Water rights is a complicated issue that touches a host of Indigenous people across the country — from Alaska and Hawaii to the Southwest and the Midwest — that involves politics, regulations and litigation, according to an expert panel at a program presented at the American Bar Association Midyear Meeting in Phoenix.
The session, “Water is Life: The Ongoing Struggle to Protect and Enforce Indigenous Water Rights,” was sponsored by the ABA Judicial Division.
“Water is life,” said Michelle Espino, chief legislative counsel for the Navajo Nation. “On the Navajo Nation water is a part of our life. It is a major part of our ceremony.” She explained the unique situation of the Navajo Nation, which draws its water from the Colorado River. The river runs through Navajo territory that spans four states, and the Hopi tribe sits in the middle of the nation.
“We have to deal with all those entities. … Each state is different in their politics. It’s not an easy effort” to negotiate water rights, Espino said.
Forty percent of Navajo homes have never had running water and people must haul water to their residences. The Navajos want to have the ability to divert water throughout the nation without the confines of obtaining permission from different states and entities to do so.
An Indian Rights Water Settlement, which has been decades in the making, involves the Navajo, Hopi and the San Juan Southern Paiute tribes and is awaiting congressional approval. It would help ensure reliable and sustainable water supplies to those tribes. The legislation carries a $5 billion price tag — larger than any such agreement enacted by Congress.
In Hawaii, a state surrounded by water, concerns exist over the natural resource. Ashley Obrey, an attorney with the nonprofit law firm Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, said the struggle for water rights is occurring in places such as East Maui, where water has been diverted for more than a century from natives for farmland by developers and corporations, and North Kona, where “there’s concern for the amount of water we actually have there.”
In Lahaina, the site of the 2023 devastating Maui wildfires, new tensions have been sparked in Hawaii’s historic fights over water, raising the stakes for water disputes and Native Hawaiian rights. “It’s concerning for the community” to see water taken from them by developers, Obrey said.
Lisa Atkinson, a tribal court judge for the Northwest Intertribal Court System, spotlighted the situation in Alaska Native communities. More than 3,300 homes in over 30 communities do not have indoor plumbing. “It’s 2025 and people are using chamber pots in Alaska,” Atkinson said.
Also, a number of villages along the coastline and several rivers have suffered losses due to erosion from climate change or are facing battles to save homes and important cultural sites. Challenges to in-stream water flows and competing natural resource interests from the ocean and rivers also threaten subsistence living and cultural practices.
Laura Berglan, an attorney at Earthjustice, highlighted what’s happening in Michigan and Wisconsin, where a proposed rerouting and a proposed tunnel for the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline cuts across the Bad River Reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Litigation ensued over both proposals, which can potentially impact water standards.