“If we take care of that water, we know that water is going to take care of us,” stated Lorelei Cloud, who has spent a lifetime advocating for water conservation and access. Cloud, a former vice chairman of the Southern Ute tribe, was also the first tribal member on record to serve on the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
On Thursday, Nov. 6, The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW) hosted Cloud and a fellow trustee of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Colorado, Johnny Le Coq, for a presentation on their respective backgrounds and water conservation work. The event, sponsored by Roaring Fork Conservancy and TNC, was a special installment of the Brooksher Watershed Institute. Lawyer Ramsey Kropf, who has decades of experience in representing Indian water rights cases in the Colorado and Klamath River basins, emceed.
After some brief introductions, Cloud opened the evening by sharing the history of her people. The Roaring Fork Valley is part of ancestral Ute territories. Though the Utes, who referred to themselves as “Nuche,” or “the people,” and called their home the “Shining Mountains,” were seasonally nomadic before the arrival of colonial miners, Cloud shared that her people do not have a traditional migration story as some Indigenous peoples do. What the Nuche have is a creation story that ties them intrinsically to the soaring peaks and waterways of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
Cloud explained that the seasonal nomadic moves of the Nuche were not considered to be migration but normal shifts, demonstrating respect and care for the ecosystems.
“We believe that we are one and the same with nature,” Cloud said, elaborating that other species and even elements like water are akin to souls.
The Southern Ute reservation was established in 1886. The territory stretches along the New Mexico border and southern Weminuche mountains near Durango. The descendants of three tribes (Mouache, Capote and the Weeminuche) live within the reservation boundaries. Restriction to reservations was one of many changes to the Nuche way of life and human interactions with the local ecosystems.
“I grew up in a home with no running water on the homesite,” Cloud said.
Broader effects of human changes included the Colorado River Compact of 1922. At a meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, representatives of the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming negotiated and documented water distribution of one of the longest rivers in the United States. Indigenous peoples of the southwest were excluded. In recent years, work by TNC, local nonprofits and advocates, including Cloud, has started to address that. At the 100-year anniversary of the Compact, in 2022, Indigenous representatives from across the seven states were welcomed. Cloud said she is proud to work with TNC, as the organization has centered Indigenous values and perspectives in ecosystem advocacy for years.
Le Coq lives in the Gore Range along the Blue River tributary of the Colorado River. He turned from photography to entrepreneurship in the late ‘90s, when he founded Fishpond. The flyfishing equipment company became the first B-Corp in the industry, and uses sustainable production processes and recycled materials. In his advocacy work, Le Coq amplifies Indigenous voices and emphasizes cross-demographic conversation.
“All of us here have a sphere of influence when it comes to advocating for the outdoors,” said Le Coq.
Among his endeavors is Science on the Fly, an initiative of citizen scientists doing water testing and sampling to track the health of watersheds. This data is especially important, Le Coq said, in areas like the Southwest with significant water use, because “80% of the water used in Colorado is for agriculture.”
He noted the progress that has been made around the inclusion of Native Americans in conservation decisions. “The First People in this nation are so vital to everything we do around the environment,” he emphasized.
Kropf and Cloud rejoined Le Coq on stage for a short conversation on takeaways from their respective work. When Kropf asked them about how serving as TNC trustees has influenced their work, Le Coq expressed his admiration for the organization’s grassroots work in over 80 countries toward a global vision. He also shared that, to him, “Ecology and economy are not opposing interests. You need both to work together to solve these problems.”
In response to Kropf’s closing question about calls to action, the guests approached it from different angles. Cloud recommended that people “pray for your water, pray for your environment, reconnect to your ecosystem on a spiritual level.” Le Coq shared a call to support human-centered work: “I think it’s important that we do what we can to support community organizations like Roaring Fork Conservancy.”
Roaring Fork Conservancy, founded in 1996, works on water testing and community education. The Roaring Fork River watershed is nearly one-million acres, or over 1,450 square miles — an area the size of the state of Rhode Island. Since its founding, the Basalt-based nonprofit has conducted tens of thousands of water quality tests within the region and taught over 110,000 students, from local schoolchildren to adults. Roaring Fork Conservancy opened its River Center in 2020, just below the confluence of the Roaring Fork River and the Fryingpan River.