Subject: Re: Hunting, Was: The Dreaded Cat Thread - large pinch of salt ,
Date: Apr 20 10:54:22 1995
From: Don Baccus - donb at Rational.COM


> Don et al.,
>
> The Quinault tribal lands were butchered by the BIA which had the legal
> responsibility in trust to make the key decisions about how tribal
> resources were to be used. The tribe is now suing the BIA for having
> destroyed their tribal forest resource base. I don't know all the
> details but there's more than meets the eye. By contrast the Yakama are
> widely regarded as eminently conservative in their forest management
> practice. They exert far firmer control over their BIA contingent that
> the Quinaults apparently were able to.

Thanks for the details. I do remember, however, from (possibly
inaccurate news reports) that a fairly large segment of the Quinault
tribe supported the BIAs management of their lands. At the time there
was a fight over tribal control, those who wanted to continue the
status quo regarding land management, those who wanted to put a
stop to the abuse.

My main point was that native Americans (who often call themselves
"Indians") are, like ourselves, people, and hold a wide variety of
disparate points of view.

Another example of a tribe which manages its lands reasonably
well is the Warms Springs Tribe, which took over control from
the BIA a long time ago. They also just recently fired their
forest management firm for concentrating too much on maximizing
the cut, despite tribal directions to the contrary.

Of course, they're only a tribe legally as the reservation was
peopled by a hodge-podge of bands from many tribes who were denied
a reservation of their own. After being lumped together they at
least ended up with a big chunk of pretty decent land.

-Don Baccus-