Four Tribes,
A vision for the future
The GBWTI exists to protect and enhance tribal rights, sovereignty, water-related resources, traditional cultural education, and other interests and issues of common concern in our respective territories through a structured process of cooperation and coordination among Goshute, Paiute and Western Shoshone communities.
Image: Goshute Elder Rupert Steele at Swamp Cedars.
Credit: Monte Sanford
A Story That Spans Millennia
As they have for thousands of years, Western Shoshone, Paiute, and Goshute people work together to revere the Earth Mother and sustain their heritage throughout their homelands. In recent years, conflicts over land and water led to new partnerships and collaborations to meet the challenges imposed by non-native communities. And while there are many success stories, there is a continuing need to bolster programming that tribal governments currently cannot sustain without outside support.
Now, more than ever, there is a need to elevate awareness about the primary needs and cultural relationships native communities have with land and water in valleys throughout the Great Basin. But there is a giant chasm between what must be done and what can be funded.
The current partnerships between the GBWTI members represent a desire to protect water, sacred sites, cultural customs and other traditional values. But the collective interests also reflect a need to ensure that native communities are keeping pace in developing infrastructure, ensuring robust participation in natural resource oversight, and modernizing diplomatic channels in government-to-government relations.
Today, the GBWTI represents tribal partnerships that will ensure justice, equity and reconciliation for native communities by securing resources, executing programming, and delivering educational opportunities for native and non-native communities alike.
Building Tribal capacity
Tribal nations throughout the Great Basin are resilient, sovereign, and committed to a just and equitable future. While the impacts of colonialism, broken treaties, forced removal, and oppressive governance still exist, there is a growing demand to reconcile, commemorate and honor the people who have long called the Great Basin their home.
Across Nevada and Utah, settler-led impacts have left reservations with insufficient water, infrastructure, and other resources — inhibiting progress for Tribal communities in today’s modern world and unjustly harming the rights of native communities. To reverse historic and modern injustices, GBWTI is a collaborative focused on capacity building, public education, and cultural restoration to create new opportunities and relationships on and off reservations. Tribal leaders created the GBWTI to help deliver much-needed resources for their people and demand accountability from non-native governments to deliver on unfulfilled promises
Common Goals, Common Interests
The No. 1 challenge and priority for the GBWTI tribal members is attaining sustainable, reliable funding streams. The GBWTI seeks to secure financial resources that are otherwise unavailable to sovereign nations — an effort that will mobilize resources for community infrastructure, advocacy, and public education. The GBWTI prioritizes actions that will bring about resources to defend the tribes legal rights, regulatory concerns and administrative priorities. The Initiative also focuses on the tribes abilities to grow food for domestic and commercial use, the health and safety of their people, and off-reservation actions that impact their rights. Based on common ancestors and history, the GBWTI is a common voice for the future of resource management across the traditional lands of Shoshone, Goshute and Paiute peoples.
