Foundational (Integrated) Approach
Legacy of Single Use Permits
In 2018, numerous communities across the Navajo Nation, including regional bodies like the Western Agency Council (comprising 18 chapters), voiced objections to 2016 amendments made by the Navajo Nation Council to the Navajo Nation Homesite Lease Regulations. The amendments ignored generational settlement and kinship, treating homesites as if they were no more than rentals subject to severe use and size restrictions. The Western Agency Council (WAC) issued its objections via Resolution No.WNAC18-03-NB8 on March 17, 2018.
The WAC called for a foundational approach, finding that “the Regulation of the use of Diné Bikéyah must be holistically planned, enable continuation of the Diné way of life, and must be premised upon land use principles, laws and teachings embedded in Diné bi beenahaz’áanii.” The WAC further found that consensus among the chapters must be reached for a “foundational document for use of Diné Bikéyah according to principles, laws and teachings in accordance with Diné bi beenahaz’áanii, to be drafted by consensus at the local level to truly reflect the values, goals and desires of the Diné, which will serve as the foundational document for all land use laws, said document to be approved by an initiative or a referendum.”
Since the turn of the 20th century more than 120 years ago, tribal land practices have been buried under federal land use regulations that have not included ANY tribal land use practices in them. Instead, federal laws have imposed off-reservation understandings of how land is used, and what is meant by land.
Additionally, systems of restrictive-use leases and permits were invented just for federal public lands that seem to ignore the existence of permanent communities. Leases and permits on the Navajo Nation are restricted to single uses, e.g. for a homesite, for farming, for business, for livestock, or withdrawn for community use, with none of these uses able to be used in combination. All leases and permits are in the names of individuals and also time-limited, and may be lost for non-compliance with use conditions. This system is viewed by land users on the Navajo Nation as insulting, divisive, destructive to communal cultural practices, and as a prime reason youth are not remaining on the Navajo Naiton.
Stewardship practices, developed over generations of indigenous land use, are entirely absent from the system of leases and permits imposed on generational communities on reservations. Meanwhile, cultural and environmental protection laws are separately imposed, with responsibilities placed on tribal agencies that lack funds to perform tasks. Community members are almost entirely cut off from their historical communal stewardship functions.
It is well-accepted among stakeholders that tribal land “is generally not managed according to tribal priorities and does not reflect that Indian lands are intended for the use and benefit of Indian tribes and their members” but are instead “being managed according to priorities generally associated with (federal) public lands.” GAO-15- 502, 25 (June 2015).
There is consensus on the Navajo Nation that a tribal vision is critical, that clearly states tribal priorities and sets forth the land use arrangements that support cultural community ingenuity, lifeways and land practices. However, there is a feeling also of helplessness, even powerlessness, that an independent system cannot now be made after generations of regulation that has made no cultural, environmental, nor community sense.
Integrated Land Stewardship
As early as 1960, the federal government saw that the single use approach did not work, and began multi-use approaches to non-tribal public land management. Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 expanded single tract public land uses to multiple uses in forests, calling for public lands to be “utilized in the combination that will best meet the needs of the American people; making the most judicious use of the land for some or all of these resources or related services over areas large enough to provide sufficient latitude for periodic adjustments in use to conform to changing needs and conditions.”
The 1960 Sikes Act further allowed partnered multi-use management to generate income, build community and conserve forests on “military reservations.” In 1988, the BIA Integrated Resource Management Planning (IRMP) Initiative extended this concept to tribal lands. Emphasis changed from single use to a whole system approach — comprehensive, integrated planning that encompasses natural, cultural, economic and social resources for each reservation according to tribal community vision for the future. The hope was that each tribe would assert its own cultural imperatives and establish unique flexible, self-renewing, and multi-use management approaches. However, tribes including the Navajo Nation have not been able to create unique IRMP all these decades. For the Navajo Nation, the primary barrier has been establishing a community-driven integrated tribal vision.
Comprehensive Integration
Integrated Resource Management Planning” or IRMP has been an available route filled with promise for a Tribe to reach its own systemic vision for future generations since the early 1990s. The language of “resource management” is used, while encouragement of tribal whole-systems envisioning is also recognized as critical for true integration of resource planning. The recognition of such whole systems integration vs. total separation of resource uses began with the evolution of U.S. National Parks and U.S. military reservations in the 1970s, which needed to support staff and communities, and perform conservation functions, all on very limited budgets.
Recognition of the importance of integrated planning to the future of reservation resources has long been a theme heard throughout Indian Country. Although sparking considerable interest among tribes from the beginning, the BIA’s IRMP Program has lacked the financial or staff capabilities to broadly support the development of IRMPs. In 1993, an internal assessment found that BIA policy for the development of “integrated resource management plans” has not generally been successfully implemented” due partly to “a lack of clear examples of the purpose, content, and use of these plans, a relatively low priority for their development in the BIA, and the absence of adequate funding and resource management expertise.” See page 1-6 of the BIA’s 2001 Guidance for IRMP Planning in Indian Country. We have made highlighted sections throughout this Guidance.
Additionally, in a November 15, 2021 White House Memorandum, the federal government committed to elevating traditional cultural knowledge across programs in federal policy decisions, in a manner that “promotes environmental sustainability and the responsible stewardship of natural resources through relationships between humans and environmental systems.” On May 5, 2022, Navajo Nation grassroots groups and individuals submitted a joint statement on the White House memorandum within a very short 5-week timeframe provided for public comment
Agricultural Resource Management Act and BIA IRMP Guidance
In 1988, the BIA Integrated Resource Management Planning (IRMP) Initiative extended the integrated management concept to tribal lands, later codified in the National Indian Forest Resources Management Act (1990) (NIFRMA) (25 U.S.C. § 3101-3120) and the American Indian Agricultural Resource Management Act (1993) (AIARMA) ( 25 U.S.C. §§ 3701 — 3746)). Emphasis changed from single use to a whole system approach — comprehensive, integrated planning that encompasses natural, cultural, economic and social resources for each reservation according to tribal community vision for the future. The hope was that each tribe would assert its own cultural imperatives and establish unique flexible, self-renewing, and multi-use management approaches. However, tribes including the Navajo Nation have not been able to create unique IRMP all these decades. For the Navajo Nation, the primary barrier has been establishing a community-driven integrated tribal vision.
In the American Indian Agricultural Resource Management Act (1993) (AIARMA), the term “Indian agricultural lands” broadly covers all Indian land other than forests, and specifically includes farmland, rangeland, land used for the production of agricultural products, and industrial lands that support the agricultural community, regardless of whether a formal inspection and land classification has been conducted. The AIARMA authorizes waivers of federal regulations or policies which conflict with a tribal plan that has been approved by the Secretary of the Interior. For a BIA powerpoint, go to AIARMA-BIA powerpoint; see also this regulation at 25 CFR 166.311 (Is an Indian agricultural resource management plan required?).
The BIA’s 2001 Guidance for IRMP Planning in Indian Country attempts to briefly provide a map or tool for tribes to develop an IRMP that encompasses tribal cultural knowledge and tribal practices, leaving the details of how to reach a tribal vision up to tribes themselves.
According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs–
Given how entrenched federal regulations are across all aspects of tribal life, the guidance acknowledges the federal government’s limitations in understanding of cultural practices within individual tribes. Consultants, both external consultants and from the BIA, have prepared data-filled documents rather than a map towards our vision. These consultants have neither the knowledge nor the authority to make this vision for us. There has been no vision component in Navajo Nation land use planning.
So long as our vision is missing, the consultants assisting in our community land use plans and IRMPs have no choice but to emphasize existing laws and regulations that have long misunderstood our communal land use roots and future.
There has also not been adequate explanation of what an IRMP is intended to accomplish. An IRMP does not stand alone. From it, implementation and action plans are developed for all resources which fall under it. As briefly explained in the Guidance, an IRMP addresses statutory and regulatory issues and lays the groundwork for consolidation of regulations and codes. An IRMP is the embodiment of the tribe’s vision of its reservation for generations to come. It is a strong statement of sovereignty and exercise of self-governance. As a planning document, it is the stepping stone to organized planning and management actions for all reservation “resource” uses.
“Resources” can easily be misunderstood to be limited to the natural world. However, the Guidance itself interprets it broadly and systemically to cover the whole of tribal life. “Integrated resource management goes beyond the natural world and incorporates social, cultural, environmental, and economic aspects of the reservation . . . It encourages active participation by those with a vested interest . . . Integrated resource management planning ties all decisions which affect a tract of land together.” Introduction, 2001 Guidance for IRMP Planning in Indian Country. The enormousness of this aspect of the IRMP is lost, because consultants and lawyers lack knowledge of tribal cultural practices, and tribal communities lack access to the policies and regulations that impact them.
Without a tool or map that informs, empowers, and guides tribal communities to reach consensus on a whole-systems vision of its future, the envisioning possibility of the IRMP may never be realized by tribal communities themselves.
Recently, the federal government has begun funding IRMP develop through grants without fully explaining how broadly the IRMP can be used for a Tribe to envision its own future resource management systems. However, IRMP developers have so far bypassed tribal envisioning. Tribes like the Navajo Nation contract out IRMP development, often to BIA programs or BIA recommended consultants, who entirely lack sufficient knowledge of tribal cultural practices.
The federal government lacks sufficient understanding of the cultural practices of individual tribes. Any tribal vision must be established by the Navajo Nation themselves, through community engagement that works.
Broad Steps
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the BIA’s 2001 IRMP Guidance describes 3 broad steps towards a tribal vision — (1) starting the formal planning process through a tribal resolution; (2) creating a workplan including roles, stakeholders, ground rules, organizational units, oversight committees, schedules etc. modeled on the formal approach of U.S. programs but intended to merely “provide a framework for tribes to create their own process”; and (3) seeking the vision through defining issues, goals and objectives. However, these 3 steps are a formal approach intended for an agency or government, and further presume that the IRMP vision developers already have the necessary information and knowledge to do their work.
In reality, the systems and structures on the Navajo Nation are multi-jurisdictional with many gaps, and they are obscure, even hidden. They are not easily understood across programs and services, nor are their regulations even accessible to other programs, let alone the general public. Also, federal and program staff and contractors work in formal regulatory systems, largely live off-reservation, and lack understanding and experience of the daily practice of traditional cultural knowledge.
Laws and regulations are greatly dispersed or not available online. The statutes of the Navajo Nation, contained in the Navajo Nation Code, was last published in hard copy in 2010, with multiple law amendments made since then not incorporated into the Code. The Code itself, when available online, is presented in 1000 page portions without page numbers or section headings. Amendments from 2014 to 2022 have, to this day, not been incorporated into the code sections they have amended, and are presently not available online.
The complicated jurisdictions, federal, tribal, tribal enterprise, and delegated contractor services, are entangled and obscure to the general public. The lack of information and understanding is intimidating for moving forward with confidence to create a true vision that encompasses community life and future generations. In actuality, the tool/map needed is of the Universe, which is symbolized in a Diné moccasin — guiding across the Red Sky, the Earth and the Stars.
Possibilities for Navajo Nation
Integrated Approaches
Historically a settlement-oriented tribe with no individual land ownership, tribal assignments have potential to provide large stewardship-settlement tracts combining homes, businesses and agriculture. Costly and difficult conservation plans that are done on individual permittee basis now each time a permit changes hands could be planned more widely and permanently. The traditional Diné approach to land stewardship by groups can be given official tribal sovereign support through innovation of new models that spring from existing federal encouragements.
Towards Stewardship Models
Without compromising its core functions, can the traditional stewardship model be given modern life? The individually-issued lease and permit system sought to end the barbaric Indian communal system in favor of the civilized foreign way of individual strongmen, land measured by lifetimes, and winner take all. What would a stewardship model look like, how would it be measured? Does stewardship as a system allow for partners from outside the community, including supports for many settlements at a time in place of the present immense struggles?
Planned with vision, tribal assignments can give birth to a true stewardship model, one that may fill the existing resource gap in local conservation and resource management and restore the Diné way of life.