Tribal Water Settlements IndexPublic records · cited to source
Federal Indian reserved water rights · compiled from public records

Every enacted tribal water settlement, in one cited table.

Congress has enacted Indian water rights settlements since 1978, resolving reserved-rights claims that date to the Winters decision of 1908. The primary records are scattered across DOI, CRS reports, state engineer dockets, and court files. This index normalizes them into one table — settlement, tribes, state, statute, funding, water — with a citation on every figure and a link to every primary record.

35
enacted settlements indexed
src: DOI SIWRO
9
pending in Congress
src: NARF tracking
$8.97B
authorized funding across 31 settlements with stated figures
src: CRS R44148 (nominal $)
9
doctrine cases, citations verified
src: CourtListener / SCOTUS

The settlements

The master table: every congressionally enacted settlement with tribe, state, public law, and — where the record states them — authorized funds and quantified water.

Master table →

The case law

From Winters (1908) to Arizona v. Navajo Nation (2023): the decisions that created, quantified, extended, and limited federal reserved water rights.

Case pages →

The pipeline

Settlements now before Congress, tracked from public bill records — the next entries in this table.

Pending tracker →
Provenance: every record on this site carries its source URL and retrieval date. The full dataset is downloadable as JSON and CSV. Compiled 2026-09-01.