Holding the Headwaters: Northern California Indian Resistance to State and Corporate Water Development

In the context of historic and ongoing California Indian resistance to displacement at the headwaters of California’s immense State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project, we foreground Native land histories to unsettle the logic and perceived permanence of contemporary neocolonial water institutions. Centering California Indian voices on the histories and futures of the headwaters, we disrupt the imperial narrative of these waters and lands as American territories needing development and conservation, replacing it with the reality of these sites as Native Californian lands requiring restitution, protection, and recognition. Beginning with an overview of the history that led to the development of quasi-public projects on Native lands, we offer three case studies of Indigenous resistance and re-framing: the Winnemem Wintu struggle to stop the proposed raise of Shasta Dam; the Maidu Summit’s work to regain ownership of former Pacific Gas & Electric company lands established within their homeland; and the Pit River Tribe’s decades-long struggle to protect the sacred Medicine Lake Highlands from government-approved corporate exploitation of geothermal resources. Holding the Headwaters directly challenges embedded injustices in natural resource policymaking and offers alternative visions for a future that addresses historic injustices and centers California Indian relationships to place.