Co-Stewardship is Great, Say Conservation Groups.. Except When We Disagree With Tribes

Please be patient as you follow me down this bunny trail.

It started with our discussion which seems to have been in an Oregonian letter by Ingalsbee and Wheeler mentioned  by Steve Wilent in a comment.

The inclusion of tribal co-stewardship and Indigenous knowledge represents a profound change that goes beyond undoing past wrongs to Indigenous peoples — it will help restore species, habitats and landscape diversity. But these benefits are under threat. The Trump administration now threatens to subvert the progressive prospects of the Northwest Forest amendment by its effort to banish the words “diversity” and “inclusion.”

1) Certainly the Oregonian is not The Smokey Wire, but it probably doesn’t matter what the “generic Trump Admin” says about abstractions.. what probably matters is what the new Chief,  and the Secs of Int and Ag think about the topic, specifically, co-stewardship and co-management. We’ve discussed those before in detail last year, riffing on a Mother Jones story.

but 2) I know people make the claim that co-stewardship will “help restore” those thing; but co-stewardship, again, is kind of a generic abstraction.  I’m sure that the FACA recommending folks for the Northwest Forest Plan would be more specific, because I have much respect for them, and perhaps someone else can look it up or knows offhand what page it’s on..

But folks keep making that claim,  like this generic statement (in bold) by a professor at the Yale School of the Environment:

Gonzales-Rogers is hopeful that, exponentially, these choices will compound, “and may even have a nexus to say something like landback” a reference to a movement that is not only rooted in a mass return of land to Indigenous nations and peoples, but also tribes having sovereignty to steward the land that was taken from them.

Gonzales-Rogers thinks the two terms have not been very well-defined over the years, but said co-stewardship agreements might be a good way to start building to co-management.

And the more tribes have autonomy over their ancestral lands, the better it is for conservation goals. According to a recent study, equal partnerships between tribes and governments are the best way to protect public lands — the more tribal autonomy, the better the land is taken care of.

This seems like an odd generic statement to make. It’s one of those statements that I think people keep saying because they operate at the abstraction level, and not at the observational level. I’ve run into those kinds of statements a few times in my career, and in my experience it can be an academic/media echo chamber.  And it seems that  the folks with the observations are never brought into the conversation, nor is there an opportunity to have the discussion. It’s kind of like a policy mantra.

Then there was our post earlier this year on George Wuerther’s idea of the “Indian Iron Curtain” and his review of Native Alaskan support for energy projects. In fact, if you scroll down on the right, there are categories for posts, and if you look on Tribes you’ll see that we’ve had many posts on this topic.

People in Tribes are ultimately people. And people disagree with each other. Like other folks, they handle decisions that have to be made jointly via some kind of governmental organization. So folks who make claims that “autonomy is the best way to protect public lands” have a great deal of confidence not only in the philosophies of individual Tribal members, but of the ability of Tribal governments to act in the way that some individuals would define as “conservation.”

Let’s look at some observations of where conservation organizations and Tribes apparently do not agree. Some have argued that the definition of “conservation” is a Euro-American concept, so that is a bit of a philosophical issue, but still relevant.

There is the Ute support of the litigated oil train, which Colorado is against.
The Navajo did a deal with Energy Resources allowing uranium access (but not all Navajos agreed with their government, duh, see above).
The Navajo did not agree with the buffer zone around Chaco Canyon (apparently Pueblo and Navajo did not agree).

Conservation groups were against the Izembeck Road (apparently because doing what the King Cove people want would “set a dangerous precedent by undermining conservation laws.”

In our world,

The Kalispels supported the Sxwuytn-Kanisksu Connections Trail Project which was litigated by AWR.

And the Black Ram project, poster child of the “Climate Forest Campaign”, the project supported by the Kootenai.

“The Tribe supports the Black Ram project, because it protects our Ktunaxa resources, furthers restoration of Ktunaxa Territory forests and was developed through our government-to-government relationship with the United States Forest Service,” said Gary Aitken, Jr., Vice-Chairman, Kootenai Tribe of Idaho.

But apparently not by the below groups, who support the Climate Forest Campaign (there are more, but I think everyone from Earthjustice to FUSEE (the very Ingalbee of the Oregonion op-ed) gets the point across.  Sometimes when some folks are for “co-stewardship” they seem to think that means.. ?unless the Tribes want to do something we don’t support.”

Some organizations who consider themselves “conservation organizations” are not in favor of cutting trees;  for some, pretty much not on private, state, nor federal land, and yet many Tribes have forest management programs, and some have their own sawmills.

In fact, there is an active Intertribal Timber Council.

It seems that another op-ed could be written on how by deferring to the wishes of some environmental groups (aka “conservation organizations”) the Biden Admin went against the will of Tribes as evidenced by their Tribal Governments.  In fact, I attended a webinar early in the Biden Admin on oil and gas policies and the two Tribal organizations (Native Alaskans and that spoke both preferred “all of the above.”