Decolonization: Treaties, Resource Use, and Environmental Conservation
dc.contributor.author | Torres, Gerald | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2022-04-26T23:07:04Z | |
dc.date.available | 2022-04-26T23:07:04Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Gerald Torres, Decolonization: Treaties, Resource Use, and Environmental Conservation, 91 U. Colo. L. Rev. 709 (2020). | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/18160 | |
dc.description.abstract | Since the 1970s, Indian policy has been guided by a federal commitment to tribal self-governance. The exact contours of this policy differ, but at a minimum, it is supposed to guide the approach of the federal government in its relations to tribes. Where state and private interests collide with tribal interests, the role of the federal government is often as a mediator of competing claims. In a sensitive and insightful piece, Professor Charles Wilkinson illustrates the way collaboration is supposed to work. He describes the process through which the tribes and the federal government negotiated the creation of what he calls "the first native national monument."I That description reflects what Professor Wilkinson believes is a turning point in the relationship among tribes, states, federal agencies, and private stakeholders in untangling the historically constituted web of interests that bedevil a fair adjustment of interests in land and resource management. U.S. colonial expansion into Indian Country meant that non-native expectations had priority in disputes over policy and law. The western movement was accompanied by presumptions about rightful claims to land and resources that are attendant to the American expression of settler colonialism. Professor Wilkinson illustrates that the physical landscape and the legal relations in which that landscape is embedded require careful attention to the mutual dependence of sacred relations and the more secularly denominated ecosystemic services. Co-management agreements can create a legal space where the various competing interests can be accommodated in a way that reduces the cost of conflict. The congeries of legal sources available for directing any specific action complicates using law as a guide for refraining relations between the tribes and their prior antagonists. The sources of law range from treaties to foundational statutes like the Northwest Ordinance or the Non-Intercourse Act.3 As illustrated by Professor Wilkinson, the Antiquities Act4 provided the legal foundation for the creation of Bears Ears National Monument, but it was the cooperation of the tribes, who shared a long and deep connection to the area, that proved essential for providing the substance necessary for the shaping of the monument. These tribes included the Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, Uintah and Ouray Mountain Ute, and the Navajo nations, who together created the Inter-Tribal Coalition, which provided early leadership during the creation of the monument. The shaping was as much conceptual as physical. By combining the traditional knowledge of the tribes with federal land management practices, the creation of the monument demonstrated how federal land and resource management in the West ought to proceed. | en_US |
dc.publisher | University of Colorado Law Review | en_US |
dc.subject | Law | en_US |
dc.title | Decolonization: Treaties, Resource Use, and Environmental Conservation | en_US |
rioxxterms.version | NA | en_US |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_US |
refterms.dateFOA | 2022-04-26T23:07:05Z |