Bray: Settler Colonialism & Navajo Nation Water Inequality

In Settler Colonialism and Rural Environmental Injustice Water Inequality on the Navajo Nation, published in Rural Sociology, author Laura A. Bray (Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University) examines the role of race and racism in rural environmental inequality. Specifically, Bray examines issues of water inequality in the southwestern United States through a historical case study of the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP).

Bray conducted research using archival sources, government documents, and secondary historical accounts focused on the NIIP, as well as federal reclamation and Indian water policy more generally. These sources demonstrated the cultural representations and institutional practices used to divide the waters of the San Juan River between the Navajo Nation and state of New Mexico.

Tribal water rights in the United States follow a system of rights based on the establishment of reservations which supersede state water law. As a result, Bray concludes that the Navajo Nation had distinct water rights to the San Juan River which were disregarded by settlers and officials who exerted control over Native resources to secure resources for urban development throughout New Mexico.

This analysis of the water politics concerning the Navajo Nation and New Mexico demonstrates how settler colonial racial projects targeted the collective rights of the Navajo in ways that undermined tribal sovereignty. Bray argues examination of how processes of spatial and racial marginalization come together can allow scholars to better understand the development and persistence of these rural environmental injustices. Specifically, Bray asserts that the encounters between settlers and native Nations represent a defining moment in white racial formation in the United States and that white supremacy underlies these settler colonial racial regimes, forming an identity that shapes contemporary America.

This case study of the NIIP sheds light on how diminishment of Navajo political sovereignty has hindered the tribe’s ability to meaningfully participate in western water development and further subordinated Indigenous rights to colonial authority. In sum, this study contributes to the scholarship of environmental justice by illustrating the importance of race, specifically anti-Indian racism, for understanding processes of rural environmental inequality formation and state-sanctioned violence.