|
After centuries of policies enacted by the federal government to force their removal from traditional homelands, Native American communities are once again facing the threat of dislocation, this time as a result of climate change. From exceptional drought in the Southwest to melting permafrost in Alaska, tribal communities across the United States are at the forefront for experiencing the most severe impacts of climate change.
Many tribes are hopeful they have powerful allies in President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to address and reduce the climate risk they are facing. However, for some tribes it is already too late, including the Quileute Nation on the far edge of the Olympic Peninsula about 100 miles West of Seattle. In December, Doug Woodruff, chairman of the Quileute Tribal Council said in a statement, “Climate change has forced us to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave the village. Without a cohesive national and international strategy to address climate change, there is little we can do to combat these impacts.”
Ann Marie Chischilly, executive director of the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals at Northern Arizona University points out that while the federal government offers help to communities coping with the effects of climate change, Native Americans often have less access to financial help than other Americans, saying, “We’re the most disproportionately impacted by climate, but we’re the very least funded.” To put a finer point on the issue, George McGraw, chief executive officer of DigDeep, a nonprofit group that delivers drinking water to homes that need it, says, “This is really textbook structural racism.” According to McGraw, the Navajo Nation has the greatest concentration of households lacking access to drinking water in the lower 48 states.
Podcast: The future of water in the West
The latest episode of CWP's podcast, The Landscape, features two conversations about the unprecedented drought and the future of water across the West: Chairwoman Amelia Flores of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, and Haley Paul of Audubon Southwest discuss the challenges and opportunities for how the drought may shift how we think about water.
|
As a society, we’ll need to think about how we’re going to cope with either intermittent or long-term water shortages in a way that minimizes conflict—That’s not a science problem, that’s a values and social science problem.”
