Seven Western states missed a federal deadline in November to share the outline of a joint plan to manage Colorado River water.
That same month, one of the river basin’s 30 tribal nations — which collectively hold around a quarter of the river’s water rights but have been historically excluded from negotiations — advanced a novel legal approach to help secure its allocation and give back to the river system as a whole: recognizing the river as a person.
The Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) is made up of Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo members, each with historical ties to the river, as CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores said in an interview in her office late November. Recognizing the river as a person establishes a duty to support its longterm health in all actions of the tribal government.
This might mean investing in initiatives like the Ahakhav Tribal Preserve wetland habitat — but Chairwoman Flores also envisions training programs for tribal members around water resource management and engineering as part of this work, as she talks about in the broadcast package below:
Aoife Kane was assistant producer. Alyssa Adams is content director of Cronkite News
CRIT’s river personhood recognition follows a 2023 federal law, the CRIT Water Resiliency Act, allowing the nation to lease its water allocation to other parties. In practical terms, legal personhood allows the river itself to be written into any future lease agreements, allowing for measures to support its broader health and longevity.
But, as the lifeblood and namesake of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, recognizing the river as a living being also has deeper and broader cultural meanings. As CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores and the Tribes’ farming manager Joshua Moore told me, the move galvanizes the nations’ sovereignty.
