Flowing Justice: Quantifying Water Rights in the Wake of Arizona v. Navajo Nation—Navigating The Legal Oasis for Native American Water Sovereignty

Authors

Sydney Shearouse, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Student Article

Abstract

Climate change has spurred a meteoric rise in environmental disputes particularly in arid climates where water shortages have become increasingly commonplace. Water rights controversies rise to the fore of public discourse as awareness and acceptance of climate change—and its impact on scarce resources—have become a near universal norm. These water shortages impact everyone. However, Native American tribes are uniquely impacted as their water rights are not clearly defined in the treaties that established the various reservations. The Supreme Court decided in Winters v. United States (1908) that there is a fiduciary duty owed to Native American tribes by the federal government to protect and provide for necessary reservation resources and prevent outside actors from infringing upon the water rights of tribal reservations. This past year, in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, the Supreme Court decided it was not a breach of fiduciary duty by the United States to refuse to assess and quantify the water rights belonging to a tribal nation. Considering current water shortages and the disparate impact that water scarcity has on Native American reservations, the current method of addressing undefined water rights must change. This Comment will discuss the duty of quantification the federal government owes to federally recognized reservations, the need to modify current methods of quantification, and additional steps that the government could adopt beyond quantification to sustain and support the cultures of Native American populations in the United States. Additionally, this Comment will consider how foreign jurisdictions treat the water rights of their Indigenous communities and what the federal government could learn from these comparative systems. As climate change leads to greater water scarcity, quantification is necessary for the federal government to meet its fiduciary obligation; however, quantification alone—and as currently defined—is not sufficient to ensure the sustainability of tribal reservations.

DOI

10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.8

First Page

433

Last Page

460

Recommended Citation

Sydney Shearouse, Flowing Justice: Quantifying Water Rights in the Wake of Arizona v. Navajo Nation—Navigating The Legal Oasis for Native American Water Sovereignty, 11 Tex. A&M J. Prop. L. 433 (2025).
Available at: https://doi.org/10.37419/JPL.V11.I2.8