09/21/2022
✨NEW work!! got really stoked on the one—it’s ULTRA detailed!✨this is the classic view of horseshoe bend along the colorado river, sometimes considered the “east rim” of the grand canyon on Diné Bikéyah, Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute), Hopiutskwa, Pueblos, and Nùu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) territories
as the colorado river continues to dry up, please consider supporting an org that brings water to the 2 million americans living without it, including many indigenous tribes who rely on and hold rights to water in the colorado river but don’t have access to it.
our beloved colorado river system supplies nearly 40 million people across the west with drinking water and irrigates about 5 million acres of farmland across 7 states and mexico. but the river is drying up. and after federal deadlines, conferences and meetings amongst stakeholders, there is still no solution. there is currently NO plan surrounding the impending crisis, including no mandatory water reductions.
30 indigenous tribes in the colorado river basin collectively hold rights to 25% of the water supply, but they have not been able to access or use much of that water because colonialism. many tribes have been stuck subsidizing the federal water supply to alleviate the crisis, but some tribes are fighting those nonconsensual “agreements.”
Daryl Vigil, the former water administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation, said on friday there’s still no real mechanism for the tribes to participate in formal colorado river discussions, so they are building that structure in the middle of the current water crisis. he stated, “We want to speak on behalf of our own water. We’ve heard a whole lot about sacrifice and hurt and pain, and we know a whole lot about that,” he said. “We’re demanding participation.”
the irony of tribes holding rights to a quarter of the water in the colorado while not having much access to it, and oftentimes being coerced to share with settlers who won’t even put a basic cap on water use is tragic and appalling. on the topic of drinking water, Vigil states, “It's a basic right as a citizen in this country. Yet 70 to 80,000 Navajos still haul water on a daily basis.”
