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Concerns Raised Over National Park Service's "Tribal Co-Stewardship Playbook"

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By

Kurt Repanshek

Published Date

October 22, 2024

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The Biden administration has worked to develop greater collaboration with Indigenous cultures/NPS file photo

An internal document suggesting national parks work to develop co-management agreements with tribal partners is drawing concern and raising questions about the legality of the National Park Service calling for co-management. 

The Tribal Co-Stewardship Playbook [attached below] was distributed early this year from the Park Service’s Intermountain Region to the nearly 90 National Park System units in that region, which touches Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, and Montana.

While clearly marked as a draft seeking feedback, the subtitle of the document says it provides “park managers decision-support to strengthen and expand tribal partner co-stewardship practices” and carried the implied endorsement of Regional Director Kate Hammond.

"Tribal co-stewardship is not only one of the Director's priorities, but a Regional Strategic Priority as well," Hammond said in a memorandum to superintendents in her region that accompanied the Playbook. "While all parks are expected to meet the legal requirements regarding Tribal Consultation, this guidebook was developed to aid parks with tools and guidance on how to expand co-stewardship in the four following areas: trust and relationships, compensation for services rendered, commercial partnerships, grants and projects with federal funding, and employment. While not completely exhaustive, these strategies present opportunities and can serve as a starting point for park managers to begin to improve co-stewardship practices with tribal partners."

Several superintendents (both retired and active, who wish to remain anonymous) are concerned that Park Service leadership sent this out for consideration —albeit as a draft— even though it is fairly obvious that it goes beyond existing law and policy.  

A Biden Administration Priority

It’s no secret that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, both enrolled tribal members, have voiced support for bringing Indigenous knowledge into the parks. Back in November 2021 the Biden administration established the “Tribal Homelands Initiative” as a means to “improve federal stewardship of public lands, waters, and wildlife by strengthening the role of Tribal communities in federal land management.”

“From growing crops and taming wildfires to managing drought and famine, our ancestors have spent millennia using nature-based approaches to coexist among our lands, waters, wildlife, and their habitats. As tribal communities continue to face the effects of climate change, this knowledge — which has been passed down since time immemorial — will benefit the Department’s efforts to bolster community resilience and protect Indigenous communities,” Haaland said during the White House Tribal Nations Summit held then. “By acknowledging and treating tribes as partners in co-stewardship of our lands and waters, we will undoubtedly strengthen our federal land and resources management.”

In March 2022 Sams appeared before the House Committee on Natural Resources to outline his agency’s goals for co-stewardship of parks with tribal partners.

“[T]he NPS is reviewing its sources of authority to enter into the full range of co-stewardship agreements, inclusive of but not limited to formal co-management,” Sams told the committee. “The NPS is also assessing its tribal consultation processes to ensure that parks and regional offices have the necessary support and guidance to work with tribal nations on these agreements and to enhance tribal member opportunities to work in and connect to national park sites that hold significant cultural and spiritual importance, consistent with President Biden and Secretary Haaland’s direction on meaningful consultation.”

Parks Canada has fully embraced co-management with Indigenous cultures. That agency has worked to develop sharing management of Cape Breton Highlands National Park with the Mi'kmaq, who consider the Nova Scotia park a place of cultural and spiritual significance and at Kejimkujik National Park and National Historic Site, also in Nova Scotia, to work cooperatively with the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia to ensure a shared approach to the management of Kejimkujik. The significance of Kejimkujik to the Mi’kmaq as a cultural landscape underpins all management direction for the site. 

That National Park Service in the United States has been less than transparent in its view of co-management with tribal nations. The agency was reluctant to release a copy of the Playbook when Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain it. In return the agency sent a copy in which every page but the cover sheet was redacted. PEER appealed that decision, and the Interior Department’s solicitor’s office released an unredacted copy. Additionally, Park Service officials in Washington declined to discuss the document with the Traveler or even say whether it was endorsed by Sams and was being distributed throughout the National Park System, and the Intermountain Region not reply to an inquiry about the document.

There Have Been Calls To Turn Over Park Lands To Tribes.

Among the suggestions contained in the Playbook:

  • Add “Welcome Home” signs in tribal languages alongside the park’s entrance signs
  • Where possible, obtain formal co-management agreements with tribes.
  • Allow tribal members to use a park address as their address when applying for positions through USA Jobs.
  • Waive entrance fees for tribal members
  • Create a “vending market" in parks where tribal artisans can sell directly to the public as vendors.

The document lives up to its title by clearly stating on page 4 that it "organizes each strategy into a series of tactics that serve to advance the strategy, and ultimately, co-stewardship efforts more broadly. The tactics are further ordered by the timeline for implementation, ranging from short-term to long-term. The goal in doing so is to provide park managers with a resource that can easily be used to incorporate co-stewardship into their management strategy."

"Relatively Harmless"

Frank Buono, who during his 30-year Park Service career worked as a backcountry and law enforcement ranger, interpreter, and retired as deputy superintendent, calls the document “a well-intentioned effort to involve tribes in the National Park System.”

“The Playbook is only aspirational in this goal, and thus relatively harmless,” he adds in his analysis for PEER. “Only Congress may vest tribes with co-management, or any other degree of tribal control, over the parks.”

And the document makes that clear, stating that “[F]ormal co-management requires legislated authority to delegate decision-making, and so immediately reaching for co-management may be too large and intimidating an endeavor for parks. Instead, park managers can focus on the numerous actionable steps they can take to improve tribal relationships within the umbrella of co-stewardship that may prove helpful when striving for future co-management.”

But Buono worries about sections of the document calling for tribal artisans to be allowed to set up “markets” to sell directly to the public, to “update museum exhibits to reflect Indigenous language, history, and narratives,” and to seemingly give tribal members an edge in hiring.

In questioning the section on pulling “tribal language, history and narratives” into park interpretive materials, the retired NPS official said, “this co-stewardship recommendation could dramatically undermine interpreting park features and history to the public in a professional and objective way.”

“It will be contentious to tell the scientific story of the populating the Western Hemisphere by our species — Homo sapiens. Tribal narratives sincerely recount that they, and their ancestors, have always been in North America,” he went on. “Or that bison emerged on the plains of the North American continent from a hole in earth. There are many similar tribal narratives that explain an understanding of natural phenomena and human events that do not conform to science or history.

“No disrespect for sincere religious beliefs is intended when we say that some evangelical fundamentalists also believe that humans and dinosaurs once coexisted. The NPS simply cannot propagate that narrative,” Buono continued. “In contrast to the special creationists, whom some now fashionably deride, many of the same persons listen in hushed reverence to tribal creation and origin myths. Tribes may freely adhere to these beliefs. But the NPS cannot propagate these narratives except to describe them as unscientific, though traditional, aboriginal beliefs.”

Missed Opportunities

Tim Cochrane, who long served as superintendent of Grand Portage National Monument in Minnesota, a monument created on land donated by the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, didn’t share Buono’s concerns over the 21-page document, though he had some of his own.

Grand Portage, he pointed out to the Traveler, just “celebrated 25 years of legally binding (beyond a feel-good document) Tribal Self Governance Act agreement, which is the gold standard on getting to substantive co-management.”

While Cochrane, who had a close relationship with the tribe, did not go through the Playbook page by page, by its very name he said it “trivializes the effort, time, and willingness to ‘share’ decision-making between tribes and parks. It also seems to suggest there is one playbook and these are the steps. Step one for me would be to talk/consult with a tribe and find out what they want (not necessarily the steps in the ‘playbook’).  Each relationship is going to be different.  And the tribe(s) will inform the park superintendent on what they want and try to identify topics of mutual interest and within the grasp of doing in the short term.”

Cochrane also disagreed that the end goal should be to agree upon co-management of parks.

“The real goal, if appropriate, is to get to a place where candid, transparent, regular conversations occur between senior park managers and tribal government(s) officials.  Further, superintendents must be prepared and willing to share decision-making,” he said. “’Co-management’" is a term thrown around a lot these days, but many of the co-management agreements I've seen aren't really what they profess to be.  If a relationship is really good, then the tribe(s) and park should be willing to ‘risk’ on some decision-making; that is, go further than just finding the easy decisions which are a 50-50 win.  Tribe(s) can become trusted allies for whom parks don't always agree, but they can be a game changer (like at Grand Portage) if they see and are willing to act on the greater good for a park.  Likewise, a park must be willing to ‘help’ a tribe (much like a good neighbor would).”

Under Grand Portage’s agreement with the Chippewa, the two agencies collaborate on a wide range of activities, such as mainteance, natural and cultural resource management, office sharing, equipment sharing, decision sharing, interpretation, and construction. Since 2011 the agreement also includes Isle Royale National Park.

Cochrane also was concerned that the Playbook did not mention treaty rights.

“If there is one very common desire in Indian country and their relationship with parks (that have applicable treaty rights) is to formally recognize those,” he said. “And honestly, I don't think you're likely to ‘get to true co-management’ today without having a firm park policy on treaty rights.”

While the retired NPS superintendent was glad to see the Intermountain Region taking a stab on collaborating with tribes, he added that “it’s not enough and is starting to shoehorn legally required consultation (or good faith consultation and interactions) in one direction.”

“Let the tribe ‘in’ very early in the process and they through conversations with the park superintendent and help construct what matters to them. This Playbook very oddly ‘leaves out’ the tribe(s) as a crafter of these relationships,” said Cochrane.

Missing Details

At the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, Phil Francis had many reservations about the draft, not the least that it lacked transparency. Francis, chair of the Coalition, said the document should carry foot notes that point to existing authority the Park Service has to institute the things the Playbook calls for.

"To move a park's management from the National Park Service to a different organization clearly, in my mind, would require some legislative authority," he said last week during a phone call. "So there's just more details that I wish I knew. I'm very interested in this, and would like to see the details, and maybe that can be accomplished when they make statements that there's some footnote provided to refer to the legislation, or the authority given by some law, where it says that this is OK to do legally."

Additionally, said Francis, the public should be given a chance to review and comment on the Playbook.

"I think there should be some type of transparency, sunshine, to see what the details are," he added. "What are the impacts? What do they mean by maybe somehow awarding a concessions contract [to a tribe]? Are they talking about in lieu of a contract that exists by some private concessioner? I'm not sure what that means. We should hear the rest of the story."

Francis also was concerned about the use of the word "tactics" in the document.

"In all my years of experience, I've never seen that term used," he said. "I hope that this is a proposal that hasn't been predetermined."

How Much Collaboration?

Questions unanswered in the Playbook is where does co-management begin and end?

In January 2023 a Native American group launched a petition drive with a goal of seeing Indigenous groups given more say in how national parks are managed and wants "sacred places within the parks" returned to the relevant Native American communities.

That drive led by the Native Organizers Alliance asked Director Chuck Sams, an enrolled member, Cayuse and Walla Walla, of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, to "re-indigenize national parks!"

"Many national parks were created by violently removing Native people from our homelands, where our ancestors lived for thousands of years. But this history has long been erased from the national narrative. Instead, parks are portrayed as pristine and untouched," reads the introduction to the petition. "To make amends for past and present injustices, we must re-indigenize national parks. And right now we have great momentum. Chuck Sams, the first Native to serve as National Park Service director, is pushing for co-stewardship of parks with Tribal Nations, and to use traditional ecological knowledge in park management."

A Petition Drive Calling On NPS Director Chuck Sams To "Re-Indigenize" National Parks Is Short Of Its 51,200 Goal

At the time Sams did not respond to an inquiry from the Traveler seeking his reaction to the petition drive. However, in September 2022 the Park Service moved to strengthen "the role of American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes, Alaska Natives entities, and the Native Hawaiian Community in federal land management." At the time Sams said such a move "will help ensure tribal governments have an equal voice in the planning and management" of the park system.

A Park Service release announcing that initiative noted that "[C]o-stewardship is a broad term that includes formal co-management (through legal authorities), collaborative and cooperative management (often accomplished through agreements), and self-governance agreements (including annual funding agreements). "

A section of the nine-page policy statement said:

To increase opportunities for Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and Native Hawaiians to fully participate in Federal decision making and to safeguard their interests, the NPS will strive to engage in co-stewardship where:

1. Federal lands or waters, including wildlife and its habitat, are located within or adjacent to an Indian or Alaska Native Tribe’s lands; or
2. an Indian or Alaska Native Tribe has subsistence or other rights, including treaty-reserved rights, or interests in Federal lands or waters even when that Indian or Alaska Native Tribe’s lands are not adjacent to those Federal lands or waters; or
3. the Native Hawaiian Community has rights or interests in those Federal lands or waters.

Another section states that, "[T]he NPS will give due consideration to tribal recommendations and Indigenous knowledge in the planning and management of Federal lands and waters. To the maximum extent practicable, the NPS will incorporate tribal, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian forest land, agriculture, traditional food gathering and propagation, access to inholdings, and range land management plans in its planning efforts."

George Wuerthener, an ecologist who, over five decades, has written nearly 40 books including Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of the Earth and Protecting the Wild: Parks and Wilderness the Foundation for Conservation, warns of the problems of allowing tribes to co-manage public lands. 

"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," Wuerthener wrote in a recent column. "Plus, in some cases, myth and superstition may become the guiding principles in park management."

Comments

As someone who has and continues to work in parks, I see many of these concerns as very overblown. Yes, there should be transparency, and yes, full co-management requires legal action from Congress. But those actions listed in this draft document are relatively small steps, many of which have been taken by parks for decades and have resulted in really only positive consequences. I'm surprised that a ranger would have concerns about an indigenous craft market. In many parks, this is something that has been happening for decades. A way for artisans and craftspeople to be permitted come to a park, and sell jewelry, pottery, weaving, carving, and other objects to visitors for a few days of the year, often accompanying a cultural demonstration of how to make said object. They are organized, official events that visitors enjoy that also improves relations with Indigenous communities. Hardly something I would say has a negative impact on the park. 

As for worrying about 'superstition and myth' overtaking facts, let's clear the air here. Parks with Indigenous interpretive programs are not going around trying to convert people to Indigenous religious practices or beliefs. The comparison to evangelical movements also doesn't make any sense because almost all Indigenous spiritual practices are insular, and not meant to be shared with those not properly a part of them. When a park relays an Indigenous story about how the buffalo came to be, or about how people came to live on a landscape, it is a way to demonstrate to people the cultural perspective of these people and how they view themselves as an integral part of an area, they are NOT trying to erase scientific data on how humans came to be in the Amercas, which I particularly find an odd fear given that the NPS is in fact deeply committed TO the science of the peopling of the Americas, as shown by recent work on the White Sands National Park trackways. I have never seen Indigenous perspectives be incorporated in a way that obscures the facts of a park, only to inhance it. 

One thing that leads to these concerns, I think, is a misunderstanding of what native nations are. Many people percieve them as a racial category, when they are in fact political affiliations (which has been affirmed by many supreme court cases). A tribe member can appear outwardly to be any ethnicity, while still retaining tribal membership. What is granting people (very specific) rights and priveleges in parks is not what racial or ethnic category they fall into, but membership to a cultural and political affiliation that demonstrates continuity in land use, informed by legally binding documents such as treaties, historical and scientific data, and park policy set by superintendents. 

Overall, I hew much more closely to Mr. Cochrane's concerns than anyone elses, as I think the document could do better at informing people about what legal avenues they can take, and emphasizing closer communication with stakeholder communities over all others. I think him being the only of these people with professed hands-on experience with tribal consultation and partnerships should lend his opinion some weight. 


From a ranger in the Four Corners, couldn't have said it any better. 


What's the opposite of "Relatively Harmless?  This document represents an abandonment of basic democratic principles and sound land management policies for rank favoritism towards a historically maltreated demographic.  The abandonment of science for social science.

The idea that one citizen should have more influence upon government affairs than another citizen, based on their skin color, race, religion or national origin is fundamentally wrong: past wrongs notwithstanding.  And two wrongs never make a right.

This document, even if legislatively enacted, would probably be tossed by the Courts on 14th Amendment grounds.  The ideas underpinning this document are just the latest iteration of "White Man's Guilt" towards the American Indian, and should be vigorously rejected by all who beleive in one person; one vote...

  


Amen Loui, amen.

 

The effort to spin "tribal identity" as something other than outright racism is so sad, and so unAmerican.  It's as if 200 years of racism and segregation means nothing when you have "good intentions".

 

 

The extraordinary efforts of the NPS to keep this "playbook" hidden should telll any national parks advoate everyhting we need to know.

 

My god, what have we become?


 I have never seen Indigenous perspectives be incorporated in a way that obscures the facts of a park, only to inhance it. 

 

 

Odd that you make this statement right after mentioning the inclusion of NA perspectives at White Sands NP and the tracks there. 

 

There is NO scientific evidence that the ancestors of the local NAs had anything to do with the tracks--the creation of the tracks (if the science is correct) pre-dates the existence of the NAs (and their ancestors) who now profess to have some insight as to their creation.  (It must be noted that "oral histories" are notoriously inaccurate), 

The inclusion of NA "perspectives" at the White Sands tracks is made IN SPITE of the science, not because of it!

 

Please.


Your supposition that oral histories are inaccurate flies in the face of anthropological studies that have shown that traditions in the PNW have accurately retold stories of volcanic activity that took place thousands of years ago such as at Crater Lake NP, and those in the southwest that have been able to recall accurately places not inhabited by those cultures for hundreds of years, contributing to archaeological knowledge of these places, such as Yucca House NM. There is also no evidence that White Sands trackways WEREN'T made by ancestors of modern indigenous groups. No evidence, for or against, leaves everyone in the same place. What it does do is validate many indigenous beliefs that people have lived in the Amercas for as long as those lands have existed as they have today. Which, given that those footprints were made before the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), that is true. Modern ecosystems quite literally did not exist when these people lived there. Generations of people lived through the process that dried out what is now the southwest, turning a cool and wet region into a desert, sea level rise created modern coastlines, and the retreating ice sheets of the north created the densely wooded areas we now today. People lived through all of these events and adapted to what came next, becoming integral parts of the landscape. Like it or not, every natural landscape in America is also a cultural landscape. Your casual dismissal of this and diminishment of its importance does not make it less true. 

Thank you. 


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