Improving Tribal Collaboration in California\u27s Integrated Regional Water Management Program

Our research examines Integrated Regional Water Management (IRWM) policy-in-practice, which often reflects broader State exclusion of Tribal partners in natural resource policy, yet also provides potential opportunities for government-to-government collaboration and co-management. IRWM is the state of California’s chosen mechanism for collaborative water management. Our findings confirm that if Tribes and state or local jurisdictions were already working well together, the IRWM program has been beneficial to Tribal interests. In the Tuolumne-Stanislaus IRWM region, for example, the Regional Water Management Group (RWMG) facilitated a first of its kind voluntary water transfer between a Tribe and a local water agency. Conversely, in situations in which local governments and Tribal governments were adversarial, IRWM presents an additional barrier to Tribal participation in water policy and planning, despite Tribes’ Winters-affirmed federal reserved water rights. In all instances, we found it would significantly improve IRWM statewide to require RWMGs to: (a) engage in statutorily defined1 government-to-government consultation with Tribes and (b) provide seats for Tribal representation on RWMG governance bodies. By revising the IRWM program guidelines, the state of California can continue to address deeply institutionalized inequities within state water policy and management structures. Following the release of our recommendations, California Department of Water Resources (DWR) began holding workshops to examine revising the IRWM program guidelines. If DWR implements the findings from our study and requires Tribal participation in the governance of RWMGs, this could set a productive example for other states, as well as result in significant benefits in California water management

Water, power, homeland: restoring and re-storying the Eklutna River

Beginning in 1929, the Eklutna River in Southcentral Alaska was largely de-watered for hydropower production without the consent of the Eklutna Dena'ina. The hydropower projects were implemented in two waves—first in 1929 by a private developer and then in 1951 by the Bureau of Reclamation. In 1991, a Fish and Wildlife Agreement between the utilities, the State of Alaska, and federal agencies called for study of the impacts of the hydroelectric projects on fish and wildlife, and development of a mitigation plan by 2024. This paper examines the process and partners involved in advocating for restoration of the Eklutna, building on the documented importance of tribal leadership in dam removals, and centering three factors that are underrepresented in the current analyses of alternative management approaches to the Eklutna: the context of the Eklutna as a Dena'ina place; the egregious and ongoing Indigenous environmental injustice of seizing Eklutna water; and the praxis of Dena'ina-led efforts to find a balance of uses of this highly valued Dena'ina watershed

Bi-Directional Learning: Identifying Contaminants on the Yurok Indian Reservation.

The Yurok Tribe partnered with the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Superfund Research Program to identify and address contaminants in the Klamath watershed that may be impairing human and ecosystem health. We draw on a community-based participatory research approach that begins with community concerns, includes shared duties across the research process, and collaborative interpretation of results. A primary challenge facing University and Tribal researchers on this project is the complexity of the relationship(s) between the identity and concentrations of contaminants and the diversity of illnesses plaguing community members. The framework of bi-directional learning includes Yurok-led river sampling, Yurok traditional ecological knowledge, University lab analysis, and collaborative interpretation of results. Yurok staff and community members share their unique exposure pathways, their knowledge of the landscape, their past scientific studies, and the history of landscape management, and University researchers use both specific and broad scope chemical screening techniques to attempt to identify contaminants and their sources. Both university and tribal knowledge are crucial to understanding the relationship between human and environmental health. This paper examines University and Tribal researchers' shared learning, progress, and challenges at the end of the second year of a five-year Superfund Research Program (SRP) grant to identify and remediate toxins in the lower Klamath River watershed. Our water quality research is framed within a larger question of how to best build university-Tribal collaboration to address contamination and associated human health impacts

Legal and Policy Approaches to Protecting Indigenous Lifeways and Homelands

From International legal tools to state-level policy and planning processes, to recognized national conservation mechanisms, and tribal jurisdictional innovations, this talk will explore several creative opportunities and inspiring precedents for protecting and affirming Indigenous rights and responsibilities to homelands

Enslaved in a Free Country: Legalized Exploitation of Native Americans and African Americans in Early California and the Post-Emancipation South

In 1850, California joined the United States as a free state. However, one of its first laws, the 1850 Law for the Government and Protection of Indians, legalized the enslavement of California Indians. Drawing comparisons between early Californian and Southern statutes that maintained racialized political economies, we argue that the institutionalized oppression perpetrated against Native Americans in California bears important legal similarities to that perpetrated against African Americans in the South, both before and after Reconstruction. This similarity is not a coincidence; the presence of both African and Native American populations in Southern legislation, the movement of Southerners to the West to participate in California’s development, the regional history of Mexican and Spanish systems of Indigenous enslavement, and a political economy reliant on racialized underpaid or unpaid labor, all created the conditions for California to legally retain de facto systems of slavery in a context of de jure freedom