Valley Journal
Valley Journal

This Week’s e-Edition

Current Events

Latest Headlines

What's New?

Send us your news items.

NOTE: All submissions are subject to our Submission Guidelines.

Announcement Forms

Use these forms to send us announcements.

Birth Announcement
Obituary

Native Lands and Wilderness Council gathers at SKC

Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local. You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.



Subscribe now to stay in the know!

Already a subscriber? Login now

PABLO — Wilderness lands, national parks and roadless areas occupy a fraction of our modern world. It can be easy to forget what the land looked like before modern civilization, what the animals, trees, rivers and streams once were and what they once meant — and still mean — to the indigenous people who call these places home.

While relatively small in comparison to the vast expanses they once were, these lands offer a unique opportunity to view nature and natural processes in their true state and habitat. For people who’ve lived off of the land and in harmony with the land, they can mean much more. 

Works projects coordinator for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes wildland recreation program, Terry Tanner, said that for him and probably for all tribal members, the Mission Mountain Tribal Wilderness means life. 

“It brings life. It brings life to the people, to the animals and to the valley. To have it in our presence gives life,” Tanner said. 

With this in mind, Tanner met with WILD Foundation president Vance Martin in Washington, D.C. According to the Native Lands and Wilderness Council’s second published case study compilation, both men expressed a concern regarding the lack of indigenous voices and land managers in conservation dialogue. The Native Lands and Wilderness Council grew from their shared concern and convened for the first time in 2005 and again in 2009. 

According to the NLWC website, the council seeks to, “Create a coherent and accessible body of knowledge and policy framework on indigenous management / stewardship of the land and seas; promote inter-tribal collaboration and direct representation by traditional custodians in policy processes related to biodiversity, wilderness and climate change; enhance the application of TEK customary and traditional practices and indigenous wisdom to land and marine conservation and management, and to globally expand the conservation of, and benefits from, stewardship of indigenous wild lands and marine and coastal areas for their cultural and biodiversity values.”

The council met in 2005 and 2009 in an effort to forward all of the above goals. This year, the same year as the Mission Mountain Wilderness’ 30th anniversary, council members from North, Central and South America gathered at Salish Kootenai College for three days of cooperative dialogue in the name of indigenous wilderness management. 

Sept. 5 featured a tour of the reservation for all visiting NLWC council members. Sept. 6 began the regional gathering with a prayer by Lucy Vanderburg and an welcome statement from CSKT Tribal Council member Steve Lozar. 

Lozar said he’d spent the past seven or eight days in Blackfeet country, and that it may have been the most intense time he’s ever spent thinking about, “our place on the land.”

“We often say that we’ve been here for 14,000 years,” Lozar said. “That’s not to be lost. We are people of the land and people of the water.”

Wilderness division manager Tom McDonald then gave a brief presentation on the Flathead Reservation’s formation, history, and adoption of the Mission Mountain Wilderness adaptive management plan. 

McDonald said the first Tribal Council under the CSKT constitution tried to set aside the Mission range as a national park, Washington said no. The wilderness management plan would not be adopted until 1982. 

The first-ever tribally owned and maintained wilderness, the Mission Mountain Wilderness is approximately 93,000 acres with a 23,000-acre buffer zone. The buffer zone acts as a cushion or transition from human activity like subdivisions and roads to a natural setting. 

“It’s very gradual,” McDonald said. “It gives you a little bit of space so you’re not disrupting wildlife that is supposed to be there forever, but you’re still allowing for multiple uses.”

As the first-ever tribally designated wilderness in the United States, McDonald said his office would often get calls or mail in the late 1980s from tribes as far away as Costa Rica. Questions often centered around how a tribe would be able to set up a wilderness area while still providing economic interests and development for indigenous people. 

“(The CSKT) would have liked to do it, but we couldn’t have afforded it,” he said. “It’s easier to do it through these collectives and organizations.”

Hawk Rosales of the Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council in California gave a presentation on the progress of their wilderness while crediting the CSKT for helping to start the movement. 

The Sinkyone Ancestral Territory was founded in December 1986. It now boasts 10 different tribes that came together to, according to Rosales, “to reclaim their ancestral territory in response to the timber industry threatening their land.” The State of California sold logging rights to their land and cut down entire valleys filled with 4 to 5,000-year-old Redwood trees. Thanks to the efforts of the SWC, many rehabilitated areas of their tribal wilderness and home are beginning to heal. 

“You set the precedent, here, on the Flathead Reservation. The impact of that has been staggering,” Rosales said. 

As the third regional gathering of the Native Lands and Wilderness Council drew to a close Wednesday night and council members headed back toward their hotels in preparation for a long-flight home, handshakes and thanks abounded in the shadow of the Mission Mountains. 

Not a single frown could be seen in the waning twilight hours. 

In the foreword of the NLWC’s second case study publication, Julie Cajune and Terry Tanner co-authored a brief history of the NLWC. In conclusion, they wrote the following:

“There is as much to be learned from the relationships that were established as there is from the knowledge brought forth from these relationships. There is indeed a lesson in respect and reciprocity that is witnessed in this work.”

“These are important lessons for a world in a state of conflict and crisis.”

Sponsored by: