Reweaving Earth: An Indigenous Perspective on Restoration Planning and the National Environmental Policy Act

Tribal restoration planning, based on indigenous ideas and practices, evolved with the self-determination and self-governance initiatives of tribal governments in the United States. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementation was roughly concurrent with the return of management authority over Indian trust lands to tribes in the 1970s and 1980s. Many, but not all, of the 556 federally recognized tribal governments have assumed responsibility for NEPA planning processes. Other planning processes pursued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Indian trust lands and those of the State of Washington for educational trust lands offer significant contrasts; to further delineate these contrasts, the author overlays tribal planning activities with a four-point methodological framework. The tribal restoration planning approach begs the question of how to maintain a dynamic range where human and natural environments are connected in past, present, and future. Tribal resource planning supports ecosystem processes and maintains tribal values at the same time. Today, federal devolution and the effects of previous intervention combine with accelerated processes of decline resulting from global warming and species extinction. The future of Indian trust lands as natural and cultural homelands may depend in large part on the ability of tribes to implement planning strategies that assure continuous restoration. The case of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (hereinafter referred to as "Salish Kootenai") in Montana offers hope through landscape-level planning strategies applied to restore that cultural and natural landscape.