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Settler Colonialism, Water Inequality, and Rural Injustice in the US Southwest

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Settler Colonialism, Water Inequality, and Rural Injustice in the US Southwest ABSTRACT BRAY, LAURA ANN. Dividing the San Juan: Settler Colonialism, Water Inequality, and Rural Injustice in the US Southwest. (Under the direction of Dr. Thomas E. Shriver). Rural communities of color suffer multiple forms of water injustice that result in insecure and unsafe water supplies, including contaminated drinking water and inadequate water infrastruc- ture. Native nations face the additional challenge of protecting their legal water rights against con- stant threats from non-Native communities and governments. This dissertation draws on theories of critical environmental justice (Pellow 2018) to examine the formation or rural water inequality in Indigenous communities. Two primary lines of research within this literature inform this study: rural environmental justice (Mckinney 2016; Pellow 2016a) and settler colonialism (Bacon 2019; Whyte 2018). I merge insights from these frameworks to examine intersections of race, space, and Indigeneity within processes of environmental inequality formation. Drawing on archival and historical sources, this study takes a historical case study approach to explore: (1) racial projects within rural environmental inequality formation, (2) the construction and mobilization of socio-spatial boundaries within natural resource conflicts, and (3) state bu- reaucratic mechanisms used to enact settler colonial projects. The case study focuses on two closely related federal water projects that divided San Juan River waters in New Mexico between the rural Navajo Nation and the rapidly urbanizing Middle Rio Grande Valley. Authorized in 1962, the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) was designed to alleviate widespread poverty on the Navajo Nation by developing an agricultural industry. At the same time, Congress approved the San Juan-Chama Project (SJCP) to divert water from the San Juan River to the Rio Grande River Basin, primarily for use in Albuquerque. The SJCP was completed within eleven years, while construction on the NIIP remains ongoing nearly six decades later. Tracing the history of these two divergent projects offers insight into the social forces upholding water injustices in Indigenous communities and between urban and rural places. In chapter one I position the water projects within western reclamation and American In- dian water rights, introduce the study’s overarching theoretical concerns and methods, and provide an overview of the dissertation. Chapter two develops the concept of settler colonial racial projects to examine the practices and discourses that unevenly allocated water resources across racial lines. I show the explicit and subtle ways that officials undermined tribal sovereignty even while pro- moting the NIIP. Settler officials’ support for the NIIP strongly resonated with federal termination policy seeking to end government support for tribes and assimilate individuals into mainstream white society. The settler colonial racial projects at work thus helped ensure that the NIIP accom- plished colonial objectives of appropriating Native waters. Chapter three analyses the SJCP and water development in the Middle Rio Grande Valley. I apply relational theories of inequality to understand how actors constructed and mobilized socio- spatial boundaries to claim control over the San Juan water. The SJCP primarily benefits urban water users in Albuquerque. Yet during legislative proceedings, discussion and project justifica- tions centered on the project’s rural benefits. Each of these justifications constructed rural places for urban benefit and symbolically mobilized rurality in a way that enabled urban places to claim greater control over the state’s water supplies. Chapter four examines how bureaucratic administration enacted settler colonial projects to prevent the NIIP from achieving its stated objectives. The water project promised economic assis- tance for the Navajo in the form of thousands of jobs, local community development, and water for municipal and industrial purposes—all of which failed to materialize. My analysis points to three bureaucratic mechanisms that delayed and remade the NIIP in ways that undermined the success of the project. These mechanisms contributed to continued water insecurity and injustice on the Navajo Nation. I conclude by discussing the dissertation’s contributions to the literature on critical environmental justice. © Copyright 2021 by Laura Bray All Rights Reserved Dividing the San Juan: Settler Colonialism, Water Inequality, and Rural Injustice in the US Southwest by Laura Ann Bray A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sociology Raleigh, North Carolina 2021 APPROVED BY: _______________________________ _______________________________ Thomas Shriver Kim Ebert Committee Chair _______________________________ _______________________________ Stefano Longo Michael Schulman BIOGRAPHY Laura A. Bray grew up in Weatherford, Texas. She graduated from Austin College (Sherman, Texas) in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Political Science. She spent several years managing a bookstore in Lancaster, Pennsylvania before beginning graduate studies at North Carolina State University. Laura earned a Master of Science in Sociology from North Carolina State University in 2015. She studies environmental sociology, environmental justice, and social movements. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My deepest appreciation to all those who made this dissertation possible. First to my chair, Tom Shriver. Over the past eight years, Tom has gone from my professor and advisor to frequent col- laborator and friend. He saw a future for me within academia before I could envision one for myself and guided me each step of the way. Thank you for keeping me on track, for turning drafts around faster than humanly possible, and for being available regardless of country or time zone. Thank you also to my committee members: Kim Ebert, Stefano Longo, and Michael Schulman. Your voices informed my inner critic, continuously pushing me to sharpen my arguments and ultimately strengthening the project. Bethany Cutts gave me a second academic home in the department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management (PRTM). Her commitment to reimagining intellectual community in ways that counteract the alienation of academia has been a constant source of support and inspira- tion. She has also pushed me to think more seriously about how my scholarship and teaching can contribute to building a more just society. For this and your friendship, I am immensely grateful. The Environmental Justice and Health Working Group in the department of Sociology and Location Matters Lab in PRTM surrounded me with a network of incredible scholars and educa- tors. Thank you for giving me a soft place to land, learn, and recharge. I also found unexpected friendship through the Project Bridge research in Robeson County. My gratitude to Hannah Goins, Nathan McMenamin, Margaret Crites, Sallie McLean, and Angela Allen for showing me how to do research in community with others. Numerous other colleagues have enriched my graduate experience. Special thanks to Kelly Godwin for the concerts, beach trips, and bonding over books and dogs. To Marie Gualtieri for the late-night laughs and making me an (amateur) foodie. To Jennifer Lutz for ensuring we always had a place to celebrate holidays and birthdays. To Olivia Vilá for being the frientor I didn’t know I needed. To UE150, the Graduate Workers Union for making the university a better place to work. And to Nicholas Membrez-Weiler for doing this grad school thing and beyond by my side. As always, my parents Jill and Mark Bray offered unwavering support. Thank you for the many cross country moves, camping trips, and only occasionally asking “how much longer?” Last but never least, thank you to Blue and Ollie, my more-than-human family, for your patience, love, and daily reminders to move and play. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Positioning the Navajo Indian Irrigation and San Juan-Chama Projects within Western Water Politics............................................................................................................................................. 2 Federal reclamation: Developing water in the West ........................................................... 2 Native Nations in the Colorado River Basin: Unsettling western water ............................ 5 Theoretical Foundations: Critical Environmental Justice ............................................................... 7 Rural environmental justice and relational development .................................................... 8 Settler colonialism and Indigenous environmental justice ............................................... 10 Research Design and Methods ...................................................................................................... 12 Chapter Overview ........................................................................................................................
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