NYT: Indians’ Water Rights Give Hope for Better Health

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/us/31diabetes.html?_r=1&ei=5043&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=EXCITE&adxnnlx=1220227275-G6DPf0kld4HgpwMkY25aoQ


Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Ed Mendoza, co-founder of a garden cooperative, uses traditional irrigation for organic crops in the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. High rates of diabetes and obesity are a problem.


By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: August 30, 2008

GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY, Ariz. — More than a hundred years ago, the Gila River, siphoned off by farmers upstream, all but dried up here in the parched flats south of Phoenix, plunging an Indian community that had depended on it for centuries of farming into starvation and poverty.

If that was not bad enough, food rations sent by the federal government — white flour, lard, canned meats and other sugary, processed foods — conspired with the genetic anomalies of the Indians to sow an obesity epidemic that has left the reservation with among the highest rates of diabetes in the world.

Now, after decades of litigation that produced the largest water-rights settlement ever in Indian country, the Indians here are getting some of their water back. And with it has come the question: Can a healthier lifestyle lost generations ago be restored?

Reviving the farming tradition will prove difficult, many tribal members say, because the tribes, who number 20,000, including about 12,000 on the reservation, have not farmed on a big scale for generations. Fast food is a powerful lure particularly for the young, and the trend of late has been to move off the reservation, to work or live.

“Nobody wants to get out and get dirt under their fingernails,” said Pancratious Harvey, one of a handful of tribal members who began a community garden a couple of years ago.

Still, the garden, which is filled with vegetables that were once staples in the tribe’s diet, is a sign of enthusiasm for farming that members believe could spread as the water arrives.

FULL story and video at link.