ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
After decades of negotiations, a major water rights settlement may finally bring water to people of the Navajo Nation in Utah. Nearly a third of tribal residents still don't have running water in their homes. The settlement could also open the door to restoring Navajo agricultural traditions. David Condos of member station KUER reports.
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DAVID CONDOS, BYLINE: The banks of the San Juan River create a green ribbon through southeast Utah Red Rock country. It's an area Navajo tribal member Mark Maryboy knows well.
MARK MARYBOY: I was born and raised on top of the hills over there. As long as I remember, there was always farming.
CONDOS: When he was a boy, Maryboy says irrigated farms along this river grew everything from chili to watermelon. But today, many farms sit idle. He says his family and others didn't have enough money to keep pulling water from the river.
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MARYBOY: I already can see the river.
CONDOS: But a historic federal water rights settlement has given him hope that the farms could be revived.
MARYBOY: I think I would be happy. I think about it all the time. And those were wonderful, happy days in my life.
CONDOS: The settlement, signed in 2022, codified the Navajo Nation's right to enough water from this tributary of the Colorado River to serve about 160,000 households each year. It also came with more than $200 million in federal and state money to help the tribe build infrastructure to actually get that water. Now a lot of that will go to connect people's homes, but a good chunk is expected to help with farming equipment, too. Heather Tanana is a visiting law professor at the University of California in Irvine and a citizen of the Navajo Nation.
HEATHER TANANA: This promise has been made to Navajo for a very long time - that they would be able to productively develop the land, and you can't do any of that without water.
CONDOS: But more than two years after the settlement signing, the money hasn't gone out yet. The tribe says more legal hurdles and scientific surveys need to be cleared first. The delay hasn't stopped people from getting to work, though.
CURTIS YANITO: I'm excited about it.
CONDOS: Navajo Nation Council delegate Curtis Yanito is helping design irrigation pump systems for local families, including his own. He says a couple dozen farms could potentially be revived along this stretch of the San Juan.
YANITO: I have this vision that I - you know, I always been interested in redeveloping all that area.
CONDOS: He says people want to grow food here for a lot of reasons - to earn money, make diets healthier and restore the Navajos' cultural connections with growing traditional crops, like the Southwest peach. For centuries, tribes here cultivated vast orchards of it, but it nearly vanished after the federal government drove the Navajo from their land and destroyed their crops in the 1860s.
REAGAN WYTSALUCY: This is a peach tree that I grew from seed.
CONDOS: Today, a small Southwest peach tree next to Reagan Wytsalucy's home in Blanding, Utah, is one of few in this area.
WYTSALUCY: I have three kids, and they don't realize how privileged they are that they have actually had this fruit. So many kids don't even know that this tree exists.
CONDOS: Wytsalucy, who is Navajo, is a plant scientist with Utah State University.
WYTSALUCY: And then we'll expect the fruit to be up here.
CONDOS: For nearly a decade, she's been researching how to bring the peach back.
WYTSALUCY: There are ceremonial connections, prayers, songs, that completely involve the peach tree. That is a huge indicator, for me and for our people, that this is something that has been historically tied to our people for who knows how long - possibly even as long as corn, beans and squash.
CONDOS: And someday, she hopes to help tribal communities plant orchards with this peach once more.
For NPR News, I'm David Condos in San Juan County, Utah. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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