The Supreme Court will hear a major water rights dispute from Arizona on Monday to decide whether the federal government has broken its promises to the Navajo Nation for more than 150 years.

Nearly one-third of Navajo households have no running water and rely on truck-loaded water.

And before that, t

Hi

y Navajo nation b

deplores the US government for breaching its duty of trust

to the treaty

1868

deal that what

settled their reservation in what is now

the

northeast

corner of

Arizona and smaller

portion parts

from south

East

ern Utah and the north

East

ern New Mexico.

That treaty “promised both land and water sufficient for the Navajos to return to a permanent home in their ancestral lands”,

lawyers for the marriage torneys of the Navajo Nation

the court told. Broken promises. The country is still waiting for the water it needs.’

But

The case goes to court

after during a period of drought in the West and

100 years

after a lawsuit over the execution of

the Colorado River

Both compact and high court decisions

that divided

are

water

S

under seven

states, including California, Arizona, and Nevada.

It also comes in an era of drought in the West.

The question now is whether the Navajo

s nation

can proceed with a lawsuit that aims to deliver a federal plan

its inhabitants their

without the need for water.

She the Navajo nation

won a preliminary victory in 2021 in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

it be

had a claim for breach of trust, taking note

That

the 1868 treaty referred to agriculture.

“The nation’s right to work reservation lands … gives rise to an implied right to the water required to do so,” the appeals court said. However, it stopped short of deciding whether this included “rights to the Colorado River main stream or other specific water resources.”

But in the fall

the

The Supreme Court agreed to hear appeals from both

the

Internal Affairs and Arizona trying to overturn the 9th Circuit’s decision.

US Attorney Gen.

eral

Elizabeth B. Prelogar argued that the 1868 treaty said nothing about water and did not establish specific duties for the government regarding water. In addition, the Navajo

s nation has

received water rights from two tributaries of the Colorado River, including Utah’s San Juan River, she said.

Lawyers for Arizona, joined by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said the Supreme Court’s injunctions assigned the waters of the lower Colorado River and it’s too late for lawsuits seeking new rights to the same water.

The cases are Arizona vs. Navajo Nation and Department of the Interior vs. Navajo Nation.