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SEPTEMBER 5, 2000

A Wyoming state judge awarded mostly non-Indians seniority in the remaining allocation of water rights on the Wind River Reservation.

As part of litigation over the water on the Wind and Big Horn Rivers, the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes already received 500,000 acre feet. The new ruling resolves the water rights of 221 other parties.

Under the Winters doctrine, first articulated by the Supreme Court in 1908, tribes have seniority rights to water on at the point the reservation was created. The Wind River reservation was established in 1868.

The tribes, however, had attemped to argue that water rights on land which was sold to a non-Indian but passed back into Indian ownership remain in control of the tribes. But the judge said the date of the first sale by an Indian allottee decides who is entitled to the rights.

Get the Story:
Water rights awarded (AP 9/5)

Related Story:
Court upholds water rights (Enviro 06/20)
Court set to rule on water rights (Enviro 6/19)

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Indian Law and the Environment - Water rights.