Check out Ten Tribe’s 2025 accomplishments in the CRWUA 2025 Annual Report.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Ten Tribes Partnership Has Developed and Approved the Following Principles to Guide its Work on River Policy Going Forward:
- As indigenous people, we are closely connected to the land and natural resources and take seriously our obligation to protect and defend the Colorado River, as well as the plants, animals, people and ecosystems that rely on the river.
- Continued drought has created extreme uncertainty for users of Colorado River water and concerns about the health of the river itself.
- Insufficient water availability will have drastic consequences for our tribes, who rely heavily on the river for commercial, domestic, cultural and spiritual purposes.
- Collectively, the Ten Tribes hold rights to more than 20% of the Colorado River’s current estimated flow, and tribal water, therefore, plays an important role in supply and demand.
- The Ten Tribes must be included in a meaningful way in shaping river policy going forward.
- Part of this policy must be an acknowledgment of the extent of tribal water rights, a recognition of tribes’ rights to use that water, and a commitment to assist tribes in benefitting from those water rights.
- It is time to stop thinking about tribal water rights as a problem to be solved and start thinking about tribes and tribal water rights as integral to solving the basin’s problems.
- For the Ten Tribes, compensated forbearance, o#-reservation marketing and protection of future rights to on-reservation development, will be necessary components of any future river management system.
- We must acknowledge that the water supply in the Colorado River was overestimated to start with and is shrinking year by year.
- We must take steps to address supply/ demand imbalances while protecting tribal water rights, the river, the reservoirs, and the plants, fish, birds and other species that depend on the river system for survival.