It’s not subtle when a white man in government literally says “states’ rights” are why he keeps blocking Native American communities from having access to water.

“We have significant unresolved concerns with the legislation that may affect each of our states’ rights to and interests in Colorado River water,” negotiators for Utah and Wyoming wrote in March to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in a previously unreported letter. New Mexico and Colorado sent similar letters.

[…]

For 83-year-old Marilyn Tewa, the stalemate means her family will continue to go without running water. Tewa serves on the Hopi Tribal Council, where her duties include working on the water rights agreement, but her village of Mishongnovi, on the tribe’s northern Arizona reservation, lacks indoor plumbing.

Every other day, she loads 5-gallon buckets into her pickup and drives 5 miles to a windmill originally built for livestock that draws untreated water from underground.

“That’s what keeps us alive,” Tewa said, tapping the spigot on a May afternoon.

“States’ rights” is a dehumanizing battle cry from the Civil War. The lobby group may as well be waving a Confederate battle flag, crying long live Custer, or remember the Alamo. The racist dog whistling is loud.

And if I had a dollar for every huge tech corporation claiming they are donating to water charities to help the poor people in Africa… while they completely ignore actual threats especially to the people in their own backyard.

This is not conjecture. I was working with a huge global tech firm that was pushing a water charity donation pledge. When I started to question the ethics of the charity, the head of it came to meet with me in person.

At first it was cordial and he said things like “happy to answer your questions” though soon he seemed a bit frustrated, even deflated as if I had unmasked him. I had asked straight questions like “exactly how many villages had security issues after a well was dug”.

To his credit he told me could confirm exactly 15 examples (at that time). I appreciated the transparency, yet he seemed disturbed by having to admit to the fact an utterly simplistic solution (get donations, drive in, dig a well, leave) to a complex problem was in fact making lives worse.

Many of those tech corporation executives have second and third homes in these states, filling swimming pools and watering lawns, actively denying Native Americans the basic water to survive.