Return to Beginning of Article: Text-Only | Graphics-Intensive
By Bornali Halder
© 2002 by Bornali Halder
Url: http://www.lakotaarchives.com/lakwaterpr.html
"This dam provides a striking illustration of how a free society can make the most of its God-given resources" - President John F. Kennedy at the formal dedication of the Oahe Dam, South Dakota. August 16, 1962.
"Water that flows through the Great Sioux Reservation is Indian water. Water is very important for Indians. One day water will be as valuable as silver or gold" - Oglala elder, Johnson Holy Rock.
At a time when treaties were being signed between Indian nations and the United States, and everywhere land was being ceded with the guarantee that remaining Indian territory would remain so unless voted against by the Indians themselves, the right to water flowing in, into and alongside these lands was seldom an issue. It was simply implied by both sides of the treaty negotiations that land also included water and air. As time progressed, however, water and land unravelled and have become discrete entities within the discourses of the water-scarce west. Water has become an ambiguous issue with argument raging as to whom owns which water resources. Indian water rights have been the major axis around which fierce conflict has spun and such conflict has dominated Lakota political and social history during the twentieth century. Against such a largely antagonistic backdrop, this article attempts to navigate a course through the history of dams and Lakota water rights along the Missouri River.
The Mni Sose - the Sioux name for the Missouri River, meaning 'muddy water' - is the longest tributary of the Mississippi. It winds its way some 2,315 miles south from southwestern Montana, through the Dakotas and the Nebraska/Iowa-Nebraska/Missouri boundaries and into Missouri, where it finally merges with the Mississippi, a few miles north of St. Louis. Only a few hundred years ago, the Mni Sose and its bottomlands and lower breaks constituted a complex, rich ecosystem thriving with wildlife. A variety of waterfowl and shorebirds were supported by the river, as well as the turkeys, woodpeckers, warblers and flycatchers that occupied the large cottonwood forests that gathered sporadically alongside it. The river also served as a rich habitat for sturgeon, buffalo fish, perch and other varieties of fish. Great herds of buffalo, pronghorn and elk feasted on the richness of the Missouri River and its Basin, and black bears, grizzlies, bighorn sheep, coyotes, wolves, mules and white-tailed deer all wandered the region also.
Many Indian tribes lived along the river, most famously, perhaps, the Arikara and the Mandan with their earthen lodges clustered along the river's lower terraces and their gardens of tobacco, corn, squash and beans. Though largely nomadic people, the Teton Sioux also gathered along the river and its tributaries such as the Moreau, the Cheyenne and White rivers and buried their dead and conducted their ceremonies there. The river was a vital source of subsistence, furnishing the Tetons with water for subsistence and ceremony, vegetation and other foodstuffs, and with timber for fuel and construction of tipis and ceremonial lodges such as the inipi lodge. The river was also a major route in the extensive inter-tribal commercial networks that existed well in advance of Europeans to the region.
Executive Director of the Mni Sose Intertribal Water Rights Coalition, Richard Bad Moccasin grew up a few hundred yards from the Missouri River, on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. During anthropological fieldwork in South Dakota between 1998 and 1999, he described to me its free-flowing nature before most of the river in North and South Dakota was dammed in the forties and fifties:
"I used to go watch it everyday. Wow! Especially in April - boom here it comes! You hope that you don't have to go up to higher ground. But we were up-stream in South Dakota. Here it comes - you can see it - it's muddy, the muddy Missouri. Boom, here it comes. It was amazing - trees, maybe a house, a shed, a car body - vhoom going right by you" (1998).
Invoking a definition of sacredness which incorporates utilitarian as well as spiritual values, Bad Moccasin explained to me his feelings on the importance of water in general and of the Missouri River in particular:
"[W]ater for the Sioux Nation, [for] Indian nations is life-giving. Our mothers when they break their... when they give birth, the water breaks. [...] The water [is] sacred in the sense that it would take your life, it could save your life many people drown in our reservoirs every year, and before the reservoirs when it was free-flowing as well. So that sacredness is recognising that it could take your life. But at the same time in the sense of giving birth, you break your waters, so there's a connection there, and that's why they really want to protect that - each Indian person wants to protect it. When you drink from a stream or a river, you want... you hope that it's safe. To this day we consider it safe. But there's some concern that it's becoming contaminated. [...] [T]he Missouri River, it retains this. We use the water and river-bottom lands for subsistence, of all the medicinal types of uses of what the water and the river bottoms produce. Food - berries; wood, for winter. So in the whole realm of the river itself, it provided an existence, subsistence. [Y]ou can look at it as sacred in that sense too."
The first Europeans to discover the Missouri were the French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet and French missionary and explorer Jacques Marquette in 1673. Soon the lower reaches of the Missouri had become an important route for fur traders who gradually pressed northwards in search of more fur-bearing animals. Between 1804 and 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition became the first to thoroughly explore the length of the river. With the advent of steamboat travel on the Missouri in 1819, the river became increasingly congested with human and commercial traffic, as non-Indian settlers moved west and freight such as lumber, coal, fur and grain used the river as its main mode of transport until the railroads took over in popularity in the mid-1800s. Today, the lower river remains a major commercial route in the transportation by barge of agricultural products as well as oil and steel. As the nineteenth century drew to a close and tribes had been moved onto reservations bordering the Missouri River and its tributaries, white settlement along the river increased dramatically.
In April 1943, the Missouri flooded over 70,000 acres of fertile bottomland in southern South Dakota and Nebraska. A month later, 540,000 acres of land were inundated. In June, a further 960,000 acres of land were flooded by the Missouri. The following spring, 4.5 million acres of farmland along the Missouri were destroyed when the river jumped its banks again. The damage to property along the Missouri River totalled some $100 million for the two years.
Public pressure forced the government to order the US Army Corps of Engineers - officially in charge of combat engineering, mapmaking, topographical surveying, coastal fortification, and river and harbour improvements - to survey the Missouri River Basin and prepare an action plan. This was accomplished under the control of Colonel Lewis A. Pick. Three months later, the Pick Plan was presented at Washington.
The building of the massive dam at Fort Peck in Montana had already been authorised by Congress in 1933 as a means to control flooding, and by 1945, the Corps had spent some $300 million on deepening the river for easier navigation. In response to flooding in the Basin area, levees, reservoirs and dams began to appear in the wake of the 1936 Flood Control Act. The Army began to espouse the concept of multi-purpose dams - a philosophy that incorporated the use of power production, flood control, irrigation and recreation under its rubric. Pressure from upper Missouri residents led to irrigation being added to the Pick programme.
Since 1902, the US Bureau of Reclamation had been charged to stimulate settlement and economic development in the arid west, reclaiming land through irrigation. It also began to devote its efforts to dam by-products such as flood control, hydroelectric power and recreation. Such dams as the Hoover and Glen Canyon on the Colorado River were constructed by the Bureau and today it is estimated that some twenty-seven million acres of seventeen western states have been irrigated under Bureau projects. By 1944, eleven of its projects had been completed in the Missouri River Basin. Nine more were under construction. Its first multi-purpose structure in the Basin was begun in 1933 with the Kendrick Project.
The Corps' Pick Plan emphasised flood control and navigation. The Bureau of Reclamation's Missouri plan (the Sloan Plan) emphasised irrigation and power development. As the two plans were being argued and considered, tension heightened between those who promoted the economic benefits of farming and those who exhorted the benefits of navigation. In other words, there was a sharp split between upper and lower basin residents as to the purposes for which the river would be diverted. In 1944, compromise was achieved and the two plans were merged under the Pick-Sloan Plan The Plan became part of the Flood Control Act of 1944 and was officially known as the Missouri River Basin Development Program.
The plan involved 107 dams along the river, including five key Corps dams in the Dakotas: Garrison Dam in North Dakota, and the Oahe, Big Bend, Fort Randall and Gavins Point dams in South Dakota. In addition to flood protection, navigation and irrigation, the plan provided for extensive hydroelectric power to a total output of 1.6 million kilowatts. One-third of this power would be generated from the power plants at Fort Randall, Oahe and Garrison.
After the reservation period, the Sioux had, for the most part, maintained rights to the western shoreline of the Missouri. The Pick-Sloan Plan ultimately affected twenty-three reservations in the Missouri Basin, much of the damage being sustained by five Sioux reservations: Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Yankton, Crow Creek and Lower Brule.
More than 202,000 acres of largely productive and fertile Sioux land were inundated by Army dams. Some 580 families were forcibly uprooted from the fertile and sheltered bottomlands of the river, as their homes, pastures, croplands, meadows, timber, wildlife and vegetation were all flooded. The agency headquarters for Cheyenne River (the 'old Eagle Butte' as residents today say), Lower Brule and Crow Creek were flooded and relocated, causing immense disruption of services and facilities. Tribal headquarters, BIA offices and public health venues became isolated from one another, causing immense hardship to those who had to do business in each but had no transportation. Medical facilities were often relocated to areas that made them virtually inaccessible from remote areas. Burial sites and other areas of sacred significance, such as areas used for collecting medicine, were destroyed along with prime grazing land and water, food and fuel resources. Severe psychological as well as physical hardship ensued as people were forced to leave ancestral land.
The Oahe Dam began construction in 1948. Located six miles northwest of the South Dakota capital, Pierre, and on the eastern edge of the Cheyenne River Reservation, the dam has produced a reservoir whose lake is deeper than the Eire and longer than the Ontario. The Oahe Reservoir is the biggest along the Missouri, and has produced the greatest output of power (595,000 kilowatts) of any army project. In his excellent book on the effects of the dams on the Sioux, Michael Lawson states:
"The Oahe Dam destroyed more Indian land than any other public works project in America. The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux lost a total of 160,889 acres to this project, including their most valuable rangeland, most of their gardens and cultivated farm tracts, and nearly all of their timber, wild fruit, and wildlife resources. The inundation of more than 105,000 acres of choice grazing land affected 75 percent of the ranchers on the Cheyenne River Reservation and 60 percent of those at Standing Rock. Ninety percent of the timbered areas on both reservations were destroyed" (Lawson 1982: 50).1
Cheyenne River lost 104,420 acres. Its largest town, Cheyenne Agency, plus two other communities were submerged. The tribal and BIA headquarters at 'Old Eagle Butte' had to be moved some sixty miles inland. Some 30 percent of the reservation population were forced to relocate. 25 percent of Standing Rock Sioux were forced to move as a result of the Oahe deluge.
A total of 6 percent of Sioux tribal lands were lost to the three Pick-Sloan projects and over one-third of Sioux tribal members were forced to relocated due to their homes and lands being destroyed. Some 75 percent of wildlife (plants and animals) had been destroyed along with some 90 percent of timber areas (except for the Yankton Reservation).
A subsistence lifestyle that had been based on the hunting of such game as deer, beaver, rabbits, racoons and pheasants, on the gathering of such plants as the 'mouse bean' (wild pea), roots, berries, currants, plums and herbs, and on the utilisation of water for ceremony and survival, and of timber for fuel and lumber was completely obliterated in a short period of time. The primary economic activity, ranching, was also crippled as cattle no longer had the fertile and sheltered bottomlands to roam, graze and water freely. Soil on the open prairie made farming impractical (but not impossible). It is ironic that the Pick-Sloan dams inundated the most irrigable lands in Sioux Country.
The spiritual and psychological effects of this dramatic change in livelihood were as devastating to the Missouri River Sioux as the economic and social upheavals that ensued. They kept a keen eye on developments occurring on the Fort Berthold Reservation just north of them.
The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota were the first Indian tribe to deal with the Corps of Engineers. The Garrison Dam had taken 152,360 acres of tribal land and had resulted in the relocation of 325 families, or 80 percent of the tribal population. The ranchers and farmers on the reservation lost 94 percent of their agricultural lands. They argued on the basis of the 1951 Fort Laramie Treaty that had stipulated that no Indian land could be taken unless consent of the Indian population had been obtained. The resultant compensation settlement in 1947 was abysmal, coming in at around $33 per lost acre. Further petitioning brought the total compensation in 1949 to $12,605,625, but the tribe lost their request for the rights to royalties on subsurface minerals in the reservoir area and for irrigation-development. Most farms and ranches were liquidated and unemployment rose to 79 percent.
Neither the 1944 Flood Control Act nor any subsequent legislation had authorised the Corps and the Reclamation Bureau to condemn tribal lands. Various Supreme Court cases had ruled that federal agencies could abrogate Indian treaties in order to exercise its eminent right of domain, but others had ruled that prior Congressional authorisation must be acquired beforehand. So, when the Corps condemned Yankton land between 1947 and 1948, without prior consent of Congress, they did so illegally. However, the Yankton Sioux received minimal compensation through the courts - barely enough to cover basic relocation costs for each affected family.
Subsequent negotiations with settlements for other Sioux tribes went the same way: the power of eminent domain was claimed by the Corps, no protest or litigation interfered with dam constructions, and no settlement offered satisfactory or 'just' monetary compensation with hydroelectric power rights and other provisions. In 1954, the Cheyenne River tribe was offered a cash settlement of $ 10,644,014, which they accepted, plus limited mineral, salvage and shoreline access rights, subject to the arbitrary regulations of the Corps. In 1958, the Standing Rock Sioux received their $12,346,553 settlement, with similar, though marginally better, additional rights to that which the Cheyenne River Sioux had obtained four years previously. The Crow Creek and Lower Brule tribes received meagre settlements long after families had been forcibly removed from their lands, and they were not offered any funds for rehabilitation until 1962.
The period of reconstruction was a painful one for the Sioux. Aside from the emotional and physical hardships that ensued with the uprootings, the settlements themselves caused practical problems. Except for the Cheyenne River Sioux who were permitted a much greater influence, tribal leaders were rarely allowed to handle any settlement monies, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs taking much of the control. Many of the affected families objected to the amount of money that had been calculated by the federal agency as sufficient to cover their expenses and property valuations, but legal fees prevented them from pressing for litigation. On Cheyenne River, for example, the tribal president during this time, Frank Ducheneaux, had owned 1,400 acres of ranch land in the Oahe area. Due largely to inflation, his settlement money allowed him to purchase only 200 acres. There were also often considerable delays in the distribution of the money.
Other problems included the increasing fragmentation of inherited land, whereby several heirs own single 'allotments'. This meant that compensation money was frequently divided up into ludicrous amounts. Michael Lawson gives the example of a 116-acre land tract in the Fort Randall reservoir area which had ninety-nine heirs. One heir's share of settlement income was worth $586 whilst another's share came to $0.37. In the Oahe reservoir area, one half section tract had 156 heirs, "29 of whom were found to be deceased, but whose interests in the estate had never been probated" (pg 141). As such, the settlement of settlement funds frequently became as chaotic as the land situation itself.
It was in the area of the Indian economy that the most serious effects of relocation were felt. Lawson:
"Ranchers, the most important economic group on the reservations, lost considerable income during the period needed to fence new lands, dig wells, and construct shelters to replace the natural features of bottomland pastures. Farmers also had difficulty finding fertile new plots and adequate water sources on the marginal reservation land that remained. Families that depended on their former land for game, wild fruit, and firewood had to search for alternative and usually more expensive sources of sustenance. All experienced higher living costs after moving because of inflated prices and the necessity of purchasing water, food, fuel, lumber, and other materials that previously had been easily accessible and free. Houses needed better weatherproofing on the open Plains and warmer clothing was required. Those who now found themselves far from federal facilities also had to allow for increased transportation expenses" (1982: 158-159).
Though the treaties had guaranteed "the perpetual integrity of their land", the Sioux tried but failed to gain generous federal compensation for damages incurred by the Pick-Sloan dams. The Pick-Sloan plans had proceeded without the proper negotiations with Indian tribes and in violation of Indian water rights as protected under the Winters Doctrine, and subsequent decisions. In the Pick-Sloan case, the Corps relied on the government's power of eminent domain to proceed with their plans. By the time the Plan's programme was properly brought to the tribes' attentions in 1949, surveying of and building on forcibly evacuated areas were already taking place.
Federal and Indian water rights came to the judicial fore in 1908, with the so-called Winters Doctrine. In 1907, a federal court ruled in favour of the Fort Belknap Reservation by stating that the Indians possessed a superior right based on treaty to the resources of the Milk River, for the beneficial purpose of irrigating the reservation. This right superseded the 'prior use' right of the state of Montana and its residents who were diverting the river upstream.
In short, the Winters principle (and the body of law subsequent to this) holds that federal government has the right to reserve water for any federal land, including Indian reservations. "Indian reservations are created by Congress with the intention of making them habitable and productive, and whatever water is necessary to fulfill this goal is reserved by implication of the tribe's use" - future as well as present needs and usages (Pevar 1992: 210).2 Thus Indians have rights to all ground and surface water resources which border, run through, underlie or are contained within reservation land.
In the water-scarce west, all states have a law that privileges the first appropriator of a water resource. This 'first in time, first in right' doctrine means that the first person to divert water has continuing and senior rights; 'junior interests' get the remaining water. But Indians benefit from federal law which holds that Indians are the first appropriators by dint of usage since time immemorial or at least since the date the reservation was established (often prior to the establishment of western states). Western law based on prior appropriation contrasts with the 'riparian' doctrine of water-rich eastern states, where "prior use does not create a vested right to continued use, and in times of scarcity, the available water supply is distributed equitably among all users" (Pevar 1992: 213).
Predictably, Indian water rights as defined by federal government is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. We have already seen how the Pick-Sloan Project went ahead without affording Indians the protections guaranteed under the corpus of legal decisions that have made up the Winters Doctrine. As the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota attorney, Susan Williams has said, Indian water rights is not a simple process because there is, to date, no coherent federal policy regarding them. Moreover, the federal government has conflicting interests in this area: one, to exert its trust responsibility and protect tribal property interests (in this case, water); two, to protect non-Indian interests in the same water resource; and three, to protect its own financial investments in non-Indian water projects such as canals and reservoirs.
Some writers have also pointed out other flaws inherent in the Winters Doctrine. The 1908 Winters case highlighted not only federal (vis-a-vis state) superiority over water matters but also over Indian water rights. In other words, the case left unclear as to whose water rights were really being enhanced - federal or Indian. As Marianna Guerrero says:
"Left unstated, perhaps deliberately so, in the high court's final articulation of [the Winters case] was whether it was the federal government or the Indians themselves who were considered as having reserved these [water] rights through the treaty-making process. [...] In any event, given the Supreme Court's then recent assertion of absolute US `plenary power' over Indian property in the Lonewolf v. Hitchcock case (1904), it is plain that the justices saw their decision as placing the waters at issue in Winters under federal rather than Indian control" (1992: 193).3
It could also be said that Indian water rights, as apparently supported by the Winters and subsequent cases, has been simply a device for the federal government to exert its power over states.
Water rights and the Missouri River issue has dominated Sioux treaty council meetings over the years. Treaty activists (comprising largely elders) quote articles from treaties and laws that delineate the exterior boundaries of the Great Sioux Nation. The problem is that the language contained therein is not clear enough.
Article 2 of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty stated that the eastern exterior boundary of the Great Sioux Nation commenced "on the east bank of the Missouri River where the forty-sixth parallel of north latitude crosses the same". This treaty was superceded by the 1877 Agreement, which delineated an eastern reservation boundary that included the Missouri River but didn't clarify its precise edge. The Agreement did stipulate that the federal government be given the right to navigation of the River.
On the basis that the eastern boundary of the Great Sioux Nation was and is the eastern shoreline of the Missouri River, activists argue that the Missouri River dams were built within the boundaries of the Great Sioux Nation and thus were a direct violation of the treaties the Sioux still hold to be legally and morally valid.
Oglala elder, Johnson Holy Rock has highlighted another ambiguity relating to Lakota water rights, and that is that
"water was not a part of the treaty instrument. You won't find water rights in them, per se. Land surface, gaming, grass, all the natural resources are identified, but strangely nothing is said about water. Therefore, by law the water within the exterior boundaries of Indian Country, according to treaties, are a reserved right. [They] have been reserved but not yet addressed" (1998 Treaty Meeting).
Despite such ambiguities, Lakota treaty activists such as Holy Rock are clear that any water flowing on, under, in, through and alongside tribal reservations is Indian water, and Lakota water rights are argued on that basis. Control over water resources is seen to be a central component of Indian sovereignty and self determination:
"Ultimately, Pick-Sloan constitutes the destruction of indigenous economies for the benefit of the larger societal economy. As a result, the tribal economies shall remain under-developed until the valuable water, hydroelectric, and wildlife resources are protected and managed for the benefit of the tribal economies, rather than for the regional and national economies. [...] [Missouri River water] is a key to [tribes'] survival, economic prosperity, cultural strength, and development. As the 21st Century approaches there can be no greater undertaking now than to develop the mechanism and capabilities for tribal control over their water resources" (Richard Bad Moccasin 1996: 3-4).4
The Mni Sose Intertribal Water Rights Coalition, based in Rapid City, South Dakota, is a non-profit organisation comprised of 26 Missouri River Basin tribes, including all nine Lakota and Dakota tribes in South Dakota. It serves as a vehicle through which tribes affected by the Pick-Sloan Plan can seek "legal, administrative, economic, and physical control over their significant water resources to achieve sustainable reservation economies, cultural well-being, and sovereignty" (Bad Moccasin 1998: 1).5 One of its greatest successes to date has been persuading the Army Corps of Engineers to reallocate a certain percentage of hydro-electric power generated from the Missouri River to Missouri River tribes. This percentage is, at present, 6 percent: 4 percent to be allocated in 2001, 1 percent to be allocated in 2005, and another 1 percent to be allocated in 2010.
The Coalition is also concerned with reservation water resource management, pollution problems, watershed conditions, and improving water quality. In 1998, it hosted a series of meetings between the Oglala Sioux Tribe and federal agencies representing another of the Pick-Sloan dams, the Angostura Unit in the southern Black Hills, which impounds the Cheyenne River. The Oglala Sioux Tribe expressed concern over the dam's effects on water quality of the Cheyenne River, which runs along the northern border of Pine Ridge Reservation and of the White River which runs into the reservation. Concerns regarding fish lesions, pesticide and herbicide contamination, sedimentation, and riparian areas drying up were brought up by the tribe. Concerns were also expressed over reduction in fish species and increase in human skin rashes and other health problems of residents who live downstream of the Angostura Unit on the reservation. The tribe reminded federal government that tribal interests must be recognised and that economic, social, environmental and cultural impacts of the dam must be taken into account. The tribe gave the Red Shirt table region in the northwest area of the reservation as an example of the destructive effects that the Angostura Dam has had on the area: they said that elders remember that before the 1940s the area was lush with trees and vegetation for subsistence and ceremony; today the area is virtually barren - there has been little new growth and it is very dry. The tribe asserted a treaty right to have a say on the dam because though the dam resides outside reservation boundary it is within the boundaries of the 1851 and 1868 Great Sioux Nation. In other words, title to the Angostura watershed still resides, by treaty, with the Lakota.
Tribes adjoining the Missouri River have also complained that the reservoirs are becoming increasingly contaminated due to sedimentation and pesticide run-offs from large-scale farming operations that proliferate in the region. Pesticides routinely seep into the ground water which then flows into the reservoirs. The reservoirs are tribes' main source of drinking water. Other environmental problems that have arisen due to the dams is that today the natural flow of the river has been tampered with and the sloughing of the river is increasingly eroding adjoining land. This impacts on Indian land particularly as there is more Indian land within the dammed area.
Resource management is seen to be an important component of enhancing Indian sovereignty. This area also includes the formulation and implementation of tribal water codes. The stress is on sustainability and conservation, and to this end the Coalition has hosted conferences and meetings on, for example, alternatives sources of power such as wind and solar and environmental protection. An example of this was when the Coalition hosted a conference in 1998 by the ICOUP - Intertribal Council on Utility Policy. ICOUP includes Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Lower Brule and Rosebud Sioux tribes as members, and, among other things, promotes tribal utilisation of alternative, clean and renewable energy resources such as wind, solar and water power on reservations. One ICOUP member told a local Indian newspaper: "Tribal members have the right to enjoy good living in their own homelands in a good way that doesn't destroy the environment" (Indian Country Today 1998). Its executive director from Rosebud Reservation, Pat Spears said:
"Our ancestors have always known the power (of the wind, sun and water). That power is recognized in our prayers, ceremonies and songs. We always pay respect to that power and now is the time to know how to use that power and develop it to live and become self reliant and leave a legacy for the youth" (Ibid.).
Energy is also a treaty right and its utilisation, especially in environmentally-friendly ways, is seen to be an important cornerstone of tribal sovereignty in Indian Country today. Reservoirs continue to threaten Indian tribes: fluctuating water levels, for example, impact cultural resource sites. Since the construction of the Pick-Sloan dams, tribal residents of reservations that border the river have reported sightings of skeletal remains from old burial sights being washed up on the shores as reservoir water levels fluctuate. The Corps of Engineers' Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for 1994 identified 945 historically- or culturally-significant sites at Oahe alone (Mni Sose News, December 1994). To this end, the Coalition have been working to include tribal concerns over cultural resources and environmental protection in the Army Corps of Engineers' Master Manual Review Process - a document that contains the guidelines by which the Corps manage water in the six Missouri River dams.
The most recent controversy over the Pick-Sloan dams and the Missouri River culminated during my fieldwork and involved the Cheyenne River and Lower Brule Sioux tribes and the state of South Dakota. In October 1998, the Omnibus Appropriations Bill was passed which sanctioned the transfer of some 100,000 acres of federal land along the Missouri River to two Lakota tribes and to the state of South Dakota. The Cheyenne River and Lower Brule Sioux tribes would be given strips of shoreline within the reservation boundaries. However, the state would receive the lion's share of land outside the reservations. Moreover, the two tribes would receive the interest on some $48 million whilst the state would benefit from the interest on some $100 million of a trust fund. These monies were to be used for wildlife management, recreation development, and, for the tribes, cultural resources protection.
The bill angered many Sioux who emphasised the fact that the land in question is located inside the boundaries of the Great Sioux Nation as decreed by the still-active 1868 Treaty - that is, a Great Sioux Nation reservation that includes and is bounded by the eastern shoreline of the Missouri River. Moreover, the transferred land is part of the unresolved and still-active Black Hills land claim under Docket 74. Thus the transfer violates the treaty and the land claim. The fact that Sioux land had been transferred to the state, during a time when the land claim has not been settled and is thus still active, angered many. In fact, it would be better that the land given to the state remain in federal ownership until the land claim is resolved and accepted, some Sioux treaty activists argued.
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).6
Notes::
© 2002 by Bornali Halder
Return to Beginning of Article: Text-Only | Graphics-Intensive