National Park Service pledges to work with tribes to protect cultural sites on public lands

When he was a young man, Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III, the first tribal citizen appointed as National Park Service director, pitched the idea that tribes should be working directly with the federal government to steward public lands.

Now, 27 years after that meeting with then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, Sams announced new guidelines to strengthen protections for Indigenous sacred and cultural sites by giving tribes a greater voice in protecting cultural assets and sacred sites on park service lands.

The new policy, outlined Tuesday, shapes the agency's initiative to create co-stewardship agreements with tribes in its 423-park system. It also reflects similar policies released by other Interior Department agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

"Our mission statement as directed by Congress is to preserve these lands for future generations, which has been what the tribes' stance has been since time immemorial," he said. "We are only the stewards of these lands while we're here and we steward those for the seven generations that follow us."

It's the latest move by the Biden administration and non-governmental groups to strengthen sacred site protection on public lands. In 2021, The Arizona Republic published a series of stories examining the federal government's ongoing failures to protect sacred and culturally important sites on public lands, including national monuments, national forests and BLM lands.

Tribes and tribal members were particularly aggrieved over what they saw as the federal government's lackadaisical approach to consulting with tribes when considering projects on public lands that could damage or destroy cultural or sacred sites.

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Three months later, in November 2021, the Departments of Interior and Agriculture announced a new cross-agency agreement  signed by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to better protect Indigenous sacred and cultural sites.

In February, the Native American Rights Fund launched a three-year project that will study existing laws and policies that fall short of effective protection.

The latest policy implements the 2021 agreement. It provides new frameworks for park managers to step beyond traditional tribal consultation, which tribes have found lacking for decades, and enabling more direct partnership agreements to jointly manage public lands in the national park system and other public lands.

Agencies will be charged with building stronger working relationships with tribes, Alaska Native regional corporations and organizations, and Native Hawaiian communities, building the foundation for them to serve as co-stewards of public lands. Co-stewardship could include formal management legislation, intergovernmental agreements or self-governance agreements.

The park service already has more than 80 co-management agreements in place, including one at Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which is managed in partnership with the Navajo Nation.

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Grand Canyon develops new tribal partnerships

Sams said Grand Canyon National Park has worked to form stronger relationships with the 11 tribes that have cultural and religious connections to the Canyon through an intertribal working group.

It's a far cry from the days when the park removed Native peoples, including the Havasupai Tribe, from their traditional villages tucked at the Canyon's floor, or ticketed and removed tribal vendors who set up blankets to sell their art inside park borders.

Grand Canyon National Park is working with Native American Community Action, a Flagstaff-based Native service organization, to open a temporary Indian market at Tusayan Ruins while remodeling the old Power Plant building at Grand Canyon Village to permanently house Native artisans.

The park's staff are evaluating and revising cultural and historic interpretations with tribal historic preservation officers. The park is also supporting efforts by tribes to perform cultural resource protection activities in the heart of the Grand Canyon.

Sams said the park service is hearing from staff members at other smaller sites, such as Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in the Flagstaff area, who would like to create tribal partnerships. Sunset Crater suffered significant damage when it was burned through in its entirety during the Tunnel Fire in April.

"We need to be able to work more closely with the tribes, their fire crews and how they used fire as a management tool," Sams, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Northeast Oregon, told The Arizona Republic.

Arizona tribes hailed the new policy.

"Tribal governments have endured many challenges in maintaining control over our land, our water resources, and our sacred sites, but the effort must continue on behalf of future generations,” says Shan Lewis, vice chairman of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and president of the Inter Tribal Association of Arizona.

The new guidance on strengthening co-stewardship of federal lands and waters provides a stronger framework for collaboration as tribes work toward a more sustainable future, Lewis said. Fort Mojave is part of a coalition of more than a dozen Southwestern and Southern California tribes seeking to create a new national monument in southern Nevada surrounding Avi Kwa Ami, or Spirit Mountain.

"I'm very proud of the staff in the field who are very hungry to have a much stronger relationship with tribal communities," said Sams.

He said he had not heard any opposition from the field: "I've heard nothing but superintendents and field staff wanting to have stronger and better relationships."

Sams said the new policy will enable Indigenous peoples and park service staff to work together on using traditional ecological knowledge to better manage cultural and environmental resources for generations to come.

"I know this new policy will empower our staff to be able to go out and have stronger, less transactional and more transformational relationships with tribes and tribal governments and tribal communities," he said.

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Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol. 

Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Park Service pledges to partner with tribes on cultural protection