Environmental Justice for Non-Recognized Tribes

Non-Federally Recognized Tribes Struggle to Protect
Environmental and Cultural Assets 


By Debra Utacia Krol and Allison Herrera


Read more about federally non-recognized tribes.


Valentin Lopez was handed a dilemma: how to honor his elders’
admonition to fulfill an ancestral directive to guard and
protect the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, a
small tribe along California’s Central Coast and parts of the
San Francisco Bay Area.  


“In 2006 the tribal elders came to a council meeting,” says
Lopez, who’s served as chairman of the 600-member tribe since
2003. “They said our creation story tells us the Creator gave
us the responsibility to take care of Mother Earth and all
living things, and Creator has never taken away or rescinded
that obligation. We have to find a way to do that.” Lopez left
that meeting “just shaking my head saying, ‘How in the world
could we ever do that?’” 


One huge roadblock: Lopez’s tribe lacks federal recognition.
Unlike recognized tribes, Amah Mutsun can’t use federal Indian
laws such as the Native American Graves Protection and
Repatriation Act, also known as NAGPRA or access federal
funding to pursue environmental and cultural site protection.
And, most of the tribal members have had to move east to the
San Joaquin Valley, priced out of their stunningly
beautiful—and expensive—homeland, because they don’t have a
reservation or other trust lands to call home.


So, how could Lopez honor his word to the elders?


[Photo: Valentin Lopez. Credit: Debra Utacia Krol]


Lopez isn’t alone: Some 55 Indigenous communities in California
aren’t on the BIA’s List of Recognized Tribes, the document
used by the feds to provide funding and technical assistance to
tribal governments for education, health care, governance,
environmental protection and many other programs. In fact,
California has the dubious distinction of the state with the
largest number of unrecognized tribes. Entire cultural groups
such as the Ohlone, Esselen, Salinan and other cultures fell
completely through the cracks, while others like the Chumash,
Mono and Maidu peoples have both recognized and non-recognized
communities.


So, how can non-recognized tribes manage to protect their
ancestral sites and exert environmental stewardship over their
lands? In California, some state laws and policies offer at
least some paths to protection.


In September 2011, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued an executive
order that requires all state agencies to engage in meaningful
consultation with Indigenous tribes in California, whether
federally recognized or not.


The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, was amended
in 2014 provisions for tribal cultural protections. And, these
cultural provisions apply to non-recognized tribes. Under the
terms of the amendment, known to tribes as Assembly Bill 52,
California tribes have legal standing to issue a notice for
consultation regarding any proposed project covered under CEQA
in the tribe’s traditional and culturally-affiliated
lands. 


More state agencies, most notably the California Coastal
Commission, have enacted tribal consultation policies. And, the
state’s Native American Heritage Commission coordinates
consultation as well as identifying and cataloging Native
American cultural resources with state borders. 


For small, resource-poor tribes such as the Amah Mutsun and the
yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe (also
known at the ytt Northern Chumash), whose lands lie about a
four-hour drive north of Los Angeles on the Central Coast,
utilizing these state regulations can be a challenge. Mona
Olivas Tucker, tribal chair of the ytt Northern Chumash Tribe,
manages relationships with a variety of state and local
agencies. 


Tucker believes that the state’s efforts to support tribes has
a mixed record. “I think the Native American Heritage
Commission tries very hard to be helpful to tribes federally
recognized and  non-federally recognized,” she says. “But
I also think they have a giant amount of work and perhaps too
small a staff to try to take care of it all; but, they do try
pretty hard to help us when we reach out for help.” And, she
says, the 30-day period to respond to requests for consultation
is insufficient for the number of requests the tribe receives.
“We work on a volunteer basis,” says Tucker. “Our tribal office
is a spare bedroom here in my house and our tribal hall is my
living room.” Each tribal member who helps with consultations
handles a different area of San Luis Obispo County.


But, even though the ytt Northern Chumash has a good
relationship with the county, working with the feds is a
different story. “When you're not federally recognized you have
greater difficulty in getting to the conference table for
discussions about your area,” says Tucker. “An example is the
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; they have been cordial. But,
we're not a federally recognized tribe, so we have the status
as a typical member of the public. We don't have a special
status with them.” 


Sometimes when the feds come calling, though, it can be a
different story. 


****


“Our tribe is very poor,” says Lopez. “We did not own any land.
The vast majority of us cannot afford to live in our territory.
And so, we live in the Central Valley versus along the coast or
in the Gilroy, Hollister, Morgan Hill area.” In fact, we met in
Winton, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, a three-hour
drive from the eastern edge of Amah Mutsun land. But the Amah
Mutsun elders had issued their orders: resume land stewardship
over their lands as they had for more than 10,000 years. Lopez
had been praying for a solution when an unlikely would-be
partner emerged—the National Park Service.  


“We got a call from the superintendent of Pinnacles National
Park,” says Lopez. “He invited us to come in and be part of the
park; he had just transferred in from another park where he had
a great relationship with the tribe.”


The superintendent told Lopez, “I recognize this is your
territory." He offered the tribe a voice at the park.


“When he said those words, we were really happy, recognizing
that perhaps this is the creator answering our prayers,” says
Lopez. “At the same time, it scared us because we had lost so
much knowledge that they expected us to have knowledge about to
take care of the plants and animals, and to tell the
interpretation story and talk about life as our ancestors had.


“We had lost so much of that knowledge.”


But, in addition to knowledge possessed by living elders, Amah
Mutsun had a powerful tool at their disposal: Some 78,000 pages
of notes compiled by anthropologist John P. Harrington,
collected from the Amah Mutsun’s last traditional leader,
Asencion Solorazno (1855-1930). 


The initial call has evolved into a partnership, including
conducting cultural burns and nurturing basketry and other
culturally significant plants within Pinnacles’ land. 



****


The situation is different for tribes that aren’t recognized
but have allotments known as public domain trust lands, such as
the North Fork Mono Tribe. 


Mono families obtained Indian allotments after a promised
reservation never materialized. Today, the North Fork Mono
Tribe has 52 allotments covering well over 10,000 acres of
land. The nearby federally recognized North Fork Rancheria,
another Mono community, has an 80-acre reservation, or
rancheria. 


The Monos’ 1.2 million-acre ancestral land base encompasses
portions of Fresno, Mariposa and Inyo counties, including parts
of the Sierra Nevada. “We've been here in our area for
thousands of years, down in the lower foothills for a good 500
years,” says Tribal Chairman Ron Goode. The Mono have
maintained that land, including many  of the more than
8,000 meadows dotting the mountain region. “That’s where the
water starts,” says Goode.


In the early 1990s, the tribe began to work on restoration and
enhancement of its cultural resources in partnership with three
counties.  “We have over 10 different resource spots that
we've been restoring since then and many other smaller acreages
of land,” says Goode. “Around 2003 we started working with the
Forest Service and restoring meadows, and we've been restoring
meadows since then.” By 2014, the tribe has restored six
meadows, bringing water and both endemic and useful exotic
plants back. 


Goode takes us on a tour of one of those meadows. 


****


It’s a rare almost-clear day in Clovis, just east of Fresno,
where Goode and his family have a small deer farm. We can spy
the mighty expanse of the Sierras through a thin haze, unlike
the grayish muck that passes for open air in the San Joaquin
Valley these days. To see where California’s water starts, we
make our way up narrow mountain roads. The grasslands and
fields give way to groves of oak, manzanita, buckwheat and
blackberry. Above our heads, pine and fir trees rise to brush
against the blue sky. “Look at black oaks and pine trees,” says
Goode.


After about an hour on the road, we reach the small meadow in
the Sierra National Forest. Goode reminds us to look up to
ensure a dead tree isn’t about to crash on our heads. The
deadfall is the result of California’s historic drought, when
about 150 million trees perished. Although it proved to be good
news for the meadows, the dead trees are a hazard. 


“So why don’t people just cut them down?” we ask. 


“I don't know,” says Goode. “I tried to get them to do that,
but you know there was a policy problem. It was not declared a
disaster federally, even though it's on federal lands. And
Governor Brown declared a disaster, so we get state money. But
we can’t get any FEMA funding. Nobody else comes in to help.”


We meander around the landscape. Goode explains the process he
and his crews followed to restore the meadow. “We cleared up
maybe eight refrigerators and hauled truckloads of stuff, beds
and all sorts of stuff, the first time we started working.”


Now, Goode and his crew has restored the meadow. “We can see
it's all green,” says Goode. “And how wet it is because the
little spring grasses are all right here. We brought the water
back by clearing it and opening it up.“ 


Goode points out the spring, a small hole in the damp ground
that oozes water. “The idea is to raise the water table back
up,” he says. “Most of the meadows were incapacitated. They
were not functional. You might have one spring working part of
the year and maybe not. Maybe had a spring that was dried for
two or three years or longer. So, we began to remove and
eradicate what didn't belong on the meadow, such as conifers.
And any other plants with too many specimens. It might be too
many willows. It might be too many manzanitas. It may be too
many of something that didn't belong there in that meadow, had
to come off.”


We carefully tread around the deer grass, being cautious of the
wet ground, looking for rattlesnakes, detouring around soaproot
and wild strawberries. 


“We've monitored the acorns. So right here we're looking at
what's called a golden oak. And we have about 40 golden oaks.
We have had, had 64 black oaks, but I think it's closer to 60
now because a few of them died or got felled. So, we have close
to 100 new oaks coming up. Last year, 2018, was like the best
acorn year. And we had over seven trees that were what we call
abundant. So, we got bags and bucketsful of acorn out of these
trees. It’s been really good.” 


Goode says success is determined by measuring resources. “We
monitor those resources whether it be acorn or young oaks. How
many oaks do we have? How many young oaks are coming up? How
many different plants?” 


“We create lists while we're working out there on the land and
identifying the insects and birds and reptiles and animals and
trees and shrubbery and all the different plants, medicine
plants, fiber plants, food plants.” In the six meadows the
tribe maintains, Goode counts up to 160 species per
meadow. 


****


Back along the Central Coast, landless tribes engage in a
different tactic. 


Amah Mutsun established a land trust which allows them to
establish stewardship partnerships even though they don’t own
any of the lands. For example, the land trust was asked by
California State Parks to assist with restoration of the
coastal prairie in Año Nuevo State Park, in Santa Cruz County.
“We currently have 10 stewards working in the field,” says
Lopez.  “Those coastal prairies are very important for the
insects and the birds and the four-legged creatures,” says
Lopez. “They provide much more than a forest does. So today we
have MOU agreements that allow us access to over 140,000 acres
in our traditional tribal territory. And those MOUs allow us to
steward, to tend, to gather, to hold ceremony, to have prayer,
conduct education research on those landscapes. 


“We don't own an inch of land but we say our ancestors didn't
own land either.”


One essential task the tribal stewards perform is repairing the
damage from more than 300 years of fire suppression. “When they
stopped fire during the Spanish period, the mission period,
Mexican period, in the American period they outlawed fire,”
says Lopez. “And so we're out there with the chainsaws to cut
down a lot of the trees that have encroached on that coastal
prairie. Then, we’re replanting a lot of traditional native
plants back out there. Those native plants provide the most
biodiverse landscapes that there is in the world.”


Restoring and sustaining California’s biodiversity also
supports species worldwide, says Lopez. For example, he notes
that wine grapes owe their continued health to endemic
California grape species that, when grafted to other varieties,
helped wine grapes to recover from a blight. 


“We believe that we know that we have Creator with us,” says
Lopez. “We know we have our ancestors with us. If something was
to happen, they would they would lose a lot more than we would,
because we would still have our ancestors and creator with us.”


“I'm saying quite frequently now that if we're going to ever
recover and heal from climate change, it's the Indigenous
people that will show the way,” says Lopez, “and our tribe is
working hard now to prepare ourselves to be such a
leader.” 


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