Native Notes

The International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management is a law and policy research institute based in Denver, Colorado. Institute staff and associates identify emerging issues and trends and help Indian tribes and other indigenous peoples develop the systems and institutions needed to protect and advance their interests.

About nine months ago we identified transportation as one of those issues that would be exacerbated by impacts of climate change and rising energy costs, and would therefore pose extraordinary problems to Indian tribes, especially those located in the rural American West.

As the transportation paradigm changes (for example the electrification of transport and the proliferation of smarter vehicles and smart highways) in response to these twin pressures, the planning, construction, maintenance, and improvement of this nation’s transportation infrastructure by state departments of transportation can potentially trigger state-local government-tribal disputes. However, these actions can also become the objective of state-local government-tribal collaborative efforts to take advantage of the opportunities these changes may present.

Our sense is that collaboration requires a mutual awareness of the workings and procedural requirements of federal and state transportation statutes, policies, regulations, and planning and budgetary processes; knowledge of the broad range of tribal environmental, social, cultural, health and safety interests that may be affected by transportation projects, and an understanding of the linkages between these interests and other legal and statutory requirements such as the federal-Indian trust doctrine, treaty rights, AIRFA, NAGPRA, etc.

Six months ago we initiated discussions with the Sicangu Policy Institute of the Sinte Gleska University of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and the Haskell Indian Nations University around a collaborative effort with the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management to establish a tribal university transportation research institute to conduct studies on the impacts of transportation on tribal interests and to carry out a communications program that would promote state-local government-tribal collaboration.

As an example of such consciousness-raising activities, we began planning the Workshop on Communicating, Consulting, and Cooperating with Indian Tribes on State Transportation Projects: The Role of the National Environmental Policy Act with the Sicangu Policy Institute. The workshop was held in Rapid City, South Dakota in November, 2007.

At that workshop I spoke with Dr. Lance A. Roberts, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering about his efforts to establish a University Transportation Center (UTC) focused on transportation infrastructure on Indian Reservations at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. It was obvious to the both of us that collaboration between the proposed UTC, the proposed tribal university transportation research institute, and the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management would bring the full range of scientific, engineering, legal, policy, social, and cultural expertise to bear on present and future transportation infrastructure issues.

We think the proposed UTC deserves support from Indian country, but caution that unless the tribal colleges create an institute with comparable weight and gravity to partner with UTC, the potential that the tribal colleges will be captured and become a satellite of the UTC is very real.