TY - JOUR
T1 - Infrastructures as colonial beachheads
T2 - The Central Arizona Project and the taking of Navajo resources
AU - Curley, Andrew
N1 - Funding Information: The author would like to thank the editor Natalie Oswin and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. The author would also like to thank the Dangerous Playground working group, Sara Smith, Banu Gökariksel, Maya Berry, Danielle Purifoy, and Annette Rodriguez for reading early drafts of the article. Finally, the author also thanks the library archivists at the University of Arizona for keeping the colonial records intact. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - Colonial difference is a story of national infrastructures. To understand how colonialism works across Indigenous lands, we need to appreciate the physical, legal, and political factors involved in the building and expanding of national infrastructures in different historical contexts; infrastructures that arrive in some places while denied in others. Using archival documents, this article accounts for the colonial politics necessary to bring Colorado River water into Phoenix and Tucson. It highlights how the following moments worked to enlarge Arizona’s population and power while denying Diné water claims: the 1922 Colorado Compact, Arizona’s 1960s campaign for the Central Arizona Project, and recent Indian water settlements between Arizona and Navajo Nation. The infrastructures that emerged from these events formed a coal–energy–water nexus reliant on Navajo coal while constructing Arizona’s water network. In sum, these projects served as colonial beachheads—temporal encroachments on Indigenous lands and livelihoods that augment material and political difference over time and exacerbate inequalities.
AB - Colonial difference is a story of national infrastructures. To understand how colonialism works across Indigenous lands, we need to appreciate the physical, legal, and political factors involved in the building and expanding of national infrastructures in different historical contexts; infrastructures that arrive in some places while denied in others. Using archival documents, this article accounts for the colonial politics necessary to bring Colorado River water into Phoenix and Tucson. It highlights how the following moments worked to enlarge Arizona’s population and power while denying Diné water claims: the 1922 Colorado Compact, Arizona’s 1960s campaign for the Central Arizona Project, and recent Indian water settlements between Arizona and Navajo Nation. The infrastructures that emerged from these events formed a coal–energy–water nexus reliant on Navajo coal while constructing Arizona’s water network. In sum, these projects served as colonial beachheads—temporal encroachments on Indigenous lands and livelihoods that augment material and political difference over time and exacerbate inequalities.
KW - Indigenous
KW - Settler colonialism
KW - infrastructures
KW - water
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U2 - 10.1177/0263775821991537
DO - 10.1177/0263775821991537
M3 - Article
SN - 0263-7758
VL - 39
SP - 387
EP - 404
JO - Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
JF - Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
IS - 3
ER -