~ Winters Doctrine ~ The United States Supreme Court has favoured this view for almost a century: Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564 (1908). The American jurisprudence recognizes that reservation users can pre-empt others from using the same water, even when those other parties have been using it for many years. The basic rationale stems from the fact that, while the Indian nations surrendered most of their territory by treaty, this did not include water rights unless the treaty expressly stated that effect. The American courts concluded that the Indian nations must have intended, as did the federal government, that the land base was to be viable economically so as to meet all their present and future needs. This entails the right to use water for agricultural and domestic purposes. ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter5.html - see water rights section
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 18:35:07 +0000
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