Flying Finns
Touring America for Forestry
In this issue, we write about forests and forestry in Indian Country.
“Indian Country” is a term tribal foresters—Indian and white—use to describe forests they manage. And what splendid forests they are: 17.1 million acres of forestland and 9.3 million acres of woodland on 193 reservations in 33 states.
Coast to coast and border to border, tribal forests include every forest type found in the United States: mixed fir-spruce-cedarhemlock stands along the Pacific Coast; hardwoods and mixed conifer forests in the Northeast and the Appalachian region; black walnut and mixed hardwoods in the Central States; open pine and pinion juniper forests in the Southwest; redwood-fir-sugar pine stands in northern and central California; pine-fir-larch forests in the Cascades and Rocky Mountains; mixed spruce-hemlock stands in coastal Alaska and fir-hardwood forests in Alaska’s interior.
Forestry In Indian Country: Progress and Promise is one of the most revealing stories we’ve run across in the 12 years we’ve been publishing Evergreen. Readers living in the West’s beleaguered timber communities will likely see themselves in some of these stories —for as we discovered, Indian tribes have had great difficulty getting the federal government to admit its role in the near destruction of their cultures. Only recently has the government finally turned the corner on 150 years of policy failures that pushed tribes to the edge of economic extinction.
A January sunset falls across Navajo woodlands
north of Window Rock, Arizona
Our main objective in this issue is to focus congressional and public attention on complex issues and events that are reshaping Indian Country, adding to the economic, cultural and environmental importance of tribal timberlands in the U.S. We need to tell you there are strong opinions expressed in this introductory article—and in our main story, Forestry In Indian Country: Progress and Promise. These opinions are not necessarily those of Indian tribes or Division of Forestry officials we interviewed. Suffice it to say there is an enormous amount of controversy swirling about in Indian Country.
For years, a simpler version of this report was published annually by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Division of Forestry, and the Intertribal Timber Council—an association of Indian tribes that own forestland. But due to funding and personnel shortages, the report has not been updated since 1992. In this issue, we do the updating, adding our own perspective on what is troubling Indian Country. As our investigation reveals, inadequate funding is only a symptom of a far more vexing problem. It appears Congress may be in violation of legally binding trust obligations first described in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, a land-mark 1831 Supreme Court decision.
The federal government’s authority to supervise Indian relations grows out of the commerce clause in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. The clause gave the government the authority to make treaties with tribes. Under these treaties, tribes ceded land to the government in exchange for the government’s promise of help. But the promise was vague and bound to be broken. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, the court defined the nature of the relationship the treaties created. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Marshall concluded tribes were neither states of the United States nor foreign states, but were “domestic dependent nations” and, thus, wards of the federal government. But the justices left it to Congress to determine exactly what the U.S. had to do under terms of the developing trust relationship. Thus was born the nation’s evervacillating policy of paternalism—federal control over virtually every aspect of Indian life. For more than a century, the policy met with failure after failure, despite billions of dollars poured into programs that were supposed to remove barriers that distanced Indians from mainstream American life. In the end, paternalism became the ultimate barrier, depriving tribes of the opportunity to grow with the nation.
Of hundreds of policy shifts, three are notable for their impacts on tribes and tribal lands. The Dawes Act, passed by Congress in 1887, gave millions of individual Indians title to small tracts of tribal land in the hope they would take up farming. The Indian Reorganization Act, passed in 1934, put Indian forestry on a sustained yield basis, ending the allotment program, which had broken millions of tribal acres into tracts too small to be effectively managed. The House Concurrent Resolution 108, passed in 1953, formalized a BIAinspired attempt to terminate trust relationships with timber-rich tribes the Bureau thought could prosper without government assistance.
Termination marked the low point in the nation’s modern-day relationship with tribal governments. It had few—if any—advocates within Division of Forestry ranks, where it was feared the hastily adopted policy would trigger a liquidation of valuable tribal timber. Others thought termination was too dramatic a policy shift for tribes that had been wards of the government for generations. Nevertheless, it remained official government policy until 1970, when President Nixon challenged Congress to again reverse direction. Rejecting both paternalism and termination, Mr. Nixon argued that the government’s trust responsibility represented a “solemn obligation...to provide community services...which would presumably allow Indian communities to enjoy a standard of living comparable to that of other Americans.”
But it would be another five years before Congress reversed itself for the last time, passing the landmark 1975 Indian Self-determination and Education Assistance Act, which granted tribes the authority—and the funding—needed to manage reservation programs, including forestry. Fifteen years later, Congress passed the National Indian Forest Resources Management Act, mandating coordinated forest resources planning. Then, in 1994, the Self-Governance Act granted tribes the authority to govern themselves, while not diminishing the federal government trust responsibility. Among other things, the Act gives participating tribes complete control over their forestlands moving the BIA’s Division of Forestry into a technical advisory role. Eventually, the Division will probably be dissolved.
Although these three laws signaled the end of 160 years of paternalism, Congress has yet to deal with the crumbling cornerstone of its relationship with tribal governments. Astonishingly, tribes do not own their land—at least not in the same sense that other private landowners own theirs. For example, tribes can’t use their land as collateral to borrow money. That’s because fee title to the land—which holds billions of dollars in timber, minerals, oil and natural gas— is still held by the federal government as part of its nebulous tribal trust relationship. One Division forester told us he thinks the nation’s more prosperous tribes would gladly give up federal subsidies in exchange for unencumbered title to their land, but many tribes are simply too small to survive without government assistance.
Within the Division of Forestry, the government to government relationship is further strained by the fact tribes now provide more than 40 percent of the money needed to sustain forestry programs once solely funded—albeit sporadically— by the federal government. The Division’s annual budget is about $45 million, around two percent of the BIA’s burgeoning $1.8 billion Congressional appropriation. Most of the money is spent on social programs. Were it not for the millions of dollars [$31 million in 1996] tribes voluntarily add to the BIA Division of Forestry budget, the federal Indian Forestry Program would be much smaller than it already is. One retired Division forester told us he thinks litigation is long overdue. “The tribes would prevail,” he predicted.
Apart from money woes, which are impeding advancements in science-based forestry, the history of Indian forests is quite similar to the history of all U.S. forests. Early day exploitation gave way to early day conservation and, subsequently, to more orderly development of timber resources.
Many readers will be surprised to learn that Indian tribes must abide by the same federal environmental laws that govern the conduct of all forest landowners. Rumors abound that the Clinton Administration recently exempted tribes from the federal Endangered Species Act, but that is not the case. The so-called Secretarial Order, signed last June by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Commerce Secretary William Daley, normalized three distinct and sometimes conflicting areas of law and policy: tribal rights, federal-tribal trust responsibility and the Endangered Species Act.
Some who read this issue will also be surprised to learn that Indians do not live “in harmony with nature amid vast primeval forests” as the political correctness monitors are wont to say. Most Indians, including those we interviewed, deeply resent the implication theirs is not a technologically advanced society. There is little evidence Indians ever lived in harmony with nature, except in the fertile minds of 17th century romanticists who invented the “noble savage” as an idyllic counter to the savagery whites inflicted on one another during Europe’s Middle Ages. And while characterizing Indians as noble savages may appeal to some people, it overlooks 12,000 years of human history, carefully pieced together by archeologists and anthropologists who estimate as many as 100 million Indians were living in North America when Columbus “discovered” the continent.
Mounting evidence also points to the fact Indians lived in an advanced, mainly agrarian society based on exploitation of natural resources, including soil, water, minerals, trees, fish and game. Millions of acres were planted annually. Where water was scarce, irrigation systems were developed. Fire was routinely used to clear land for crops, clean campsites and promote grass production, which attracted game animals. Gardens were cultivated, fruit and nut trees were cared for and access to hunting and fishing grounds was controlled. A private property rights system emerged, conferring ownership on those who invested human capital in the development of natural resources.
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, images of noble savages living in harmony with nature live on in the popular press. Environmentalists have twisted the Indian image in a symbolismover- substance campaign promising the public the best way to “save” forests is to leave them to nature, thereby “restoring” pre-European forest conditions. But Charles Kay, a Utah State University wildlife ecologist says pre-European forests can’t be restored without first restoring pre-European Indian cultures. He also argues that pre-European forests were not “natural,” having already been significantly altered by Indian farming and hunting. “Instead of being ‘noble savages’ who were too wise to overexploit their resources, Native Americans acted in ways that maximized their individual fitness regardless of their impacts on the environment. [They] were the ultimate keystone species that once structured entire ecosystems.”
 Winter logging on the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State |
- Indian forests are important to tribes for economic reasons, but cultural and religious ties to the land are often just as important, particularly in the Southwest, where woodlands serve both ceremonial and economic ends.
- Since 1910, tribal forests have been managed by the Division of Forestry, a tiny organization embedded in a vast social outreach called the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is, in turn, a part of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Division has always toiled in anonymity, never achieving the public stature enjoyed by its sister agency, the U.S. Forest Service. And unlike the Forest Service, the Division has never had the nation’s timber industry in the wings to fight—and win—its budget battles.
- Because the Division of Forestry is held captive by a non-forestry bureaucracy, it has always had great difficulty attracting and maintaining a following in Congress. As a result, it has never been adequately funded. This in spite of the fact that courts long ago declared tribal forestry programs to be a federal trust responsibility.
- Because the Division has never been adequately funded, many of the advanced technologies pioneered by the Forest Service are not yet in use in tribal forests. Even more revealing is the fact the Division’s budget is much too small to support the kind of integrated resource planning and management Congress now requires of other federal forest resource managers. This embarrassment —and its legal implication— is further amplified by the fact voluntary annual contributions from tribes account for more than 40 percent of the federal Indian Forestry budget.
- A benchmark scientific assessment completed in 1993 by the Indian Forest Management Assessment Team concluded Indian forestry is both underfunded and understaffed compared to other similar public and private ownerships. In the early 1990s, funding for tribal forestry was 63 percent of that for timber production for the national forests, and only 50 percent of what private timber companies in the Pacific Northwest were investing in their lands.
- Although tribal forestry programs are seriously under-funded, the longtroubled working relationship between tribes and the Division of Forestry is probably stronger than at any time in history. Credit the Intertribal Timber Council, a national association of tribes that own and manage timberland. The group, which was founded in 1976, has done much to focus congressional and scientific attention on tribal forestry’s needs and successes. Also credit the Division for somehow managing to stay focused on its core forestry mission, despite the fact federal funding has been woefully inadequate.
- Generally, Indian forests across the U.S. are in good condition, though many of the same healthrelated problems found on adjacent national forests are beginning to show up on tribal lands. There is more old growth timber on tribal lands than in neighboring national forests, a tribute to a conservative management style for which the Division of Forestry is famous. Although several tribes are thinning stands that exhibit old growth structural features, there is dismay over the fact the government wants to use these reserves as habitat, without compensating the tribes for not harvesting. Other western landowners have been fighting the same battle for years.
- Although tribes are bound by the same federal environmental laws that limit what other landowners can do with their timber, some of the most innovative forest practices in the U.S. can be found on tribal forest lands. One big reason: courts have ruled that Indian forests— though held in federal trust—are not public forests. Thus, timber sale appellants and environmental litigators have not been able to topple tribal forest plans as they have U.S. Forest Service plans. For example, the Yakama Indian Nation in southwest Washington State has implemented a management approach that provides for the harvest of significant amounts of timber, while also providing habitat for species dependent on old growth forest environs.
- Since 1992, the harvest from reservation forests has averaged 706 million board feet a year. Western tribal forests— those in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming—account for 62 percent of the harvest, some 436 million board feet. Such a harvest would not have been thought significant a decade ago, but with national forest harvest levels approaching zero, Indian timber is assuming a new economic importance in the West’s beleaguered timber communities.
- Change is coming to Indian Country, as newly empowered tribes begin sweeping aside bureaucratic barriers erected by the BIA, most notably during FDR’s New Deal era. New industries, including gaming, high technology and manufacturing, are boosting tribal employment, making timber production less important than it once was. This provides new economic and political footholds for Indians who believe their forests should be preserved, not harvested. As if to mirror the country at large, Indian tribes are dividing themselves into factions favoring or opposing harvesting.
- Although tribal forestlands hold great promise—from both economic and environmental perspectives— further progress in integrated forest resource planning requires increased federal funding. Given the inside-thebeltway popularity of programs with environmental and cultural themes, it is hard to understand why tribes and tribal forests are being overlooked.
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."