Tribes voice files

The Duwamish people have been in what is now Seattle for at least thousands of years. White settlers arrived and began occupying lands in the area around the early s. By , the US government and the Indigenous tribes of the Puget Sound region signed the Treaty of Point Elliott , in which tribes ceded their lands in exchange for a reservation and the rights to hunt and fish in their usual places.

Without their own reservation, the Duwamish people were forcibly removed from what became the city of Seattle, according to the tribe. The tribe has since adopted and maintained a constitution, bylaws and a governing body, but because it does not have reservation lands, the federal government does not recognize the Duwamish as a tribal entity. The Duwamish have lobbied the US for federal recognition for decades, to no avail.

With the support of members in the community, the tribe identified two-thirds of an acre that was up for sale, said Cecile Hansen, chair of the Duwamish Tribal Council. For years, the Duwamish have been gathering and governing on that two-thirds of an acre.

And as more people learn and engage with the tribe and its history, community support for the Duwamish has grown. The three-and-a-half acre property was once intended to be a residential development but had since transformed into a dump site after years of neglect, said Amanda Lee, president of the Shared Spaces Foundation.

The Shared Spaces Foundation consulted with the Duwamish tribe and decided it would rehabilitate the land and raise the funds needed to purchase it, Lee said. And a lot of people have hauled water, you know, all their life. You know, every truck around here, you see a water tank in the back.

SAKAS: Pena works for a tribal program to deliver water to members not connected to the local utility.

PENA: It's pretty dry around here. I mean, if people have wells, they're real slow wells or the wells aren't really producing much water, you know?

She's with the Water and Tribes Initiative, which is working to secure tribes a voice in the upcoming policymaking process on how to best manage the Colorado River. CLOUD: We've been stewards of this water for such a long time, and we need to make sure that we're always in the conversations of how much water that we are using to make sure that we all can have sustainable water. The congressionally approved agreement on how to manage its water was signed a hundred years ago when Native Americans weren't considered U.

Seven states and Mexico are part of that deal today, but the 30 sovereign tribes in the river basin are excluded. Manuel Heart, chairman of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, says that means tribes haven't known exactly how much water is theirs. Beginner's Guide Chasing.

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