Good morning. It's good to be here again. I say "again" because I spoke in this same building - maybe even this same room - less than a year ago. The occasion was the thirty-first annual National Indian Timber Symposium, sponsored by the Inter Tribal Timber Council.

For those of you unfamiliar with ITC, it is the association of Indian tribes that own and manage timberland across these United States. My main message to them - indeed my only message - was that I believe the time has come for America to seriously consider returning our national forests to the Indians from whom we took them.

As you might imagine, my message received thunderous applause. But a few people who know me and aren't ITC members, or even Indians for that matter, thought I was kidding, thought I was trying to make a perverse joke about the destruction of our forests by wildfire and judicial fiat.

But I was not kidding then, and I am not kidding now. I do indeed believe the time has come for our country to think very seriously about returning our federal timberlands to Indian tribes.

I confess that the first time I said this in public was a little scary for me. Like many of you, I grew up camping and fishing in national forests - in my case the old Coeur d'Alene National Forest in northern Idaho. Many of my fondest childhood memories are of weekends spent fishing the Coeur d'Alene River with my father.

But in recent years, I have very reluctantly come to believe that giving my beloved forest back to the Indians may be the only way to save it from disastrous federal forest policies and an unthinking, uncaring Congress.

The e-mail response to my ITC speech was enormous. What shocked me was the lack of resistance to the idea. I only received one negative reply It came from a gentleman I do not know who lives in Lake Arrowhead, California. He expressed a fear that Indians might refuse to allow whites access to their new forests. Who could blame them?

I was also surprised by the fact that no one in the news media bothered to call and find out who the crackpot was who wanted to give our national forest heritage back to the Indians. I actually stayed by the phone the day after my speech thinking someone would call and ask me the question that is standing before all of us this morning like the proverbial 5,000-pound elephant. And that question is "Why in the name of God would any sane person want to give our national forests back to the Indians?"

I could, of course, simply say that we should give them back because they weren't ours in the first place. But that answer - though true - would rob me of a very important point that I want to make here this morning: and the point I is that we are not caring for these forests the way we should, the way we know how, the way our country's first foresters sought to care for them. Gifford Pinchot is rolling over in his grave.

I want to repeat this assertion, because it is the title of the remarks I bring you this morning: Gifford Pinchot is rolling over in his grave. And so are Pinchot's fellow travelers - all of them visionary young men who joined him in founding the Society of American Foresters: E.T. Allen, Henry Graves, Bill Hall, Ralph Hosmer, Overton Price and Tom Sherrard. They would view what we are allowing to happen in our national forests as a sin.

I believe it is a sin too. And I know of no other word that so aptly describes our failure to care for our forests: sin. That we have allowed anti-forestry activists to gain absolute and total control over our national forests, forests that are now dying and burning to the ground, is a sin.

Our sin is the reason I believe it is time for us to consider returning these once beautiful forests to their original owners. I know they will care for them, and I know we are not.

An Indian friend in Seattle recently asked me if I thought the American people would we willing to do such a thing. My quick answer was that I thought they might at least give the idea serious thought if they knew more about the wonderful job that tribes do in protecting the natural, cultural, historic and spiritual assets found in tribal forests.

Another forester friend, who is white, agreed that tribes do a great job, but added that they couldn't do the wonderful job they do if they had to live with the same screwball laws and regulations we have to live with. To which I wanted to say, "And isn't that just the point!" But I didn't. Instead, I reminded him that tribes, despite being sovereign nations, do an excellent job of living with the spirit and intent of what my friend Jack Ward Thomas has called "our crazy quilt of environmental laws." I wish he had said "our self-defeating crazy quilt of ‘I win, you lose' environmental laws - because that's what we really have here: a set of laws so complex and so convoluted that there is no way on earth the Forest Service or any other federal agency can abide by them. What we have here is the "Lawyers and Federal Judges Full Employment Act." What we have are laws and regulations that enrich forestry's enemies, while forests die and burn. It is sin - and it is again the reason why it is time for the nation to think seriously about returning its federal forests to their original owners.

By the way, I have many Forest Service retiree friends who agree with me. They don't like the idea; some of them even hate it. But they love these forests more than they hate the idea. And so - like me - they are willing to give them up, willing to give them to people who will care for them.

Over the last decade, we have published two special issues of Evergreen Magazine showcasing "forestry in Indian Country." In fact, both reports bore the title, "Forestry in Indian Country." A friend asked if Indians weren't offended by the title. I said, "No, one of the first lessons I learned from a tribal forester was that most Indians actually like the word "Indian" and prefer not to be called "Native Americans."

"We want to be thought of as Americans, just like you," one tribal forester told me. "We call it ‘Indian Country,' and so should you."

What amazes me most about Indian Country is that the culture is still alive, despite our government's best efforts to annihilate it. Indian culture clings doggedly, if not miraculously, to its past because it is not possible to separate Indian life from Indian land. In our white society, most of us live two or three generations removed from ancestors who lived on the land and worked it with their own hands. I am blessed: both of my grandfathers did: one was a cattle rancher and the other owned a small sawmill. They both knew a great deal about land and nature and what it took keep land prosperous. Indians still know this, but the rest of us are clueless, including, it seems, quite a few foresters who don't recognize sin when they see it.

Someone asked me recently what I see in tribal forestry that I like so much. Well, I said, at the risk of inviting cynicism, I think that on a very small scale, tribal forestry looks a lot like what SAF's founders had in mind when they laid out their early plans for managing the West's new forest reserves. There is a reason, I explained, why the 142-page Use Book, published in 1905 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture was called the Use Book, and it was to remind worried westerners that the country's new forest reserves were for their use.

Indians use their forests in many different ways, yet tribal forests remain among the healthiest community forests in the entire country. How tribes do what they do on the pittance Congress provides is a constant wonder to me. And believe me, it is a pittance. Tribal forestry gets what the Forest Service spills on the lunchroom floor. My Forest Service friends get upset with me when I say this, but there is no denying that where funding is concerned our government is not living up to its trust responsibility, to say nothing of moral aspects of hastily drawn treaties we so busily signed while herding Indians on to reservations far from their homelands.

Tribes that were fortunate enough to end up with timberland treat it very, very well. I've never seen forest mortality in tribal forests on the scale we now see it in our national forests. Nor have I seen the waste we now see in national forests after wildfires, where millions of dollars in valuable timber are left behind. These are sure signs of neglect. No one is home. No one cares. Such arrogant disregard for social and economic need would never occur in a tribal forest.

Where tribal forestry is not yet all that it can be, the problem is inadequate funding and the blame belongs squarely on congressional shoulders. Let me tell a short story that illustrates this point. A few years ago, while working on Evergreen's first Indian County issue, I got the cook's tour of tribal forests in the Southwest. Among our stops was Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation near the Arizona-New Mexico border. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry has an office there. So does the Navajo Tribe's forestry department. The two offices are a separated by a sidewalk - yet they are light years removed from one another. Step inside the BIA's office and you find the latest and greatest technology. But step inside the tribe's office and you find cast-off computers someone else no longer wanted. Clearly our government isn't doing enough to help tribes get their forestry programs up and running; yet I found the Navajo's young forester to be one of the most cheerful and positive thinkers I'd ever encountered. He saw hope where I saw despair. Imagine what this young man could do for Navajo forestry if he had the same kind of equipment the folks across the sidewalk had.

Some tribal forestry programs have made more progress than others. The Warm Springs in Oregon, the Yakima, Quinault and Colville in Washington, the Hoopa in northern California, the Mescalero in New Mexico, and the Salish-Kootenai here in western Montana all have tremendous forestry programs. Several others in east, south and Great Lakes regions also do a wonderful job.

I would like to see what tribes could do on their timberlands if Congress gave them the same per acre allotment that the Forest Service gets every year, because apart from fighting fires - a task many Indians know well - I haven't the slightest idea what the Forest Service does with its budget. Of course, there are a few notable exceptions. Tim Love, who sits nearby and is Seeley Lake District Ranger, is one of the last professionals in the entire agency. There are a few others, but many were run off during the Clinton years or simply faded into retirement when their time came.

Today, the Forest Service is a mere shadow of what it once was. Most environmentalists think this is a step in the right direction. I do not. Count me among those who agree with Sally Fairfax who many years ago expressed a fear that the day would come in the Forest Service when process would count more than substance. That day has arrived. District rangers and their staffs have little decision-making authority left. Why is this? Why is it that the folks on the ground who know what's best no longer have the latitude to do what's best? Why was it necessary, during the Clinton years, for Al Gore to personally call district rangers and chide them for their actions? Was the Vice President better qualified to make the decision? Did he have more on-the-ground experience than the district staff? Of course he didn't, but it hardly mattered. His objective was to demoralize the agency, to so discourage believers in forestry that they would leave the Forest Service. And in this endeavor, Al Gore was monumentally successful.

Last month, my old friend Marlin Johnson, who worked in the regional office in Albuquerque for years, finally threw in the towel. Marlin was the last of a breed of men who devoted nearly every waking moment of their professional lives to what they called "the outfit."

It wasn't an eight-to-five job and it wasn't about the benefits or federal holidays. It was about esprit de corps. It was who they were and what they did. It was also how they lived their lives, and we liked and respected them for it. They were part of the social fabric of our communities. They went to our churches. Their kids grew up with our kids. What has happened to the Forest Service is also a sin.

Holly McKenzie, who invited me to be your speaker this morning, recently asked me a question that I'm quite certain is on your minds too. She wanted to know what I think we could do to restore health and resiliency in our federal forests and, parenthetically, how we could come to agreement with forestry's adversaries on a method or process for doing it.

I regret to say that, short of giving it back to the Indians, I don't know how. Those who believe federal forests should be managed for the monetary and intrinsic values they hold, and those who believe nature should do the managing, without regard to the economic, ecological or social consequences, will never come to terms with one another. Our overly litigious society offers no alternate, binding process by which warring parties can peacefully co-exist. I think this is the one great failing of our republican form of government.

But I did not come here to talk about government failure or predatory lawyers. I came here to ask the Montana Chapter of the Society of American Foresters to put this question about the fate of our federal forests to a vote of the membership.

Should our federal forests be returned to their rightful owners or should we stand by helplessly while wildfire and judicial activists destroy them?

You may disagree with me, but I think this is where we are today and I see no opportunity for improvement on the horizon. We need to stop kidding ourselves about what we could do "if only this" or "if only that" would happen. "This" or "that" isn't going to happen as long as the Congress allows special interest groups to enrich themselves and their causes through misuse of the federal Endangered Species Act and the Equal Access to Justice Act.

Putting this question to a vote of the members may sound silly and unnecessary, but if not Montana SAF, then who? Who will take the first step forward to say that what is happening in our national forests is wrong? Who will be first to call sin by its rightful name?

If the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management were actually doing something wrong that might harm the environment, there would be reason for concern, and possibly litigation. But these lawsuits involve Byzantine administrative processes - and have little or nothing to do with actual activity on the ground. I don't think most Americans understand this. I think most Americans probably believe the two agencies are doing something terribly wrong and have no one but themselves to blame for their courtroom troubles.

There may be an alternative to returning our national forests to their first owners, though I believe hope for its success is so small that I almost hesitate to mention it, but I will. It lies in elevating the intellectual quality and integrity of the debate - and even here I believe tribes can and should play a central role.

We need to redefine the purpose of our great national forests. We need to ask ourselves why we have them and what we want from them. We need to find out what price we are willing to pay for what we want from forests. We need to look at what's out there that we like or don't like. We need to assess our possibilities and make some reasoned choices based on what the late Harvard botanist, Hugh Miller Raup, called "Forests in the Here and Now." The "we" I refer to here is us - any American who would like to participate in a new national dialogue on forests.

We have been here before. The country had this same conversation with itself after the Civil War. Many were concerned about widespread forest destruction. The question was, "What if anything could be done about it?" I have always been fascinated by the fact that there were no forest scientists to guide this conversation or influence the outcome when Pinchot and his fellow dreamers were throwing paint on the canvas the first time around. The deep thinkers of the day were botanists, landscape architects, ornithologists, journalists, geologists, biologists, big game hunters and foresters trained in Europe.

For Heaven's sake, we didn't even have a forestry school in the United States at the time our first conversation with ourselves began. Yet those who participated in the conversation managed to produce a beautiful painting that was a perfect image and likeness of our country at the time.
That it is no longer the image and likeness of our post-industrial society in no way diminishes its beauty or the values it espoused. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that some of the social and cultural refinements that produced this early image of our country's relationship with nature are among the elements that are missing from our canvas today.

Civility is gone. Arson and sabotage have replaced peaceful dialogue. Arrogance and condescension have replaced respectful behavior. Savage personal attacks have become the norm. Some people, me included, have even had their lives threatened. Others, including my old friend Gil Murray, have been killed for what they believed.

What on earth is going on here? What sickness grips our society so tightly that we now accept this kind of inhumane, anti-social behavior?
What is happening to us?

Peggy Noonan's remembrance of the late William F. Buckley, published in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal, caught my eye. I'm glad it did, because she reminded me that Buckley was much more than the focal point of conservative thought in the last half of the Twentieth Century. He was also a culturally refined man of great humor and tolerance who, in an earlier time, would have been called a "renaissance man."

Here is some of what she wrote about him that I think strikes at the heart of what is missing from our canvas today.

"I thought it beautiful and inspiring that he was open to, eager for, friendships from all sides, that even though he cared passionately about political questions, politics was not all, and cannot be all; that people can be liked for their essence, for their humor and good nature and intelligence, for their attitude toward life itself. He and his wife, Pat, were friends with lefties and righties, from National Review to the Paris Review.

"It was moving, too, that his interests were so broad that he could go from an appreciation for the metaphors of Norman Mailer to essays on classical music to an expanded debate with his beloved friend David Niven on the best brands of peanut butters."

"His broad-gaugedness, his refusal to be limited, seemed to me a reflection in part of a central conservative tenant, as famously expressed by Samuel Johnson.

‘How small of all human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.'

"When you have it right about laws and kings, and what life is, your politics are grounded in the facts of life. And once they are grounded, you don't have to hold them so desperately. You can relax and have fun. Just because you're serious doesn't mean you're grim."

In our approach to forests, we have become far too grim, and we are no longer grounded in the facts of life. The fun long ago went out of the conversation. I can't even remember the last time I had a civil conversation with anyone from the other side of the forestry debate. We live on different planets, yet I suspect we value many of the same things in forests: wilderness for example. I find it comforting that we have such spectacular wilderness areas so close by, though I wish more people understood that even wilderness areas undergo great change through time. We cannot preserve these vast land masses as we would preserve huckleberry jam. For that matter, even good jam spoils in time.

There are two points to be made here. The first one is that the only constant in nature is change. There is nothing much we can do to alter this truth. The second one is that even our wilderness areas have been subjected to human influences for eons. So you tell me, what's natural? I haven't the slightest idea.

I also find something a little loopy about the whole idea of "returning fire to ecosystems." What the hell does this mean? I accept the fact that fire is a part of most ecosystems, but in our post-industrial society do we really need to be running all through the forest with torches lighting fires when we really don't know what comes next? We know wood smoke isn't very good for our health, that it can cause dreadful respiratory problems in children and older people, so why are we talking about more burning when thinning will often do much the same job?

And why is it that the same folks who fret about the possibility of global warming find nothing wrong with the millions of tons of carbon dioxide that forest fires belch into the atmosphere? Where is our common sense? Or as an old Oregon friend said to me recently, "Where is my bullshit meter when I really need it?"

Earlier I said I think there are choices society ought to consider that fall short of actually giving our national forests back to the Indians. These choices are described in some detail in two old Evergreen issues I brought with me today. I believe there are enough copies for each of you to have a set. The first issue is our most recent "Forestry in Indian Country" report. It describes what tribes are doing better than I ever could. Please read this report and consider its implications. Note well how beautifully tribes balance economic need with social, cultural, historic and spiritual values. Then ask yourself why we aren't doing these same things in our national forests and, equally, what political barriers must be removed before the Forest Service and the BLM can do the same good work tribes are doing in their forests.

The second report titled "Ring of Fire" describes the economic and environmental tragedy that is unfolding in eastern Oregon, where nothing happens without the approval of federal judges and anti-forestry activists who don't know the first thing about forestry. The collapse that is occurring in eastern Oregon is already complete in Arizona and New Mexico, where little wood processing and marketing infrastructure remains.

Tragically, the collapse that is occurring in eastern Oregon will soon begin in western Montana if Congress does not intervene first. One might legitimately ask where our state's populist governor stands on this issue. I heard him speak at the Montana Logging Association's spring meeting last year - and I was quite pleased by his fine extemporaneous remarks, which demonstrated that he understands both the problem we face and its solution.

I think Montana SAF should ask to meet with the governor. Ask him straight away what you can do to help him carry the message to Congress.
Tell him you are thinking seriously about voting on this question I have brought before you this morning - and ask him if he thinks the time has come for the country to return its federal forests to the Indians from whom they were taken.

At the very least, it is time for a new national conversation about what our forests in the here and now should be. It seems very appropriate to me that this conversation should begin here in Montana, where we have so much to lose and go much to gain. And it seems equally fitting that the Montana chapter of the Society of American foresters should lead the discussion. Most Americans know very little about what forestry and foresters have accomplished over the last century. And they haven't the slightest idea what could be accomplished over the next century. This is why it is so very important that someone who knows this story and feels passionately about it leads our new national conversation.

In my mind, tribal forestry, with its economic, cultural, social and spiritual underpinnings, lights the way to a better future for the entire country. We can either do as tribes do - or we can return our national forests to their safekeeping, and they can do it for us.

My time with you is short - and I have a favor to ask of all of you. Later this morning you will hear from Adrian Leighton, a delightful young man who holds a PhD in forestry from Yale.

Adrian has established the nation's first tribal forestry bachelor's degree program at Salish-Kootenai College, just down the road from here. Last June, the program graduated its first three students. This may not seem like very many, but Adrian tells me there were only around 20 Indian students enrolled in four-year forestry degree programs in the entire country in 2004.

I'll leave it to Adrian to tell you about his program. But as he describes it to you, think about how proud Gifford Pinchot and the founders of the Society of American Foresters would be if they could see what Adrian and his small staff have accomplished in a short period of time.

I believe SAF's founders would want to do everything they could to help grow this program. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing about SAF's modern-day leadership, because believe it or not, SAF has refused to certify the Salish-Kootenai program because, according to Adrian, they think it is too small. Too small for what: too small to be taken seriously, too small to be any good, too small for anyone to notice, too small for learning to occur? Whatever happened to the idea that small classes offered better learning environments? This is terribly bad behavior, coming as it does from a Society that loves to trot out Indian forestry on Journal of Forestry pages whenever it suits its purposes.

The fact that Salish-Kootenai College has successfully rolled out the first four-year tribal forestry program in the country ought to have SAF singing its praises, not turning up its nose and walking away. Someone needs to take SAF's leadership to the woodshed, and I hope Montana SAF will do it.

Salish-Kootenai's forestry program merits certification - which is more than I can say for a lot of big-time forestry schools that are busy changing their names so they don't look like forestry schools anymore. This might be someone's idea of good marketing, but I find it professionally disgraceful. Where are their principles? Where is their integrity? How is forestry helped by such disingenuous behavior? Who do they think they are kidding? As I have already said twice before this morning, Gifford Pinchot is rolling over in his grave.

Pinchot was opinionated as hell. There is much about him, including his high-mindedness, which I don't much care for. I've always thought the unfailingly diplomatic Bill Greeley was the greatest chief the Forest Service ever had, but I know many disagree with me on this point. It hardly matters. What does matter is that we also bring Pinchot, Greeley and SAF's early members into the new national conversation I hope Montana SAF will initiate. We can do this by examining their writings and their extraordinary record of accomplishment. I want to jumpstart this process right now by closing out my time with you with a few wisdoms from "What It All Means," Chapter 90 in Breaking New Ground, Pinchot's autobiography, which he completed shortly before his death in October of 1946.

"Without natural resources, life itself is impossible. From birth to death, natural resources, transformed for human use, feed, clothe, shelter and transport us. Upon them we depend for every material necessity, comfort, convenience and protection in our lives. Without abundant resources prosperity is out of reach."

"Conservation is the foresighted utilization, preservation and/or renewal of forests, waters, lands and minerals, for the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time."

"Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good. Since its objective is the ownership, control, development, processing, distribution and use of the natural resources for the benefit of the people, it is by its very nature the antithesis of monopoly. So long as people are oppressed by the lack of such ownership and control, so long will they continue to be cheated of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, cheated out of their enjoyment of the earth and all that it contains."

"The rightful use and purpose of our natural resources is to make all the people strong and well, able and wise, well-taught, well-fed, well-clothed, well-housed, full of knowledge and initiative, with equal opportunity for all and special privilege for none. Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. That is the answer."

Thank you