Thank you, and welcome! It is a pleasure and a privilege to be here with partners from Tribes. Thank you to the elected Tribal officials here today and to the Intertribal Timber Council for your support in pulling this event together. I know it took a lot of work to make this meeting happen.

Thanks also to the Forest Service employees who are here today. Investing in relationships is a priority for our agency, and your presence shows how much we respect Tribes and how much we value our partnership.

Unfortunately, a follow-up consultation has just been scheduled, and it conflicts with part of the session on Thursday. But our team will work with Tribal members who will be participating in that session to ensure the continuity of these workshops.

So I am honored to be able to kick off this series of engagements. I look forward to deepening our Government-to-Government relationships. I look forward to finding new areas where we can share common ground and work together for a better future for all.

Trust Responsibility

The work you are doing over the next two weeks reflects our shared commitment to improving the condition of forests and grasslands across shared landscapes. The Forest Service is committed to sustaining and restoring shared landscapes for the benefits people get from them—clean air and water, habitat for native wildlife, forest and rangeland products, and so much more.

These lands include many resources and sacred sites that are important to Tribes. We know that the work we do as an agency affects the lives of native people. It affects sacred sites, medicinal plants, and other natural and cultural resources. These resources are an important part of traditional and contemporary lifeways, and we have a sacred Trust obligation to protect them.

So it is important for every Forest Service employee to understand our Trust responsibilities and the unique relationship between the Federal Government and Tribal Governments. We have great respect for Tribes as sovereign Nations, and we are fully committed to our Trust and treaty responsibilities. We are fully committed to partnering with American Indian and Alaska Native Tribal Governments to achieve outcomes that will benefit us all.

Shared Stewardship

Bottom line: we will meet our Tribal Trust obligations. But we also have other reasons to collaborate with Tribes because no one of us can meet the challenges we face alone. Insects and disease, invasive species, and increasingly severe wildfires do not respect borders. Challenges like these pose risks—social, ecological, and economic risks to communities that depend on forests and grasslands, including Tribes.

We are all in this together because we all face these same risks and challenges together. We are interdependent across the landscapes we share, so we must work together if we are to protect the natural resources entrusted to our care for generations to come.

That is why the Forest Service is pursuing a policy of shared stewardship across shared landscapes. Shared stewardship means sharing decision space with Tribes and other stakeholders to decide on what the land needs and what actions we can take together. By taking an all-lands, all-hands approach, we can achieve shared goals that none of us can achieve alone.

New Tools

Fortunately, we have the tools we need for shared stewardship with Tribes. Since 2004, the Tribal Forest Protection Act has let us meaningfully collaborate on projects proposed by Tribes on Federal lands bordering Tribal lands—projects to reduce risks from disturbances like wildfire and bark beetle. Since the 2018 Farm Bill, we’ve had projects submitted in five Forest Service regions, and we will discuss more than 20 project proposals during sessions next week.

The Farm Bill gave us new tools for shared stewardship with our Tribal neighbors. We now have more opportunities to work with Tribes and others under our expanded Good Neighbor Authority. We also have new opportunities for TFPA projects with Tribes under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, or public law 93-638. 638 lets us enter into self-determination agreements and future contracts for projects on National Forest System lands.

For the past two years, the Forest Service has been working with Tribes to figure all this out. We’ve been improving implementation plans for TFPA projects and developing policy for 638, for Good Neighbor agreements, and for other authorities.

That is one reason why we are here for this workshop. We are interested in hearing about the barriers that Tribes are finding to entering into these types of agreements. We are interested in exploring how we can work together to remove or reduce those barriers.

Embracing Collaboration and Risk

In recent decades, the Forest Service has come to understand that we don’t know everything about conservation ourselves. In particular, we have much to learn from our Tribal neighbors. It has been a learning curve and a cultural shift for many of us to begin to embrace the knowledge, science, and traditional land management principals in Indian Country.

We have great respect for our Tribal partners for what they have to teach. Collaboration takes an extra investment of time upfront, but we can achieve so much more together than we could alone. Based on sharing knowledge and exploring common values, we have an opportunity to frame management actions in terms of outcomes on the land we all want.

That is why we are committed to integrating our work with Tribal partners into our program of work each year. As you know, the Biden administration is fully committed to integrating Tribal authorities and Trust responsibilities into our day-to-day operations. So are we. On behalf of the entire Forest Service leadership, I pledge to honor that commitment … to prioritize our investment in collaboration with our fellow sovereigns … and to allocate resources accordingly.

As you know, collaboration calls for mutual trust. That includes tolerating a reasonable risk of failure for the sake of learning. As we carry out new authorities like 638, the Forest Service pledges to communicate and to share lessons learned and best practices. Together, we can continue to learn and strengthen our Government-to-Government relationship.

Our mission at the Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. We can fulfill our mission only by recognizing and supporting the sovereignty of Tribal Nations … only by building on the traditional knowledge, perspectives, and resources that Tribes bring to managing these lands … lands that Tribes know better than anyone else.

Benefiting Generations to Come

In closing, I thank the Tribal leadership here today for investing your time in building a relationship with the Forest Service based on mutual trust and respect. I also thank our employees for showing up to learn how we can strengthen our relationship with Tribes.

We have a common goal: healthy, resilient forest and grassland ecosystems across shared landscapes. I believe that through these workshops, we will continue to learn together and work together to protect the things we all value on the land, for the benefit of generations to come.