Examination of US federally recognized indigenous tribes in AZ, with respect to their water rights…or lack thereof
Author
Affiliation
Dr. Greg Chism
School of Information, University of Arizona
Important
Throughout this project I personally use the term “Indigenous” and “Tribal” to refer to the Indigenous Peoples that lived in pre-colonial North America. The U.S. Census Bureau uses the term “American Indian” (a term some Indigenous Peoples also prefer), and subsequently many of the Federally Recognized Tribal Reservations use this term. It is not my wish to create or follow prejudice against Indigenous Peoples through this project, as it was meant only as a learning resource. Any concerns about the content of this project will lead to its immediate correction or complete removal.
0 - Set up
I used several packages for this project, most of which related to plotting maps with {ggplot2} or creating interactive/reactive tables with {reactable} and {reactablefmtr}.
Packages installed
if(!require(pacman))install.packages("pacman")pacman::p_load(here, htmltools, lwgeom, tidyverse, tigris, sf, ggtext, ggrepel, ggiraph, glue, readxl, janitor, reactable, # for HTML tables reactablefmtr, # for easier formatting reactable tables scales, patchwork, usmap, webshot2)webshot::install_phantomjs()# Options to use tigris datasets with sfoptions(tigris_use_cache =TRUE, tigris_class ="sf")
Setting the default theme ggplot and output options for the project.
Theme Settings
# setting theme for ggplot2ggplot2::theme_set(cowplot::theme_map())# setting figure parameters for knitrknitr::opts_chunk$set(fig.width =8, # 8" widthfig.asp =0.65, # the golden ratiofig.retina =1, # dpi multiplier for displaying HTML output on retinafig.align ="center", # center align figuresdpi =350, # higher dpi, sharper imagemessage =FALSE)
1 - Introduction
What is the status of Indigenous Tribal water rights in Arizona?
As both a resident of Arizona and a member of the University of Arizona (UArizona) faculty, I have been acutely aware of the influence of Indigenous Peoples and their culture. Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, and my city of residence, Tucson, is home to the O’odham and Yaqui tribed. The UArizona Land Acknowledgement recognizes that the campus is on the land and territories of Indigenous Peoples, and as such strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service1.
Arizona is the sunniest state in the U.S., with an average of 5,755 kJ/m² in annual sunlight. In addition, there has been a +12.23% change in sunlight since 19922. Over the last 15 years, the Southwest has experience substantial drought, especially affecting the Colorado River3 and Lake Mead4. The Colorado River supplies about 36% of Arizona’s water. Whereas other sources are from groundwater, 41%; in-state rivers, 18%, and reclaimed water, 5%5. Due to climate projections for the southwestern U.S., it is likely that Arizona’s drought situation will only worsen over time6.
Of the 22 federally recognized tribes in AZ, only 14 have either fully resolved, adjudicated rights, or partially resolved rights claims7. In fact, Navajo Nation, the largest federally recognized tribe, only recently passed a proposed settlement that would ensure water rights for its tribe - a deal that has yet to be passed by Congress8. What has taken so long? Legally, Indigenous Tribal users were left out of water rights decisions until 1908, when the Supreme Court ruled on the Winters Doctrine, a decision that guaranteed water rights to tribes9. Since this landmark decision, tribes have had an uphill battle due in part to their sovereign nation status not being respected. In fact, Congress tried to abolish tribal governments, disband their reservations, and relocate residents to urban areas in 195310. In addition, tribes were forced to endure existential threats to their ways of life, such as fleeing boarding schools that wished to assimilate Indigenous Peoples into U.S. society11. Due to this, 1978 was the year the Ak-Chin Indian Community (near Maricopa AZ) was the first tribe to settle water rights12. As a result from this constant uphill battle, there are still 8 Arizona tribes with completely unresolved water rights.
2 - Data Import & Wrangling
2.1 - Arizona shapefiles
There were two sources for shapefiles used in this project:
The shapefile for Arizona Indigenous Tribes was sourced from the Arizona Department of Health Services. Several columns were added onto this original data:
Plotting AZ Indigenous Tribal boundaries from the az counties shapefile and the shapefile from AZGeo Data. There are a few noteworthy steps:
Utilizing five geom_sf() arguments - i. for the AZ counties, ii. for major AZ rivers, iii. for the Central Arizona Project, iv. for major AZ lakes, v. for the indigenous regions.
Utilizing geom_label_repel_interactive() to create interactive labels (tooltips).
Utilizing scale_fill_identity() to fill the tribal land geometry and give it a custom legend.