In Winters v. United States (1908), the Supreme Court held that the right to use waters flowing through or adjacent to the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation was reserved to American Indians by the treaty establishing the reservation. Although this treaty did not mention water rights, the Court ruled that the federal government, when it created thereservation, intended to deal fairly with American Indians by preserving for them the waters without which their lands would have been useless. Later decisions, citing Winters, established that courts can find federal rights to reserve water for particular purposes if (1) the land in question lies within an enclave under exclusive federal jurisdiction, (2) the land has been formally withdrawn from federal public lands — i.e., withdrawn from the stock of federal lands available for private use under federal land use laws — and set aside or reserved, and (3) the circumstances reveal the government intended to reserve water as well as land when establishing the reservation.

    Some American Indian tribes have also established water rights through the courts based on their traditional diversion and use of certain waters prior to the United States' acquisition of sovereignty. For example, the Rio Grande pueblos already existed when the United States acquired sovereignty over New Mexico in 1848. Although they at that time became part of the United States, the pueblo lands never formally constituted a part of federal public lands; in any event, no treaty, statute, or executive order has ever designated or withdrawn the pueblos from public lands as American Indian reservations. This fact, however, has not barred application of the Winters doctrine. What constitutes an American Indian reservation is a question of practice, not of legal definition, and the pueblos have always been treated as reservations by the United States. This pragmatic approach is buttressed by Arizona v. California (1963), wherein the Supreme Court indicated that the manner in which any type of federal reservation is created does not affect the application to it of the Winters doctrine. Therefore, the reserved water rights of Pueblo Indians have priority over other citizens' water rights as of 1848, the year in which pueblos must be considered to have become reservations.

    Many researchers regard Thailand's recent economic growth, as reflected by its gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates, as an example of the success of a modern technological development strategy based on the market economics of industrialized countries. Yet by focusing solely on aggregate economic growth data as the measure of Thailand's development, these researchers have overlooked the economic impact of rural development projects that improve people's daily lives at the village levelsuch as the cooperative raising of water buffalo, improved sanitation, and the development of food crops both for consumption and for sale at local markets; such projects are not adequately reflected in the country's GDP. These researchers, influenced by Robert Heilbroner's now outdated development theory, tend to view nontechnological development as an obstacle to progress. Heilbroner's theory has become doctrine in some economics textbooks: for example, Monte Palmer disparages nontechnological rural development projects as inhibiting constructive change. Yet as Ann Kelleher's two recent case studies of the Thai villages Non Muang and Dong Keng illustrate, the nontechnological-versus-technological dichotomy can lead researchers not only to overlook real advances achieved by rural development projects but also mistakenly to conclude that because such advances are initiated by rural leaders and are based on traditional values and practices, they retard "real" economic development.