To close out 2024, NARF and First Nations Development Institute co-hosted a national conference entitled Shared Horizons: Navigating Tribal Co-Stewardship and Co-Management Opportunities. The Shared Horizons conference brought Tribal and federal employees and representatives together to attend trainings, share ideas, and network to grow the field of Tribal co-stewardship and co-management.
Tribal co-stewardship and co-management are approaches to public land management that center Tribal sovereignty and ensure mutually beneficial government-to-government cooperation. As early as the 1960s, cooperative management was used to protect Tribal treaty rights to off-reservation resources. However, it was not until 2021, when the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture issued Joint Secretarial Order No. 3403, that Tribal co-stewardship and co-management became a federal priority. Since then, Tribal Nations have entered into more than 400 cooperative agreements with federal agencies to co-manage and co-steward their ancestral homelands.
The conference’s keynote address, which was given by NARF Executive Director Echohawk, highlighted NARF’s and FNDI’s decades-long relationship centered around protecting Tribal homelands. Echohawk highlighted Tribal Nations’ historic efforts to protect their sovereign interests in their homelands and natural resources and emphasized how the federal government’s commitment to co-stewardship and co-management marks a pivotal shift in the way federal and Tribal governments engage one another in respect to shared interests in land.
Throughout the two-day conference, attendees participated in trainings and discussions led by Tribal representatives; federal employees from the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Forest Service; and other subject matter experts. NARF Staff Attorney Beth Wright provided a training on Sacred Site and Cultural Resource Protection, and NARF Fellow Noah Lee provided a training on Co-Stewardship Authorities and Agreements. The conference was not recorded, but webinars related to co-stewardship and co-management delivered by Wright, Lee, and other experts can be found at FNDI’s resource on Stewarding Native Lands.
The Shared Horizons conference highlighted the need to include Tribal Nations in the management of their ancestral homelands and reinforced the need for sovereign-to-sovereign cooperation to create effective and respectful management decisions. As the conference wrapped up, participants shared aspirations that a second conference on co-stewardship and co-management would be held the following year. While the co-stewardship and co-management landscape is uncertain with a changing administration, the relationships built during the conference will continue to shape collaboration between Tribal Nations and federal agencies in the years to come.
NARF was represented at the conference by Executive Director John Echohawk, who served as keynote speaker, as well as Staff Attorneys Brett Lee Shelton and Beth Wright, and Fellow Noah Lee.
NARF, with support from its partners, developed the Sovereign-to-Sovereign Cooperative Agreements Repository to consolidate the large variety of agency resources, Tribal guidance, laws, regulations, and scholarship related to co-stewardship, co-management, and other forms of sovereign-to-sovereign cooperation.
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