The Transformative Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Healing River Ecosystems
By Erika Pietrzak, March 13, 2025
Today, thousands of Indigenous people “are caring for the land and are powerful leaders advocating for clean water and healthy, free-flowing rivers.”
For as long as North America has been inhabited, Indigenous peoples have sustained and cultivated ecosystems across the current United States. Historically, Indigenous settlements often surrounded river systems because of the amazing abilities of water to sustain all kinds of life. For these settlements, river systems “supported a reliable source of drinking water, plants and animals for sustenance, fertile land for agriculture, and a system for transportation.” When Europeans and their descendants colonized the Americas, they severely underrated the management and effort that Indigenous peoples undertook to maintain clean water systems. They stripped Indigenous peoples of their critical role as environmental stewards, and proceeded to sell and steal land from the tribes without proper exchange of knowledge. Ever since then, the United States has experienced tremendous losses in river systems.
The “first in time, first in right” doctrine establishes a “first come, first serve” policy that allows the first person who accesses a given water supply to divert it from its natural source and use it “beneficially” to secure the legal right to that water. The 1908 Winters v. United States Supreme Court decision established that Indigenous tribes take precedence over nonindigenous appropriations of the first in time rule for water access. This ruling advised that “when the US government established Native American reservations, it also implicitly reserved enough water for sustaining life there.”
Throughout the history of the United States, rivers have been pivotal to the country’s political and economic affairs. Rivers “provided efficient routes for transportation and helped facilitate migration of people, food, and trade goods”. This led to the invention of steamboats in the 1800s and the subsequent construction of canals and channels across the country. In the 1900s, the advent of hydroelectric dams helped power the nation’s economy and energy demands. Massive dams were built en masse in the mid-1900s, plugging America’s river systems, “submerging scenic and culturally significant valleys and halting important natural processes, such as downstream sediment movement and upstream fish migration.” Particularly, the construction of dams often flooded Indigenous homelands, destroying food systems and forcing Indigenous people to move outside of reservations. All of these attacks on river systems have been repeatedly fought by Indigenous communities.
Today, thousands of Indigenous people “are caring for the land and are powerful leaders advocating for clean water and healthy, free-flowing rivers.” This includes both reviving traditional practices by applying their ancestors’ wisdom, and advocating for the land and river systems they rely on to their local politicians. A critical facet of their environmental stewardship also includes championing the removal of dams across the country that disproportionately impact Indigenous water systems, including tribal-led efforts to remove four dams to bring back salmon runs and improve water quality.
With many Indigenous groups being forced out West through the Trail of Tears, Western water rights and systems are of great importance. In the west, “water is a sacred and scarce resource plagued by pollution, shortages, and contentious fights over legal rights, often between Indigenous peoples and business groups.” A Caltech expert, Laura Taylor, has found in a recent study that pollution has worsened around Native reservations during legal negotiations, especially upstream pollution by the industrial sector. Taylor posits that this occurs because when companies begin to anticipate a change in water rights, they become less incentivized to take care of those systems. This phenomenon is worsened during lengthy legal battles that “create a regulatory void in which no party feels fully accountable for the upkeep of the water, allowing pollutants to accumulate unchecked.” This is an especially important finding as it has been a long-held belief that delayed legal action harms Indigenous water rights.
The National Park Service and Environmental Protection Agency require our attention and diligence to heal and maintain our river systems. In taking steps to heal these systems, “the traditional ecological knowledge and perspective held by Indigenous People is essential.” The continuous lack of inclusion of Indigenous communities in water rights decisions perpetuates the “ongoing structure of colonialism which has led to the need for water settlements.” By including Indigenous knowledge in efforts to clean American river systems, thousands of years of ecological knowledge can help achieve equitable solutions that best incorporate the needs of the land.
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