Bitter Water:
A Memoir of Discrimination in Indian County
Bitter Water: A Memoir of Discrimination in Indian County is a rare first-hand look into tribal institutions of the modern-day West through the eyes of a Northern Arapaho woman. As Charlene Delaunay comes face-to-face with a culture she’d never known, she and her French husband Manu struggle to become sheep ranchers on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.
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Book Summary
Sheep ranching was tough, but not nearly as tough as the problems they would encounter getting water to their land. Faced with life-threatening intimidation by a treacherous neighboring family controlling water access, the couple is pushed to the brink after a decade of no government or tribal intervention. They decide to break the law in order to save their sheep.
The neighbor who cut off their water happened to be the water engineer in control of the Tribal Water Board. Appeals passed through him and his minions. After exhausting all efforts and calls for assistance, the couple locates a country lawyer versed in Indian water law. Recognizing tribal court was an inadequate venue, the lawyer pursued an unusual approach: he would file a civil rights suit against the Tribal Water Engineer and his family. It would be a long shot ….
Through a maze of laws and jurisdictions, Charlene and Manu are resolute in their integrity to find justice and maintain their own loving relationship.
Bitter Water is a timely memoir as tribes across the American West battle in court to secure their historically granted water rights. Marginalized people forcibly relocated during the nineteenth century—their cultures and populations nearly decimated by the westward expansion of Manifest Destiny—no longer defend their land and water with bows and arrows but with the skill of lawyers.