One hundred years ago this Thanksgiving Day, the Colorado River Commission signed the Colorado River Compact at Bishop’s Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The commission included delegates from the seven Colorado River Basin states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and was chaired by Herbert Hoover, President Warren G. Harding’s secretary of commerce. The commission did not incorporate any input or consultation with the basin’s Indigenous peoples, including the 30 federally recognized Indian tribes in the basin today. The compact’s only mention of tribes is in Article 7, an article that ensured that nothing in the compact would affect the federal government’s obligation to the tribes, an article Hoover coarsely deemed the “wild Indian article.” That article has not stood up to its charge...