“Rather than
follow a time line, I’ve followed the river, pursuing an upstream
journey that began in Wind River Canyon and will end at the
headwaters near the Continental
Divide.”
With these words, former
High Country News editor Geoffrey O’Gara embarks
on a meandering course through Indian dispossession, legal
wrangling, floundering farm communities, and reservation politics
in Wyoming. O’Gara’s new book, What You See in Clear
Water: Life on the Wind River Reservation, follows the
Shoshone and Arapaho as they grapple with local farmers over
control of the Wind River watershed. In the 19th century, tribes
saw their water rights chiseled away as the government enticed
settlers to irrigate and farm the Wind River
Valley.
When 150 years of negotiations proved
fruitless, the tribes took the battle from the community hall to
the courtroom. At the end of an 11-year legal showdown, the U.S.
Supreme Court narrowly upheld the tribes’ claims in 1989, handing
the Shoshone and Arapaho the first Native American water rights
affirmed at every level of the court system.
But
victory was short-lived, and the tribes never got the chance to
reclaim the water for fish and rehabilitate the watershed. As
O’Gara notes, “paper” water is not the same as “wet” water. The
Wyoming Supreme Court ruled just three years later that management
of the Wind River would continue to be overseen by the state. The
tribes did not appeal the decision, though new coalitions are
forming to improve the watershed.
Instead of
deluging the reader with agency acronyms, O’Gara focuses on the
personalities and historical forces that have shaped this
yet-unresolved fight. An Eritrean engineer, the tribal business
council, a Shoshoni biologist, farmers claiming irrigation rights,
and sagebrush rebel politicians all illustrate the stresses and
frustration that this prolonged fight has inflicted upon
reservation residents.
While O’Gara’s choice to
eschew chronology in favor of loosely assembled sketches and
episodes may send the reader thumbing back through previous pages,
trying to sort out dates and characters, What You See in Clear
Water remains a vivid account of divided communities in an
overdrawn watershed.
What You
See in Clear Water: Life on the Wind River Reservation, by Geoffrey
O’Gara, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Hardcover: $25.00. 285
pages.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Watershed Wars.
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