Tribes have relied on food rations

By Randal C. Archibold, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
August 31, 2008

GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY, Ariz. - More than a hundred years ago, the Gila River, siphoned off by farmers upstream, all but dried up in the parched flats south of Phoenix, plunging an Indian community that had depended on it for centuries of farming into starvation and poverty.

Then food rations sent by the federal government - white flour, lard, canned meats and other sugary, processed foods - conspired with the genetic anomalies of the Indians to sow an obesity epidemic that has left the reservation with among the highest rates of diabetes in the world.

Now, after decades of litigation that produced the largest water-rights settlement ever in Indian country, local Indians are getting some of their water back. And with it has come the question: Can a healthier lifestyle lost generations ago be restored?

Reviving the farming tradition will prove difficult, many tribal members say, because the tribes, with a population of 20,000, including about 12,000 on the reservation, have not farmed on a big scale for generations. Fast food is a powerful lure, and the trend of late has been to move off the reservation to work or live.

“Nobody wants to get out and get dirt under their fingernails,” said Pancratious Harvey, one of a handful of tribal members who began a community garden a couple of years ago.

Still, the garden, which is filled with vegetables that were once staples in the tribe’s diet, is a sign of enthusiasm for farming that members believe could spread as the water arrives.

Elsewhere, several members are acquiring plots in hopes of growing traditional crops as well as more profitable ones such as alfalfa. Gila River Farms, the largest tribal agriculture outfit, plans to double its farming, to about 35,000 acres, once the water begins flowing again. On the reservation, the sound of earthmovers fills the air as workers repair dilapidated and abandoned irrigation canals and ditches, and dig new ones.

The water settlement, involving the two principal tribes on the Gila River reservation - the Pima, who call themselves Akimel O’otham, or “river people,” and the Maricopa - as well as a related band, the Tohono O’odham Nation on the Mexican border, took effect this year, after being approved by Congress in 2004.

It will take several more years to complete the irrigation and related projects, at a cost to the federal government of about $680 million.

Most of the water was diverted in the late 19th century, slowing the Gila River to a trickle. It was a startling turn of events for a tribe whose ancestors had thrived on the river for generations through an elaborate system of ditches and laterals.

The federal government’s construction of the Coolidge Dam, completed in 1928, was intended to restore some of the lost water, but the reservation never got enough to bring back farming in any significant way.

As the water disappeared and the Pima switched to government rations as their staple, obesity, alcoholism and diabetes exploded. More than half of the population over 25 has adult-onset diabetes, and a rising number of children are getting it.

The Pima had long wanted the water back, and by the late 1980s, buoyed by trends in water-rights laws and a new brand of reservation-born negotiators, serious talks began.

Water claims are usually complicated, hotly disputed affairs in the warm, dry West. The settlement, which took 30 years to reach, provides the reservation 653,500 acre-feet of water a year - an acre-foot is equivalent to about two families’ water use annually - coming from a mix of sources, with the Central Arizona Project tapping the Colorado River providing the biggest share. It also includes the $680 million to rebuild the irrigation system and to provide drainage, water monitoring and other benefits.

Federal and state officials said the reservation might have gained much more water had it prevailed in court. It had asked for 2 million acre-feet, for one thing, based in part on documented use of the river going back to the 16th century.

A compelling reason for settling, federal and state officials said, was to provide all sides certainty and clarity over how much water they will have now and in the coming decades. The reservation had already received or been promised about two-thirds of the water in the settlement, but the additional water makes the Gila River Indians major water brokers as they lease some of it to cities and could vault the tribe to the top of farming in the state as well, said Gregg Houtz, the lead lawyer for the state’s Department of Water Resources in the settlement agreement.

The reservation has discussed farming about 150,000 acres, or 40 percent of its 372,000 acres, but it is planning to avoid large housing developments.

The Gila River itself will remain largely dry; the water from the settlement will be delivered and distributed through a system of culverts and canals.

© Copyright 2008 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

Posted on August 31st, 2008 by hunwut
Filed under: Community, Environment