Governing water insecurity: navigating indigenous water rights and regulatory politics in settler colonial states

ABSTRACT

Indigenous peoples experience water insecurity disproportionately. There are many parallels between the injustices experienced by racialized and marginalized populations and Indigenous peoples. However, the water insecurity experienced by Indigenous peoples is distinctly shaped by settler colonialism. This article draws on examples from Canada and the United States to illustrate how jurisdictional and regulatory injustices along with the broader political and economic asymmetries advanced by settler colonial States (re-)produce water insecurity for Indigenous peoples. We conclude by engaging with how Indigenous peoples are pushing back against these arrangements using State and non-State strategies by revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and governance systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous water governance
• settler colonialism
• sovereignty
• water insecurity
• water contamination
• Canada
• United States
• Navajo Nation

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the ways our knowledge and thinking for this paper was advanced through Wilson, Arsenault and Montoya’s participation in the ‘Water, Inequality, and Justice in Higher Income Economies’ roundtable panel at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Vancouver, BC; and Wilson and Arsenault’s participation in the Household Water Insecurity Experiences in Higher Income Countries workshop at the University of British Columbia organized by the HWISE RCN in November 2019. Lastly, a thank you to all the community collaborators in the Navajo Nation and with Yukon and Ontario First Nations, which inform this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Indigenous’ is an umbrella term for peoples that claim historical continuity with their homelands. We use it as an inclusive term to refer to First Nations, Inuit and Métis people in Canada, and both federally and state-recognized tribes in the United States. Although antiquated, the term ‘Tribe’ is still used in federal–Indian law to refer to the central governments of Indigenous nations in the United States. We recognize these are colonial categories. Where possible, we prioritize self-designated names.

2. Household water insecurity is the opposite of water security and is defined as any deficiency in safe, reliable, sufficient and affordable water necessary for a thriving life (Jepson et al., 2017).

3. Settler colonialism is a form of colonialism where colonizers dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land for settlement and resource development (Coulthard, 2014; Wolfe, 2006). While colonialism and settler colonialism involve domination by an external power, only settler colonialism aims to displace Indigenous peoples with a settler society (Wolfe, 2006). Colonialism is often framed as a historical event that we are seeking to ‘reconcile’ in the present. However, as Wolfe (2006) notes, settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. It is a ‘complex social formation’ and that has continuity over time.

4. We use the term ‘State’ as synonymous with nation-states including subnational governments that are part of the settler colonial scaffolding. By contrast, ‘states’ refers to subnational political units of the United States, analogous to Canadian provinces and territories. States are not ‘discrete’ entities or an ontological given (Harris, 2017). Thus, we attend to States as an ideological project that legitimizes government institutions and processes, which sometimes have contradictory agendas and interests (Harris, 2017; Nadasdy, 2017).

5. On 5 July 2020, Dominion and Duke energy companies abandoned the Atlantic Coast Pipeline after years of litigation.

6. The study used American Community Survey data that records Indigenous peoples as ‘Native American’ and makes little effort to distinguish between the nation of Indigenous respondents.

Additional information

Funding

This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program [grant number 950-232734].