Sacred Sites

It’s National Forest Week – so let’s think about forest planning for tribal areas

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But we all knew that, right?  Here’s the National Forest Foundation link.

But here’s the rest of the story:

It’s National Forest Week, and members of the Crow Tribe are celebrating recognition of a special place in Montana.

In the U.S. Forest Service’s final draft of its Custer Gallatin National Forest plan released last week, the agency recognized the cultural and spiritual significance of the Crazy Mountains, designating it an “Area of Tribal Interest.”

The Custer Gallatin plan recognizes only the southern part of the Crazies. The Forest Service did not include the cultural significance of the northern part in its Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest plan from May.

Ideally, Doyle (a Crow tribal member) said, the tribe would like to see both sections recognized, but he noted that the region in the Custer Gallatin National Forest is most significant.

Why?  If there was one thing that everyone involved in developing planning regulations agreed on, it was that management direction should not change just because of an administrative boundary with a different staff member in charge.  And now this.  Two adjacent forest plan revisions, on roughly the same schedule, and different ideas about what?  Maybe there’s some legitimate resource reasons, but here’s the extent of the plan components for this area (and they don’t require much):

Desired Conditions (BC-DC-TRIBAL)

01 The Crazy Mountains embody a tribal cultural landscape significant to ongoing traditional cultural practices of the Crow Tribe.

02 Research, education, and interpretation of the Crazy Mountain tribal cultural landscape provides public benefits and enhances the understanding and appreciation of Crazy Mountain’s natural environment, precontact, contact, and Crow traditional cultural values.

Goals (BC-GO-TRIBAL)

01 The Custer Gallatin National Forest protects and honors Crow treaty obligations, sacred land and traditional use in the Crazy Mountains through continued consultation with the Crow Tribe.

This is not the only “area of tribal interest” on the Custer-Gallatin.  The Helena-Lewis and Clark plan has plan components for “areas of tribal importance,” but does not identify them (other than the Badger-Two Medicine area).  The plan dedicates one descriptive sentence to the tribal history in the Crazy Mountains.  So, again, how does the Forest Service explain the line they have drawn here?

(Related to the consistency idea, there was a lot of debate about whether plan decisions should be made by forest supervisors or regional foresters.  The Forest Service went with the former (I was told so the Chief wouldn’t be involved in objections), and this is the kind of problem they created.)

Supreme Court may reinterpret tribal treaty rights on national forests

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Here’s a pending Supreme Court case, Herrera v. Wyoming, that hasn’t shown up in the Forest Service litigation summaries.  The federal government is defending the right of a Native American to hunt on the Bighorn National Forest without complying with state hunting laws.  If they lose, tribal treaty rights, as currently understood, could be severely diminished.  The hearing is scheduled for January 8.

When the native tribes ceded their lands to the federal government, the language in the treaties typically preserved their rights to various uses and activities on indigenous lands that were not included within the new reservation, for which the treaties used the terms “open and unclaimed” or “unoccupied” lands.  Much of that land is now part of national forests.  Here is how the Forest Service interprets the language referring to those lands:

The term applied to public domain lands held by the United States that had not been fenced or claimed through a land settlement act. Today, “open and unclaimed lands” applies to lands remaining in the public domain (for the purposes of hunting, gathering foods, and grazing livestock or trapping). The courts have ruled that National Forest System lands reserved from the public domain are open, unclaimed, or unoccupied land, and as such the term applies to
reserved treaty rights on National Forest System land.

In the case currently pending before the Supreme Court the State of Wyoming has argued that this is not true (they also argue that the lands became “occupied” when Wyoming became a state):

The parties further dispute whether the Bighorn National Forest should be considered “unoccupied lands” for treaty purposes. Herrera and the federal government emphasize that the proclamation of a national forest meant the land could no longer be settled, which they argue was the historical standard for occupation. Yet Wyoming argues that physical presence should not be the test, especially given the West’s expansiveness. According to Wyoming, the federal government’s proprietary power over its own lands, including its decisions to exclude hunters, demonstrates that the land was effectively occupied when it became a national forest.

Courts have held that the federal government has a substantive duty to protect ‘to the fullest extent possible’ the tribal treaty rights, and the resources on which those rights depend.   If Wyoming were to win their argument, treaty rights to accustomed tribal uses of national forests would no longer exist.  Because the federal government is defending the tribal interests in this case, one might think that the Forest Service would continue to protect these rights even without the treaty obligation.  However, in the past they have disagreed with tribes on issues such as campground fees and desired salmon populations.

Trump Reportedly Wants to Clearcut Giant Sequoias

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As per the Sierra Club

“Logging companies are lying in wait, chainsaws ready, for Trump to chop the protections of Giant Sequoia National Monument.

Don’t let Trump give loggers free reign to fell majestic trees. Become a monthly donor to save this precious ecosystem: http://sc.org/2upyrE6 ”

Leave no funding opportunity left unexploited!

Klamath Westside salvage project

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I thought this article provided a succinct overview of the state of salvage logging in California.  I was curious about what kind of a logging project the Center for Biological Diversity and local environmental groups were supporting.

Table 11 in the ROD shows that the tribal alternative they supported would harvest about 2000 acres. The selected alternative would log three times that.  Why did the Forest Service pick the latter over the former?

“As shown in Table 12 (sic), there is considerable overlap between the Karuk Alternative and the Selected Alternative;”

Did the FS miss the obvious point here?  That the magnitude of the project is the problem because it would affect water quality and salmon runs?  (Or is this what “pound sand” means?)

It was also interesting to read the earlier letter from the Karuk Tribe chairman that describes the tribal interest in prescribed fires.  I wonder if the Forest Service has considered managing the historic tribal lands for “production of acorns, wild game, medicinal plants and basketry materials,” among its multiple uses.

Track Rock Gap- What’s Up With That?

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You may have read the Examiner stories (under “Crime and Corruption”). Links to those stories can be found in the below story.

This is from Indian Country Today media network.

In July, another Examiner article ran that claimed the Forest Service knocked down more than one hundred trees and blocked the primary trail without the permission of the Creek and Cherokee people.

Wettstaed was quick to debunk the accusation.

“We went to [the nations],” he said. “I’ve kept them appraised with everything that’s going on. … They’ve all endorsed what we’ve done.”

Judy Toppins, public affairs staff officer with the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest Service, said that in March not one hundred, but less than two-dozen trees were chopped down to obscure the user-created trail.

“The mitigation activity that we did for the unauthorized trail … included the taking of about 20 or so dead or damaged trees, non-merchantable timber,” she said. “There also was quite a bit of brush cut and pulled into that trail area. … Nothing was cut within the archeological zone.”

Lisa LaRue-Baker, acting tribal historic preservation officer with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, affirmed that Wettstaed has been in consistent contact with the nation in reference to the site and trail.

“We consult with the Forest Service in our historic area of interest on a regular basis,” she said. “[They] made us aware of [the chopping down of the trees] and we didn’t object to it.”

LaRue-Baker said a film crew had submitted an application with the Forest Service to film a documentary within Track Rock Gap. LaRue-Baker told Wettstaed that the nation was adamantly opposed to the idea to filming at their sacred site.

“Our initial response was that we didn’t wish to see the permit be approved because it’s an archeological site that we would like to remain pristine,” she said. “It’s a sacred site and we don’t want sacred sites commercialized and exploited.”

She added that the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians do not want the site “violated and forever altered for curious and recreational purposes.”

LaRue-Baker, who said she’s “baffled” by the “fabricated Mayan-Cherokee connection,” said her nation, in partnership with the Forest Service, are working on a plan to further protect the site.

“It’s the last stronghold we have on our homeland,” she said. “It’s very near and dear to us.”

The Examiner article said:

He added that Oklahoma Cherokees had informed the USFS that the stone terraces and building ruins at Track Rock Gap were the burial places of many great Cherokee warriors and therefore could not be photographed or filmed. The administrator was asked if opinions of officials at the Seminole Nation, the Muscogee-Creek Nation or the Miccosukee Tribe had been considered in the matter. The administrator didn’t answer the question. Shortly thereafter, it was confirmed that Creek officials had not been consulted by the USFS concerning Track Rock Gap.

My question is that if the Oklahoma Cherokees said “no” and other Nations said “yes” does that mean it would have been OK? I would think that one “no” would be sufficient.

Also, it seems like it would be easy enough to check 100 vs. 20 trees.

I suspect that there is a good news story that could be written about this controversy, that would explain both sides so we could understand their perspectives, and also go out and count the darn trees.

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