Editorial: An age-old slight

Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2006 | 7:49 a.m.

American Indian tribes in Nevada and Utah are crying foul over not being notified about an agreement that withdrew federal protests from a Southern Nevada Water Authority plan to take billions of gallons of water from rural White Pine County.

According to a story by Launce Rake in the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was among the Interior Department agencies that signed the agreement, which called for withdrawing the agencies' protests to a plan in which water would be pumped from Spring Valley. The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation says the Indian affairs agency failed to notify tribal governments before signing the agreement Sept. 10.

Ed Naranjo, Goshute Reservation vice chairman, told the Sun that "the federal government is, as usual, ignoring the trust responsibility that it has to protect Indian tribes and tribal resources." The Goshute Reservation sits about 70 miles north of Spring Valley on the Nevada-Utah border. Naranjo said that members of other tribes also were not notified, including the Ely Shoshone, who live 30 miles from Spring Valley.

The bureau's acting regional director told the Sun that her agency believes that the pumping of 30 billion gallons of water from Spring Valley will not affect the tribes who live outside the valley. Still, the Bureau of Indian Affairs apologized for the slight in a letter to the Goshute tribe, saying that it didn't have time to notify tribal officials.

Negotiations went on for weeks before an agreement was reached. There was ample time for the bureau to notify neighboring American Indian tribes. While the Bureau of Indian Affairs may have reached the same conclusion about the water plan, it should have consulted the tribes before making such a decision. Federal officials must stop making this generations-old rebuff.