Dean Suagee: Native input needed to guide future of our parks

Earlier this year I received an invitation to attend an organizational meeting of the Next 100 Coalition. I’m glad I was able to make it. Most of the people in the room were representatives of grassroots, regional, or national organizations. I wasn’t representing any organization, but, rather, considered my participation to be in the nature of a subject matter expert, drawing on my four decades of experience in Indian law and policy. In addition to myself, there were a few other tribal members in the room that day. A few Indian people, of course, is better than none, but more would have definitely been better. There is a great deal of diversity among tribal nations, diversity that, in my experience, many non-Indian people just do not have the background to really appreciate. In my view, a good way to help foster appreciation for the diversity among tribal nations is to add more tribal voices to the conversation.

So, at that organizational meeting of the Next 100 Coalition, I joined in the conversation. The main objective was to formulate a list of steps that could be taken by the Park Service and other land managing federal agencies toward realizing the coalition’s vision of enhanced diversity. One of the steps that I suggested was ultimately included in the coalition’s list.

That item was to ask the Park Service to complete the process of revising its regulations in order to make it legal for tribal members to gather plants at traditional locations that are now within national park areas. The Park Service had published a proposed rule on this topic in April 2015. In my view, the proposed rule did not go as far as it should have, but it was an improvement over the status quo. It did provide a path through which it would no longer be illegal for tribal members to conduct traditional gathering practices. I was concerned that it might get lost in a pile of other projects and not get issued as a final rule. In May, I participated in a meeting that the coalition arranged with White House officials and staff, and I got the chance to put in a few words for finalizing the plant gathering rule. I also wrote an op-ed about the issue which was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but by the end of June, Secretary Jewell announced the promulgation of the final rule.