Missouri River and other Water Rights Issues::

Conclusion

Although the Pick-Sloan Plan was designed to benefit the people of the Missouri Basin in the main areas of irrigation, flood control, hydroelectric power, navigation and recreation, the Sioux benefited little from any of these objectives. Flood control mainly benefits the lower basin area between Kansas City and Sioux City, as the upper Basin area of Sioux Country, for example, suffers little in the way of floods. In fact, Sioux land is more under threat from reservoir waters exceeding their maximum pool levels and infringing on Sioux property. Undulating reservoir waters also cause stream-bank erosion and shoreline conditions become unstable, inhibiting tribal development of their shoreline land and resources. Many Indian ranchers, for example, have lost livestock to eroding banks.

In terms of power, the Pick-Sloan Plan has produced a remarkable amount of hydroelectricity. In 1972, the mainstem Missouri River dams were producing 13.2 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power - that is, some 30 percent of the Basin's total generating capacity. Although this has led to increased availability of electricity to area residents, including the Sioux, and although rises in reservations' economic levels have meant more people than ever have access to electricity, the Pick-Sloan Plan has not meant that electricity is actually affordable. Quite simply, many reservation Sioux still cannot afford electricity and have to rely primarily on a single wood-burning stove.

As for irrigation, this is an impractical possibility for much of the upper Missouri region. A mere 125,000 acres of Sioux land has been determined to be irrigable by the Bureau of Reclamation - and lack of finance and necessary infrastructure means it may be some time before the Lakota and Dakota tribes can even begin to develop their potential in this area. Moreover, much of the soil on Sioux reservations is of poor quality, tending toward high-sodium and high-alkaline contents and poor permeability (shale and gumbo).

Sioux problems in the area of water are further exacerbated in the legal arena. Though the 'Winters Doctrine' asserts the Sioux's prior and paramount rights over water flowing through or alongside reservations for the purpose of development, judicial clarification on the matter of reserved water rights is lacking. Certainly Winters afforded the Sioux and other Indian tribes no protection with regard to the Pick-Sloan Project.

Land is nothing without water, and reclamation of land to tribes means nothing without the rights to the water that can furnish tribes with the ticket to greater economic self sufficiency and political self determination. Standing Rock Lakota activist, Madonna Thunderhawk summed up Indian activists' views on the on-going struggle for water:

"Water is the lifeblood, the key to the whole thing. Without water, our land rights struggles - even if we were to win back every square inch of our unceded lands - would be meaningless. With water which is ours by Aboriginal right, by treaty right, and by simple moral right, we Indians can recover our self sufficiency and our self determination. Without that water, we are condemned to perpetual poverty, erosion of our land base, our culture, our population itself. If we do not recover our water rights, we are dooming ourselves to extinction. It's that simple. And so I say that the very front line of the Indian liberation struggle, at least in the Plains and desert regions, is the battle for control over our water" (quoted Guerrero 1992: 207-208).¹

Notes::

• 1 - Marianna Guerrero. 1992. "American Indian Water Rights: The Blood of Life in Native North America." Jaimes, M. Annette, ed. The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.

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