ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The U.S. government is entering a new era of collaboration with Native American and Alaska Native leaders in managing public lands and other resources, with top federal officials saying that incorporating more Indigenous knowledge into decision-making can help spur conservation and combat climate change.
Federal emergency managers on Dec. 7 also announced updates to recovery policies to aid tribal communities in the repair or rebuilding of traditional homes or ceremonial buildings after a series of wildfires, floods and other disasters around the country.
With hundreds of tribal leaders gathering in Washington, D.C., the first week of December for an annual summit, the Biden administration celebrated nearly 200 new agreements designed to boost federal cooperation with tribes nationwide.
The agreements cover everything from fishery restoration projects in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to management of new national monuments in the Southwest, seed collection work in Montana and plant restoration in the Great Smoky Mountains.
The new co-management and co-stewardship agreements announced mark a tenfold increase over what had been inked just a year earlier, and officials said more are in the pipeline.
U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community in northern Michigan, said each agreement is unique. He said each arrangement is tailored to a tribe’s needs and capacity for helping to manage public lands — and at the very least assures their presence at the table when decisions are made.
The U.S. government controls more than a quarter of the land in the United States, with much of that encompassing the ancestral homelands of federally recognized tribes. While the idea of co-stewardship dates back decades and has spanned multiple presidential administrations, many tribes have advocated in recent years for a more formal role in managing federal lands to which they have a connection.
Tribes and advocacy groups have been pushing for arrangements that go beyond the consultation requirements mandated by federal law.
Ada Montague Stepleton, a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund, said the significant uptick in the number of agreements signed just in the past year show there’s a willingness in Indian Country to find a path forward that is mutually beneficial to tribes and the federal government — and ultimately taxpayers.
“We’ve been compiling information to try to understand these agreements better,” she said. “There is a sort of a double-edged sword. We want to make sure that sovereignty isn’t eroded while at the same time creating places where co-management can, in fact, occur.”
The agency also is now accepting tribal self-certified damage assessments and cost estimates for restoring ceremonial buildings or traditional homes, while not requiring site inspections, maps or other details that might compromise culturally sensitive data.
Nancy James, first chief of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in Tribal Council in Alaska, said the effects of climate change on tribal communities can’t be ignored.
“Reality check,” she said, after ticking off details about warmer temperatures, bears not hibernating as they should and the inability of her people to fish due to changing water conditions. “Global warming has affected every one of us.”
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