Stolen River

THE TURBULENT, CHOPPY WATERS of the Colorado River pull from tributaries as far north as Wyoming before they race south for hundreds of miles, crashing together as they churn through the Grand Canyon, then smoothing out as they roll south. In southwestern Arizona, where the Sonoran and Mojave deserts meet, the river gently makes its way through Aha Makhav lands.

In the Mohave language, Aha Makhav means “the Water People.” The Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo — the four tribes that comprise the Colorado River Indian Tribes, a federally recognized tribe that is also known as CRIT — have relied on floodplain and irrigated agriculture along the Colorado for 4,000 years. The CRIT Reservation was established in 1865 for the “Indians of the Colorado River and its tributaries.” (That vague language made it easier for the tribe to welcome people from the Hopi and Navajo nations in the ’40s.) Today, the reservation’s green, lush farmland stands out against the dry desert that surrounds it.

“These valleys have always been traditional lands to us,” Amelia Flores, CRIT’s chairwoman, said in January. “It is evident in our clan songs that follow along the river.” The water from the Colorado helps the mesquite tree — a tree of life for the Mohave people — flourish. “The roots provide, for the babies, the cradle boards that they are cradled