reserved water rights

What happened

In Winters v. United States (1908), the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana had been reserved in 1888 as a permanent home for the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine bands. The United States sued to stop appellants from building dams and reservoirs on the Milk River that kept its water from flowing to the reservation. The Supreme Court held the government had reserved the waters for the reservation. It reasoned that "The Indians had command of the lands and the waters, command of all their beneficial use," and asked whether they would have given them up. It added that "The power of the government to reserve the waters and exempt them from appropriation under the state laws is not denied, and could not be."

In Arizona v. California (1963), the Court held that enough water was reserved to irrigate all the practicably irrigable acreage on the reservations. It rejected Arizona's argument for measuring the right by the Indians' "reasonably foreseeable needs," because how many Indians there will be and what their future needs will be "can only be guessed."

The rule was restated in Arizona v. Navajo Nation (2023): "The Federal Government's reservation of land for an Indian tribe implicitly reserves the right to use needed water." But the Court held that the 1868 treaty "reserved necessary water to accomplish the purpose of the Navajo Reservation but did not require the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe."

The Court's holdings define the right; how much water each tribe receives is settled case by case.

Summarized with AI assistance from 4 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error