The U.S. government signed hundreds of treaties with tribal nations. Tribes across the country are still fighting for the rights and lands promised to them. And now, climate change has made the urgency of protecting Indigenous land and water even greater.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann joined students on a trip to the last free-flowing groundwater stream in Wyoming’s Laramie County. The stream is located on land originally promised to Indigenous nations in a 19th century treaty. But that territory was drastically reduced by another treaty about twenty years later. The Northern Arapaho Tribe never received their own land and ended up on the Wind River Reservation with the Eastern Shoshone Tribe.
“My life is based upon the sacrifices our people made, which was giving up this land to be put on the reservations,” said Sandra Iron Cloud, who is Northern Arapaho and has been teaching at Wyoming Indian High School since 1985.