Here and There

How does a commentary about upstream dams on the Colorado River fit within a special issue devoted to dams and development on Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon?First, dam building on the Colorado River helps us envision a scenario of what the future might look like for Amazonian Indigenous peoples.For the past century, capital-intensive development on the Colorado River has taken the form of energy-producing dams, irrigation projects, and storage reservoirs on Indigenous lands in the American Southwest.Second, the ultimate paradox is that Colorado River dams and irrigated water on Indigenous lands have undoubtedly improved many lives, but at enormous cultural and environmental costs.For instance, across the US-Mexico border, the lush agricultural fields of Yuma, Arizona, and California's Imperial Valley encounter the dry, militarized borderlands in which more than 90 percent of the Colorado River has been diverted by upstream US dams.Shaylih Muehlmann (2012:1) describes the tensions swirling around the Colorado River in her recent book, Where the River Ends: Contested Indigeneity in the Mexican Colorado Delta.She states that "directly across the border the river's water trickles to a stream.This is the most unequal international border in the world, a geopolitical barrier that while seeking to stop people from going north, as we shall see, prevents water from flowing south.Now, all that remains of the Colorado River is a dried-out riverbed, whose cracked and saline surface is a potent reminder of the river that once fanned out in the Mexican Colorado delta."Upstream, along the lower Colorado River, 2 dam building projects have noticeably impacted five Indigenous Nations -the Fort Mohave, Chemehuevi, Colorado River Indian Tribe, Quechan, and Cocopah (also known as Cucap in northern Mexico and Cocopa, more generally 3 ) -all except for the Chemehuevi continue to live on portions of ancestral homelands.Across the border, the Mexican Cucap live in mostly small, rural communities situated on the edge of the Colorado delta and upper Sea of Cortez.The Cocopa originated at the river long before the arrival of outsiders, including the time of first contact with the Spanish in the sixteenth century (Kelly 1944(Kelly , 1977;;Kniffen 1931).Before contact, population estimates of nearly 8,000 Cocopa reveal how Colorado River Indigenous peoples successfully maintained themselves in the arid mountains and brackish wetlands located at the end of the river.Drastic reductions in Cocopa populations resulted after contact with Europeans and resulting hardships intensified after the formation of Mexico and later the United States (Spicer 1967).In general, systemic periods of violence, warfare, and diseases, such as tuberculosis, small pox, and other European pathogens, decimated Cocopa people from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.Today, about 300 US Cocopah live north of the US-Mexico border in Somerton, Arizona, on several small reservations.In Mexico, self-identifying Cucap total about 200 individuals and live in small, rural villages, in communities such as El Mayor Indigena Cucap, Campo Flores, and Pozas de Arvizu, and in the urban centers of Mexicali and San Luis Rio Colorado of the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California del Norte (Figure 1)

Biology · Fishery · Geography · Indigenous · Environmental Science · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

• Infrastructures as colonial beachheads

  Open Access•Andrew Curley•Environment and Planning D…•2021

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• Small hydropower, large obstacle? Exploring land use conflict, Indigenous opposition and acceptance in the Norwegian Arctic

  Open Access•Stine Engen, Vera H Hausner et al.•Energy Research & Social Science•2022

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• Indians and Energy

  Paul C Rosier•Journal of American History•2013

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• Cycles of Conquest

  Gertrude P Kurath, Edward H Spicer•Journal of American Folklore•1965

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