WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear a major water rights dispute from Arizona on Monday to decide whether the federal government has broken its promises to the Navajo Nation for more than 150 years.
Nearly a third of the Navajo households do not have running water and must rely on water that is trucked in. The Navajo Nation blames the U.S. government for having breached its duty of trust that came with an 1868 treaty that established their reservation in what is now northeast Arizona and smaller portions of southeastern Utah and northeastern New Mexico.
That treaty "promised both land and water sufficient for the Navajos to return to a permanent home in their ancestral territory," attorneys for the Navajo Nation told the court. "Broken promises. The Nation is still waiting for the water it needs."
