On Thursday, September 5, 2024, Water Education Colorado recognized Lorelei Cloud with the 2024 Greg Hobbs Next Wave Leadership Award. Read more about the award and past award winners here.
Lorelei Cloud, Vice Chairman of the Southern Ute Tribal Council, is a motorcycle-riding former boxing coach who made history in March 2023 as the first Native American to be appointed to the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB). She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Board and represents the Southwest Basin’s San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan rivers.
Lorelei is nearing the end of her third term on the Tribal Council and, this November she’ll run for a fourth. She joined the Council in 2015 after seeing a multitude of challenges her community was facing and believing that she could do something about them. “I thought to myself, if I wasn’t going to be part of the solution then I was part of the problem.”
Between these dual leadership roles and others—Lorelei also serves as Co-Founder and now former Co-Chair for the Indigenous Women’s Leadership Network and as a leadership team member for the Water and Tribes Initiative—Lorelei is committed to empowering other young female leaders and to acting on behalf of her Tribe to strengthen both sovereignty and water security.
Her top priority, which she describes as “24-7, 365,” has been preserving Southern Ute Tribal water and developing that water. “The only way we’re going to protect it is to develop it. We’ve been disenfranchised since the creation of our reservation, and the development of our water is part of that.”
Lorelei’s background and childhood influences made leadership, and in particular leadership around water, part of her DNA. She was raised primarily by her grandmother and eldest sister in a small adobe house on the Southern Ute Reservation, three miles from Ignacio, with no car and, even more significantly, no running water—a lesson in itself. “I grew up understanding the value of water and how to take care of it,” says Lorelei.
She describes it as a very traditional Ute home setting, where they grew most of their own food, were taught a profound respect for Mother Nature, and, with only two channels on the television, spent most of their time outdoors. Lorelei’s home was one where all the relatives, including revered Tribal elders, would gather. Her uncle, Leonard C. Burch, served as Chairman of the Tribe for 36 years. “I grew up in his house as well,” she says. The most influential figure in her life, her grandmother Sunshine Cloud Smith, had also spent years on the Council, including as acting Chairman, in the 1950s.
Lorelei wasn’t taught the Ute language growing up. For the older generations, it had been very difficult to learn English, and because of that, she says, “They only spoke English with us. They didn’t want us to fall behind.” She did, however, grow up hearing the language spoken around her, and also learned a multitude of other things from her grandmother and other family members, including “the prayers and protocols,”—and how to play poker.
Lorelei attended seven different colleges but never finished. Different life events got in the way. “Mother Nature and my family have always been my biggest teachers,” she says. Now she is in her fifth year of a degree completion program at the University of Denver, where she is studying leadership and organizational studies.
Before joining Tribal Council, Lorelei had worked in a hardware store, then in banking for eight years. She moved on to the Southern Ute Housing Authority for approximately another eight years, and then spent five years at Red Willow Production Company, an oil and gas company owned by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.
After deciding to run for Council nearly a decade ago, she almost talked herself out of it. Describing herself as a closet introvert, she says campaigning was difficult. “Even now I don’t like talking about myself. Trying to sell myself to Tribal Members, and why they should vote for me, is the scariest thing I ever had to do.”
She couldn’t believe it when she won by a landslide. “I was so shocked at the amount of belief that my people had in me,” she recalls.
Along with the history-making leap to serve on the CWCB, Lorelei’s proudest accomplishments include establishing a Memorandum of Understanding, signed in April 2024, with the four Upper Basin states of the Colorado River Basin and the six Upper Basin Tribes, with regard to the Colorado River. The MOU outlines a commitment to information-sharing, and to identifying and cooperating to address issues of mutual concern.
A precursor to working on the MOU was developing a strong working relationship with Colorado state officials, particularly former CWCB Director Becky Mitchell, who now serves as Colorado’s Commissioner to the Upper Colorado River Commission and whom Lorelei credits with her opportunity to join the CWCB Board. “She was very open minded and helped develop that small window I needed to be able to put my application in and for that application to be taken seriously. Having that person advocating for you regardless of political backlash and changing the course of history is paramount to the change we really need.”
Now, says Lorelei, “We’re finally making some headway to set everything in motion to develop our unused Tribal water.”
Lorelei spends a good deal of time educating others on Ute history and sovereignty, as well as belief systems. “There is a lack of knowledge with how Tribes work within the government structure,” she explains. And, “There is this colonized view of nature and land, where everything has to have ownership. But why, why does that have to happen?”
“We came from our Creator, and there are all of these things he gave us to take care of…every blade of grass, every ounce of water has a spirit. There is a divine love between humans and Nature. It changes your view of the world. It changes how you see the essence of life.”
Part of her message is that the Ute people have always been here on this land and will continue to fight to be here. But at the same time, her belief in our shared fate undergirds her spirit of collaboration: “We’re all in this together. My environment is your environment and yours is mine. Your future is my future, and my future is your future.”
In her limited free time, Lorelei loves to watch boxing, a sport she previously coached, and to ride her new motorcycle every chance she gets. She isn’t married but has three grown children plus five granddaughters and two grandsons. Her son, Diamond, lives in Albuquerque, has a degree in Aviation Electronics, and currently works surveillance at a casino. Her older daughter, Alicia, lives in Bayfield, has a Culinary degree, and is a really good cook. Her youngest daughter, Keona (Skippy), is in her second year at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Sports Management.
Looking ahead, Lorelei says she will continue to focus on being a role model for other young Ute women and girls to step into positions of leadership. “Utes were always a matriarchal people. Somewhere along the line we lost that because of colonialism.”
She’s also committed to ensuring Tribes are included in every conversation with the state. And she sees an opportunity to further influence the structure and makeup of the CWCB. “There is another sovereign nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, that should have a seat on the CWCB to be able to represent themselves.”
Summing it up, Lorelei says of her life and career to date: “I’ve always been a water protector. I just needed a chance to show it.”
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