A fair number of things made headlines in 2023… globally, or nationally… or in small town news websites.
Recently — like, this past Wednesday — we learned that the Republican who has been representing Colorado’s vast but less-populated 3rd Congressional District, Lauren Boebert, plans to move to a new residence somewhere in Colorado’s nearly-as-vast and also less-populated 4th Congressional District, and run for the seat long held by conservative politician Ken Buck, who has announced his retirement from Washington politics.
In the political realm, we also learned that the Colorado Supreme Court decided, on December 19, that Donald Trump is not qualified to appear on the presidential primary ballot in Colorado, due to his participation in the Jan. 6 events at the U.S. Capitol.
Also close to home, Colorado voters rejected a proposition written by General Assembly Democrats to eliminate TABOR refunds in exchange for a slightly lower property tax rate. A special session, after the election, passed a bill that will reduce property taxes here in Archuleta County by about $250 on residential homes, and about $420 on commercial properties, with no reductions on vacant land. These reductions apply only to the taxes paid in 2024. What the future holds, we will have to wait and see.
In Part One of this editorial series, however, I wrote briefly about music, and in particular, about Indigenous music.
Music has been in the headlines lately. I’m thinking in particular about Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour and Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ tour, which together appear to have generated around $10 billion in economic activity here in the U.S. Not bad, for a bunch of musicians and dancers.
Reportedly, Beyoncé attended the premiere of Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras’ concert film, and Taylor Swift in turn attended the premiere of Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ concert film.
These women seem to be supporting each other. Just like the women in the ‘Barbie’ movie.
On the Indigenous side of things, a change has been taking place at the conference tables where the future of the Colorado River is getting portioned out. Back in 1922, representatives of seven state governments — Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and California — overestimated the amount of water typically available in the Colorado River and signed a ‘compact’ that eventually allowed California and Arizona to nearly drain dry the nation’s largest water reservoir — Lake Mead.
Mexico was also a part of the 1922 Compact, but they were unfortunate in being located downstream of California and Arizona.
Not part of the 1922 Compact, however, were the numerous sovereign Tribes living within the seven Colorado Basin states. Some of these tribes had previously signed treaties with the U.S. government, guaranteeing access to Colorado River water, but those guarantees were not included in the 1922 Compact, for reasons that we all might understand.
From a December 27 Colorado Sun article by Shannon Mullane:
Collectively, the 30 tribal nations in the basin have rights to about 26% of the Colorado River’s average flow, but states and the federal government have repeatedly left them out of major decisions about how the river’s water is stored, divided up and distributed. This month, tribal representatives from around the Colorado River Basin took the mic at the biggest basin gathering of the year with a focus on correcting historical wrongs and asserting their rights to water.
“We are still not directly engaged in the process that determines (the river’s) future,” Amelia Flores, chairwoman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes — four tribes with land in Arizona and California — said at the 2023 Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas. “… Our livelihoods and our traditions have no voice. We must do better.”
In 2022, tribes with land in the Upper Basin – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – began meeting with the Upper Colorado River Commission, a governance body made up of federal and Upper Basin state officials.
“This relationship that we’ve formed is very, very important on how the Upper Basin moves as a collective,” said Lorelei Cloud, acting chairwoman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, which has land in southwestern Colorado. “We’ve gotten to a point now where we are sharing information with each other, and that’s been monumental.”
Why this new development — tribal participation in Colorado River negotiations — took 100 years, is partly hinted at by Ms. Cloud’s comment. Not only were the tribes previously unacknowledged as valid participants, by the states and by the federal government, but additionally, the tribal nations were not talking to one another.
The nations are talking together, finally.
Reporter Mullane writes that about a dozen nations across the Colorado River Basin, including the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in southeastern Colorado, still had unquantified water rights as of 2021.
Settling these rights for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe needs to happen before 2026, Chairman Manuel Heart said. The tribe has completed the legal process to quantify the amount of water tied to its rights in Colorado but not in New Mexico and Utah.
In some cases, tribes may have quantified water rights but lack the infrastructure to deliver it to homes, businesses and farms. Both tribes in Colorado have rights to water they currently can’t access in Lake Nighthorse Reservoir near Durango.
“We should all have the fundamental right to access clean water,” said Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Chairman Manuel Heart. “We should all have the right to use these waters based on what our needs are.”
What, exactly, our needs are, is a subject of ongoing debate.
For example, do we have a ‘need’ for golf courses in the middle of an arid desert?
Our society places a high value on things that generate economic activity.
Things that put money into someone’s pocket.
Is this what the Harvard Medical School would define as a “primitive society”?