 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2016) |
 |
The Native American Fish and Wildlife Society (NAFWS) is a non-profit organization and is a national tribal organization in the United States established informally during the early 1980s. NAFWS was incorporated in 1983 to develop a national communications network for the exchange of information and management techniques related to self-determined tribal fish and wildlife management.
At the beginning of 70's and early 80's, many Native American tribes in the United States began to take a more proactive approach to the management of their natural resources, especially fish and wildlife resources. This was prompted by the increase of tourism on reservation lands which included recreational opportunities like hunting and fishing. This was set into motion by legislation established by Congress, Public Law 93-638 better known as the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. This was followed by several legal cases, including New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe, Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation and White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, that were heard by the Supreme Court, which recognized the Tribes sovereignty and jurisdictional right to manage their own fish and wildlife resources within reservation exterior boundaries. These rights continue to be contested in various forms by the State and Federal governments today.
This actions led to the formation of a national organization, established to assist tribes in the development and protection of Indian fish and wildlife resources. The Society was founded in 1982 prompted by a few dedicated individuals who came together in July 1981 on the Warm Springs Reservation to attend a Tribal Fish and Wildlife Workshop sponsored by the Native Tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was there that several individuals, among them Nathan Jim "Eight Ball",Gerald "Buzz" Cobell, Herschel Mays, Doug Dompier, John Smith, Levi George, Butch Blazer and others, were instrumental in coming up with the strategy to develop a national organization now known as the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society (NAFWS). Buzz Cobell organized the first national meeting in Great Falls, Montana in 1982. The Blackfeet Tribe hosted the national Indian/Eskimo Fish and Wildlife conference. This meeting provided the nucleus and impetus for the first Society meeting, whereby the first Board of Directors were elected. Mr. Cobell was elected the Society's first President. Eight others to serve in that capacity since then: John Smith, John Antonio, Patricia Zakovec, Don Sampson, Ron Skates, Butch Blazer, Matthew "Cully" Vanderhoop and Joe Jay Pinkham III. Alongside its line of presidents, the society has had five Executive Directors since 1982. These include; Dewey Schwalenberg, Ella Mulford, Ken Poynter, Ira Newbreast and Donald "Fred" Matt.
Today there are seven regions of the Society which include: Pacific, Southwest, Great Plains, Great Lakes, Northeast, Southeast, and Alaska—which was the last region to join the Society in 1992. The Society was founded on the knowledge that without wild animals, life would be deprived and demeaned, that they move the people through the great mystery of creation. Federally-recognized Indian tribes within the lower 48 United States have jurisdiction over a reservation land base of more than 52 million acres, or 81,250 square miles. Alaskan Native lands comprise another 45 million acres. To many Native Americans, this land provides a religious, cultural, and economic subsistence base. This base is being utilized by both Indians and non-Indians for recreation purposes. They also contain habitats that are critical to the recovery of various species listed as threatened or endangered. [1]
The NAFWS's mission as a non-profit organization is to assist where possible the Tribes/Native Villages of Alaska with protection, preservation and to enhance the wise use of Native American fish and wildlife resources and associated habitats. The Society's purposes are charitable, educational, scientific and cultural. The primary purposes are as follows:
The primary funding source for the Society comes from annual appropriations from Congress that are administered through various federal agencies. However, the Society also relies on funding from many sources that are non-governmental which include private and membership contributions. The society is an organization that is membership driven, with 1300 plus individual members and many tribes that are associate members.
Several promotional videos have been released to help the society in their outreach efforts, including "Our Native American Wildlife Heritage" (1987), "Circle of Life" (1992) and "Keepers of the Circle" in (1994). Training and education are also significant focuses of the society. The "Youth Practicum" was officially started in 1991 by Sally Carufel Williams. Many students have gone through the program, and quite a few of them have gotten involved in tribal natural resource management and other students have gone on to become tribal leaders in their own right. The society has also offered many training programs, including: law enforcement, fish and wildlife management, chronic wasting disease, VHS, and avian influenza. The society most recently has hired its own biologists who provide much of the training and technical assistance concerning disease issues and other request for fish and wildlife management where possible.
In the early 1990s, the Society went to Congress to seek funding for a bison initiative that would help bring Tribes together in their efforts to re-establish bison herds are their lands. In 1991 several society board members and tribal bison managers held a meeting on how to better accomplish this. In 1992 the first funding was provided to the society for the development of an Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC).
Participating tribes are in a unique situation because their advancing tribal natural resources agenda are often met with issues such as pressures for land development, threatened treaty rights, overlapping jurisdictions, and tribes losing land base. In order to address these issues, a group of Intertribal natural resource organizations have pulled together to host a tribal natural resource conference.
In 1993, member tribes of the Society banded together to acquire funding of their natural resource management offices through legislation. The Native American Fish and Wildlife Society took the lead in this fight. H.R. 2874 was introduced into the House of Representatives. The bill was entitled "Indian Fish and Wildlife Resource Enhancement Act of 1993." The bill aimed to reaffirm and protect Indian hunting, fishing, and gathering rights and to provide for the conservation, prudent management, enhancement, orderly development and use of the resource. It would also maximize tribal capability and flexibility in managing fish and wildlife resources for the continuing benefit of Indian people. A management component was developed under the bill. The bill passed through the House of Representative. It was then introduce in 1994 on the Senate side under S. 1526 under the title "Indian Fish and Wildlife Resource Management Act of 1994." The states showed up in full force to oppose the bill. Their main contention is that the monies generated from the Pittman–Robertson Act and the Dingell–Johnson Act (PRDJ) would be used for these programs under the bill. PRDJ is an excise tax on the purchase of all equipment for hunting, fishing, hiking, and camping. The funds are divvied out to the natural resource department in each state and US territory and is separated according to the land mass of each state and territory. The tribes contend that since the states use tribal reservations to calculate total land mass that the tribes deserve a cut of the funds for their natural resource departments. The bill was tabled in the Senate.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
The Warm Springs Indian Reservation consists of 1,019 square miles (2,640 km2) in north-central Oregon, in the United States, and is governed by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.
The Wisconsin Walleye War became the name for late 20th-century events in Wisconsin in protest of Ojibwe (Chippewa) hunting and fishing rights. In a 1975 case, the tribes challenged state efforts to regulate their hunting and fishing off the reservations, based on their rights in the treaties of St. Peters (1837) and La Pointe (1842). On August 21, 1987, U.S. District Court judge Barbara Crabb ruled that six Ojibwe tribal governments had the right under these treaties for hunting and fishing throughout their former territory.
The Flathead Indian Reservation, located in western Montana on the Flathead River, is home to the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d'Oreilles tribes – also known as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. The reservation was created through the July 16, 1855, Treaty of Hellgate.
The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation are the federally recognized confederations of three Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribes who traditionally inhabited the Columbia River Plateau region: the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla.
The Bad River LaPointe Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians or Bad River Tribe for short are a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people. The tribe had 6,945 members as of 2010. The Bad River Reservation is located on the south shore of Lake Superior and has a land area of about 193.11 square miles (500.15 km2) in northern Wisconsin, straddling Ashland and Iron counties. Odanah, the administrative and cultural center, is located five miles (8.0 km) east of the town of Ashland on U.S. Highway 2. The reservation population was 1,545 in 2020. Most of the reservation is managed as undeveloped forest and wetland, providing a habitat for wild rice and other natural resources.
The Blackfeet Nation, officially named the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, is a federally recognized tribe of Siksikaitsitapi people with an Indian reservation in Montana. Tribal members primarily belong to the Piegan Blackfeet band of the larger Blackfoot Confederacy that spans Canada and the United States.
The CSKT Bison Range (BR) is a nature reserve on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana established for the conservation of American bison. Formerly called the National Bison Range, the size of the bison herd at the BR is 350 adult bison and welcomes between 50-60 calves per year. Established as a National Wildlife Refuge in 1908, the BR consists of approximately 18,524 acres (7,496 ha) within the Montana valley and foothill grasslands. The management was transferred back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in 2022 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after more than a century of federal management and nearly two decades of negotiations.
The National Wildlife Refuge System in the United States has a long and distinguished history.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is the agency of the state of Michigan charged with maintaining natural resources such as state parks, state forests, and recreation areas. It is governed by a director appointed by the Governor and accepted by the Natural Resources Commission. Currently the Director is Daniel Eichinger. The DNR has about 1,400 permanent employees, and over 1,600 seasonal employees.
The Fort Peck Indian Reservation is located near Fort Peck, Montana, in the northeast part of the state. It is the home of several federally recognized bands of Assiniboine, Nakota, Lakota, and Dakota peoples of Native Americans.
The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation is shared by two Native American tribes, the A'aninin and the Nakoda (Assiniboine). The reservation covers 1,014 sq mi (2,630 km2), and is located in north-central Montana. The total area includes the main portion of their homeland and off-reservation trust land. The tribes reported 2,851 enrolled members in 2010. The capital and largest community is Fort Belknap Agency, at the reservation's north end, just south of the city of Harlem, Montana, across the Milk River.
Elouise Pepion Cobell, also known as Yellow Bird Woman, was a tribal elder and activist, banker, rancher, and lead plaintiff in the groundbreaking class-action suit Cobell v. Salazar (2009). This challenged the United States' mismanagement of trust funds belonging to more than 500,000 individual Native Americans. She pursued the suit from 1996, challenging the government to account for fees from resource leases.
The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, also known as the Harvard Project, was founded in 1987 at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. It administers tribal awards programs as well as provides support for students and conducting research. The Harvard Project aims to understand and foster the conditions under which sustained, self-determined social and economic development is achieved among American Indian nations through applied research and service.
Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in Northern American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by accumulation of TEK and handed down through generations through traditional songs, stories and beliefs. It is concerned with the relationship of living beings with their traditional groups and with their environment." Indigenous knowledge is not a universal concept among various societies, but is referred to a system of knowledge traditions or practices that are heavily dependent on "place". Such knowledge is used in natural resource management as a substitute for baseline environmental data in cases where there is little recorded scientific data, or may complement Western scientific methods of ecological management.
Pan-Indianism is a philosophical and political approach promoting unity, and to some extent cultural homogenization, among different Indigenous groups in the Americas regardless of tribal distinctions and cultural differences.
Bison hunting was an activity fundamental to the economy and society of the Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the vast grasslands on the Interior Plains of North America, before the animal's near-extinction in the late 19th century following US expansion into the West. Bison hunting was an important spiritual practice and source of material for these groups, especially after the European introduction of the horse in the 16th through 19th centuries enabled new hunting techniques. The species' dramatic decline was the result of habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practiced by non-Indigenous hunters increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to non-Indigenous demand for bison hides and meat, and cases of a deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples during times of conflict.
New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe, 462 U.S. 324 (1983), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the application of New Mexico's laws to on-reservation hunting and fishing by nonmembers of the Tribe is preempted by the operation of federal law.
The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish (NMDGF) is a state-level government department within the New Mexico Governor's Cabinet that is responsible for maintaining wildlife and fish in the state. The NMDGF undertakes protection, conservation and propagation, and regulates the use of game and fish to ensure there is an adequate supply for recreation and food.
The conservation of bison in North America is an ongoing, diverse effort to bring American bison back from the brink of extinction. Plains bison, a subspecies, are a keystone species in the North American Great Plains. Bison are a species of conservation concern in part because they suffered a severe population bottleneck at the end of the 19th century. The near extinction of the species during the 1800s unraveled fundamental ties between bison, grassland ecosystems, and indigenous peoples’ cultures and livelihoods.# English speakers used the word buffalo for this animal when they arrived. Bison was used as the scientific term to distinguish them from the true buffalo. Buffalo is commonly used as it continues to hold cultural significance, particularly for Indigenous people. Recovery began in the late 1800s with a handful of individuals independently saving the last surviving bison.# Dedicated restoration efforts in the 1900s bolstered bison numbers though they still exist in mostly small and isolated populations. Expansion of the understanding of bison ecology and management is ongoing. The contemporary widespread, collaborative effort includes attention to heritage genetics and minimal cattle introgression.#
The Intertribal Buffalo Council (ITBC), also known as the Intertribal Bison Cooperative, is a collection of 82 federally recognized tribes from 20 different states whose mission is to restore buffalo to Indian Country in order to preserve the historical, cultural, traditional, and spiritual relationships for future Native American generations.
