TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY AND TRUST RESPONSIBILITY

In Oppose Welfare Ranching, Protect The Wolves, Sacred Resource Protection Zone by Twowolves1 Comment

 

protect the wolves, sacred resources,

TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY AND TRUST RESPONSIBILITY

 Protect The Wolves™ adds: Today we know that the United States must ensure that the purposes for which reservations were created are not undermined and the fiduciary obligations that arise from the trust responsibility must be met by all federal agencies and in a manner that does not interfere with Tribal rights. The FWS did not take the best course of action in Slaughtering “Phoenix”. She should have been captured and sent back to a captive Breeding Program.

Further it was wrongly reported by some news outlets that the WMAT contacted FWS, After our Investigation, We now know that that is not True after speaking with White Mountain Apache Tribes Game and Fish.

We need all 57,000 plus people to step up so We are enabled to take the needed action against the Crooked elected Officials that are influenced by Special Interest Cattle Groups. It is time that you take the Power back that you have available, and use it through our Voice to put these Government branches into Court!

To gain an overall perspective and appreciation of how Tribes view the ESA as it relates to Tribal interests, it is important to present some discussion on the basis of and the general principles embraced by all Tribal governments, namely Tribal Sovereignty and Federal Trust Responsibility. Tribal Sovereignty The inherent sovereignty of Indian Tribes and Nations has long been recognized by the United States Constitution, the Federal Government, and Federal Courts. See, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831); United States v. Winans (1905) (Indian nations reserve all governmental powers and individual rights not specifically abrogated by Congress, or granted away by the Tribes in their treaties or agreements with the United States). As a result of a constitutionally established government to government relationship, the Federal Government has a responsibility to protect Indian trust resources (Indian trust resources generally include land, water, air, minerals, and wildlife, reserved or otherwise owned or held for the benefit of Indian Tribes and nations). That legal principle has been reiterated extensively in recent years within the context of natural resource management, Parravano v. Babbitt (1995) (Federal Indian trust responsibility extends not just to the Interior Department, but to the entire Federal Government as a whole) and Covelo Indian Community v. FERC (1990). As sovereign nations, Tribes and Tribal lands are not subject to the same public domain laws that govern other lands within the United States, either public or private. It has been legally established that inherent in the establishment of a reservation is the right of Indians to hunt and fish on reservation lands free from state regulations, lawfully exercise substantial control over the lands and resources of its reservation, including its wildlife, and to regulate the use of its resources by members as well as nonmembers. Cases such as the Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States (1968), Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Association (1979), New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe (1983), Arapahoe Tribe v. Hodel (1990), and Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians (1999), have affirmed this precept. Some of these rights are based on treaty rights, but many follow from the mere establishment of a reservation and the self-governance powers inherent therein. Congress may limit the powers of Indian self-governance, including the denial of treaty established hunting or fishing rights, as it did when it prohibited Indians from hunting eagles under the Eagle Protection Act. But to do so, the Congressional act abrogating those powers must be clear and explicit. See Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903). Tribes retain their rights and powers, comprehensive of all Tribal properties and interests; United States v. Winans (1905), Winters v. United States (1908). In general, however, Congress has not abrogated Tribal interests and utilization of Indian trust resources and the matter has been, for the most part, left to Tribal regulation.

Tribal Perspectives on Mexican Wolf Recovery 6 Trust Responsibility

  It is well established that Indian Tribes in the United States are sovereign entities, and that the U.S. is legally required to protect Indian trust resources for the benefit of each respective Indian Tribe and Nation. Those legal responsibilities are intended to ensure that Tribal lands remain capable and sufficient of serving as viable homelands. In managing trust lands or assisting Tribes in doing so, the government must act for the exclusive benefit of the Tribes, and ensure that Indian lands and resources are protected and maintained for their exclusive use. Tribal lands are not public lands and are not set aside or designated for the purpose of conserving endangered species, critical habitat, or for the primary purpose of conserving flora or fauna, except as it may directly benefit the Tribes. As a practical matter, Tribal lands comprise some of the most remote, wild and scenic places on the continent and Tribal lands often support a far greater biological diversity than surrounding private or public lands. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that Tribal lands (reservations) are first and foremost the homelands to Indian people, established to provide for their respective traditional, spiritual, cultural, social, and economic benefit. As trustee, the United States must ensure that the purposes for which reservations were created are not undermined and the fiduciary obligations that arise from the trust responsibility must be met by all federal agencies and in a manner that does not interfere with Tribal rights.

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Comments

  1. You will notice that the document presents very similar issues and worries that do the general federal and state landholders (cattlemen and those who have fears related to their unfamiliarity with the wolf).
    My adult name is the same as a name of a large tribe for Wolf. I do not speak it here or in the company of those who may mistake me. I was born of people only slightly mixed with a people who are relatives of wolf, where the wolf was able to remain during the worst time past. I was given a little of the knowledge of these relatives and of the right way to live, even though the arguments and wars have washed most understanding away from us all.

    This issue of sovereignty over the flow of rivers and beings, is one to which I have given some attention. In formal address, I have pointed out that all communities, however large, should be dealing with conservation on a main speaker to main speaker between the human peoples. Such practices and actions as have been taken, for instance, by the two large Apache tribes, have been visible to those to whom Wolf is important. The trophy hunting, the logging, the diversions and upstream taking of rivers, including the river of life, have been issues I’ve observed much of the north to south span of this continent.

    Because Twowolves has posted here about this division, I feel it has been appropriate to speak if only to voice for that necessary separation.
    Yes, traditions have been claimed by all sides of the human inhabitants, and there is a disputable issue about what constitutes tradition, and even validity.

    I comment here to bring a story that is both long and quick, and it seems to be about another, less known people; for only if we grant equal recognition to such other peoples as these great white fishing birds, can we approach both respect and our own limited place.

    As the season began its turn under the changes of the last moon, I was walking in some low hills. I saw something not seeming native to that land a Wolf and I had long known.
    It was white, a tall bird known as Egret. Strangely this egret having seen this human, did not fly away, but kept to its business of discovery and rest. Knowing that its kind always flew immediately upon seeing a human, I avoided letting it see much of my direction, but still curious enough to expose my presence.

    The egret, you see, was persecuted by the men who came here with guns only 167 years ago, for nearly eighty years. I have known some humans who attained adulthood before the roads and machines and cement you see , among whom was a grandmother. She told me wen I asked as a child about the feathers that adorned her head, among the very old clothing she kept into the last of life.
    She always instructed the lone child who asked, and those who did not ask her things still tell me that she was mean or standoffish to them, and held this against her and that one, along with jealousy.
    What she told me was that the Egret, and the Great Heron whose voice calls from time before the coming of our two-legged kind, were so prized that they were shot almost into complete disappearance by those who sought to profit or impress or give gifts. She told me this along a clean river half the continent from this place of egrets and herons. So I have watched the rare-in-my-early life fishing birds for thousands of miles in three directions from here. I know their change, their adaptation, their fear.
    This young egret was the first I have ever seen from the lost streams of the Colorado into the sea, to the northern waters of frog and minnow, the swamps and sunken grasses of the south and east, to accept a human presence, walking.

    The things its ancestors had to learn, are no longer needed for the moment, and this egret was born not heir to the constant death.

    Just a few days ago, I was watching from a hidden distance, another egret. Older and highly skilled, it was arrowing and gulping alternately, getting the small fish that all the egrets around could not imitate. Yes, it missed sometimes, and the big tidal flats in this place some miles from the new/old young I had seen, was filled with fishing companion white birds. They were not catching anything remotely as well, having to stay far longer to find their needs, even when flying in to replace the sated master.

    But it is of the change that I want to emphasize to you. Those of your or any tribe who say, “this wolf is not that wolf. He acts different”, and such things, is mistaken to one who has stood above young wolves splashing, crashing their chests together, and playing in a dark riverbed, unconcerned, later giving their silent signal and disappearing to the hunt.
    I have never spoken of designated tribal lands as to be imagined as safe and sure places for wolf. I have long known of the traditions of a few of them who wished to exclude this original native. I happen to be excluded too, having young argued with those who were closer to the people to whom I am related. They believed that the imposed traditions and missionary schools of their childhood were the “right” way, and that the distant and unremembered traditions of relationship were passe’, not “good” for that or any tribe.

    I cannot speak for them. I can only tell of the lives and conversation of raven and fishhawk, of what this or that bison or bear just then said, of the dolphin gang who came to play often with us children in once-clean waters, of the loon family who questioned the floating head of their visitor, of the Wolf who came unbidden unless by some hidden signal that he was to teach and remind some lost younger brother.
    I hardly walk now in some of the places made sacred by his joy or suffering or silent conversation. I do write here to remind all that every people, every nation have an equal right to live, and that the decisions of a kind that have for uncounted years gathered together to exclude others, looks quite the same, to those who were of a people part of the land before them.

    the Ojibwe teach that original man and wolf were together the last to come, to be created; That they together counted and named and learned of all the others, and this is why the wolf knows them all, although, as I was reminded by a story told me by the rememberer of the Buryat, that the problem the animals counciled about was: man has forgotten.

    Now almost none of you knows of those people or others of the little-stick forests 10,000 miles and years from yourselves. Yet your ancestors knew theirs, and share the memory that the eagle of the great sky, is a seer and a traveler whose courage was enough for it to do something as a go-between, which I will not tell here.
    Identification with this courage is shared across a land far larger than this island you know. Reaching for this courage must never reduce the sacredness of each life, of each bird.

    The egret has at last come to its original knowledge once again, 90 years after the cruelty of men toward it was ended on agreement over its loss. You decide if your tribe’s (however you divide such mists) wealth is worth more than the lives and ancient ways of another.

    Just as I am not your decisionmaker, disinherited as I am from both sides of your tribal arguments (for EVERYONE involved in this dispute claims “tradition”, and farther tribes have told me of meanings and practices farther distant in time,, when there were few enough to share), neither are you elevated to make decisions about families and tribes who have shaped and loved this world before your coming, no matter what you call yours.

    We have never been here, my Brother and I, for your forgiveness or your tolerance. We have accepted what you are, and have stepped around hidden, or approached you, as he wished, to tell you of himself, or to find out what you really are. I was his younger brother, after all, and by right and wisdom the decisions and evaluations have always been his.

    You will remember or forget this; and by your choice, we will know you.

    They are other peoples, as worthy of equal recognition as you would grant to your own kind.
    This far I will interfere, to tell you this, once known across that globe you spin so small in your mind. I do not speak mere opinion, but as someone who has crossed many “borders”, listened as youngest child does to those others you mistakenly claim as your property.

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