Tribal Co-Managment of Federal Lands– A Questionable Proposal.

Old growth Douglas Fir, Siuslaw NF, Oregon. Photo George Wuerthner

The federal agencies including the National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service have all been directed to find ways to engage tribal people in co-management of federal lands (or in some cases such as California in state parks and other state lands). 

These co-management agreements are being implemented at all federal agencies frequently without any public review. I tried to get a co-management agreement from the BLM and FS . In every instance, I was told they were not “available” for public review. I finally got one co-management agreement signed by the Siuslaw NF with some coastal Oregon tribes, but only by getting my Senator to intervene and demand a copy. It still took more than a month for his staff to get a copy; 

Clearcut in Oregon’s coast range. Photo George Wuerthner

Maybe the reason no one is allowed to see the Suislaw-tribal co-management agreement is because the tribes called for much greater logging, including of old growth for “economic development” and of course a requirement that some jobs go to tribal members. 

A co-management arrangement has been signed between Graton Rancheria and Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo George Wuerthner

Other co-management agreements have been made at Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida, and Point Reyes National Seashore in California. Recently the Federal Government signed co-management agreements with three Alaskan native corporations and tribes.

Logging on the Quinault Reservation, Washington. The assumption that tribal people behave any differently when it comes to exploitation of the landscape is questionable.

If you aren’t alarmed by this sort of reverse discrimination, you should be. The track record of tribal people on environmental issues where they “control” the land, resources, or outcome is not very good.

Who controls the outcome is critical. In areas where they do not have a vested interest, particularly a financial one, they may appear “environmentally” allied. But where there is a significant potential for financial gain, you see a different story. 

See my article on the Indian Iron Curtain.

I won’t go into all the problems I anticipate with co-management, the least of which is that it is anti-democratic in that certain people based on race are given greater input and control over public lands. 

Reflection in Muir Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska. Tribal people are permitted to gather gull eggs within the park. George Wuerthner

In some cases it changes traditional public practices. For instance, tribal members are permitted to collect gull eggs within Glacier Bay National Park. Removing native wildlife is usually prohibited in national parks, but there are exceptions, such as an elk hunt in Grand Teton National Park. However, the tribal egg removal is based on race, while the elk hunt is open to any hunter who obtains a permit.

Plus, in some cases, myth and superstition may become the guiding principles in park management.

 Even encouraging tribal “narratives “about tribal origins and territory , which some co-management agreements highlight to guide management, is problematic insofar as they are often based on tribal mythology, not necessarily factual history.

For instance, the 27 “associated” tribes of Yellowstone are not based on any objective criteria. All a tribe has to do is say they had some connection to Yellowstone, and they are granted this special status. Such designation garners special status in park management decisions. 

A further problem is that a “tribal membership” is often based on dubious genetic or other criteria. Some tribes only require 1/64 Indian blood–or about 2%. I.e., in many cases, tribal members are more Caucasian than Native Americans but can use their tribal status for beneficial status as consultants or employees as recommended below. Environmental knowledge or environmental ethics are not passed down through genetics. Many, if not most, tribal members are fully integrated into the dominant global culture, and attributing special knowledge or insights simply because someone is part of a genetic racial group is questionable.

My ancestors on my mother’s side were Scandinavian Vikings who settled in Northern Ireland a thousand years ago. Does that mean I can sail a Viking galley by the stars or know how to use a sword or fish for cod?

Conservation groups are afraid to say anything critical for fear of appearing racist. For instance, when I finally got the tribal co-management agreement for the Siuslaw NF and the call for increased logging, I sent it to several prominent Oregon conservation groups asking if they would alert members or make a public comment. The one response I got was they were not going to touch it. 

Fenceline contrast between ungrazed lands (left side) and Navajo Reservation lands (right side). If the BLM uses Navajo TEK to manage livestock in the Bears Ears National Monument, will it look like this? Photo George Wuerthner

Recently I got an email from the Wilderness Society proclaiming how wonderful it was that TEK would be incorporated in the Bears Ears NM management. Tribal knowledge would guide livestock grazing, commercial timber harvest, climate warming and other issues. Yet the Wilderness Society does not define exactly what or how TEK would differ from current management policies. It simply assumes if tribal members are involved, management will be “better.”

Oil and gas development on Unita Ouray Reservation, Utah. Photo George Wuerthner

 I suppose the BLM loves the idea of using TEK. If you have visited the Navajo Indian Reservation, it is a wonderful example of how tribal members have trashed the land by livestock grazing. Or maybe they will consult the Ouray and Uinta tribe, which supports an oil railroad, or the Southern Utes, who oppose wolf restoration in Colorado. There is a lot of TEK that the BLM will find useful in justifying the exploitation of the monument.

There is a movement to equate TEK with Western science. In most cases, TEK is nothing more than observational, with no mechanical or scientifically valid explanation. It is more analogous to mythology and superstition than science, which tests and repeatability standards that critical examination can verify. One may observe that some plant grows in a particular location or some animal utilizes a specific habitat, but some myth or story often explains why it does.

Bison and calf. Some tribes believed bison came out of a hole in the ground to replenish herds. Photo George Wuerthner

For instance, some Plains Indians believed the herds would appear if they danced the Buffalo Dance. Of course, since the dances continued, sometimes for weeks or months, and did not end until bison arrived or the tribe starved, meant it couldn’t fail.

Some tribes assert they should be permitted to collect plants and even hunt in national parks, though other citizens do not permit these activities, with few exceptions. If this were widely implemented across national parks, it would gut the basic premise of parks as refugia for wildlife and plants.

While co-management may be nothing more than “lip service” in some instance and may have no legal status, any public employee who does not at least appear to be compliant may suffer consequences.

Some tribal activists see co-management as the first step towards transferring public lands to tribal entities as part of the “Land Back” movement. Such a transfer would result in the loss of one of America’s most democratic institutions—its public lands heritage.

Comments

  1. Sunflower Avatar
    Sunflower

    Sounds like the “Project 2025” of the National Park system.

  2. Nope Avatar
    Nope

    Fuck this guy and screw you, wildlife news, for publishing this offensive article! RACISTS!

    1. Jonathan Ratner Avatar

      Simply saying “fuck you, you are a racist” is cheap and intellectually impoverished.

      The first step is you need to challenge the underlying facts, with logic and rationality.

      Once agreed upon facts are settled, then you need to explain how the opinions/conclusions developed based on those facts are racist.

      Simply stating facts and conclusions that someone or some group may not like, is not racist.

    2. NDN Avatar
      NDN

      In this case, the article by Mr. Wuerthner didn’t even cite any facts—it was simply an expression of personal opinions. Without a foundation of agreed-upon facts, there’s no basis for logical debate. When opinions are presented without supporting evidence, it’s easy for them to reflect unchecked biases or stereotypes.

      Additionally, while facts and logic are essential in discussions, it’s important to remember that how facts are framed and interpreted can still perpetuate racist narratives. For example, citing statistical disparities without context might be factually accurate but can reinforce harmful stereotypes if the broader socioeconomic factors driving those disparities are ignored.

      So, challenging racist opinions or conclusions goes beyond just debating facts—it involves analyzing how those facts are used, or in this case, how unsupported opinions might perpetuate harmful ideas. Simply stating opinions or even facts doesn’t absolve someone of racism if their framing or interpretation serves to marginalize or dehumanize others.

      Finally, while logic and reason are important, it’s also valid for someone to respond emotionally, especially when faced with dehumanizing or bigoted views. “Fuck you” may not engage in a calm debate, but it can express the frustration and anger of being confronted with racism. Dismissing this emotional response ignores the real harm that racism causes, and people have a right to express their outrage when their humanity is being undermined.

  3. Jonathan Ratner Avatar

    Can you explain exactly how this article is racist?

    1. Huang Li-Shia Avatar
      Huang Li-Shia

      Co-management agreements are a political determination between two sovereign nations. To minimize a nation and its sovereignty based on the ancestry of that nation is racist. Please go back to school and learn about your US law before you post such intellectually impoverished articles. You are perpetuating harms to the entirety of society when you release these opinions.

  4. Mary Avatar
    Mary

    Thank you for this important post. WHO KNEW people would destroy land so easily, claiming it’s best environmentally or culturally?

    You had me at ‘Clearcut in Oregon’s coast range’. Insupportable loss of life in what should be protected lands.

    These public lands are to be preserved– a public resource for generations to come– a desperately needed habitat.

    WHY ARE PUBLIC LANDS MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS KEPT SECRET?

    “Maybe the reason no one is allowed to see the Suislaw-tribal co-management agreement is because the tribes called for much greater logging, including of old growth for “economic development” and of course a requirement that some jobs go to tribal members. ”

    Noone is so special they are permitted to kill off ecosystems.

    1. Jonathan Ratner Avatar

      More than half a year ago, I submitted a FOIA for all these types of agreements in the Forest Service because the Secretary of Agriculture had mentioned that there were 21 in a published interview. I got no response. I filed an appeal but have gotten nothing yet.

  5. Patrick McKay Avatar
    Patrick McKay

    The new Bears Ears Management Plan literally banned target shooting to avoid offending ancestral spirits with artificial noises. Basing federal land management decisions on so-called “traditional indigenous knowledge” is nothing more than adopting native paganism/animism as a state religion in utter violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment.

  6. Wayne Tyson Avatar
    Wayne Tyson

    My beautiful grandmother was Cherokee. She told me about The Trail of Tears and taught be a lot about Nature. I suspect, but cannot prove I have a sort of Cherokee nose, but I “look” European–as do a lot of “Indians” who are “registered.” On government forms I sometimes check the “other” box. Sometimes I simply state that the concept of “race” is not a valid scientific discovery, but a “scholarly” concept that has gained wide acceptance. “We” were all black in the beginning. Skin color lightened with northerly migration–Vitamin D deficiency = rickets is one of the more rational explanations of why skin color lightened in the north. Brittle bones around the birth canal, for example, tends to cause mortality, leaving the lighter-skinned individuals in darker-skinned populations that blocked the sunlight too well.

    One of the things my grandmother taught me was that nobody could “own” the land, but should take only what one NEEDS from Earth. “Warrior Woman” taught me that they (the Miwok) “harvested” only one of the two leaves from the wild onions in their historical and prehistorical onion patch, and the The California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) bulldozed it to take some of the curve out of a road near Yosemite so people could drive faster. The Cahuilla people, for example, ensured that they would only take half of any population by passing up the first individual, using the second, passing the third, and so on . . .

    That is interdependence.

    Hear Kenneth Boulding: “We have only two choices, really. We can have an ‘I beat you down, you beat me, down, I beat you down’ society [culture/competion], or we can have an ‘I lift you up, you lift me up, I lift you up [cooperative] Society.’” Sustainable–I guess is the way to say it, but so many of the ways the word is recently used, begs the original definition.

  7. Bruce Bowen Avatar
    Bruce Bowen

    I would say to those interested in this subject ,”ferret out the usury and follow the money trail”.

    I have personally known traditional tribal medicine men and women and they are in a very small minority and most of them despise capitalism and tribal business councils. They possess an uncommon form of self discipline and their ceremonies are very real. But for every real medicine person there are dozens of other people who use the “mystic” of native American culture for their own gain. Governments and NGO’s not with standing. These imposters prey upon the ignorance of others and should not be confused with historically, authentic traditional rituals, cosmology and practices.

    Tribal business councils ( the entities that the government deals with) do not necessarily represent much of traditional indigenous culture and have had plenty of trouble with internal problems such as embezzlement , misuse of funds etc.. Hmmm- sounds the U.S. government doesn’t it.

    So now we are in the age of double speak, NGO’s, hyper-bureaucracy and hyper sensitivity to race; and the “race card” is being deployed much more frequently especially when dollars are to be made.

    Folks should not lump together a legitimate medicine person who would like to save a patch of habitat of medicinal herbs with the tribal business people who want to fatten tribal coffers.

    Thus I agree with Mr. Wuerthner in that the federal government must be open about its conduct on public land. I recall that older phrase from the past:

    “Taxation without representation is tyranny”

  8. Huang Li-Shia Avatar
    Huang Li-Shia

    If you don’t know how this is racist then you obviously have not been to a tribal gover

  9. Jonathan Ratner Avatar

    For the last quarter of a century I have been totally focused on protecting our public lands through the application of science, law, regulation and policy.

    The legal and regulatory framework is very far from perfect but its what we have developed over the last century or so.

    I have also spent some time on reservations in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho where this legal and regulatory framework does not exist.

    The adjacent BLM lands, as poorly managed as they are, generally look wonderful in comparison.

    I have also dealt with the management of ESA listed species that occur both on and off the reservation. In FOIA I have seen communications between the FWS and the tribes outlining the significantly more difficult position of protecting endanger species on tribal lands.

    The last thing our public lands need is a legal and regulatory framework even weaker that what we have now.

    While we are at a fairly early stage of “co-management” experimentation, the threats this poses to our public lands are real and they must be discussed.

    Just because someone may be offended by the discussion is not sufficient rationale to not engage in the discussion.

    If any topic that someone may get offended by is now off limits, then virtually all dialog will cease.

    1. Bruce Bowen Avatar
      Bruce Bowen

      If the question is primarily about co-management, then more than one example should be given to provide the readers a chance to form their own opinions based on a wider view of Native American and federal cooperation. Here are several.

      https//eagles.iowanation.org

      http://www.fws.gov/story/2022-08/endangered-salmon-returned-home-…….. .

      So yes- let us keep a dialog going.

  10. Michael Kellett Avatar

    George cites a number of examples to support his findings and conclusions. I am familiar with many of them and, as far as I can see, he is describing them accurately.

    If anyone can provide facts that show his claims to be inaccurate, I am sure he would be glad to issue a correction. Thus far, no one in these comments have offered such facts.

  11. Jeff Hoffman Avatar

    For those of us who are biocentric or ecocentric, it doesn’t matter at all which group of humans manages the land. What matters is protecting and restoring native nonhumans, habitats, and ecosystems as much as possible. The Natives here were exponentially better at this than the colonizers who invaded, but now that they’ve been colonized, most of the Natives have the same mentality as the colonizers. As Bruce Bowen pointed out, only the traditional Natives should be involved in managing the land, and they are few and far between, unfortunately.

    BTW, anyone who calls George or this essay “racist” totally missed the point and/or is racist themselves. We don’t care who manages the land, we just want it to be left alone, or to be restored to its most natural state if necessary.

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George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.

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