By Rachel Sawicki

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and principal deputy director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Martha Williams recently visited the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia for discussions with local tribal leaders.

Their Jan. 24 visit gave them the opportunity to talk about the important role of urban wildlife refuges in conservation and community building. They also highlighted the bipartisan infrastructure law investments in the Delaware River Basin, and the Interior Department’s commitment to advancing environmental justice.

The Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware — recognized by the state but not the federal government — has recently partnered with the refuge, and the tribe’s chief, Dennis Coker, attended the meeting.

“I’d like to talk about elevating the status of state-recognized tribes with the federal government because we kind of get overlooked to a great extent,” he said. “The federal government really has no obligation by law to state-recognized tribes, even though they do make exceptions to a couple of rules, for economic development, but they really have no law that requires them to consult with state-recognized tribes.”

When it comes to getting federal recognition, Chief Coker is hesitant to start that process.
“That’s a long, lengthy, expensive process, and typically, the only tribes that are successful in that process are ones that have a gaming backer,” he said. “Personally, I’m not really seeking federal recognition because we are a sovereign nation of people. We are still in our traditional homeland. The creator granted us our sovereignty. We didn’t depend on another sovereign to give us sovereignty.”

Chief Coker added that tribes that are successful in the federal acknowledgment process automatically become what is described as a “domestic dependent sovereign.”

“So your sovereignty is actually dependent on a greater sovereign, and in that case, it would be the United States of America, granting you sovereignty,” he said. “That means you have to actually relinquish some of your sovereignty to become a federally recognized tribe. … It’s like colonialism all over again.”

Seeking inclusion

According to a press release, while visiting the refuge, Ms. Haaland discussed the importance of advancing environmental justice and the department’s efforts to increase access to nature for all communities. In addition, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, through the refuge and others, has made a significant effort to be more collaborative across the entirety of its programs by partnering with surrounding communities that have historically been excluded from the conservation conversation.

Native American representation is growing among federal leaders, aiding the communication for which Chief Coker has been waiting.

For the first time, in addition to having a Native American secretary of the interior, director of the National Park Service Charles Sams is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

NPS also recently hired a regional tribal liaison who is Native American, Eric Chiasson, who grew up in central Maine as an off-reservation member of the Eskasoni Mi’kmaq First Nation.

A University of Maine public policy graduate, Mr. Chiasson went on to complete a policy, planning and management program at the Muskie School of Public Service and the University of Massachusetts law program. While studying law, he worked in a legal aid clinic for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and clerked for its Tribal Court.

Now, he serves the Department of the Interior’s Region 1: North Atlantic-Appalachian, which is comprised of 83 park units, 23 national heritage areas and more than 1,000 national historic landmarks, in states from Kentucky to Delaware to Maine.

“I became aware of the work the National Park Service does with indigenous peoples, reached out and subsequently worked for a year with the Tribal & Cultural Affairs Office in a series of field placements, and then, (I completed) a cultural resource diversity internship before being hired into my current position,” Mr. Chiasson said. “The tribal liaison is the regional program lead for tribal consultation and provides support, advice and interpretation to the regional leadership team to build and sustain relationships with 47 formally recognized tribes.”

Though the Lenape Tribe of Delaware is not federally recognized, he said NPS policy calls for consulting with all associated people about research on cultural and natural resources, development of park planning, documents that may affect resources of the groups and proposed studies that entail collaboration with the tribes.

“The keystone for priorities in tribal relations, as expressed by our leadership, is effective consultation,” he said. “Two of NPS director Charles Sams’ top priorities are confronting the climate crisis using indigenous, traditional, ecological knowledge and advancing equity, inclusion and access in carrying out the NPS mission.”

One particular NPS project is the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program, a small initiative that acts as an arm of NPS and works with communities on environmental and outdoor recreation work. It is nationwide but, in the Northeast, it has 14 staff serving 13 states from Maine to West Virginia.

The proposals they work on vary greatly, from development of a trail, protection of green space or designing a park master plan to habitat restoration or developing a greenway concept idea.

Julie Bell, cultural resource project manager at NPS, said that RTCA works with lots of tribal communities, not just federally recognized ones. She added that the addition of a liaison was made to recognize tribes here that did not move west. For a long time, she said, there was an assumption that there weren’t any major tribes left in the Northeast.

“They’re raising their voices, too, and they want to be represented at the table, not just when it comes to traditional consultations on certain types of federally assisted projects, in general,” Ms. Bell said. “So we felt like there’s a need for that kind of representation within our own staff and within our own leadership in the region.”

Part of the growth RTCA is working on is building an understanding of indigenous communities and prototypes of engagement on an internal level, while developing the staff guidance to do so.

“We’re kind of proceeding slowly on this because it is relatively new for our program to do this kind of work,” Ms. Bell said. “In the past, it’s been a matter of which groups know about our program in order to apply. Now, we’re being a lot more proactive and reaching out to underrepresented groups that we haven’t helped in the past. So we’re proceeding slowly because we feel it’s important to build the relationships and trust first and understand their needs and concerns.”

Lenape of Delaware involved

One of those groups is the Lenape Tribe of Delaware, which is a few years into restoring a patch of land in Cheswold and turning it into an garden of edibles.

“What we’re trying to do is raise the level of awareness of how important the indigenous resources are at the preserve,” Ms. Bell said. “That’s a story that hasn’t been told of the occupation and settlement by the Lenape ancestors.”

She said RTCA is also being intentional to include tribes on other projects that might interest them. She noted a master planning project with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources at the White Clay Creek Preserve — an initiative that involves the Lenape Indians of both Delaware and Pennsylvania.

“Part of the National Park Service’s five-year plan is to celebrate the native peoples in that area because they’ve all just come to understand and realize that there were people here, there were cultures here, before the Europeans ever arrived,” Chief Coker said. “When it comes to our relationship with the National Park Service, we’re being offered that same opportunity. We know that this was Lenape homeland. We know that there was a Lenape culture here. And we know that the traditional homeland that was Lenape was much bigger than this 2-mile stretch of the Brandywine.”

Chief Coker said he hopes the Lenape’s partnership with NPS will be mutually educational.

“Dialogue is always accompanied by opportunity,” he said. “We didn’t have a written history. We have an oral history. And much of that culture and tradition was lost during that period of depopulation when we lost all of our elders, our storytellers, our wisdom keepers, who succumbed to these diseases because the elders were a vulnerable population.”

Therefore, Chief Coker said they are left with only their imaginations. However, he added, assistance from archaeological excavations and scientific research can help make that imagination a little more real.