Native American Participation in Public Lands Management: An Historical Evaluation

The purpose of this paper is to explore the historical development of Native Americans' participation in public lands management. The literature on federal-tribal relations in public lands management demonstrates that Native Americans face an uphill battle in order to receive recognition of and protection for their cultural and traditional ties to public lands. This paper uses Arnstein's ladder of participation to evaluate several historical examples of federal-tribal relations in public lands management. Arnstein's ladder of participation shows how different forms of participation correspond to an individual or groups power to affect outcomes of decision-making processes. The examples discussed in this paper are explicative of these different forms of participation and show that the predominance of hierarchical power structures and particular cultural ideals of American society have impeded recognition of and protection for Native Americans' cultural and traditional ties to public lands. Around the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th century, forms of nonparticipation excluded Native Americans from the emerging dialogue concerning the nation's first public lands. Although Native Americans became more militant and assertive in the economic, political, and cultural spheres of American society as time went on, tokenistic forms of participation still precluded effective and equitable recognition of and protection for their cultural and traditional ties to public lands. This paper concludes with an evaluation of the recent creation of Bears Ears National Monument by presidential proclamation and how the organization and activism by several tribes to receive protection for the Bears Ears landscape demonstrates the potential for similar approaches to produce more effective and equitable forms of participation.