Ranking Member Grijalva Statement on Arizona v. Navajo Nation SCOTUS Decision
Washington, D.C. – House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) today issued the following statement on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. Navajo Nation. In the 5-4 decision, with a majority opinion authored by Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that the U.S. government’s treaty promise of providing a permanent homeland to the Navajo Nation doesn’t require the U.S. government to take modest steps to secure water supplies needed for a viable homeland.
“This is a dangerous decision that moves us backward to our shameful past in which treaties were promises not worth the paper they were written on,” Ranking Member Grijalva said. “Forcibly removing Indigenous Peoples from their full homelands is a violence we can never reverse. Today, the Court’s majority states that when a treaty establishes a ‘permanent home’ for a tribal nation, the U.S. government doesn’t have to take the most basic steps to ensure the delivery of water needed for a livable home — let alone a permanent home.
“Ruling against the Navajo Nation in this way while we face a third decade of intensifying drying of the West is especially egregious. This decision will only further complicate an already tense water allocation negotiation process that has too often shut tribes out. Since the radical SCOTUS majority wants to undermine the promise of a permanent homeland, I encourage my colleagues to work with me to pass a legislative solution to get the Navajo Nation the water that is rightfully theirs.”
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