memorandum of agreement (MOA)

Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program

Year

Based on a memorandum of agreement between the Tribe and Skagit County, the Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program provides a framework for conducting permitting activities within the boundaries of the "checkerboarded" reservation and offers a forum for resolving potential conflicts. The process, which began in the mid-1980s, was the first of its kind in the United States and illustrates a promising alternative in land use conflict resolution by promoting between-government jurisdictional coordination. Since 1996, the tribal and county governments have jointly adopted a Comprehensive Land Use Plan and procedures to administer the plan, which together foster a mutually beneficial government-to-government relationship. Significantly, the model also has served to improve relationships between the Tribe and other contiguous local governments. To date, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has instituted more than a dozen separate agreements with federal, state, county, and municipal authorities in the areas of land use, public safety, public health, environmental protection, and utility regulation.

Resource Type
Citation

"Swinomish Cooperative Land Use Program." Honoring Nations: 2000 Honoree. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2001. Report.

Permissions

This Honoring Nations report is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Maamakaadenbaagwad (it is amazing): The Miracle of the Walleye

Producer
Red Lake Department of Natural Resources and Project Preserve
Year

This video, produced by the Red Lake Department of Natural Resources and the youth at Project Preserve, explains the history and progress of the Red Lake Walleye recovery program.

Citation

Red Lake Department of Natural Resources and Project Preserve. "Maamakaadenbaagwad (it is amazing): The Miracle of the Walleye." Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians. Red Lake, Minnesota. 2008. Film.

This Honoring Nations "Lessons in Nation Building" video is featured on the Indigenous Governance Database with the permission of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Narrator:

“The tradition of fishing has been passed on from generation to generation. It is part of who we are as a Nation. So when the fish left, so did part of our identity.

MAAMAKAADENBAAGWAD

Then came the miracle of the walleye. We thank the Creator and all those that sacrificed to bring back the tradition of fishing. We will not forget.”

REMEMBERING THE PAST
When the Lake Was Our Warehouse

Citizen:

“It was really fun in the olden days cause there was a lot of fishing. A lot of work to it, but it kept us going.”

Citizen:

“When I was growing up, we didn’t have nothing. We just had a piece of string and that’s how we used to fish.”

Citizen:

“When we fished a long time ago, we didn’t have no motor boats. We had to use paddles to get out on the lake.”

Citizen:

“We had wooden boats, flat-bottom wooden boats with an old 10-horse[power] Johnson motor, which I bought from my brother before he left. That was in the early ‘50s so you know the motor was kind of old by then.”

Citizen:

“Back in 1921, we was fishing then but we was fishing down at the [location]. That’s where I lived. We had a landing in there where we [unintelligible] and to the land. And we had a steep hill we’d pull the fish boxes up. We used a horse to do that. He helped us all day long, that horse.”

Citizen:

“In the evening, we’d set them just before dark. We would set them overnight, then early in the morning about 5:00 we’d go out and get them. We had to go out early because I was working. The nets were regular nets and we used eight of them. That’s about what we done, that’s just what we had to do at that time.”

Citizen:

“We used to use our boat to go to Red Lake to take our fish stock. Don’t think about... well, we had a fast boat, it would take about an hour on the lake to get to the fishery.”

Citizen:

“We got all different kinds of different fish. We got a lot of perch and walleyes and northerns. Then towards the end there we started to get a lot of sheephead and stuff. But then the walleyes, we used to get a lot of them then all of a sudden they just... we didn’t get any more.”

FROM SUSTAINENCE TO INDUSTRY
Establishing Fishing as an Economic Resource

Narrator:

“Traditionally, Red Lake members fished by spear and by line. It was a practice that was a way of life to the community and was in balance with nature.”

Citizen:

“This spear I made out of maple. My grandfather and grandmother were making these one day and they said I could go get fish with these when I was a little boy and I did. I made one like this.”

FISHING REGULATIONS
(Set in 1921)

Narrator:

“It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the State of Minnesota first introduced fishing as an industry to Red Lake Nation.

The annual quota for walleye and Northern Pike was 650,000 lbs.

Annual quotas were established and in 1921 the state built a fishery close to the lake. Netting was introduced and for the first time there was steady employment on the reservation. Families took up the practice of netting on behalf of the fishery.

Each night, each family could set 5 nets, each 300 ft. long with 4-inch stretch mesh.

The state then brokered all sales off the reservation.”

Al Pemberton:

“When they started fishing on the reservation, it was to keep the war effort going and the State of Minnesota started a fishing year and they started fishing with pond nets which are trap nets and they keep the fish in there. But they couldn’t get enough that way, so they started with nets and then the tribal members started fishing then.”

Ron Beaulieu:

“They taught me how to hang nets, how to pull nets, how to pick the fish out of the nets, everything, every phase. We even hauled fish around the lake so we got in on that, too. We knew what everybody caught around the lake.”

FROM INDUSTRY TO UNEMPLOYMENT
Depletion of a Precious Resource

Narrator:

“No one ever considered the possibility that the lake could become overfished. But it happened. In the late 1990s, we saw the population of walleye almost become extinct.”

Pat Brown:

“There are several things that caused the downfall of the walleye. First of all, many people blame the commercial fishery, but it wasn’t just the commercial fishery. The federal government was to manage this lake on a sustainable basis, but they never did. It was basically for social and economic issues is what they used. The Red Lake DNR [Department of Natural Resources] was started in 1987 and the main reason that the DNR was started here was because the tribal council was concerned that the fish stocks were being overfished in Red Lake. The original DNR consisted basically of a director, a secretary and a fishery biologist and after that time then it kind of grew.”

Ron Beaulieu:

“We took spawn in the spring. Usually it takes four males to one female and we had a biologist check and our rate I think in about ‘90 was 250 to one female so you could see why I was alarmed but other people didn’t seem to be alarmed by it but I was because I thought, ‘If the female all go, then we’re done.’”

Charles Barrett:

“They started making big fish bonuses here and everybody wanted to get in on it so at one time there was over 600 fishermen, but that wasn’t all, there was other people fishing too, Upper Red [Lake].”

Ron Beaulieu:

“Yeah, they weren’t paying attention. They wanted to make more money because guys started using more nets and more illegal nets, too, which they should have probably never done because it cleaned it out pretty quick there in the early ‘90s then.”

Pat Brown:

“On the state waters they had the same problems. Basically we had people taking more than one limit a day, but they just never had the enforcement staff to properly monitor up there either.”

Ron Beaulieu:

“And we always figured another 60,000 to 70,000 was going off on the black market and that hurt the lake, too.”

Pat Brown:

“A lot of people talk about the black market that was running rampant around the Red Lakes. If there was not a market for those fish off the reservation, then there wouldn’t have been a black market. So all those things together basically caused the collapse.”

Narrator:

“The impact of overfishing was devastating to Red Lake’s economy. Everyone living on the reservation felt the impact. It served as a wake up call, a reminder that the lake and its fish were the reservation’s most valuable natural resource. The time had come for sacrifice and for change.”

Al Pemberton:

“'Cause there wasn’t enough stock in the lake they voted to stop fishing.”

Floyd Jourdain:

“It was a hard pill to swallow for some people to say, ‘Geez, we’re not going to fish any more for 10 years.’ And there was... even though everything indicated that our lake was not in a good way. Some people just did not want to accept the fact that we were really hurting and that our fishing populations had depleted to a point of danger. And even with all that information, they said, ‘We don’t really want to stop. We don’t think we should have to.’ So it was the tribe who initiated the moratorium. It was the fishermen themselves who said, ‘We’re not catching fish anymore, something needs to happen,’ and it was the tribal leadership who said, ‘We’re going to reach out to the State of Minnesota, the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] and the surrounding communities to work with them to make this thing successful.’”

David Conner:

“Former Chairman Bobby Whitefeather had a meeting with State DNR Commissioner Rod Sando down in the Minneapolis area and they talked about the problems with the Red Lake Walleye fishery, the sharply declining catches, and since the state owns a portion of Upper Red Lake, they have some jurisdiction there, so the two talked about a joint effort to try and recover walleye stocks.”

Pat Brown:

“The Band and the State and the feds had to come to the same table and agree on how we were going to bring back the walleye.”

David Conner:

“The plan included both short- and long-term goals. What did we need to do to get the recovery off the ground and running? Such things as short-term stocking to help, it also included a moratorium on fishing on the Red Lakes. The memorandum also included an enforcement plan spelling out the responsibilities of both the state and the tribe and how they were going to enforce stoppage of fishing and various other regulations. So it had two important components, the recovery plan and the enforcement plan and these were incorporated in the Memorandum of Agreement and then that was signed back in 1998 by the Band, the State and the federal government. So that officially started the process for the recovery of Red Lake Walleye.”

THE MIRACLE
Hard Work, Patience and a Little Good Luck

Narrator:

“Several years passed. The community honored the request of the technical committee and slowly, over time, with hard work from many people, a healthy population of walleye returned to Red Lake.”

David Conner:

“We had some good luck, we did some stocking which worked and did good there. But we also had a moratorium on the harvest of walleye and that was extremely important having that in place. So it was actually the patience of the people who liked to fish in giving up fishing for quite a few years that aided in the recovery also.”

Pat Brown:

“It was... it’s kind of a miracle and we had a lot of good luck. When we first started to recover the population we felt that if we did the big stocking then we would be able to maybe bring the lake back in 10 years. And the reason we said 10 years was is that we were going to do these major stockings every other year to bring back the population. Our guess was that we would only get one or two of those big stockings to actually take and in fact what we ended happening was all three of the big stockings that we did, all three of them produced big year classes and that was the good luck.”

David Conner:

“We had teams of fisheries assessment folks from both the tribe and the state and they worked the waters pretty much all year long to collect information on the fish stocks. We undertook tagging of fish where we implanted the fry before stocking in a tetracycline solution, which put a mark on the fish and that allowed us, when the fish were released into the water, we could track them as they grew up and determine which numbers were stocked and then what the percentage of stock versus natural walleye were in the lake and that was a critical component to being able to assess the recovery of the walleye.”

Herb Mountain:

“I’ve got to admit I had my doubts, but like I always stressed before, it was a lot of luck involved in this besides a lot of work. But I know that we need to keep monitoring it and doing these assessments so we can always be aware of the condition of the lake so we can take appropriate measures if and when it ever happens like the way it goes starting to be overfished. Hopefully with what our job is that it’ll never happen.”

Al Pemberton:

“The gods helped us out a little bit. We had good years and stuff happened the way it was supposed to so it came back faster than they ever thought it would.”

BACK TO FISHING
Finding a Sustainable Balance

David Conner:

“During the recovery process and a couple years prior to the reopening of the fishery, we had community meetings across the reservation in off-reservation tribal communities like say in Minneapolis and Duluth to talk about the fact that the fish were coming back and it looked like we were going to reopen.”

Pat Brown:

“The catch limits were put in place, the recommendations were put in place by the Red Lake Fisheries Technical Committee, and the reason they did this is to try to make the harvest so it’s sustainable.”

Al Pemberton:

“It’s more of a change for some of the people that used to fish with nets but maybe it’s like... Indians, we’ve always adapted anyway so we’re going to learn a different way of doing things.”

Floyd Jourdain:

“As far as preserving the lake, we’ve taken a very slow approach to how we’re going to get back into the fishing industry. One of the main things was regulation. We want to make sure that we listen to the tribal members who wanted fishing industry regulated. Until we’re able to adequately do that, then we’re going to go slow. For about the first two or three years we’ll hook and line and then after that when we have the resources to regulate we’ll go further from there.”

Narrator:

“When fishing was reintroduced in 2006, a series of regulations were put in place to protect this new population of walleye.”

Only Red Lake Band Members may fish reservation waters

Citizen:

“It feels good to see all that fish and it’s just good to come out here and fish and see the walleyes.”

Hook and Line is the only legal way of harvesting walleye

“Bring him up. There he is.”

[cheering]

“I got that one.”

“All right, Ryan.”

All Walleye Between 20 and 28 inches must be released

“It needs to be 18 inches to keep.”

“19.”

“You can see it’s too big.”

“You going to throw him back?”

“This needs to be put back.”

Subsistence limit, to walleye commercial limit, 75 walleye

Narrator:

“Along with the regulations a series of six biological assessments were established to assist with determining population levels and trends.”

Pat Brown:

“Yeah, we basically do six different assessments throughout the year, and the first one we do every spring is usually in mid-April and that’s the spawn trap assessment. And what we do there is we basically block the river off. It allows us to see how many males and females are going up the river to spawn and we do the same thing every year and that allows us to compare that information from year to year to see how the recovery was going, but secondly now that the recovery is done we can see how many spawning fish are coming up the river. The second assessment that we do every year is called a post-spawn assessment; it’s a gill-net assessment. And the reason we do that is because we base so much of our quota on the number of mature females in the lake and they’re saying that all those females are basically laying eggs, at least the mature ones. Sometimes in a system like this, not all those females who lay their eggs will actually re-absorb or not spawn the lake now and that can throw our estimate off. The third survey that we do every year is usually the whole month of July and the first two weeks of August and that’s our shoreline seining, and that’s how we tell how many baby walleyes are being produced on an annual basis. And the way we do that is we have eight different sites on Upper and Lower Red Lake that we sample each week for six weeks and then we count the number of walleyes that we catch, the young, yellow perch, particularly the perch fish and then we compare that from year to year.”

Herb Mountain:

“And that goes on for quite a while there, weeks. Our objective there is to collect all the different year classes of walleye and we’ll cut their heads open and take the loose bones out of them and scale. This way we can age them in the winter months. Field surveys -- we’ll do interviews with fishermen on the lake in the summer months and the winter months. And what we do is we write a little questionnaire that we fill out and we ask them for their permission if they want to be in this, they have a choice. It’s just simple questions. What we do with this data is we use this to determine the pressure on the lake.”

PLANNING FOR TOMORROW
Working Together Towards an Economic Future

Narrator:

“In 2008, the Red Lake Fisheries reopened its doors ready to begin a new chapter of commercial innovations. This time not only processing the fish caught from the lake, but also packaging and distributing the walleye on behalf of the community.”

Sean Rock:

“With all the machinery in place the fishermen will come in, their fish is weighed and the fish is then gone through a de-scaling machine, then it goes through a heading machine and then a fillet machine, which will basically give us a bone free fillet. From the fillet machine it’ll drop onto a trim table and that’s where the process will do the final trim and making sure that the specs are good on the fillets so hopefully no bones and good V-cuts. And then from the trim table it’ll go into the new freezer tunnel. It’ll go out of the freezer tunnel onto a glaze conveyor. And then from the glaze conveyor it goes to a machine that’s called the scan back machine that’ll actually weigh the individual fillets into size coordinating, whether it’s two to four ounce, four to six ounce and it’ll also weight the fish into an 11-pound box for us and from there it goes right to the freezer.”

Floyd Jourdain:

“Well, we envision having a very exclusive operation like no other in the world.”

Sean Rock:

“We want to start trying to bring in Canadian fish down here which would more than double our process capacity. It’s just a matter of everything getting in place.”

Floyd Jourdain:

“We’re talking about working with some of the Canadian First Nations to produce some of their walleye as well, bring it in and help them to distribute. And we see ourselves within 10 years of being the top walleye manufacturer in the entire world.”

David Conner:

“Today a fresh hand-caught, line-caught product carries a premium, so that’s another advantage for the tribe and for now looking at hook and line as a continued option.”

Donovan Sather:

“Red Lake now is turning to making a branded product. Morey’s was the company that helped us before get out there and sell all over the world. Now we market currently with wild rice all over the world and now we’re starting to bring the fish into the picture with a local freshness and year round availability.”

Joel Rhode:

“Our goal with time is to have as much of our products sold online as we possibly get.”

Pat Brown:

“In the future, what most people want to see is that the fish are captured by tribal members, taken to the fishery and then also processed by tribal members, that would be to fillet, and then we’ll market those either through the internet or through some type of restaurant sales or just sell them right out of the fishery itself.”

Floyd Jourdain:

“This is a good time to educate our people on historically how special the relationship with the Indian people here is, continues to be with the lake and emphasize that a whole new generation of people need to carry that on.”

Narrator:

“Time is passing us slowly. The wind is blowing, it is here and it is there. We wait to hear when we can go back on to the lake, waiting for the walleye to reappear. This walk, this journey, this passion, this waiting -- we are the only generation to grow up without the tradition of fishing. Our parents told us to wait and be patient. We were. Others worked hard on our behalf. We all believed, we all waited; everyone is here and we are ready. Oh, what is this -- a walleye? A gift from the Creator. We are not the first generation to protect our lake but we will be the last generation to grow up without fishing.”

Student 1:

“Although my favorite part was the ice fishing, when we went ice fishing. The day was like sunny out and it was really cold. And, yeah.”

Student 2:

“But it was fun 'cause we got to out on a boat and fish. I caught a fish. Yeah, I caught a fish. It was a sheephead. That’s an ugly fish.”

Student 3:

“All the walleye out there, you can go out anywhere out on the lake and you can catch fish.”

Interviewer:

“Could you do that five years ago?”

Student 3:

“No. It was a lot harder five years ago. We couldn’t take them.”

Student 4:

“I will probably remember for the rest of my life.”

Produced by the students of PROJECT PRESERVE:
Brandi Barrett
Ryan Brown
LD Harris
Sherene Iceman
Tessy Johnson
Clayton Jourdain
Justin Jourdain
Starr Jourdain
Sara Rushman
Ryan Stillday

Edited by:
Tessy Johnson
Justin Jourdain
Sara Rushman

Interviews, Red Lake Department of Natural Resources:
Al Pemberton, Director
David Conner, Administrative Officer
Pat Brown, Fisheries Biologist
Herb Mountain, Fisheries Technician
Ron Beaulieu, Forestry Technician

Interviews, Red Lake Fisheries
Charles Barrett, Plant Foreman
Sean Rock, Manager

Interviews, Red Lake Foods, Inc.:
Joel Rhode, Manager
Donovan Sather, Sales Associate

Additional Interviews:
Floyd Jourdain, Jr., Chairman
Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians

Leo Desjarlait
Mauarice “Jocko
• Thunder

Project Preserve Educator:
Diane Schwanz

Artist Mentors:
Kristine Sorensen
Anna Swan Sherwood
Kao Choua Vue

Special Thanks to:
Nathan Anderson
Randy Barrett
Tom Barrett, Jr.
Kevin Spears
Murphy Thomas
Andy Thompson
Steve Wennblom
Vernon Whitefeather
Randy Wold
Red Lake DNR Staff
Red Lake Historical Archives
Red Lake Net News
Red Lake Tribal Council

This project was made possible with the support from the following:

Harvard University
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development:
Amy Besaw Medford, Director of Honoring Nations
Jackie Old Coyote, Director of Education and Outreach
Eric C. Henson, Research Fellow

University of Arizona
Native Nations Institute:
Ian Record, Ph.D., Manager of Educational Resources

The Ford Foundation
The Nathan Cummings Foundation
Red Lake High School
In Progress
The Stepping Stones Foundation
International Water Institute
Riverwatch Project
Prairie Public Television
University of North Dakota
And private donors

© 2008 

Native Nation Building TV: "Intergovernmental and Intertribal Relations"

Producer
Native Nations Institute
Year

Guests Jaime Pinkham and Sarah Hicks focus on Native nations’ efforts to enhance their relationships with other governments as a way to advance their nation-building objectives. It details how some Native nations are forging mutually beneficial intergovernmental agreements, and chronicles the many advantages to forging similar intertribal arrangements.

Citation

Native Nations Institute. "Intergovernmental and Intertribal Relations" (Episode 8). Native Nation Building television/radio series. Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy and the UA Channel, The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona. 2006. Television program. 

Mark St. Pierre: "Hello, friends. I'm your host, Mark St. Pierre and welcome to Native Nation Building. Contemporary Native Nations face many challenges including building effective governments, developing strong economies that fit their culture and circumstances, solving difficult social problems and balancing cultural integrity in change. Native Nation Building explores these often complex challenges in the ways Native Nations are working to overcome them as they seek to make community and economic development a reality. Don't miss Native Nation Building next."

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Mark St. Pierre: "Today's show explores the importance of intertribal and intergovernmental relationships and the innovative approaches that many Native Nations are taking as they forge ahead with Nation building goals. With us today to examine these relationships are Jaime Pinkham and Sarah Hicks. Sarah Hicks, a citizen of the Native village of Ouzinkie in Alaska, is a doctoral candidate at Washington University. She also directs the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center where she works on a joint project with the National Conference of State Legislatures. Jaime Pinkham, a citizen of the Nez Perce Tribe, is Watershed Program Manager with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission and Intertribal Fisheries Organization. Welcome to both of you and thanks for being with us." 

Jaime Pinkham: "Thank you."

Sarah Hicks: "Thanks."

Mark St. Pierre: "Jaime, when we talk about intergovernmental and intertribal relationships among Native Nations, what are we really talking about?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, Mark, I feel we're talking about creating a platform that respects the individual autonomy of the tribes or the governmental agencies that sit at the table and it's a relationship that's built upon trust and mutual respect and provides our ability to provide collective talent and wisdom and resources to overcome conflicts or to move forward on areas of mutual concern."

Mark St. Pierre: "Would you like to respond to that?"

Sarah Hicks: "Yeah, I think we're really talking about deliberate relationships between sovereign governments who are coming to the table as equals. We're looking at relationships that are across various issue areas, we're looking at relationships that are between different levels of government, different kinds of governments and even different branches of government."

Mark St. Pierre: "Sarah, what role do these relationships play in building a Native nation?"

Sarah Hicks: "Well, these kinds of relationships really provide a way for tribal governments to extend their influence beyond their boundaries. It's really a way for tribal governments to leverage their influence, to bring their voice to the table with other governments to influence the policy making that's going on outside of their boundaries."

Mark St. Pierre: "Just as a follow up, is there a concern that tribes who work with, say, state or county agencies are surrendering some sovereignty, or how does that work out?"

Sarah Hicks: "Historically, because of the government-to-government relationship between the federal government and tribal governments, that there's been a great deal of attention to this very critical important relationship. But on the other hand, as we've seen devolution, or the federal government passing resources and authority to lower levels of government, to state government, to county government, in some cases to tribal government, that I think tribes are becoming less concerned about what they're giving up, and I think they see many more opportunities to cooperate on issues of mutual concern. So they're really looking to their neighboring governments as potential partners to accomplish some of these really important jobs that local governments perform."

Mark St. Pierre: "Jaime, you seem like you want to jump in there."

Jaime Pinkham: "I don't see it as an erosion of sovereignty when we reach to other governments, and I think we're seeing more and more -- because of the capacity that tribes are building -- is we see these other governments reaching out to us. We've built the institutional capacity on resource programs, education and health care, and the other thing is that the tribes have unique access to federal resources, for example highway trust funds, which we can help rebuild or maintain infrastructures, especially in rural communities, that county governments and local municipalities depend upon, too. So I see them reaching out to us as well."

Mark St. Pierre: "You've both seen a shift in how Native nations view these relationships and their potential benefits. Historically, what began that shift in emphasis?"

Sarah Hicks: "Well, I think much of it was devolution as I was just mentioning earlier. Really in the late 1980s, we started to see more and more federal programs, environmental programs, some human service programs, community development programs that are being moved to more local levels of government, and over time the pace of devolution has increased. So throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, we've seen more and more resources really being directed at more local levels of government, and this just increases the incentive for tribal governments and state and county governments to look for these issues of mutual concern, to really bring to bear their limited resources on both sides to address issues that all governments care about."

Jaime Pinkham: "I also see the follow up on that is some courtroom fatigue where too often we're trying to resolve our differences in the court room and when you go to court you have one winner, one loser but when you come together in exploring these relationships you try to harmonize your efforts, and while litigation and negotiations are both difficult paths to take, the difference is the outcome and the outcome is the mutual benefits. The other thing is I've really witnessed over the past 10 to 15 years this elevation of both state and federal governments in formalizing tribal policies. It's an expression of tribal relationships, so we see the cabinet levels in the state legislatures and representatives of the governor's office now reaching out and creating new relationships with Indian tribes."

Mark St. Pierre: "In regions where tribes are really a small minority of the local or general population, have these relationships in fact increased the power of tribes in regional and local politics?"

Sarah Hicks: "I would argue yes. I think that this is a vehicle for tribes to come together on the one hand in intertribal organizations. We've seen an increased growth in regional intertribal organizations, and I would say an increased strength in those organizations as well over the past couple of years. So on the one hand, tribes being able to come together to voice their collective concerns, to share their resources that they have has definitely made a difference, but I also think that on the state and county level, neighboring governments are starting to see tribes as bigger political players. Tribes are getting on the map. They're starting to realize that there are a lot of common interests with tribal governments."

Jaime Pinkham: "And I agree. I think we're seeing many cases where local governments would like to ride upon the coattails of tribal governments because of the capacity that they have at dealing with the variety of levels of issues from very local to national in nature."

Mark St. Pierre: "Just on a personal level, on a human-to-human level, do you see these relationships strengthening communication and relationships between literal neighbors of the reservations?"

Jaime Pinkham: "I think we do, because as the tribes get more active in local politics, especially you start seeing members of the tribal communities becoming on school boards and county governments and city governments, and that helps really soothe and create and foster some positive relationships. What concerns me is we see the growth of these anti-Indian, anti-sovereignty organizations, but if we could work better and have these positive examples, we can try to teach these places where this fear exists of tribal sovereignty that really there's nothing to fear but really there's an opportunity, a partnership that can really help all communities prosper and grow."

Mark St. Pierre: "That kind of leads to a logical question I guess then. How have tribes or Native Nations avoided litigation, avoided conflict in dealing with other governments?"

Sarah Hicks: "Well, I think tribes and neighboring governments have really looked to local agreements as a way to avoid litigation. As Jaime was mentioning earlier, litigation is frequently extremely time-consuming, extremely expensive, and often results in an outcome that nobody's happy with, so to the extent that tribes and states or tribes and counties or tribes and other tribes can come to the table together to negotiate agreements that work better for everybody down on the ground, that's a win-win situation. We've seen a number of examples. If you look to motor fuel taxation and tobacco taxation, there have been some great agreements in Nevada, in Nebraska, in Oklahoma, in Arizona. There have been agreements around natural resource issues, around protection of cultural issues, around human service delivery. So I think we're seeing a proliferation of these kinds of relationships across a whole range of different topic areas."

Mark St. Pierre: "Is it in the best interest of federal, state and municipal governments to cross these traditional divides and work together with Native nations?"

Jaime Pinkham: "I believe it is. If you look out west, where that sense of individuality is treasured, but as long as we remain isolated, anonymous and faceless, we will never be able to come over some of those very difficult issues out west and a lot of those issues will deal in terms of the environment, the return of wolves or the recovery of salmon, where we see divisiveness in our communities. So the best way really is to start as local as you can. It's the politics of place in crafting those relationships very locally and using that to build up the ladder to state, federal governments. Who better to resolve local issues than those of us who live there? And to take those outcomes to where we really need action passed, and whether it's at Congress or at the state legislative level."

Sarah Hicks: "I guess I just wanted to make a related point, which is that I think not only are we seeing these relationships grow in all different kinds of topic areas and really in all different places across the country, but I think we're also seeing relationships that are being built across different branches of government. So increasingly, we're seeing relationships not only with the executive branch but with the legislative branch or in some cases they're relationships with the judiciary, with training of judges around some particularly important issues to tribal communities. So I think the trend is just growing and I think increasingly we're seeing that we have so many common issues where all neighboring governments are concerned about finite resources, about protecting our environment, about serving our citizens, making sure they have the essential governmental services they need. So I think increasingly we're just seeing more opportunities for governments to come together to solve these issues at the local level."

Mark St. Pierre: "Has this caused a shift in how these governments view Native Nations they work with? In other words, the State of Washington for instance, has it created a shift positive or negative in how they view the tribes in Washington?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, I can't speak for Washington, but in Idaho when I was on Tribal Council with Nez Perce, we did sense a shift, but unfortunately the shift was going two directions. One is where we were working collectively with a local county government and a city government to provide services to the reservation, but by us being there having access to economic development funds we were able to improve the infrastructure of the City of Lewiston. On the other hand, we saw these other governments riding on this wave of concern about what sovereignty will do to a community, and so we were faced with an alliance of 22 entities from school districts to city governments to county governments who feared tribal sovereignty and what it could do, the concerns about regulation and courts and they feared this word called 'sovereignty.' Sovereignty is something that really is an expression of the health of a community. So we worked hard to try to overcome the misconception that some of these communities had and the way to do it is to try to show the positive relationships we had with other neighboring communities."

Mark St. Pierre: "In South Dakota, I think there's a tremendous fear that in negotiating with the state, for instance, about anything, you're in a sense violating your treaty, because your treaty is between the tribe and the federal government. Do you want to respond to that concern 'cause it's a powerful concern."

Sarah Hicks: "Well, and I think part of this comes from a sense or a fear that many of these protections can be eroded, that the resources, the federal trust responsibility to American Indian tribal governments can be eroded. And so out of the fear to sort of protect what we have, there's been in some cases a real resistance to developing these kinds of relationships. But I think that nationally, we've started to move in a bit of a different direction. We've started to hear in national forums, tribal leaders articulating, 'We need to make sure that the federal trust responsibility is protected. We need assurances from the federal government that increasingly tribal self determination and tribal self-governance efforts, that increasingly, intergovernmental relationships aren't in anyway affecting the federal trust responsibility.' So I think on the one hand, tribes are concerned about that and I think they are looking to ensure that those protections are in place, but on the other hand, because of again the many, many common concerns and because of the increasing resources and opportunities for collaboration at the local level, I think we're seeing tribes move in that direction."

Jaime Pinkham: "And no doubt, I sense there still is some concern in Indian Country, because you have the federal government and then tribal government, state governments and the lower governments, and there's the concern that if we work with governments below us from the states down to city governments, that it's an erosion of our treaty rights and an erosion of our sovereignty. But the thing to keep in mind is we have the sovereign choice to work with those governments only if we choose."

Sarah Hicks: "Right. And I think we are. I think Jaime's right. We're talking about deliberate relationships between sovereign governments. It's governments coming together at the same table as equals to determine the type of relationship they want to have and what that relationship will encompass. So with tribes at the driver seat, I think this is really just underscoring that this really is about tribes as governments, tribes behaving as governments."

Mark St. Pierre: "I certainly think that sends a powerful idea to those tribes that are very nervous about these kinds of things, to hear that there are tribal groups working on positive relationships with local governments. Let's turn to a totally different thing here and look at intertribal relationships. Why are a growing number of Native Nations developing relationships and ties with other tribes in their region or nationally?"

Jaime Pinkham: "I think it's built on longstanding alliances and relationships that we've always had. In the Columbia River it was the salmon that always brought us together. The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, we're focused around the salmon, so we've always had the traditional alliances. The other thing, too, is recognizing the diversity of the landscape of Indian Country with our forms of government, our languages and our economies, it's important that we begin to share our talent and also to share knowledge and wisdom. When you look at parts of the U.S. where maybe we don't have the economic strength or we don't have the political strength and we're going to rely upon our neighboring tribes, and so I think these alliances are pretty fundamental to helping to elevate the tribal voice in places like Washington, D.C."

Sarah Hicks: "Part of it's strength in numbers, the sheer fact that tribes can come together, that we do have consensus on a great many issues and that we have a stronger voice if we work together. I also think that Jaime's right, a lot of this is really just formalizing relationships that have always been there."

Mark St. Pierre: "The tribes that work together, is it important that they kind of have their own internal tribal ducks in a row, that they have an effective government?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Yeah. Again, getting back to all politics is local, yeah, you have to be well-grounded and have strong, stable political leadership and use that as the basis and build up from there."

Sarah Hicks: "There's no doubt that it's important to have a message straight from the top that says, 'These relationships are important, that we're going to do what we can to work collaboratively on issues that we can.' This isn't to say that neighboring governments can always find common ground and can always agree on solutions to joint problems, but it is to say that it's important to have a message from the leadership that articulates very clearly the intention of cooperative relationships. On the other hand, I also think it's really important that the technical folks, that the staff, that the program directors are also on board for this. In some sense, you need the message from the top, the general policy that says, 'We're going to work together.' But on the other hand, it's the technical staff, it's those folks that are actually doing the work who really have to take to heart what it means to work collaboratively, to look for those opportunities to invite the other governments to the table."

Mark St. Pierre: "This question's for Jaime. In your capacity with the Nez Perce Tribe, you've been involved in a number of intergovernmental relationships. How did that process start? Tell us how that began and what it led to."

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, let me use an example, it's a recent example. We were involved in one of the largest water adjudications in the nation, the Snake River Basin, the Snake River Basin Adjudication, and actually we had two tracks going. We had the litigation track in court, but through the McCarran Amendment we're stuck in state court. And that's not the most comfortable place for a tribe to have their issues resolved. The other option we took was to try to find a negotiated settlement and both processes were going on track. And so the Tribe decided that we needed to keep both options open and we aggressively pursued a negotiated settlement working with the State of Idaho as well as representatives of the federal government. And believe me, it took us almost eight years to get this thing through and it took a lot of hard work. And like I said earlier, both paths are difficult but the only difference is the outcome. So we were able to resolve our differences and we had to be prepared to give a little and to gain a little bit. But in the end we avoided court, we avoided a court that may have ruled against our sovereignty, a court that could have ruled against some of our treaty-reserved rights. We preserved that. Those are the core values of our community and through negotiation we were able to preserve them."

Mark St. Pierre: "For those of us that aren't familiar with the actual issue, give us a framework for what brought the conflict to be."

Jaime Pinkham: "Actually, it started when the state went after securing their reserved water rights out of the Snake River Basin and they filed claims with the federal government. Well, the tribe couldn't stand back. We had to submit our claims and our claims were based on really two fundamental principles. One is in-stream flow to protect fisheries and the second one was the consumptive uses on reservation, whether it be for residential or industrial uses. And so we went through a long process to establish our tribal water rights claims."

Mark St. Pierre: "You now work for the Columbia River Intertribal fish Commission and I understand that's an award-winning intertribal organization. How has that commission empowered its member tribes, the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Actually, I see it the other way -- that they've empowered us as a real function of tribal government. We provide technical expertise, legal expertise and assistance in intergovernmental affairs, but really when you look, the real strength of our organization rests in the tribes and the capacity they've built on the fisheries front in the four tribes in the Pacific Northwest that have treaty rights on the Columbia River. So really they empower us and we act and respond to whatever directions that they want us to go to. It's a wonderful organization and I would say that we're on the cutting edge of salmon recovery in very contentious times, the fate of the salmon and subsequent fate of the four lower Snake River dams. It is a difficult issue to be dealing with, but fortunately we have four strong tribal governments that have empowered us to act on their behalf."

Mark St. Pierre: "I guess one of the things that I'm looking at, the salmon recovery, is something that has broad economic implications for the region doesn't it?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Oh, it does. The irony is that when the settlers first came out west they had the timber, the agriculture, and the salmon economies, so salmon helped get a foothold. But today you hear them speak only passionately about protecting the timber economy or the agriculture economy and we need to once again elevate the significance that the salmon economy played, not just for Indian people but for the region. And a strong salmon economy also means a strong, healthy environment."

Mark St. Pierre: "Sarah, in your work with the National Congress of American Indians, you've been exposed to many mechanisms available to develop these types of partnerships. Can you talk about how that came about and what some of those methods are?"

Sarah Hicks: "Sure. First, I think just the National Congress of American Indians is an interesting model. Our organization was founded in 1944, actually in response to attempts by the federal government to terminate American Indian tribes. So the very impetus for our organization was that tribes needed to gather together collectively to advocate against the federal policy toward termination. So the whole purpose of our organization was to bring tribes together and to represent their interests to the federal government. So that's just one model of intertribal organizations. But then I think what you're speaking more directly to is a project that the National Congress of American Indians has had with the National Conference of State Legislatures, a national organization that serves the legislators of every state in the United States so actually they serve a little over 7,000 state legislators. And in this work that NCAI has done with NCSL, we've been funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for about six years now to start to provide some targeted technical assistance to states and tribes who are interested in finding new ways to work together. So some of the models that we've looked at and shared broadly include the establishment of Indian Affairs commissions, so these are usually executive-branch offices within the state government that try to coordinate the affairs of the executive branch in relationship to tribes. Then, of course, there are a number of legislative committees. I believe there are 14 states that have 17 different legislative committees that deal specifically with tribal issues. Some deal broadly with state tribal relationships where as others deal with particular issues around the relationships so perhaps repatriation, perhaps gaming, things like that. But there certainly are quite a number of models out there where states and tribes are finding new ways to work together developing new mechanisms and developing new agreements that will sort of chart the circumstances under which these relationships should continue."

Mark St. Pierre: "What I understand, it seems to me from what you're saying that the general climate is improving for the positive. Would that be your..."

Sarah Hicks: "I think so. If you look at some of the work that NCAI has done over the past year, we've been working up in Alaska with the previous administration there to sign a government-to-government agreement with the tribes in Alaska. That was the Millennium Agreement. We've seen similar types of agreements in a variety of other states. We've seen an increased number of Native legislators. I think that's a big sign that Native people think it's worth investing in the state system. We've seen increased number of bills that address tribal issues in state legislatures. So I think across the board we're seeing various indicators that tribes are moving in this direction. And again, not that this is a panacea. We don't think this is the be-all-and-end-all, that this is the solution for everything. Certainly tribal governments and neighboring governments will have very different views on some things in large part because of tribal cultures and tribal values may differ substantially from other governments. But on the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to look at issues that we can agree on and I think we are definitely moving in that direction."

Mark St. Pierre: "Let's turn now to some success stories. I know both of you have tremendous involvement in a wide range of these kinds of relationship building and conflict resolution. Give us some ideas of some of the successes in the country that are based on this new energy."

Jaime Pinkham: "Some of the things that we've worked on back home in Nez Perce country and looking at issues that were once conflict that had now come into a cooperative relationship, and one was when we were looking at protecting our traditional foods and medicines and the federal government had a plan to spray herbicides and it was to take out noxious weeds. And then we protested that so in turn the federal government and the state worked with us to develop a new method of controlling noxious weeds that would safeguard our traditional foods and medicines. So we started a bio-control center, so I think that was one where we took conflict and turned it into something that was positive and actually is providing resources, non-pesticide options to control noxious weeds in the Pacific Northwest."

Mark St. Pierre: "Sarah?"

Sarah Hicks: "I guess there are a couple that I can think of. One is that in 1998, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation signed an agreement with the Narragansett Tribe that would actually allow for tribal members to be hired by the state department of transportation to monitor some of the progress that was being made on developing highways, to be there when human remains or cultural artifacts were found so that there would be tribal members on site to try to make sure that those things were protected and they were addressed in a way that was appropriate to the tribe. So there are some examples like that. There are examples around federal subsidies to tribes to deal with foster care and adoption. Right now the federal funding flow is only to states, but we've seen some progress such that there are 71 tribal state agreements in 13 different states that allow these federal funds that are so urgently needed to deal with child welfare issues in tribal communities, to allow these funds to flow through the state to the tribes and in many cases there are other administrative funds and there are training funds that go with these so we are seeing I think...Jaime's pointing out some examples, and I'm talking about a couple others, and we're seeing that really this isn't relegated to just one domain, that we're actually seeing these kinds of efforts in a variety of different topic areas."

Mark St. Pierre: "I know in the fishing industry in the northwest that there have been arguments about water flow in terms of the revitalization of salmon in those rivers and they've required very complicated agreements. Can you tell us a bit about some of those?"

Jaime Pinkham: "Well, yeah, some of them are complex agreements where we have to work with a variety of people. If you look at the river system, it's a river of life. Not just human life, but an economic life, and a wonderful example is where the Confederate Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have reached beyond...we can talk about [intergovernmental] relationships and intertribal relationships, but also there's the importance of creating private sector relationships, and the Umatilla Tribe has a wonderful example of that where they were concerned that the irrigators were pulling water out of the life-giving river as they were trying to return salmon to the Umatilla River. So they worked with the local irrigators to do a water exchange to keep water within the river system. So they took what were traditional adversaries and now they've become allies in salmon recovery. So we see those kinds of agreements at play. And I'm hoping we'll see more and more of those. The salmon issue is not going to be resolved overnight and you've got so many players in the game from utilities to irrigation to recreation interests and the long-seated tribal interest that is there, and we need to continue to reach out and build more of these relationships. And you see the tribes who are taking the lead on running fish hatcheries and working with federal government on land restoration to kind of restore the habitat that is important to these species, so the relationships are really building out in the northwest."

Mark St. Pierre: "We want to give a heartfelt thanks to Sarah Hicks and Jaime Pinkham for appearing on today's edition of Native Nation Building, a program of the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management and Policy at the University of Arizona. To learn more about Native Nation building and the issues discussed here today, please visit the Native Nations Institute's website at www.nni.arizona.edu/nativetv. Thank you for joining us and please tune in for the next edition of Native Nation Building."

Washington joins Nisqually Tribe to develop new 1,300-acre state park in Mount Rainier foothills

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Washington will develop a new 1,300-acre state park in the Mount Rainier foothills, about a 2.5-hour drive north of Portland/Vancouver. The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission and the Nisqually Indian Tribe on Tuesday signed a partnership agreement for the collaborative development of Nisqually State Park...

Tribal chair Cynthia Iyall described the partnership as very good news, calling it important to the Nisqually Tribe. The Mashel area, she said, is very close to tribal members' hearts as an ancestral homeland, as the birthplace of Chief Leschi, and also a critical habitat for salmon recovery...

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Richard, Terry. "Washington joins Nisqually Tribe to develop new 1,300-acre state park in Mount Rainier foothills." The Oregonian. June 3, 2014. Article. (http://www.oregonlive.com/travel/index.ssf/2014/06/washington_joins_nis…, accessed June 4, 2014)