Tribal Voices Get White House Ear But Still Waiting for Results

Tribal voices say they’re finding more ways to get their concerns in front of the Biden administration, even if that increased access isn’t always translating into wins on environmental protection and climate action.

Biden has directed all federal agencies to make “regular, meaningful, and robust consultation” with tribal nations, noting that Native Americans are disproportionately impacted by health and economic disparities and worsening climate impacts.

But it’s unclear whether that message has filtered down to federal agencies and departments that interact directly with tribes, said Julia Bernal, a member of Sandia Pueblo and director of the Pueblo Action Alliance.

“Tribes should be at the table when it comes to decisions and planning and instead of being told `look, this is the new development project we’re working on,’” Bernal said.

The administration’s efforts still lean too heavily on offers to listen to tribal views and less on in-depth consultations where those views are given significant weight, said Mario Atencio of the Arizona-based Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment, representing Navajo communities.

“The joke around here is `well, we asked for a consultation—but what we got was a listening session,” Atencio said.

The administration can help by getting tribes more federal resources to help them better compete for federal grant dollars and with policies that scale up home-grown clean energy and other climate-friendly technologies in communities, Bernal said.

That would require a more consistent focus on tribes to overcome structural hurdles to having more of a voice in federal decisions, such as permitting, in which Bernal said the process tends to favor the oil and gas industry.

“Our nation can streamline processes for industries like oil and gas, but then they make those same permitting processes incredibly hard for local economies,” she said. “It shows you where the priorities are.”

‘Meaningful and Robust’

Biden has won praise for placing members of tribes in high-ranking positions. He named New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, as Interior Secretary, and Jaime Pinkham, a member of the Pacific Northwest’s Nez Perce Tribe, to a top post with the Army Corps of Engineers.

He also has scored early environmental and conservation wins—including reinstating Bears Ears and other national monuments upended by President Trump, and killing off the Keystone XL Pipeline, opposed by a coalition of Indigenous tribes. But Biden’s moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters was blocked in July by a federal judge in Louisiana.

Some conservation actions have sparked criticism—tribes aren’t monolithic when it comes to views on oil and gas leasing—such as a proposal to create a 10-mile drilling buffer around New Mexico’s remote Chaco Canyon. While some tribes hailed the move, the Navajo Nation complained its pleas for a more modest five-mile radius to protect revenue it gets from oil and gas deposits went ignored.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management “now wants to initiate formal tribal consultation after the fact,” said Navajo Nation Council Delegate Mark Freeland.

Complaints that tribal voices aren’t being heard is a common one, though more often heard when one winds up on the losing side, said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance representing oil and gas drilling in the West.

“They often say, `They didn’t do enough consultation.’ Well you know, sometimes you lose,” she said.

And while some tribes want lands off limits to drilling, “you also have tribes that are very pro-oil and natural gas, like the southern Utes or the three affiliated tribes of the North Dakota"—the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation—"and they are very pro-energy because that’s how they ensure the livelihoods of their people.”

Mixed Record on Leases

Oil and gas drilling has long been a contentious issue between tribes and the federal government.

During the Obama administration, Interior tried to cancel a contentious oil and gas lease near Glacier National Park in the Badger-Two Medicine area—considered sacred by Blackfeet Nation, said Hilary Tompkins, a former Obama-era Interior solicitor.

The attempt, which triggered years of litigation, shows how challenging it is to simply cancel existing leases on public lands, as Biden pledged during the campaign, she said.

But stopping such leases requires successfully navigating time-consuming procedural requirements, including detailed analyses of existing resource management plans, said Tompkins, now a partner in Hogan Lovells US LLP’s environmental practice.

Interior’s decision to suspend oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge highlights Biden’s challenge in making good on promises to protect such pristine areas. It’s a temporary moratorium while the department carries out a detailed review of the environmental impacts of the leases.

Biden deserves credit for taking quick action to block what many native populations considered a rushed lease sale Trump announced a month before he left office, said Tonya Garnett, special projects coordinator for the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government in Alaska.

Congressional Democrats are pushing to repeal 2017 provisions tacked onto sweeping tax legislation that opened parts of the refuge to drilling, she noted. That reversal hinges on passage of Biden’s Build Back Better package, which passed the House but is being negotiated in the Senate.

“We still have a long way to go,” Garnett said. “After the 2020 sale of these lands, we have remained steadfast in our commitment to protect our sovereign rights and these sacred lands from those—including oil and gas companies—who would exploit it for profit.”

The tribes consider a northern piece of land particularly sacred—the calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou Herd—as native peoples have lived among the caribou “since time immemorial,” she said.

Glimmer of Hope

Environmental groups who work closely with tribes say that focusing too narrowly on the need for thorough consultation ignores centuries of mistreatment of tribes by the federal government.

Economic opportunity for many tribes is limited, to the point where they have little alternative to maximizing oil and gas revenue.

“These lands have been deemed as sort of sacrifice areas by the federal government in the not-so-distant past,” said Kyle Tisdel, climate and energy program director for the Western Environmental Law Center.

Others say the administration deserves credit for trying to give tribes and other marginalized communities more policy input following decades of neglect.

Tompkins, the former Interior solicitor, said she’s optimistic that the recent “awakening on issues of racial justice” has put a spotlight on “long systemic problems that Indian country has faced,” in many cases for hundreds of years.

“I think there’s a greater awareness” of the plight of tribal nations, she said. “And I hope it’s not a one-shot deal.”