Navajo president to council: Hurry and approve water rights settlements
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren has urged the tribal council to quickly approve a pair of proposed water rights settlements.
“The current round of negotiations to settle our claims to the Colorado River in Arizona began in the early 1990s but reach back to the 1960s,” Nygren said in a statement Tuesday. “This is a long time coming, so I look for a unanimous vote from council.”
Navajo Nation council speaker Crystalyne Curley introduced legislation May 11 to address water rights claims in the Rio San Jose Stream System and the Rio Puerco Basin in New Mexico, calling it a “monumental step forward in securing water sovereignty” for Navajo communities and sustaining water resources for “generations to come.”
Under the larger Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement, which Curley introduced May 12, the Navajo Nation would receive a significant amount of Arizona’s allocation of Colorado River Upper Basin water, a portion of Lower Basin water, all groundwater underneath the Navajo Nation and all surface water reaching the Navajo Nation from the Little Colorado River.
The Navajo Nation covers 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles). About 30% of Navajo families live without running water and must haul it from remote wells in order meet their basic household and livestock needs.
If Congress authorizes the agreement, it will provide up to $5 billion worth of water infrastructure and development for Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes in Arizona.
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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem listens to Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairwoman Janet Alkire, unseen, during a tribal flags ceremony on Jan. 10, 2024, in Pierre. Eight out of nine South Dakota tribes have banned Noem, a Republican, from their reservations.
Eight out of nine tribes banish South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem
Two more tribes in South Dakota this week banished Republican Governor Kristi Noem from their reservations over her suggestions that tribal leaders benefit from drug cartel activity.
The Lower Brule Sioux Tribe endorsed a ban on Wednesday, a day after the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe passed a similar resolution. Now, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe is the only one of nine tribes in South Dakota that has not followed suit.
“We want our children and fellow tribal members & tribal relatives across the State to be seen as equals and treated with respect and dignity like any other ethnicity in our State,” Lower Brule tribal chairman Clyde J. R. Estes posted on Facebook.
The bans follow remarks Noem made during separate town hall meetings in March.
“Their [tribes’] kids don’t have any hope. They don’t have parents who show up and help them,” Noem said, and she suggested that Mexican drug cartels operate on reservations to the benefit of some tribal leaders.
Crow Creek chairman Peter Lengkeek told South Dakota Public Broadcasting Wednesday that no Mexican drug cartels operate on his reservation.
“We have cartel products, like guns and drugs, but they pass over state highways getting to the reservation,” he said.
Tuesday, Noem appointed a former Oglala Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety chief to serve on the state’s Department of Tribal Relations, alleging he “found himself without a job” after he told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs about the cartel presence on tribal lands.
Noem’s office did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.
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— AmyLazore Tetsiakota’:on ⭐️ (@laxmomproblems) May 16, 2024
Graduating student forced to remove beaded cap, feather
Native Americans protested on social media after officials at a New Mexico high school graduation ceremony confiscated a Lakota student’s beaded cap and feather.
In a video widely shared on social media, two Farmington High School officials are seen taking a cap and feather from Genesis White Bull and replacing it with one that was unadorned.
Navajo Nation first lady Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren expressed support for White Bull and for all students wishing to wear items of cultural significance on graduation day.
“For some graduates, this is the last graduation ceremony they will ever have,” she posted. “Deciding what to wear goes far beyond a simple decision of what color dress or shoes to wear. For Native students, this is a day to proudly wear our traditional regalia [that] reminds us of how far we’ve come as a people.”
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“G is for Genocide” by Hunkpapa Lakota artist Danielle SeeWalker. (Courtesy, Danielle SeeWalker)
Colorado town cancels artist’s residency over controversial painting
Hunkpapa Lakota artist Danielle SeeWalker was slated to become the first Native American to serve as Vail, Colorado’s, summer 2024 artist-in-residence.
But that was before SeeWalker posted a painting titled “G is for Genocide” on social media. It shows a near-faceless woman wearing a feather and a keffiyeh, the traditional Bedouin headscarf that has become the symbol for solidarity with Palestinians.
“It is about me expressing the parallels between what is happening to the innocent people in Gaza ... to that of the genocide of Native American populations here in our lands,” SeeWalker wrote in an Instagram post.
A community member saw the post and complained to the city, which abruptly canceled this year’s residency program just weeks before it was slated to begin.
“They called me last week, and the phone call lasted about a minute and a half,” SeeWalker told VOA. “I didn’t get a word in edgewise. If I could have had the opportunity to have a fruitful, engaging conversation about what I stand for as an artist, as an Indigenous woman, I would have appreciated that.”
In a statement on its website, the town of Vail said that while it “embraces her messaging and artwork surrounding Native Americans,” the town does not want to use public funds to support “any position on a polarizing geopolitical issue.”
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