History and Impacts of Indigenous and Settler-Colonial Water Management in the Colorado and Poudre River Basins

Charter Summary:

Tribes and Indigenous communities hold the longest history of land and water stewardship in the Intermountain West, including holding inherent rights and responsibilities to the waterways. Climate change and other social and environmental challenges continue to stress water availability and quality in the region, motivating a re-examination of settler-colonial policies and practices governing water management. With the guidance of our Indigenous Advisory Council, our project seeks to understand the history and impacts of Indigenous and settler-colonial water policy and management practices in the Colorado River Basin (CRB) and Poudre River Basin (PRB). This involves 1) Deconstructing and reconstructing a timeline/cycle through archival research to understand major shifts in policy and management of these river basins, with an emphasis on the ways in which different worldviews, rights, and benefits are represented and supported, or disregarded in these historic shifts; 2) Identifying challenges and opportunities through literature review, for tribal and Indigenous-led water stewardship in contemporary water management; and 3) Developing recommendations and baseline data for environmental monitoring and restoration in the Poudre River Basin to serve CSU Native American Cultural Center’s new field site. In our process we are working closely with community partners to co-design our project, including methods for data collection, pathways for recontextualizing Indigenous data and stories, and to co-design Indigenous educational materials that can serve K-12, higher education, and community learning curriculum needs in the region. We also aim for our charter project outputs to serve to provide region-specific context for furthering research and policy development relevant to Indigenous and tribally-led water management.