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Show # 1044 Page 22 in many areas by default because there's no one - no lawyers around who recognize Indian water rights, that default has taken place, and the ah - you know, the local commercial interest have, in effect, stolen the water. Ah - that certainly has been true in Southern California and in, to even greater extent, parts of the Southwest. One of the problems with Indian water rights is once the horse is out of the barn, it's awful hard to get him back. Look at Pyramid Lake. If the Indian people at Pyramid Lake had had a competent attorney in 1902 when they started stealing their water, he might have enjoined it then, perhaps. Certainly, the water rights cases go back about that far. Winters is a 190' something case, the basic case. But they didn't, and now, you know, the - the city of Reno is using their water. Well, you're not going to destroy the city of Reno. That's the horse out of the barn, so the crucial - there's a real preventive need here, to recognize these problems ahead of time. The Navajo Tribal Council forfeited Navajo rights to the - to the Colorado River - I think they've attempted torescind it, but there's a lot of question about that, ahm - because they weren't advised by their tribal attorneys, the private attorney, ah - about what they were doing. They did it without knowing, and ah - now that the - the basic rule is stated in Winters Against United States the best exposition of it is Arizona gives California, |
