Indigenous Groups and Water Access Across the Americas, Part 1
Safe water is a human right, but thousands of Indigenous groups lack access to safe water around the world.
Earlier this month was World Indigenous People’s Day, a holiday honoring Indigenous communities around the world. The label Indigenous includes more than 476 million people living in 90 countries, representing thousands of unique and enduring cultures. World Indigenous People’s Day highlights these cultures’ struggles and the work of preserving Indigenous cultures in the face of marginalization and environmental destruction.
One of the biggest struggles for many Indigenous communities is the preservation of water resources. Once we’ve become used to finding safe, clean water out of a tap or a filter inside our homes, it’s hard to imagine living any other way. Without that access, however, everything in life changes. We have to worry about where we will find water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, or growing food. Hygiene and sanitation may become more difficult without adequate water, leaving our communities more vulnerable to the spread of disease. Just drinking water or using it for cooking puts families at the risk of possibly deadly illness.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 2 billion people around the world lack access to a safe water source at home, while millions more have no safe water source at all. Thanks to growing water scarcity around the world due to climate change, that number may increase drastically over the next decade — and across the world, Indigenous groups are among the most vulnerable in this regard.
Thousands of Indigenous communities lack access to running water or even a safe water source. On reserved lands around the world, running water is scarce. To make matters worse, modern industrial pollution threatens the integrity of water sources on reserved lands, polluting the bodies of water that indigenous groups have relied on for ages.
Access to safe water can be easy to take for granted — and it should be, considering how vital water is to everyday life. However, the human right to safe water isn’t always — and for many communities in the Americas, trying to preserve that right has been an uphill battle.
United States: COVID-19 and Water Safety in the Navajo Nation
In the United States, nearly one-tenth of all residents of Indigenous communities live without safe water access — and the water situation in the Colorado River Basin in the American Southwest has been particularly dire. Last year, more than forty percent of residents in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico lacked access to safe water. Due to the efforts of local water safety organizations like DigDeep’s Navajo Water Project, that number has gone down significantly. Still, approximately one in three Navajo Nation residents lack access to safe water access in their homes.
Even for families that do have running water in their homes, local water sources aren’t always safe or reliable. An article for KUNC last year by Alex Hager described the plight of the To’hajilee community in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Residents described a water system decades out of date — collapsing wells, rusty pipes, and faucets running red and black with polluted and untreated water. The water is undrinkable, and thousands of To’hajilee residents have to drive out of town to buy water in Albuquerque.
Without running water they can use, many families find themselves driving miles to nearby towns to buy water for their needs. Having to buy water can put a financial strain on families; experts estimate that having to haul water is at least 70 times more expensive than using piped water. Because of the expense of finding water, many families have been forced to ration the water they use for drinking, cleaning, and cooking. The need to use water as sparingly as possible is likely part of the reason why Native American communities were hit so hard in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone received a few simple instructions — wear a mask, stay inside, and wash your hands. However, water-stressed communities the world over found that the last instruction was difficult to maintain in homes that barely had enough water to drink. Without the resources to practice protective hygiene, water-stressed communities were left vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19.
Across the United States, Native Americans and Native Alaskans had infection rates more than three times as high as Caucasian Americans. In addition, American Indians were hospitalized four times as often and had higher mortality rates. From the first cases in the Navajo Nation in March 2020 to May 2022, there was one death for every ninety-three people in the Navajo Nation.
Over the past few years, local efforts to improve water access in the Navajo Nation have drastically increased the number of Navajo households with access to running water. The Navajo Water Project, launched by the Indigenous-led water charity Digdeep, has implemented several new water sources around on Navajo land, and the organization delivers water to hundreds of families living near the sources.
The Navajo Water Project has also installed solar-powered home water systems for dozens of Navajo Nation residents. Families receive full water systems, including a 1200-gallon water tank, solar power, and a filtration system. Digdeep also prepares clients to maintain their water systems and make simple repairs and provides technical support after the implementation of the project.
There are still thousands of people in the Navajo Nation who live without safe water. However, thanks to the efforts of organizations like Digdeep, the number of people with safe water access on the reservation is starting to grow.
Check on our page later this week to read the rest of the series.
