Pueblo Women Carrying the River’s Future

For the Rio Grande Pueblo nations, the path to secured water rights has been long and hard, made harder by drought and generations of upstream engineering. Yet some of the most hopeful leadership on the Middle Rio Grande comes from Pueblo women.

High Country News profiled three of them: Julia Bernal, co-founder of the Pueblo Action Alliance, which centers youth in water advocacy; Judge Verna Teller of Isleta Pueblo, who helped Isleta become the first tribal nation to set its own water-quality standards under the Clean Water Act; and hydrologist Phoebe Suina of San Felipe and Cochiti, whose Indigenous, women-led firm works on water-resource engineering. Different callings, one river, and a long view.

Sources: Indigenous feminism flows through the fight for water rights on the Rio Grande (High Country News via Yale FORE) · Summary (WECAN International)