Opinion of the Court
Navajos. None is persuasive.
First, the Navajos note that the text of the 1868 treaty established the Navajo Reservation as a “permanent home.” 15 Stat. 671. In the Tribe’s view, that language means that the United States agreed to take affirmative steps to secure water. But that assertion finds no support in the treaty’s text or history, or in any of this Court’s precedents. The 1868 treaty granted a reservation to the Navajos and imposed a variety of specific obligations on the United States—for example, building schools and a chapel, providing teachers, and supplying seeds and agricultural implements. The reservation contains a number of water sources that the Navajos have used and continue to rely on. But as explained above, the 1868 treaty imposed no duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe. The 1868 treaty, as demonstrated by its text and history, helped to ensure that the Navajos could return to their original land. See Treaty Between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians With a Record of the Discussions That Led to Its Signing 2, 4, 10–11, 15 (1968).
Second, the Navajos rely on the provision of the 1868 treaty in which the United States agreed to provide the Tribe with certain “seeds and agricultural implements” for up to three years. 15 Stat. 669. In the Navajos’ view, those seeds and implements would be unusable without water. But the reservation contains a number of water sources that the Navajos have used and continue to rely on. And the United States’s duty to temporarily provide seeds and agricultural implements for three years did not include an additional duty to take affirmative steps to secure water, and to do so indefinitely into the future. If anything, the treaty’s express requirement that the United States supply seeds and agricultural implements for a 3-year period—like the treaty’s requirement that the United States build schools, a chapel, and the like—demonstrates that the
