Report Highlights Agency Failure to Protect Ancestral Lands

WASHINGTON, DC – A report issued jointly by the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (NATHPO) and The Wilderness Society (TWS) has identified that stronger integration of Tribal perspectives, traditional knowledge and values into management and planning is needed to better protect ancestral lands and waters across Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. The agency is midstream in a public comment period on its proposed Public Lands Rule, which closes on July 5th. 

Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) are a designation tool under oversight of the federal BLM, an agency that oversees roughly 245 million acres of public lands for the Department of the Interior. Although the tool has been used in sporadic application across BLM lands, the agency’s public comment process on the rule provides an urgent opportunity to strengthen and make more consistent how local agency field offices can and should be using the ACEC designation, in partnership with Tribes, to provide meaningful and lasting protection for Indigenous cultural lands and sites. 

"ACECs are important as far as protecting cultural and traditional ecological knowledge,” says Yufna Soldier Wolf, Tribal advocacy coordinator for the Wyoming Outdoor Council. “Indigenous knowledge is ancient knowledge that needs to be taken seriously and every step of the process needs to be invoked to protect and ensure that Tribes, elders, and youth are incorporated into passing that knowledge on. ACECs track record wasn't taken seriously until this administration, under Secretary Haaland, decided that new processes needed to be streamlined for Indigenous Tribes to protect their erased narratives."

The report, issued first to Tribal communities in late March, cites three case studies from Oregon, Alaska and the Great Chaco Landscape in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah in which ACEC designations were pursued by Tribal Nations asserting their connections to BLM-managed lands and advocating for the protection of culturally significant places through ACEC identification, designation, and management. Nominations have been outright rejected, existing protections removed, and current ACEC lands face ongoing damage, vandalism or threats from oil, gas and other development.

According to the report, “While [the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976] FLPMA intended for the BLM to prioritize the identification and designation of ACECs so that important places on public lands could be protected, the BLM often does not adequately consider or manage ACECs. This has led to irreparable harm to places of cultural importance to Indian tribes.” The agency's current proposed rule change lacks the specific details and clarity to make the tool effective for protecting Tribal and other culturally significant areas.

“The report highlights that the federal government has failed to provide consistent and adequate consideration for places of tribal cultural importance on public lands, leading to unnecessary harm to Tribal communities and their traditional lands,” says Michael Spears, co-author of the report and senior researcher with Anthropological Research, LLC based in Tucson, Arizona. “In the future, for the federal government to fulfill its trust responsibilities to Tribal Nations, it must adopt rules and practices to promote the consistent and meaningful consideration of tribal perspectives on–and values to–public lands.”

In response to the BLM's request in late March for comments on a proposed rule change affecting ACEC designation and management, The Wilderness Society and the National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers partnered to make recommendations to the agency for strengthening its regulations to ensure tribal cultural sites receive the protection they deserve.

The areas the workgroup focused on include:

• Free Prior and Informed Consent
• Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) and reserved treaty rights
• Recognition of Indigenous Knowledge as a valid knowledge system on which to base management decisions
• Reminding the BLM of its mandate directly engage with Tribes in Government-to-Government Consultation
• Specific language regarding the designation and management of ACECs with regards to Indigenous Tribes 

Background

Nearly 40% of all US public lands are overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM’s mission is focused on providing multiple use opportunities and conservation.  For nearly 40 years, however, the agency acknowledges that it has not consistently fulfilled its mandate under Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 to designate and manage “Areas of Critical Environmental Concern” or ACECs, which can include cultural sites (which include both natural and cultural resources) that have profound significance to Indigenous People and contemporary Indigenous Tribes.

As a result, the BLM has largely focused on resource extraction and multiple uses while, in many regions, neglecting conservation and cultural resource protection in partnership with Tribes who have stewarded these lands for centuries.  

Today, some of the most vulnerable areas of BLM lands are cultural sites, which are at risk from climate impacts like flooding and fire and human-caused threats like energy development, vandalism and unmanaged and unauthorized recreation.

B-roll footage of BLM lands, including Greater Chaco and other culturally significant areas, is available. 

Contact: Kate Mackay, Communications Director – Landscape Connectivity: 602-571-2603