To the Fence and Back: An Introduction (PDF)

INTRODUCTION To the Fence and Bacl< When I was writing this book I had an opportunity to run with Victor Masayesva, Jr., a well-known Hopi filmmaker and farmer from the village of Ho'atvela (Hotevilla) on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona.' He had come to the University of Illinois to work with me and my colleagues in American Indian Studies on a film called Maize, about the corn oflndigenous people. 2 During our short, three-mile run at the Crystal Lake Park in Urbana, we talked about our film project, and I asked him several questions about his life, but the majority of our conversation centered on the topic of running. "Has anyone ever told you about how Hopis once mimicked the movements of animals to make them better runners?" he asked me. "No," I replied, a bit embarrassed that I had no idea what he was talking about. "I'm surprised people back home haven't told you," he said to me. He then proceeded to describe the movements of deer and antelope and the lessons that Hopis, or Hopiit, 3 oflong ago learned from studying these magnificent runners. 4 While we made our way around the lake I became self-conscious about my sloppy, unrefined running form. At times I struggled to maintain his pace, but like most runners I worked equally as hard not to show it. There was something about his running that both intrigued and impressed me. His stride was quick, and his shoes tapped the pavement, whereas mine pounded it. He seemed to run effortlessly, as though he was gliding along on a cushion of air, exemplifying what distance runners Danny Abshire and Brian Metzler once said: "No matter how fast you're running, your body is in harmony with the ground beneath you, moving freely and easily, springing almost effortlessly with each footstep. "5 Then in his early sixties, Victor had fine-tuned his running stride, and he knew it. To him, I was but a young scholar who spent his time writing about Hopi running, while he had lived his life as a runner. And it soon became apparent to me that I had much to learn from him. My advanced degrees and faculty appointments are no substitute for the lived experiences of others. In Hopi culture, men such as Victor serve as "uncles," teachers of younger men such as myself. We are instructed at an early age to respect and honor our elders and to listen to their advice. 6 And we are taught to value their life experiences and to place those experiences above our own. Shortly before we approached the last quarter-mile of our run, I asked Victor one final question. "So when you run back home, how many miles do you usually cover?" I thought perhaps he would say five, eight, or even ten miles. I wanted a figure, something to gauge what we had just done to the distance he normally covers at Ho'atvela. And I wanted to know how my running compared to Victor's daily jaunts. But he gave me an answer that I did not expect. He smiled, chuckled a bit, and said to me, "Oh, you know, to the fence and back." 7 Many American runners today are obsessed with two factors in their running, distance and time. Open any issue of Runner's World magazine, and you will see advertisements for products that promise to improve these two areas. 8 Today's runners resemble moving laboratories of gadgets and gauges. With the help of digital trackers and other audio devices, runners can escape the natural noises around them, including the sounds made when they breathe and the rhythmic pounding of their feet. Companies such as Apple and Garmin have engineered running watches with GPS and built-in heart-rate monitors. Some watches have the ability to track your position, distance, pace, and other bits ofinformation and send the data wirelessly to your home computer or mobile device. 9 Through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, people can now run anywhere on the globe and remain connected to the world. But this kind of running, and the mentality behind it, was not the kind of running that Victor spoke of when he and I ran loops around Crystal Lake Park. Victor's brief description of running "to the fence and back" speaks to a cyclical aspect of traditional Hopi running that is often not reflected or practiced in today's society. For Victor, and other Hopi runners of his generation, running was not always meant to be measured in miles, or timed in increments of hours, minutes, and seconds. And it did not always involve modern gadgets, shoes, sport drinks filled with electrolytes, or the latest running attire. 10 Hopi messenger runners oflong ago routinely ran 4 Hopi Runners barefoot and navigated their high plateaus and deserts, sometimes in the darkness of night, by studying their mountains, valleys, the moon , and the stars. 11 They ran to nearby villages or American towns and often returned to Hopi in the same day. Their "fences," metaphorically speaking, were the Hopi villages ofSongoopavi and Walpi, or the Arizona towns of Flagstaff and Winslow, to name a few. Other times their "fences" were located far beyond Hopi ancestral lands and included the Pueblo villages of New Mexico, the Indigenous communities of central Mexico, and the coastal lands of Native California. They ran with a purpose and a destination (the fence) in mind, but they always returned to their villages (and back). They always returned home. In his book on the lure of distance running, marathon runner Robin Harvie remarked that "getting back home lies at the heart of understanding one of the fundamental instincts of why we run. ,m The concepts of migration, mobility, and "home" also serve as an important lens for understanding the ancient and modern world of Hopi long-distance running. Since the beginning of Hopi time, Hopis have been in a constant state of movement to and away from home. Similar to many other Native peoples, Hopis have explained these movements in very detailed origin and emergence accounts. The stories connect the people to the land and. give Hopis a worldview to understand and interpret their past, present, and future. From a very early age, Hopis have been taught about the great migration stories of long ago. 13 Well before Europeans set foot on this continent, Hopis learned that their people once divided themselves into clans and migrated in all four cardinal directions. 14 According to Hopi beliefs, the clans traveled to the Pacific Ocean, Central America, and occupied lands in present-day New Mexico and Colorado.15 During these migrations, the people experienced different climates and terrains and learned to survive by hunting, gathering, and planting. But as Hopi cultural historians Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, and anthropologist Thomas E. Sheridan and others once noted, Hopi migration was "not a single migration but a complex series of journeys, many of which followed river valleys including the Colorado, Verde, the San Pedro, and the Membres." 16 And one of these journeys, to a place nearly two hundred miles east of their mesas, tells ofa time when the people ran footraces and established running in Hopi culture. At Chaco Canyon in the San Juan Basin of New Mexico, Hopi clans cleared trails that extended to the ancient settlement of Mesa Verde in ColTo the Fence and Back 5 orado. Used by the Flute Clan for ceremonial purposes, the running trails at Chaco Canyon are among the earliest evidences of running in Hopi society. Hopi clan runners who competed at Chaco Canyon did so to bring rain to their "family's fields." When they returned to their original lands in the place we now call northern Arizona, the Flute Clan continued its ceremonial races and established running in Hopi culture. Hopi runners, or warik'aya as they are referred to in Hopi, of the distant past ran as representatives of their clans and believed that their swiftness of foot would benefit their people with much-needed rain and a bountiful harvest. 17 Tuwangyam, or Sand Clan, runners regularly ran to shrines or other sacred sites far beyond Hopi ancestral lands to entice rain clouds to follow them back to their mesas. The ceremonial runners believed that the faster they ran on their return journey, the quicker the clouds would arrive on Hopi lands to water their fields. 18 But the migrations to distant locations, and the complexities that surrounded them, did not cease when the Flute or other clans returned to their present mesas and established villages. Many years after those initial clan migrations, Hopis participated on a second wave of migration as their world intersected with the one beyond the mesas. With the establishment of the railroad, opportunities for Hopis to venture outside of their ancestral lands slowly increased. For a number of years, Hopi runners who had been hired by white individuals to deliver messages from Hopi villages to American towns such as Winslow or Holbrook often witnessed the arrival and departure of trains. The ancient running trails of their people brought them to the steel tracks of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. And although they had witnessed these marvels of modernity from a distance, they soon became their passengers and traveled from one end of the country to the other. One of the first examples of this came in the early 1890s. At this time, government officials carefully planned a trip for Hopis, all of whom were runners, by train to the East Coast to show them modern civilization, the supposed superiority of American ways, and the power of the US military. During this trip, officials brought the people to American cities known for their industry, federal Indian boarding schools, and military forts. They also had them witness the "acres and acres" of corn and other agricultural fields throughout the Midwest. 19 They did so to convince the people to adopt Western methods of farming back home, to stop resisting US government mandates, and to embrace Western forms of schooling for their 6 Hopi Runners children. When the people returned to their villages, they argued among each other about how to respond to these outside forces of colonialism and contemplated their future in an ever-changing American society. The accounts of Hopi leaders who traveled by train to the East and West Coasts connect to the larger story ofHopi running in important ways. Prior to the early 1890s, Hopis rarely, if ever, boarded trains to travel across the United States. Instead, trains brought visitors to the Hopi mesas, many of whom came,to survey the region or to see and record Hopi religious ceremonies. These visitors returned home by rail with stories about footraces that they had observed on Hopiland and published them in American newspapers and other forms ofliterature. But when the Hopi delegation departed by rail for the nation's capital, or when a group of Hopi runners and prisoners left Arizona in the same fashion for Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, they foreshadowed a new era for Hopi running in American society. The delegations, whether voluntary or forced, point to a time when government officials required the people to board locomotives for places such as the "land of oranges," a term Hopis used to refer to the many orange groves surrounding Sherman Institute, an off-reservation Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. 20 Others boarded trains to travel far east to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. 21 Although Hopi youth arrived at the schools to receive an academic and industrial education, some used the opportunity to join the school's track and cross-country teams. They signaled toward a future when school and other government officials sent Hopis by train to compete in cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York, and to when these same runners traveled by rail back to their villages as modern athletes, only to be confronted with deeply rooted cultural beliefs about running in Hopi society. In my book I rely heavily on this concept of leaving and returning to understand and tell the story of Hopis who left their villages to compete at off-reservation Indian boarding schools. In the late 1870s, US government officials began creating these schools to help assimilate Native people into American society and to teach them trades that would be useful to tribal and nontribal communities. At the schools teachers and other officials taught the students to read and write English and instructed them in several other disciplines. In addition to teaching them subjects most commonly found in American grammar schools, school officials trained female students in domestic education and provided male students with To the Fence and Back 7 opportunities to learn trades including blacksmithing, plumbing, and leatherwork. 22 "All the ordinary mechanical occupations likely to be useful in the future life of the pupils are taught at the Phoenix Indian School," wrote the Arizona · Republican. The "girls learn housekeeping, cooking, (and] sewing" while the "boys have ample chance to find their natural bent in the bakery" and in the "machine and tailor shops. "23 Although focused on academic education and industrial training, Indian schools offered students the chance to participate in several extracurricular activities including music, drama, and sports. In his book To Show What an Indian Can Do, historian John Bloom keenly observed that sports at Indian boarding schools "provided a popular image of modern Native Americans that the promoters of the Indian boarding school system used to promote their cause. "24 School officials encouraged athletic competitions to reinforce the values of team effort, competition, and the benefits of hard work. Students joined athletic teams as a result of their desire to compete, to improve their athletic skills, and to demonstrate to each other and white audiences that Indian athletes-if given the chance-could compete against white members of American society. Furthermore, sport teams increased the visibility of Indian schools and taught athletes the Western concepts of competition and what non-Native people deemed to be fair play. While Hopis participated in several sports, including basketball, football, and even boxing, their greatest success came as members of track and cross-country teams. Sports at off-reservation schools provided Native athletes opportunities that did not exist for them on their reservations. When Hopis joined cross-country teams at Sherman Institute, or the Indian school at Carlisle, they experienced for the first time different regions of the country, life in modern cities, and a new way of running footraces. And Hopis used these opportunities to learn and interact with people from other parts of the United States and the world. While competing in marathons, Hopis ran with runners from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, and although from vastly different cultures, they spoke a common-and perhaps universal-language of competitive running. 25 Having come from a society that valued long-distance running for ceremonial and practical purposes, Hopi youth transferred this cultural mindset with them when they entered these faraway schools. Hopi runners who competed at Indian schools had come from a tribe of racers. While none 8 Hopi Runners Runners at the Oraivi Footrace, Orayvi , Arizona , 2009. Photograph by author. of these athletes needed to be taught the essence of long-distance running, coaches nevertheless trained them in modern running techniques and rules to compete effectively in American track and cross-country events. The dirt trails on the reservation did not resemble the paved roads or clay tracks used in many American running competitions. And so in their first year on a school's cross-country team, Hopis learned about running in different locations, climates, and elevations. And they had to develop mental and physical strategies for running in cities, on mountain roads, or in front of thousands of cheering spectators in a stadium. When Hopis ran on trails back home, they did so in a relatively quiet and peaceful environment, far from the sounds of locomotives arriving and departing towns such as Winslow. Running on or near the mesas, Hopis became attuned with their bodies and surroundings, becoming one with their environment. They listened to their own breathing, the sound of their feet tapping the trail as they danced on Mother Earth. They felt the rhythmic pounding of their heart telling them to adjust or steady their pace. 26 And they listened to birds singing and the sound of the wind cutting through the canyons. And often they ran alone, experiencing physiTo the Fence and Back 9 cal ailments that all distance runners endure. "He was alone and running on," Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday writes of a Jemez Pueblo runner named Abel. "All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running on, and he was past caring about pain." 27 In the high desert of Arizona, Hopi runners also beheld beautiful landscapes, greeted majestic sunrises and sunsets, and had unobstructed views for miles in all directions. Running with no distractions from the outside world, Hopis ran with "good hearts," prayed silently for the well-being of their people, and sang songs to their katsina spirits to entice the rain clouds to follow them home to their villages. 28 However, the tranquil environment that encompassed the trails back home did not reflect the fast pace and at times chaotic life in large modern American cities. In Los Angeles, for example, Hopi runners had to learn to navigate through crowds of shouting spectators and endure the piercing sound of honking automobiles. Most of these automobiles lined the race path alongside the spectators, but others, accompanied by newspaper reporters, drove ahead of the runners and fumigated them with their exhaust. As one reporter for the Associated Press remarked, "life in the clean-up land of the Hopi reservation with their own people is far different from the gasoline laden sphere of the white man's out of doors. "29 For some Hopis and non-Indians who raced in Los Angeles and in other cities such as New York, the exhaust caused severe breathing problems that required them to quit. No longer running back home where the air was clean, the Hopi runners learned to endure the smell and ill effects of toxic automobile smoke and adjusted to this new way of running in modern American cities. But toxic fumes from automobiles was not the only issue Hopi runners had to contend with when they ran in American races. Most competitive runners at this time wore leather-and-rubber shoes specifically designed for distance running. 30 However, back on the reservation, the people either ran barefoot or wore moccasins made by members of their village. To compete in American events in the early rgoos, Hopis often had to replace their traditional footwear with modern running shoes. Many Hopis found them to be cumbersome and uncomfortable, and at times attributed their less-than-stellar performances to the shoes that race officials required them to wear. While some Hopi runners competed in at least one American race wearing moccasins made from the hide of a deer,31 most had to adopt the American-style shoes and adjust their strides accordingly. 32 10 Hopi Runners But as Hopi runners accepted, sometimes begrudgingly, Western forms of running in US races, newspapers and the sporting communities had to also rethink how they understood Hopis in this new American sport context. When Hopi people competed and won American running events, newspaper writers seemed surprised that the "little Hopis" had the ability to defeat top runners in the nation. In their articles, authors and their illustrators focused on the Hopi runners' short stature and quiet demeanor and wondered how the runners could perform so well in the nation's prestigious marathons. Some writers attempted to explain their running success on Hopi religious customs, forces of colonialism, and exercise they received from trekking up and down cliffs to tend to their corn and melon fields below the mesas. With little or no familiarity with Hopi history or culture, newspaper writers informed their readers on Hopi running accomplishments, explained why Hopis did so well in cross-country events, and situated Hopis in what they perceived to be their place in American society. Often accompanied with illustrations and photographs, newspaper accounts of Hopi running victories created tremendous excitement for American sport enthusiasts; and solidified-at least for the time being-Hopi running in American sport society. While sport enthusiasts praised Hopi runners for their victories, they also became disappointed in them when they lost races and fell short of their expectations. For years, newspaper and other writers had published glowing accounts on the running accomplishments of the Hopi people. At times describing the runners in mythic terms, newspapers built them up in the minds of their readers to succeed, and not to fail. But Hopis competed in hundreds of track and cross-country meets throughout the country, and won only a portion of them. Regardless of their Native identity or cultural upbringing, Hopi runners faced physical and mental handicaps that every runner experienced in the early twentieth century. They suffered fatigue, sprained ankles, sore knees, and blistered feet. Running long distances, whether,on soft or hard surfaces, took a toll on their bodies and often shortened their careers. After trotting through the hot Mojave Desert in the late 1920s, limping his way through the mountain region of northern Arizona with sprained ankles and battered knees, one acclaimed Hopi runner not only quit the race but used the occasion to exit competitive American running entirely. 33 In addition to enduring physical handicaps, those Hopi runners that To the Fence and Back n +="" competed at Indian schools suffered in other ways. Government officials established the schools to instruct youth in grammar, math, science, history, and various occupational trades. However, for students to properly learn these subjects, they needed to be present in the classroom. Students who ran for the school's cross-country and track teams devoted large amounts of time to practicing, conditioning their bodies to function at the highest levels. Early in the morning, while their schoolmates slept, the teams ran the city streets and paths of Riverside, Phoenix, and Carlisle, to name a few. Those who ran for Sherman Institute also trained on long stretches of dirt roads that ran parallel to the many orange groves in Southern California, stopping now and then to quench their thirst and replenish their energy with the sugary fruit. And after their training, while experiencing physical and mental fatigue, they sat in their classrooms and attempted to learn their daily lessons. Having once run freely up and down their mesas as young children, the Hopi youth, and even their running, had become "institutionalized," a term used by runner and writer James F. Fixx to describe the constraints imposed on running and movement when youth enter schools. 34 Then, in the late afternoon, as their peers relaxed in dorm rooms or visited with each other under the shade of a palm tree, the runners often hit the streets again, a cycle that continued for months during the school year. 35 And some accomplished Hopi runners participated in so many meets that they spent much of their time away from school, and their education and grades suffered as a result ofit. 36 But fatigue and subpar grades at Indian schools did not compare to other, more culturally problematic, issues awaiting the runners when they returned to their village communities. While a select few Hopis at Indian boarding schools received honors and notoriety for their feats of endurance, others back home remained unimpressed with their running accomplishments. 37 When Hopis returned to their villages after their boarding school days, they came home to a society with a long tradition of distance running and great runners. However, the vast majority of these runners, many of whom were much older than the student athletes, never had opportunities to compete at Indian schools, marathons, or for city athletic clubs. Since they did not attend an off-reservation school, they never demonstrated before newspaper writers their abilities in American marathons or international events. Therefore, they remained virtually unknown to those outside of the Hopi community. But people back home krn;w of these runners and regularly 12 Hopi Runners reminded the young Hopi track stars about the long tradition of running in Hopi society and culture. They reminded them that long before Hopis won medals and trophy cups in American marathons, or had their names grace the pages of American newspapers, Hopi clan runners competed against each other on and below the mesas, and when they won footraces, they received rain. 38 Furthermore, younger Hopis often came home from Indian boarding schools with a heightened sense of accomplishment and pride. Fellow pupils treated certain Hopi athletes with celebrity status at their schools, but when they returned to the reservation, their national and international fame failed to impress the older Hopi runners, who continued to run according to the Hopi way. Hopi runners at Indian schools realized that many runners remained on the reservation with "better wind and faster legs, "39 and this reality created tensions with the older Hopi runners when the proud and accomplished athletes returned home. The tensions between older and younger runners often centered on issues of identity and how Hopis understood running according to Hopi culture. At off-reservation Indian boarding schools, the cultural reason for running races at times conflicted with certain values reinforced at Indian schools. Officials at Sherman, for example, routinely told the students that the "determination to win" was the "epitome of American sport." 40 People in US society participated in sports to win, and not to bring wellness or health to their team. Historically, Hopi clan runners ran footraces as a way to express their culture as Indigenous people, to elevate their clan status, and to bring much-needed rain to their dry and arid fields. School officials believed that students' athletic achievements should stem from personal loyalty to the school, and competitive successes would in turn enhance the runners' own sense of institutional fidelity and allegiance. This understanding encouraged Hopi students to set aside their practice of running according to Hopi culture, in ' order that it might be replaced with values esteemed by American society. No longer in an environment or among a people who ran according to Hopi clanship loyalties, the Hopi runners learned to compete on behalf of the school and for their peers who cheered them to several marathon victories. 41 American understandings of sport also differed greatly from Hopi clan beliefs about long-distance running. In the early twentieth century, politicians, educators, philosophers, and others believed that sports unified the nation, strengthened the ideals of American citizenship, and demonstrated to foreign nations the superiority of US culture and democracy. To the Fence and Back 13 Sport historian Mark Dyreson noted that during the early twentieth century, figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, A. G. Spalding, and Price Collier believed that sport would "restore civic virtue," promote an understanding of "fair play," dictate "American economic and social relations," and "serve as a crucial institution for creating a twentieth-century American republic. "42 While the ideals of nationalism greatly influenced sport competition at the turn of the century, not every athlete competed in sports to strengthen and promote the American republic. Ralph C. Wilcox once remarked that some Irish immigrants competed in US sports to foster pride in the "Land of Erin" and to "ensure that their fellow countryman's Irish roots were never forgotten." 43 Marathon historian Pamela Cooper noted that "immigrant groups" participated in sports as an "expression of ethnic cohesion." Cooper observed that immigrant runners "ran as representatives" and that the "success of a single runner was all that was necessary to enhance the honor of an entire group. "44 While Hopis and other Indians have never considered themselves to be immigrants in North America, Native athletes shared similar understandings ofrepresentation and community with Irish, German, and other immigrant runners. Although individuals such as Roosevelt, Spalding, and Collier emphasized the role sport had in the furtherance of American nationalism, others focused on the power of sport to transform into better individuals. 45 At this time, many Americans still considered Hopi adults and other Indians to be dirty, lazy, and to have the mental capacity of children. 46 But in their participation in athletics, even Indians could be lifted to a higher moral and virtuous state. "Take a class of boys and give them proper instruction in cross-country running," Coach Lewis of Sherman Institute once remarked, and it "will develop [them] into good strong youths" and "will do more for the temperance cause and to do away with cigarettes than anything else that I know of. "47 In addition to running for sport programs at Indian schools, some Hopi runners also ran for teams under the auspices of city athletic clubs and competed alongside people from many nationalities. Prior to 1900, sport enthusiasts strategically developed athletic clubs in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia. 48 Although colleges and off-reservation Indian schools created their own sport programs, athletic clubs in American cities influenced sport in US society in significant ways. "Nearly all contemporary sports evolved, or were invented, in the city," sport historian Steven A. Riess observed, for the "city was the place where 14 Hopi Runners sport became rationalized, specialized, organized, commercialized, and professionalized." 49 City athletic clubs competed against each other and emphasized fair play and gentlemanly conduct. 5°For the Hopi runners, representing athletic clubs in large cities also gave them opportunities to race against top runners and to compete in more meets. It also provided them with financial backing needed for their race entry fees and other expenses. While Hopis ran beyond the mesas for various reasons, school administrators, government officials, sport promoters, and a host of other individuals had their own agendas for Hopis to compete and succeed in national and international competitions. School superintendents and coaches saw the success of Hopi runners as a way to bring recognition to their schools and athletic programs. City officials saw Hopi running success as a way to promote their towns and attract business to their cities. Government bureaucrats used Hopi runners to bolster pride in America and to demonstrate to the world the superiority of American culture and society. Race promoters and other organizers viewed Hopi running success as an opportunity to earn money and to advance their personal and financial interests. And newspapers published thousands of articles on the accomplishments of Hopi and other Indian runners to increase their sales and to heighten interest in sporting news throughout America. 51 This book examines Hopi runners who left their villages in the early 1900s to compete in cities across the United States. It examines the ways Hopi marathon runners navigated between tribal dynamics, school loyalties, and a country that closely associated sport with US nationalism. It calls attention to Hopi philosophies of running that connected the runners to their village communities, and to the internal and external forces that supported and strained these cultural ties when Hopis competed in US marathons. This work pushes the notion that between 1908 and 1936, the cultural identity of Hopi runners challenged white American perceptions of Natives and modernity and placed them in a context that had national and international dimensions. This broad perspective linked Hopi runners to athletes from around the world, including runners from Japan and Ireland, and caused non-Natives to reevaluate their understanding of sport, nationhood, and the cultures oflndigenous people. Over the years, scholars and other writers have published modest amounts of material on Hopi runners. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, anthropologists such as Alexander M. Stephen and Jesse Walter To the Fence and Back 15 Fewkes made several trips to Hopiland to study certain aspects of Hopi life, including running. In his two-volume ethnography Hopi Journal, Stephen provided brief observations on the religious significance of Hopi kickball races and offered short commentary on Hopi clan runners. 52 Around the same time, Fewkes published his essay "The Wa-Wac-KaTci-Na, a Tusayan Foot Race" on competitions between Hopi clan runners and Hopi katsinas and clowns. 53 These and other anthropological expeditions to Hopi paved the way for other scholars and academics to conduct research on the mesas, including a Ukrainian anthropologist named Mischa Titiev, who published an essay on Hopi clan runners at Orayvi. 54 "The Hopi believe," Titiev wrote in this essay, "that the faster a man runs, the faster the clouds will come. "55 For the next several years, written accounts of Hopi running mostly appeared in newspapers, children's books, or in venues intended for public audiences. 56 In the early 1980s, however, Peter Nabokov, then a graduate student in anthropology, rekindled scholarly interest in Native and Hopi runners by publishing a comprehensive account of Indigenous runners entitled Indian Running. 57 In this study, Nabokov wrote at length about Hopi runners of the past and present. He was the first scholar to situate Hopi running within a contemporary American sport society. 58 Eight years after Nabokov released Indian Running, Dick and Mary Lutz published a nonscholarly but well-cited account of Tarahumara Indian people of northern Mexico and dedicated an entire chapter to their running legacy and abilities. Written for the general public, The Running Indians provides an intimate glimpse into the lives of the Tarahumara based on two trips the authors took to Copper Canyon in Mexico to live among the people. 59 While much of what authors wrote in the 1980s and 1990s centered on the running traditions of tribes, journalists and other writers soon began publishing biographical works on individual Native runners. In 2006, musician and amateur historian Michael Ward published a biography on Narragansett runner Ellison "Tarzan" Brown, who is perhaps best known for twice winning the Boston Marathon and for competing in the Olympic Games in Germany in 1936. 60 The following year, historian Brian S. Collier wrote a remarkable account of Steve Gachupin, a Jemez Pueblo runner who amazed America's running community for his six consecutive victories of the Pike's Peak Marathon in Colorado during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Basing much of his essay on oral interviews that he conducted with Gachupin, newspaper accounts, and works by Pueblo and 16 Hopi Runners non-Indian scholars, Collier highlights the cultural significance of running for the Jemez runner and his village community. 61 At the same time that Collier published on Gachupin, an editor for the Colorado History Now newsletter named Ben Fogelberg published a brief article on Hopi runner Saul Halyve ofMusangnuvi (Mischongovi) and his short-lived success competing at the Teller Institute in Grand Junction, Colorado. 62 And although not writing on a specific runner, Christopher McDougall, an avid distance runner himself, two years later published a highly popular book entitled Born to Run wherein he explores Tarahumara running by focusing on the people's health, cultural beliefs, and environment. 63 , Building upon this rich body ofliterature, I place Hopi long-distance runners within a larger American sport context. I seek to accomplish what Dyreson did with his wonderful article "The Foot Runners Conquer Mexico and Texas." In it he situated Tarahumara runners within international dimensions, challenged notions of their Indigenous identities in the print media, and demonstrated their influence on people's understandings of Mexican nationalism. 64 While I situate Hopi running within a broad American sport context, I do not offer a comprehensive account on the topic. Instead, I provide a window for one to see a particular time in American history when Hopis competed simultaneously for their tribal communities, Indian schools, the nation, and even for themselves. Much has yet to be researched or written on Hopi runners, especially works on contemporary runners, and the many runners who are lesser known outside of the community and who have received little to no attention. 65 I am, of course, also reminded of this whenever I speak to other Hopi individuals about this topic: "Oh, have you heard of [so and so]?" they ask me; "he was a great runner." Although it has been some time since I ran laps around Crystal Lake Park with Victor, his comment "to the fence and back" still resonates with me as a Hopi person. It helps me understand my people's history as a continuous cycle ofleaving and returning, of going away and coming back. It causes me to consider the ancient ones who ran to sacred sites far beyond Hopi ancestral lands to entice the rain clouds to follow them back to their mesas. 66 And it reminds me of messenger runners who used a network of trails to deliver information to other Hopi village~ and to people in faraway lands. Hopi clan and messenger runners of the past foreshadowed a new era in Hopi society when the people left their villages to visit American cities and returned to tell about what they experienced and saw on To the Fence and Back 17 their journeys. And it points to a time when Hopi youth and older adults continued the cycle ofleaving and returning when they departed on trains for off-reservation Indian boarding schools, competed on cross-country teams, ran for race promoters or city athletic clubs, and then migrated back to their villages as modern Hopi athletes. They are for the blessings of the cloud people, for the rain, for the harvest, so we have a good life, a long life. That's what these ceremonial runners do. They bring this positiveness to the people. -Leigh]. Kuwanwisiwma, Village of Paaqavi r8 Hopi Runners water Article Engaging Southwestern Tribes in Sustainable Water Resources Topics and Management Karletta Chief 1, *, Alison Meadow 2 and Kyle Whyte 3 1 2 3 * Department of Soil, Water, and Environmental Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA Center for Climate Adapation and Science Solutions, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA; [email protected] Department of Philosophy and Department of Community Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1032, USA; [email protected] Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +1-520-626-5598 Academic Editors: Eylon Shamir, Sharon B. Megdal and Susanna Eden Received: 5 April 2016; Accepted: 13 July 2016; Published: 18 August 2016 Abstract: Indigenous peoples in North America have a long history of understanding their societies as having an intimate relationship with their physical environments. Their cultures, traditions, and identities are based on the ecosystems and sacred places that shape their world. Their respect for their ancestors and ‘Mother Earth’ speaks of unique value and knowledge systems different than the value and knowledge systems of the dominant United States settler society. The value and knowledge systems of each indigenous and non-indigenous community are different but collide when water resources are endangered. One of the challenges that face indigenous people regarding the management of water relates to their opposition to the commodification of water for availability to select individuals. External researchers seeking to work with indigenous peoples on water research or management must learn how to design research or water management projects that respect indigenous cultural contexts, histories of interactions with settler governments and researchers, and the current socio-economic and political situations in which indigenous peoples are embedded. They should pay particular attention to the process of collaborating on water resource topics and management with and among indigenous communities while integrating Western and indigenous sciences in ways that are beneficial to both knowledge systems. The objectives of this paper are to (1) to provide an overview of the context of current indigenous water management issues, especially for the U.S. federally recognized tribes in the Southwestern United States; (2) to synthesize approaches to engage indigenous persons, communities, and governments on water resources topics and management; and (3) to compare the successes of engaging Southwestern tribes in five examples to highlight some significant activities for collaborating with tribes on water resources research and management. In discussing the engagement approaches of these five selected cases, we considered the four “simple rules” of tribal research, which are to ask about ethics, do more listening, follow tribal research protocols, and give back to the community. For the five select cases of collaboration involving Southwestern tribes, the success of external researchers with the tribes involved comprehensive engagement of diverse tribal audience from grassroots level to central tribal government, tribal oversight, on-going dialogue, transparency of data, and reporting back. There is a strong recognition of the importance of engaging tribal participants in water management discussions particularly with pressing impacts of drought, climate change, and mining and defining water rights. Keywords: indigenous; tribes; Native Americans; stakeholder engagement Water 2016, 8, 350; doi:10.3390/w8080350 www.mdpi.com/journal/water Water 2016, 8, 350 2 of 21 1. Introduction Indigenous people often understand themselves as having an intimate relationship to the environment and cosmos in which they consider every element and species to have life and to be sacred. Some indigenous people believe that human and nonhuman individuals come from the earth and the ability to reach harmony among individuals is dependent on being a steward of the natural environment by giving back more than what is taken. To many indigenous people, water is life and water is sacred. Water is part of religious and cultural practices for purification, prayers, and various ceremonies. Water is also part of indigenous identities and origin stories; for a Diné-specific example, Diné deities include “Born-for-water” and Diné clans include “Big-water”, “Near-the-water” and many other water-based clans. To indigenous people, the use of water is integrated with respect for the water as a living entity that gives life and supports the health, integrity, and character of an individual. Similar relations exist across North America. For Anishinaabe people (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, among others), the value of water arises from the creation story in which water is considered to play the role of a source and supporter of life. Water mediates interactions among many living beings on the earth and is considered a relative with responsibilities to give and support life. Bodies of water are considered to have their own unique personalities. Humans have special responsibilities to respect and care for water and to encourage its life-giving force. Ceremonies are organized to ensure people renew their connections to water [1,2]. The sacredness of water represents a cross-cutting way Southwestern tribes approach their relationship to the environment. One hundred and eighty-two federally recognized tribes have tribal lands in the six states of the Southwestern United States: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California. Tribal land holdings range from small rancherias, colonies, and reservations, such as the 20-acre reservation of the Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians in California to the 27,413 square-mile reservation of the Navajo Nation located across Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Tribal lands are in rural and urban areas, for example, the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Reservation lies within the rural Nevada-Oregon high deserts and the Las Vegas Tribe of Paiute Indians of the Las Vegas Indian Colony is located in the heart of the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Tribal economies vary widely including ranching, agriculture, mining, gaming, tourism, retail, and various other industries. Tribal lands span diverse ecosystems and climatic regions with highly varied precipitation and temperature patterns from arid deserts to fertile valleys as well as coastal and mountainous terrains. The Southwest is home to seven of the largest tribes and five of the largest Indian reservations. Many cities in the Southwest have large and diverse tribal communities that have organized centers and other institutions that provide health and other services, legal advocacy, and support of cultural continuance. California has the largest percentage of citizens (14%) who identify as American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination with another race (followed by Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, and New York) and 33% of the state of Arizona is tribal land. Tribes in the Southwest are diverse in their languages, traditions, beliefs, and geographic settings. The legal, political, and cultural frameworks surrounding water in the U.S., which often treat water as a commodity that can be transferred and sold , can cause dissonance and challenges for indigenous communities who wish to assert their legal and political rights to water through their own cultural frameworks that treat water as sacred. There are at least four overarching challenges that face tribes regarding this dissonance, some of which are issues primarily for U.S. federally recognized tribes and others that are concerns for indigenous peoples more broadly. First, water laws governing the Western U.S. are based upon the concept of prior appropriation, or “first in time, first in right” and give priority to those water users presumed to have first put the water to beneficial use [5,6]. One specific barrier created by the idea of prior appropriation is that only federally recognized tribes are given this Westernized right. For tribes that have occupied ancestral lands for thousands of years through complex cultural and political systems, which often emphasize kin, clan, and spiritual relationships, the concept of divvying up waters to tribal governments or to individual persons, settler or indigenous, is difficult to accept. Moreover, recognition of water rights for cultural and ceremonial practices Water 2016, 8, 350 3 of 21 is not always considered or part of the legal processes of water quantification. Secondly, water contamination can mean two very different things to indigenous and non-indigenous communities. When water is contaminated, the contamination can be emotionally devastating and traumatic for indigenous peoples, particularly when the water is connected to sacred sites, religious concepts, and subsistence activities [9–13]. Third, partly as a result of the legal and political challenges discussed above, indigenous communities have often been excluded from negotiations and discussions about water management practices. Often, indigenous people are not at the table when water management decisions are made and data are not available in transparent or accessible ways [14,15]. Finally, the fourth overarching challenge—which certainly is influenced by and influences the other three—is that traditional knowledge(s) (TK) related to the management of water have often not been given equal standing or respect in U.S., Canadian, and other Western water management frameworks [14,15]. Traditional knowledge is local knowledge which have been gathered and refined over hundreds of years, passed down from generation to generation through particular cultural, economic, and spiritual practices and is part of the fabric of indigenous communities. Traditional knowledges can be used to structure and guide scientific research, corroborate environmental data collected using instruments, and offer options for resilient management practices for indigenous people [17,18]. In order to effectively engage tribes in water management topics, it is important to recognize these challenges and ways to address these challenges using culturally appropriate and tribal specific engagement. The objectives of this paper are (1) to provide an overview of the context of current tribal water management issues, especially for U.S. federally recognized tribes in the Southwestern United States; (2) to synthesize approaches to engage tribal individuals, communities, and governments on water resources topics and management; and (3) to compare the success of engaging Southwestern tribes in five examples to highlight some significant activities for collaborating with tribes on water resources research and management. 2. Context of Tribal Water Resources Management Issues 2.1. Indigenous Governance and Sovereignty The legal, political, and historical frameworks that govern tribes within the U.S. strongly influence the ways in which tribal water rights are allocated and the ways in which water is and can be managed by tribes. In the following section, we outline the key principles of federal Indian law and tribal water rights, especially ones that are relevant to U.S. federally recognized Southwestern tribes. In the United States, there are 567 federally recognized tribes and at least 34 state recognized tribes. The former are sovereign nations in the eyes of the U.S. who maintain government-to-government relationships with the U.S. government. Tribal sovereignty refers to the principle of self-governance; in the context of federal-tribal relations it means that any rights not explicitly ceded through treaty making are assumed to remain under tribal control—such as rights to water, natural resources, and internal self-governance. However, that sovereignty is limited because tribes now exist within the borders of the U.S. and there are limits on tribal capacity to regulate non-tribal members living in their jurisdictions. Tribes are legally described as “domestic dependent nations,” in a guardian-ward relationship with the federal government. The domestic dependent nation status has led to the concept of the trust doctrine, which requires the federal government to act in the best interests of tribes. It is important to note that, while legal principles hold that tribes are on equal footing with the federal government and the government must support their best interests, neither the government-to-government relationship or the trust doctrine have been consistently applied throughout the history of federal-tribal relationships. Although the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is assigned to enact this trust responsibility and oversee tribal assets, the BIA acting on behalf of federally recognized tribes has mismanaged programs, lands, and natural resources, and often failed to act according to the best interest of tribes [20–23]. In recent decades, progress has been made in terms of tribal control of tribal resources, such as the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Water 2016, 8, 350 4 of 21 Education Assistance Act and subsequent amendments (known informally as “638 contracts”) which allow tribes to contract with the federal government to operate programs serving their tribal members and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, which can support natural resource management with gaming revenue. As inherently sovereign nations, federally recognized tribes technically have the right, in the eyes of the U.S. federal government, to determine their own governing structures. Some tribes have maintained their traditional governments while other tribes have democratic Westernized tribal governments institutionalized by the U.S. government through the 1934 Indian Reorganization (Wheeler-Howard) Act. For example, the Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico maintains a traditional form of government, where the chief spiritual leader appoints the War Chief and Lieutenant War Chief, who are responsible for over-seeing and preserving the cultural and ceremonial calendar and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, who carry out governmental affairs. On the other hand, the Ho-chunk Nation has a democratic election where candidates vying for President are elected based on popular vote. Tribes’ abilities to control and manage natural resources are also affected by the ways in which land is held in their regions. Although reservation lands are controlled by tribal governments (and held in trust by the federal government), due to legislation such as the 1887 Dawes Act , some tribal lands have been allotted to individual owners, making them fee-simple lands controlled by individuals, not tribal governments. In some cases, reservations are “checkerboarded” with some tracts owned by tribal members or non-tribal members and others still under the control of tribal governments—making comprehensive natural resource management all the more challenging [26,27]. This is the case for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma where the tribal nation must manage their resources where there is significant non-tribal activity. It is also the case that within federally recognized, state recognized and unrecognized tribes, groups of tribal members continue their own “grassroots” water stewardship or management systems that are not recognized by any U.S. federal or state entity as self-determining entities. This initial use of the word “grassroots” is in quotes because sometimes these groups are exercising stewardship or management systems based on traditional knowledge that predates the U.S. or the era of federally recognized tribal governments. These groups, whether operating within federally recognized or unrecognized tribes, face the jurisdictional and governance challenges of not being respected as caretakers. 2.2. Tribal Water Rights Federally recognized tribes have federally reserved water rights with a priority associated with the date their reservation was created. These rights were codified in the 1908 Winter’s Doctrine. Specifically, a tribe has rights to sufficient water to fulfill the purposes of its reservation, as defined by the U.S. government, such as agricultural production, and could not be lost due to non-use. The McCarran Amendment waived federal sovereign immunity in state water adjudications and allowed states to quantify federal reserved water rights including tribal reserved water rights in basin-wide adjudication, in which the courts assess and catalogue water rights contested in court. Tribes can also pursue negotiated water settlements bringing federal and non-tribal and tribal water users to the table to negotiate water rights. In 1983, in Arizona v. California, tribal water rights were associated with the practicable irrigable acreage (PIA) policy, in which tribal water rights are quantified based on the amount of water needed to irrigate irrigable lands on the reservation [31,32]. PIA places limits on tribes insofar as only allocating water for agriculture, even though in some cases, tribes are not agriculturally based or not in a climate that necessarily supports agriculture on a large scale. In 2001, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that PIA is not the only standard for determining water allocations. In Adjudication of All Rights to Use Water in the Gila River System and Source, the Court added the “homeland standard” for calculating the amount of water a tribe is entitled to, in recognition of the rights of tribal members to adequate water to live on reservations and not just for farming. Water 2016, 8, 350 5 of 21 Tribes have been advocating for cultural uses through beneficial uses and water for the environment such as leveraging in-stream flow rights, minimum flow requirements, and Endangered Species Act. Rancier analyzed 27 tribal water rights settlements and concluded that negotiated water rights allowed more flexibility to meet the needs of parties particularly for cultural water uses. Rancier compared two tribal water settlements, The Snake River Water Rights Settlement (“Nez Perce Water Rights Settlements”) and Truckee-Carson Pyramid Lake Water Rights Settlement Act and the Preliminary Settlement Agreement (“The Pyramid Lake Settlement”) using a 28 point criteria to determine the success, strength, and weaknesses of the settlements [8,34]. Both of these tribes rely on fisheries for subsistence and cultural purposes and their settlements supported tribal fisheries listed under the Endangered Species Act. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (PLPT) used the Endangered Species Act to prevent further reduction of instream flows in the Truckee River System where overuse by agricultural activities resulted in fish floundering in a dry stream bed [8,34,35]. Two other water settlements, the Taos Pueblo Indian Water Rights Settlement and Agreement and the Zuni Indian Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act of 2003 and Agreement included significant provisions for cultural wetland restoration addressing groundwater and surface water use. For the Taos Pueblo Indian Water Rights Settlement, limits on groundwater withdrawals were set to limit impacts to tribal cultural and religious wetlands. For the Zuni Indian Tribe Water Rights Settlement, 5500 AFY of unappropriated flows were authorized to restore cultural and religious wetland Kolhu/wala:wa and Sacred Lake Hadin Kyaya with a 1984 priority date. Tribes have used other environmental protection legislations to advocate for the protection of their waters from overuse and contamination. These include the Clean Water Act, treaty rights, Endangered Species Act, as well as the ability of tribes to attain Water Quality Treatment as a State securing their authority to regulate water quality on their tribal lands. 3. Examples of Tribal Water Resources Challenges A range of water resources challenges face tribes today. This section gives examples of water challenges facing tribes in the Southwestern United States. The first is the process of defining tribal water rights. The second is lack of access to water. The third is the effects of excessive use of water impacting water quantities on the reservation. The fourth is water contamination from mining, industrial, and agricultural activities. Finally, climate change and drought will amplify these existing water challenges. The process of defining water rights can be locked in decades of litigation, adjudication, or negotiation due to the number of water users in the watershed and the legal complexities in court. If litigation is pursued, the tribe is typically the sole bearer of financial burden. In addition, the final rulings can have repercussions on other tribes in their water rights litigation. Even if a tribe wins the water right on paper, which is called a ‘paper water right,’ the tribe may not necessarily have the financial capital to extract and deliver their water. This is the case in the Wind River Reservation where litigation resulted in water rights strictly for agricultural purposes and not for beneficial use, such as instream flows administered by the State Engineer. Since the United States is trustee of federally recognized tribes, they are a party in tribal water rights cases, however, the U.S. may also potentially represent other competing interests such as that of federal agencies. Representing two parties in a case is normally a conflict of interest but current U.S. laws allows the U.S. to represent competing interests and thus are not held to the same standard as private fiduciary in tribal water rights cases. In sum, the U.S. Department of Justice may litigate on behalf of the tribe as an active partner or may play a passive role as a trustee for a federally recognized tribe. Even if a water settlement is negotiated, it may receive opposition from the tribal community or grassroots because of discontent in the negotiated allocation such as in the Senate Bill 2109: Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Act of 2012. In the final step, this settlement needed Congressional approval and Senator Jon Kyle (R-AZ, 1995–2012) introduced the settlement before Congress to garner support. In his opening remarks, Senator Kyle said, “Legally, the Navajo Nation and Hopi tribe may assert claims to larger quantities of water [than are outlined in the Water 2016, 8, 350 6 of 21 settlement] but they do not have the means to make use of those supplies in a safe and productive manner.” This created uproar from the Navajo grassroots community because his statements implied the lack of the Navajo Nation’s ability and resourcefulness to use the water. Yazzie identified this approach as a model of minimization of water rights not quantification. In addition, grassroots communities were not involved in the negotiation at the community level as these negotiations were held behind closed doors. This widespread disapproval from both the Navajo and Hopi grassroots halted approval of the water settlement. The second challenge is access to water. Approximately 9% of Native American homes in the United States lack safe and adequate water supplies and lack access to waste disposal facilities in comparison to 1% of U.S. homes. Not only does this have implications for quality of health and life for tribal members, but it also dampens the economic growth on tribal lands subsequently impacting quality of life in terms of available jobs and infrastructure. In addition, some tribes may not be able to use groundwater sources due to lack of quality. For example on the Navajo Nation, in the southwestern portion of the reservation, groundwater is highly saline and can contain heavy metals, making it unsuitable for drinking or livestock purposes. The third challenge is excessive water use and diversion impacting tribes. For the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, excessive diversion at Derby Dam for agricultural use blocked access to upriver spawning grounds for fish and during a drought left dying fish for two miles downstream of the dam. Since the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe is located at the terminal end of the river system, they are subject not only to excessive use but also by non-point pollution into the river by municipal, industrial, and agricultural practices. Another similar example is the Pueblo of Zia located 35 miles northwest of Albuquerque, NM near the confluence of the Jemez River and Rio Grande who are facing upstream impacts including recreational activity, agricultural diversion, and encroachment of the large cities of Rio Rancho and Albuquerque. The Pueblo of Zia encourages sustainability, self-sufficiency, and subsistence activities. Today, most of the tribal members hunt, gather, cultivate food crops, and raise livestock and Zia’s economy is based on agriculture which is intertwined with their religion, government, social organizations, and livelihoods. The fourth challenge is off-reservation and on-reservation contamination of water by mining, industrial, and agricultural uses. Regulating and minimizing impacts can be difficult when there are many non-tribal users who may be hard to identify until it is too late, such as in the case of abandoned mines. For the Laguna Pueblo, the abandoned Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine covers almost 8000 acres east of the village of Paguate and acid mine drainage leaks into the arroyos and streams flowing into the Rio Paguate and Rio Moquino, both of which are upstream of the village. In southern Arizona, thousands of gold and copper prospector abandoned mines exist that create both physical hazards and pools of acid mine drainage. Finally, hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines exist in Colorado upstream of the Mountain Ute, Southern Ute, and the Navajo Nation. Recently, on 5 August 2015, the Gold King Mine Spill, spilled three million gallons of acid mine drainage into the Animas and San Juan Rivers, which the tribes depend on [10,41]. Finally, short-term drought and climate change, which has impacts on natural systems affecting indigenous peoples everywhere, strains sometimes already stressed water infrastructure that may be lacking, inadequate, or poorly maintained. This increases the vulnerability of tribes to flooding, drought, and water-borne diseases. Existing infrastructure can be damaged due to changes in water quality, water resources, and land subsidence. A flood on the Fond du Lac Reservation in 2012 resulted in extensive crop loss of wild rice, which is a sacred food of great importance for many of the Midwestern tribes. On the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota, silt and sludge closed a water supply intake pile when a 2003 drought caused water levels to drop to very low levels. In Alaska Native villages, beavers which can carry giardia are moving father and father north and are in northern rivers of Alaska which have not been occupied since the last ice age. In light of these examples of the experience of diverse tribes, climate change and drought will likely amplify existing water challenges that face tribes in the Southwest today. Water 2016, 8, 350 7 of 21 4. Collaborative and Participatory Approaches to Research and Resource Management 4.1. Tribal Sovereignty and Research Practices The principles embedded in federal Indian law and policy (discussed above) also govern the ways in which research is conducted by and with tribes. As outlined above, the federal government has a set of legal principles that govern its relationships with tribes and its responsibility to act in the best interest of tribes. The rights of inherent sovereignty retained by tribes dictate that researchers and other professionals seeking to work with tribes adhere to the standards set by tribal governments. As sovereign nations, tribes have the authority to control when, where, how, and whether research is conducted on their lands or among their citizens. Unfortunately, this right was not always recognized or respected. Prior to the resurgence of tribal sovereignty in the area of research, researchers often felt they had “the authority of the federal bureaucracy... behind them... [R]esearchers could set their own agenda and do as they pleased without having to consult with or defer to tribal polities. Research has always been deeply implicated in the colonial political context”. This lack of oversight often led to abuse, misrepresentation, and exploitation of Native peoples by researchers [44–47]. Since the mid-1990s, a growing number of tribes have established their own research protocols and review boards [44,47,48]. While each tribe’s regulations vary, some general principles are evident across the protocols. First, researchers must gain permission to conduct the research on tribal lands or with tribal members. This process may start with speaking with tribal elected officials who have the authority to approve research and/or applying to the tribal research office for a research permit. During the process of gaining permission, researchers should have open discussions with the approving body about data ownership, use, and sharing. Some tribes consider all data collected on their lands to be their property and do not allow it to be shared with the general public (often a requirement of federal research grants). Researchers should be clear about the extent to which they can publish or share data from their proposed research and whether additional permissions or review might be required prior to publication. Some tribes may simply request that the original data be archived with them for use and access by tribal members. In addition to any tribal government oversight, researchers must have any research involving people reviewed by their Institutional Review Board (IRB) to ensure that it complies with federal regulations regarding human subjects research (i.e., The Common Rule, 45 CFR 46). However, a critique of the standards set by The Common Rule governing human subjects research is that it focuses too much on individual rights and protections and does not explicitly cover the concerns of tribal communities regarding, for example, protection of local or traditional knowledge. There are also questions of whether the research will benefit tribal members who invest their time in the research process. To strengthen IRB processes to increase protection for tribes, some institutions, such as The University of Arizona, review all research proposed in or with tribal communities to ensure compliance with tribal protocols [44,48]. While these official review processes are fundamental to conducting ethical research with tribes, they are often just the first step in ensuring that tribal interests, needs, and knowledge are fully respected and braided into research and outcomes. It is important for researchers to take the time to learn the cultural context and sensitivities of the information being collected, such as how and when certain knowledge can be transmitted; the cultural significance of particular resources (see discussion above of water as a cultural resource), which imbues discussions with greater significance than the researcher may be aware of; and any prohibitions or proscriptions against discussing certain topics. It can sometimes be the case that certain communities within some tribal nations that are keepers of certain forms of knowledge may have their own expected protocols for researchers to respect that are stronger than those of their tribal governments. Given, as discussed earlier, that many tribal governments today do not correspond to the traditional governments, researchers should do the work to ensure they are paying respect to the overall research situation within a tribe, considering both the tribal government and the community [16,50]. Though in no circumstances should the complexity of Water 2016, 8, 350 8 of 21 tribes be used to play different governmental authorities and constituencies against one another or to serve as an excuse for avoiding formal tribal IRB processes or the formal involvement of tribal council. Lastly, researchers need to consider that certain members of tribes, especially elders or culture-bearers, are being constantly burdened with requests to work with researchers. These members often do not receive benefits from participation in research projects that are comparable to what the researchers gain in relation to their own careers and aspirations. Scientists have a moral responsibility to respect indigenous knowledge systems as more than sources of data. Many indigenous peoples see themselves as sensitive to social, cultural, and political dimensions of knowledge systems that scientists have forgotten to pay attention to in relation to their own knowledge systems. Scientists may assume that it is normal to view plants, animals, elements (e.g., water) and ecosystems as mere resources with no cultural or spiritual value. Yet many indigenous peoples see “water as a resource” as just one possible kind of relationship on which a knowledge system could be based. Many indigenous knowledge systems produce empirically valid claims using approaches to plants, animals, elements, and ecosystems as kin or clan relatives, who have agencies, spiritualities and personalities of their own [51–53]. Hypothetically, a researcher who treats water as a mere resource could accidentally insult or disrespect tribes or imply forms of handling or using water in research that are inappropriate. Thus, scientists should take pains to ensure that they do not privilege often unseen assumptions within their own knowledge systems that could lead them to sour their relationships with tribal collaborators. External researchers and scientists are often not accustomed to or comfortable with the ways in which indigenous persons describe indigenous knowledge systems. For example, Native Americans often describe knowledge as knowledge in experience that is carried and embodied [52,53]. This is called ‘lived knowledge’ where knowledge cannot be separated from human experience and action. Burkhart gives an example of the Seneca people who planted corn, beans, and squash together because of traditional ceremonies and cultural stories about Three Sisters that told that planting these together would feed the people. This relationship is an illustration of the nitrogen cycle and nitrogen replenishment keeping the soil productive and fertile. Indigenous knowledge is based on patient observation and contemplation. Though just because indigenous persons describe their knowledge systems in this way, it should not be presupposed that this means that indigenous persons cannot understand and connect their knowledges to the approaches to knowledge assumed by others. Understanding the differences between approaches to knowledge, even if just at the heuristic level, will arguably help researchers be better prepared to work with tribes and to have appropriate cultural sensitivities. Tribal knowledge systems also involve different social institutions and relationships to politics than scientific knowledge systems do. As fields such as science studies and the philosophy of science have pointed out, any knowledge system works through social institutions, from political authorities to sources of support (e.g., funding), that set research priorities, assign powers and privileges to certain members or groups, create rituals and rites of passage, and so on. External researchers are often unaccustomed to seeing themselves as embedded within social institutions given their personal interest and passion in the pursuit of knowledge. Yet they are nonetheless embedded in social institutions that differ from those of tribal knowledge systems, creating the possibility for mismatch. For example, knowledge taken to be public by scientists may be tribal knowledge that should only be appropriately expressed in a certain ceremony. Another example is tribal knowledge about the location of a medicinal plant may not create political problems for scientists but it may for members of a particular tribe who could stand to lose access to harvesting those plants if their location is made public. Climate and Traditional Knowledges Workgroup (CTKW) calls this the “governance value” of knowledge, which scientists often times do not pay attention to with their own knowledge systems [16,50,55]. While tribal members often are open about the relationship of their knowledge systems with beliefs in the spirituality of nonhumans or the inherent ties between knowledge and social institutions and political agendas, scientists are often not comfortable with this. Scientists Water 2016, 8, 350 9 of 21 should approach collaborations with tribes initially more as diplomats than as fellow inquirers, given these differences. Lomawaima summarizes the legal and political standards of research as well as the cultural and ethical requirements when working with tribes, into four “simple rules”: (1) ask about the ethics of conducting research in each particular community; (2) do more listening than talking; (3) find and follow any and all tribal research rules or protocols; and (4) give something back to the community in exchange for their cooperation with your research. Others have emphasized, in relation to these rules, that researchers do have to respect and follow tribal research protocols that emerge from cosmological frameworks for approaching the world that are very different from science [51,52,55]. Moreover, researchers should endeavor to consider their roles within larger U.S. settler colonial structures as professionals working for powerful universities, scientific organizations and agencies. Instead of understanding their research ethics as simply a matter of getting information from tribes without harming anybody; they can instead try to determine how their research will ultimately support the sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and well-being of tribal members, communities, and nations. Given that this article addresses primarily external researchers who seek to work with tribes, we did not include decolonizing methodologies as part of the initial approaches, but seek to discuss it here given its overall importance for how external researchers approach tribes. Decolonizing methodologies, or indigenous research methodologies, emphasize an orientation to research that reconfigures how researchers relate to indigenous communities. For research to truly be beneficial, the research design itself has to emerge from indigenous conceptions, cosmologies, and frameworks for empirical inquiry. Decolonizing methodologies calls for indigenous peoples to develop their own research institutions for gaining and protecting knowledge that supports their sovereignty and the well-being of their community members. While this literature focuses on the development of indigenous research, it has an important implication for researchers from universities and other institutions outside of tribes. External researchers, through their research, need to support the development of both tribal capacities to produce their own research, on tribes’ own terms, and also ensure that their own research institutions are organized as best as possible to match up with tribal institutions, such as the development of indigenous research institutions within U.S. colleges, universities, and research institutions. Indigenous research methodologies seeks to empower indigenous persons to take on the role of researcher in ways that respect the cultural protocols, use the assumptions of empirical validity, and advance political agendas of their communities and indigenous nations; they seek to pose direct, critical questions to non-indigenous researchers about what it would really mean to decolonize the relationship between powerful universities, scientific organizations, and agencies that often sponsor research with tribes. 4.2. Collaborative Approaches to Natural Resource Management Not only is a more collaborative approach to research with tribes good ethical and legal practice, it can also be a more effective way to make natural resource management decisions, including those about water. Research on collaborative, or participatory, research processes involving scientists, stakeholders, and policy or decision makers has shown that participants tend to trust scientific information more and are more likely to use it to inform decisions when they collaborated in the process of developing the knowledge [58,59]. However, we know from research like Beierle , Nadasdy , Rowe and Frewer , Stern and Fireberg , and Ford et al. , among others, that not all collaborative processes are equal. The ways in which scientists engage with other parties—the processes they use—matters to the outcomes. We identified five approaches to engaging tribes on water and other natural resource management issues, including (1) Tribal Participatory Research (TPR); (2) Boundary Work; (3) Adaptive Water Governance; (4) Community Based Adaptation (CBA); and (5) Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (IEK) Engagement Structures (Table 1). Most of the approaches meet Lomawaima’s four simple rules of tribal research to various degrees. Water 2016, 8, 350 10 of 21 Particular attention should be paid to the process of collaborating on resource management research and policy decisions with and among indigenous communities. Fisher and Ball propose an approach they call tribal participatory research (TPR), which is based on participatory action research (PAR), which emphasizes inclusion of community members throughout the research process. TPR is a synthesized model created to address the historical legacy of exploitation of indigenous communities by outside researchers. They note that PAR was created based on the principle of using research to have a liberating effect and increase self-determination , key components that have been missing from much research involving indigenous communities in the past. TPR acknowledges the need to incorporate community-specific cultural factors, acknowledgement of historical trauma, involvement of community, and protection of tribal interests. The TPR mechanisms focus on tribal oversight, the use of a facilitator, training and employing of community members as project staff, and the use of culturally specific assessment and intervention methods. Tribal oversight includes a tribal resolution, tribal advisory committee, and tribal research protocols. Although TPR was developed for social sciences, the mechanisms outlined by TPR is significant for engaging tribes on water resources topics. Boundary work seeks to negotiate boundaries between science and other knowledge forms in order to both make sense of different knowledges and generate new knowledge. Boundary work focuses on creating politically- and culturally-sensitive processes even when the goals of collaboration are explicitly about knowledge exchange. Robinson and Wallington examined the integration of indigenous knowledge into co-management systems in Australia and found that managers needed to take into account the institutional landscapes as well as current socio-ecological landscapes, because older management or legal structures can inhibit the development of new co-management structures. Boundaries can also create barriers to collaboration. Robinson and Wallington identified three factors in effective boundary work: meaningful participation in setting goals and co-producing knowledge; governance to ensure that boundary work is accountable; and co-production of boundary objects (e.g., maps, or interpretive frameworks that all participants agree to as trustworthy and respectful of their differences). Adaptive water governance requires governance to adapt to uncertainty and change through ongoing learning, institutional integration, collaboration, and co-management partnerships. It is structured as polycentricinstitutional arrangements that nest decision-making and integration of roles and activities between state and non-state entities and is useful where significant knowledge gaps exist. Adaptive water governance manages uncertainty through water entitlements that solidify indigenous claims and basin planning that incorporates indigenous knowledge. Water can be re-allocated in response to changing conditions and values and basin planning regularly reviews and updates targets. Water entitlements acknowledge indigenous claims and provide infrastructure and institutional capacity. Water planning goals, structures, and processes are based on indigenous knowledge and perspectives. Bark et al. found that indigenous communities with existing land holdings were better positioned to influence water management and policy than those who lacked holdings. Community based adaptation (CBA) is a community-led process, based on communities’ priorities, needs, knowledge, and capacity to empower people to plan for and cope with the impacts of climate change. Ford et al. unpack some of the challenges and potential issues with even the most well-intentioned participatory research work focusing on CBA. Based on their experiences with CBA approach to climate change impacts, they note that researchers cannot assume that research has a positive role to play in a community, just because it uses participatory processes; sometimes-new research is not the answer to a community’s needs. Further, they stress the need to manage expectations—those of the community and those of the researchers—and be realistic about what research can actually achieve in a community. Finally, they caution researchers interested in the CBA approach to invest time in planning and coordinating their work well in advance, because to be truly effective a participatory approach requires significant time, effort, and resources. Water 2016, 8, 350 11 of 21 Hill et al. analyzed 21 case studies of environmental management decisions in Australia that included indigenous communities to develop a typology of engagement types based on how they integrate indigenous environmental traditional knowledge (TK) with Western science, how TK is managed throughout the process, and how TK is integrated into management strategies. They identify four general types of engagement: Indigenous Governed collaborations (IG); indigenous-driven Co-Governance (ICoG); Agency-driven Co-Governance (ACoG), and agency governance (AG). Indigenous-governed collaborations (IG) and indigenous-driven co-governance (ICoG) provide better prospects for integration of TK because indigenous peoples retain control over that knowledge. IGs stem from indigenous initiatives such as a confederation of indigenous nations who are focused on environmental issues, actions, and policies. IGs focus on advancing distinct indigenous society and cultures with inclusive participation of indigenous people with indigenous people retaining significant power. On the other hand, ICoG are created in response to government initiatives but empower indigenous interests and authority while recognizing the need to improve indigenous and non-indigenous people’s capacity to operate and with significant power sharing with non-indigenous interests. Cronin and Ostergren analyzed three tribal collaborative water management structures including two tribes in the Northwest and one tribe in the Southwest. In this comparative study involving the analysis of 31 tribal and non-tribal interviews, Cronin and Ostergren identified six factors that influence tribal engagement in water management discussions: (1) tribal cultural connection to aquatic resources; (2) political clout and legal standing of tribes; (3) relationships between tribal and non-tribal communities and relevant agencies; (4) recognition of the benefits of collaboration; (5) consistency and vision of tribal leaderships; and (6) the availability of resources to tribes. Cronin and Ostergren stated that the presence or absence of any factor may not determine tribal engagement. Their recommendation of persistently seeking tribal input aligned with Lomawaima’s second rule, however, asking about ethics, tribal protocols, and giving back is not emphasized, instead they emphasize that tribal and non-tribal partners should seek to work together, share stories, and find whatever possible common ground there is. Notably, Cronin and Ostergren suggest that non-tribal partners engage tribes early on such as in the planning phase and plan to make a long-term commitment. Table 1. Selected five approaches of engaging tribal members, communities, and nations in water management discussions. Tribal Participatory Research Boundary Work Adaptive Water Governance Community Based Adaptation (CBA) Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Engagement Structures () Application of participatory action research to a new context for tribal communities Using scientific and indigenous knowledge to co-manage resources A hybid planning model that combines scientific, institutional, and social processes Community-led process based on communities‘ priorities, needs, knowledge, and capacities, which should empower people to plan for and cope with challenges Indigenous Governed collaborations (IG), Indigenous-driven Co-Governance (ICoG), Agency-driven Co-Governance (ACoG), and Agency Governance (AG) 4.3. Braiding Traditional Knowledge with Water Management When new water management structures are designed, they should explicitly allow local people to use and refine their own knowledge system in ways that maintain the integrity of the knowledge practices, according to Hill et al.. This kind of flexibility requires a different type of approach to engagement and integration of new knowledge; it requires the kind of collegial engagement between scientists, decision-makers, and other participants, which, as described by Biggs and consistent with Smith and Whyte , scientists actively support the production of local or indigenous knowledge systems, not just the integration of local knowledge into Western science frameworks. Water 2016, 8, 350 12 of 21 The challenge of how to braid Western and indigenous sciences in ways that are beneficial to both knowledge systems has been addressed in several places by Huntington [18,72,73]. Huntington urges Western scientists to carefully consider how they use the term traditional knowledge, to define it clearly and carefully to avoid misrepresenting the knowledge, and to recognize that there may be distinctions in types of knowledge within the community. Robinson and Wallington raise a similar point and note the importance of establishing a relationship with the community that will facilitate the outsiders’ understanding and use of traditional knowledge. Latiluppe claims that for “TK to advance the priorities and goals of Indigenous research partners and to be of benefit to Indigenous peoples, it is paramount that researchers consider their positionality and anticipate the outcomes of particular approaches within situated contexts”. Whyte claims that “environmental scientists and policy professionals, indigenous and non-indigenous, should not be in the business of creating definitions of TK. Instead, they should focus more on creating long term processes that allow the different implications of approaches to knowledge in relation to stewardship goals to be responsibly thought through”. A group of indigenous scholars with significant experience working on climate change and other resource management and planning issues have developed a set of guidelines for the use and integration of traditional knowledge into management planning efforts. The purpose of these guidelines is to increase understanding for the protection and role of traditional knowledge in climate initiatives for federal and intergovernmental agencies. The eight guidelines outline principles of engagement and protocols for engaging tribes when it relates to traditional knowledge and understanding the risks tribes face when they decide to engage. As was mentioned earlier, the principles of engagement are to “cause no harm” and “free, prior and informed consent” indicating that there is fairness, early engagement, transparency, and the right to engage or disengage at any time. The eight guidelines are (1) understand traditional knowledge; (2) know that tribes have a right not to participate; (3) communicate risks to tribes and help tribes to understand risks; (4) establish an institutional interface; (5) train federal agency on traditional knowledge, its protection, and related policies and protocols; (6) establish specific directions to uphold TK protections; (7) recognize multiple knowledge systems; and (8) develop guidelines for review of grant proposals. Although these guidelines are focused on traditional knowledge in climate initiatives, the principles outlined are very applicable to environmental research more broadly. 5. Case Studies Five case studies involving engaging Southwestern tribes on water management and water topics will be discussed. The manner in which tribes were engaged, the effectiveness of engagement, and the desires and concerns resulting from the engagement of the tribe will be discussed. The five cases studies are the Hopi Drought Study, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (PLPT) climate change project, the Water Resources Research Center (WRCC) Annual Conference focusing on “Indigenous Perspectives on the Sustainable use of Water”, the WRCC’s engagement of tribes to create a roadmap for considering environmental water demands, and the Colorado River Basin Tribal study and the effort to engage tribes. The first four are cases led by University of Arizona researchers. The varying levels of approval by the tribe and university research institutions are summarized in Table 2. Table 2. Tribal and research approvals received by case study. Case Purpose (1) Hopi Drought Study (2) PLPT Climate Change Project (3) Indigenous Water Conference (4) Environmental Demands Roadmap (5) Colorado River Basin Tribal Study Drought planning Climate change and water planning Tribal Council Tribal IRB University IRB Community/Grassroots Support/Resolutions 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Water management Water management planning & policy Water management planning & policy 4 4 4 Water 2016, 8, 350 13 of 21 5.1. Hopi Tribe Drought Study The Hopi Department of Natural Resources (HDNR) has been collaborating with researchers from the University of Arizona (UA) to develop a drought monitoring framework to help HDNR address the drought impacts on farming, ranching, and cultural traditions occurring for at least 15 years. The framework was developed using a collaborative research project that included rapid assessment, organizational ethnography, and participant observation, as well as interviews and multiple discussions with Hopi citizens and employees for approximately 5 years. The goal of the project was to ensure that Hopi concerns were at the forefront regarding drought, existing monitoring and knowledge practices, and capacity to respond to drought impacts. By relying on local knowledge and skills, the drought monitoring framework was designed to harness local data in ways that support local decisions, rather than relying entirely on instrumental data from external sources, which is sparse across Hopi lands. For example, the team noted that the current drought plan relied on data not readily accessible to HDNR staff, making it difficult to declare (or to undeclare) drought. However, HDNR staff were already collecting environmental status information through several programs, including water resources and range management that shed ample light on drought conditions in the region. The shift to locally controlled data, the team hopes, will place more control in the hands of local decision makers and community members who are most affected by drought impacts. 5.2. Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Climate Change Project Researchers from The University of Arizona, University of Nevada Las Vegas, and the U.S. Geological Survey have been collaborating with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe in Nevada to identify water-specific vulnerabilities to climate change [35,76]. When interviewed about their experiences working together (by one of the authors, Meadow), both the researchers and the PLPT staff discussed important practices when researchers collaborate with tribes, particularly on sensitive issues involving water and water rights. For example, although PLPT does not have its own research review board, the lead investigator (author Chief) ensured that she had the support and consent of the tribal council by formally requesting their cooperation in the project and received a letter of support from the (then) tribal chairperson that documented permission to undertake the research and the tribe’s commitment to collaboration. Throughout the project, the research team checked with PLPT staff to ensure that they were following community protocols regarding meetings, interviews, or other forms of data-gathering. The researchers presented before the PLPT tribal council on an annual basis, to receive approval in research changes, and to present final reports. They worked with PLPT staff to organize community workshops to ensure that local protocols were followed. A high degree of trust developed between the researchers and PLPT staff, which was demonstrated when the potentially sensitive issue of protected cultural knowledge came up in the course of the research. Rather than become a hurdle, both groups were able to discuss what to do with cultural knowledge, should it arise in interviews or other discussions, and come to an understanding both were comfortable with. 5.3. Indigenous Perspectives on Sustainable Water Practices Conference The University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center (WRCC) hosts an annual conference on various water management topics each year. Due to the recent highly contentious proposed Little Colorado Water Settlement, a significant number of Navajo and Hopi grassroots members advocated to have a voice at the 2014 conference on “Closing the Gap between Water Supply and Demand.” To highlight the voice of the indigenous communities, the 2015 WRCC conference was focused on “Indigenous Perspective on Sustainable Water Practices”. A tribal advisory committee (TAC) was formed to represent the indigenous perspectives across Arizona and provide guidance and advice on the conference agenda and speakers. TAC met monthly to plan steps. In this planning process, a survey was developed and distributed across tribes to determine conference title, topics, speakers, and provide input for the indigenous water conference. The Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) Water 2016, 8, 350 14 of 21 hosted the conference and over 300 individuals from 49 municipalities and 13 Native communities throughout Arizona attended the conference which was a record number of attendees for WRCC annual conferences. The GRIC Governor Stephen Lewis provided welcome remarks highlighting the celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Gila River Water Settlement and a challenge for tribal water security into the future and an investing in the youth. John Echohawk (Pawnee), founder of the Native American Rights Fund, provided the opening remarks encouraging an active dialogue between grassroots tribal members and tribal leaders as well as non-tribal environmental managers. The conference was a convergence of traditional grassroots perspectives and environmental managers resulting in mutual learning and respect. Arizona State Senator Carlyle Begay (Diné) noted that the event represented “... a very much needed conference, generating a lot of great discussion, a lot of great insight, and most importantly great ideas in moving our communities forward in discussions about the future of our water resources”. 5.4. Arizona’s Roadmap for Considering Water for Arizona's Natural Areas The University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center (WRCC) created a roadmap that outlines considerations for water for Arizona’s natural areas in Arizona water management and planning decisions. Often times the water demands needed for the environment, such riparian water demands and aquatic ecosystems, are not considered in state management plans. The objective was to promote a discussion on ways that stakeholders can address environmental water demands under the constraints of limited water supplies and existing water rights. The WRCC engaged a diverse set of participants including academic, business, environmental farming, mining, municipal power, ranching, and tribal perspectives through surveys, focus groups, workshops, and presentations. Considering that tribes have a deep connection to the natural environment where water for the environment is respected, this topic was expected to be of great interest for tribal communities and nations. Among the various participants, 40 tribal persons were engaged, which was about average compared to the other non-tribal participants. The tribal participants were recruited as voluntary participants. With 22 tribes in the state of Arizona and a land base of nearly a third of the state, the recruitmen

To the Fence and Back: An Introduction (PDF)

Document Details

Tags

Related

Summary

Full Transcript

Upgrade to continue