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

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

Holding the Headwaters: Northern California Indian Resistance to State and Corporate Water Development

In the context of historic and ongoing California Indian resistance to displacement at the headwaters of California’s immense State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project, we foreground Native land histories to unsettle the logic and perceived permanence of contemporary neocolonial water institutions. Centering California Indian voices on the histories and futures of the headwaters, we disrupt the imperial narrative of these waters and lands as American territories needing development and conservation, replacing it with the reality of these sites as Native Californian lands requiring restitution, protection, and recognition. Beginning with an overview of the history that led to the development of quasi-public projects on Native lands, we offer three case studies of Indigenous resistance and re-framing: the Winnemem Wintu struggle to stop the proposed raise of Shasta Dam; the Maidu Summit’s work to regain ownership of former Pacific Gas & Electric company lands established within their homeland; and the Pit River Tribe’s decades-long struggle to protect the sacred Medicine Lake Highlands from government-approved corporate exploitation of geothermal resources. Holding the Headwaters directly challenges embedded injustices in natural resource policymaking and offers alternative visions for a future that addresses historic injustices and centers California Indian relationships to place