES
WATER RIGHTS