Native Lands - Ramy Shbaita

    I like to think that I look at these articles from a slightly different perspective than some people due to my background in the field of public policy. The readings really highlighted many of the policy issues that I have worked though or personally observed myself to one extent or the other. Trafzar served to highlight the importance of the religious and cultural understanding the Natives have of their lands and what the United States has done in response to that. It is heartbreaking to find that many tribes are ignored, with the US Federal government choosing to do whatever they would like to the lands ultimately leading to severe degradation of the natural environment. There are some amazing success stories however of government cooperation with the natives to stop crises such as the discovery and subsequent management of the hantavirus that was plaguing the Navajo communities. With the Navajo knowledge of the seasonal cycles and relationships between the animals and the plants that would grow, the CDC and Indian Health Service were able to successfully manage the outbreak before it grew to something catastrophic. More of these instances have slowly been occurring in the policy world, where the policy makers are now listening to scientific evidence that backed up the strategies that natives have been using for hundreds of years. Another example that comes to mind for me is how the California Forest and Wildlife service is now starting smaller fires to create controlled burns that would prevent larger fires from getting as out of control in the future. This was something originally done by the natives who were at one point barred from doing so in the interest of environmental protection. 

    Malheur’s reading brought into question the ability of the federal government to just create new land areas that only it has administrative control over, leading to the topic of where the land was originally taken from anyway. Once again, this becomes a larger policy issue where the discussion turns to who or what entity has administrative authority over certain land areas, and whether these claims by multiple parties are legitimate and should be listened to. Private, native, and public interests all clash here, and Malheur did a fine job I thought in highlighting the issues with just listening to any one party by explaining the context of many of these ideas.

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