At Pyramid Lake

Three: The Lake and Its Totem

68 t h r e e � � The Lake and ItsTotem Disputes between the Pyramid Lake Paiutes and their rivals for water from the Truckee River continued to fester. Federal and state agencies created to manage Indian affairs, water resources, and fish and wildlife frequently found themselves in conflict with each other as well as with Indians, farmers, businessmen, and municipal authorities, all claiming their rights were not being protected. During President Nixon’s administration the Department of the Interior, home to all the major government bureaus involved, attempted to find a solution to the Pyramid Lake problem. During President Reagan’s tenure of office, the road to settlement shifted to the US Senate and remained there into the administration of George H. W. Bush. The passage of the TruckeeCarson –Pyramid Lake Water Settlement Act in 1990 was the culmination of more than a century of rancor. The legislation did not solve all the problems, but it created a process for achieving peace. More important, and overlooked in the accounts of the settlement act that I have read, was the acknowledgment of the complex interrelationship of water rights, human rights, states’ rights, and the rights of endangered species. When the federal government passed laws in the 1960s to prevent the extinction of endangered species, including the cui-ui and the Lahontan cutthroat trout, it trumped the plans of governors, farmers, and dam builders. Laws that recognized the cui-ui as the emblem of a people’s heritage found acceptance in a nation that was beginning to understand that humans are part of nature. As Freeman House puts it in his poetic account of fish restoration in the Pacific Northwest, Totem Salmon, “Somewhere beyond our modern notions of religion and regulation but partaking of both, human engagement with salmon—and the rest of the natural world—has been marked by behavior that is respectful, participatory, and ceremonial.” Three important examples of the intertwining of rights are examined in this chapter. First, as the proceedings of the Pyramid Lake Task Force (1969–71) reveal, institutionalized racism persisted in the civil rights era. As critics of the The Lake and Its Totem 69 task force report pointed out, there was more at stake in preserving Pyramid Lake than protecting sportfishing. The Paiutes were also endangered. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the idea of destroying a village in order to save it made little sense. Second, when Nevada senator Paul Laxalt launched his effort to resolve the conflict between the Kuyuidokado and the Newlands Reclamation Project farmers, he understood the issues primarily in economic terms. Both the irrigators and the Indians had a lot to lose financially. But they knew that they had even more to lose if the rights they firmly believed were theirs were not acknowledged and protected. Third, as the 1988–90 negotiations leading to the settlement show, other parties to the dispute were redefining their goals. City managers and power company administrators claimed water rights, endangered-fish management planners required new kinds of public-private cooperation, and many Native Americans saw themselves as part of the postcolonial world. Though they could never recover the freedom and authority they possessed before the conquest of the Americas, they could, as tribal council chairman Joe Ely put it, use a kind of “judo approach”—that is, use knowledge of their opponents’ strengths to cause them to lose their balance. The final episode, the US Senate hearings on the settlement act, gains additional significance because of the Bureau of Reclamation oral history project that provides countless insights into the ways the participants thought about the issues involved. For the practicing historian, there is a lovely irony in seeing the story of Pyramid Lake beginning and continuing in oral testimony. water rights and civil rights In February 1967 Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall issued the first regulations for the Newlands Reclamation Project, requiring farmers to conserve water and improve project efficiency. The new operating criteria and procedures (ocap) also required better management of the water used in electrical power generation. A few months later the cui-ui were placed on the first list (“Class of ’67”) of endangered species sanctioned by the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. The operating procedures and the listing of an endangered species provided the basis for a series of legal actions by the tribe to secure more water for the lake. In 1968 the tribe filed a suit for water for the endangered cuiui based on the...