The newest season of the ABC history podcast series “Reclaimed” focuses on the persistent lack of available drinking water on the Navajo Nation.
In the four-part series, Houston-based journalist Charly Edsitty, who’s a Navajo citizen, examines the struggle to secure reliable water resources and a historic settlement that could grant tribes long-awaited access to the Colorado River.
She spoke with KNAU’s Adrian Skabelund.
Adrian Skabelund: For years, about a third of the Navajo Nation has not had reliable access to drinking water. Why is this a unique moment to be covering water issues on the Navajo Nation? And how did you come to this story now?
Charly Edsitty: So there's been some pretty significant movement happening within the last year-and-a-half, or so, with this issue. This is a decades-long problem and we've had thousands of Navajo citizens living on the reservation who are physically having to haul water to and from their homes, having to ration water.
And again, this is happening in 2024 in the United States. And so we focus a lot on the current settlement that's happening with the state of Arizona.
And we really dive in deep to help people understand the many complicated layers of trying to get access to the Colorado River. We walk people through what has happened with this latest settlement that actually was approved by the tribe earlier this year, which, that in itself is significant, because two other attempts didn't even make it that far.
AS: Yeah. What do you hope the takeaway is for listeners, whether they're folks from across the country or folks from here in Northern Arizona?
CE: I went into this definitely thinking about the Indigenous listener, for people who, this is their day-to-day reality. And so I wanted it to be representative of those voices and of the people who were actually impacted by it.
I think it's important that people understand and hear directly from the people who have to deal with this every single day.
As for just the average everyday American, I think it's important to understand the issues that are happening in these tribal communities. And, just because you are not directly impacted by this, or perhaps you don't live near a tribal community, doesn't mean that you shouldn't care about this.
You know, if this particular situation where people didn't have running water was happening in a major city, like perhaps Phoenix, New York or Houston, there would be outrage over this and there would be cries for a solution. So it's important to understand that just because this is not happening in a major city doesn't make it less important.
Nobody on the Navajo Nation asked for this to happen. It happened to us. And you can see throughout the many decades of fighting and fighting, the Navajo Nation are very adamant that they want their claim of the Colorado River.
AS: Yeah, the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement, it hasn't been ratified by Congress yet.
What is the future of the Navajo Nation potentially for the next four years under a Trump administration?
CE: You know, we posed this hypothetical at that time to some of the people that we spoke to who were part of this podcast, and many of them expressed concern about a Trump presidency.
At that time, again, just a possibility, but we know that that is a reality with our President-elect Donald Trump.
So I think people are nervous. They don't know what the future of the bill is going to be. I think one of the sticking points that people are nervous about is the price tag associated with it: $5 billion to be spent on infrastructure. It's a large project for a very large, complex problem.
And so I think that people obviously are hopeful, but it remains to be seen if that will even happen, or if there's going to have to be perhaps some money taken away or different stipulations put into place that may change this settlement agreement.
But I think at the end of the day, the main takeaway from everybody is that no matter what happens with this, we are going to keep on fighting.
AS: Well, thank you so much for giving us some of your time today.
CE: Of course. Yeah. Thank you very much for the time.
