KTVF: Senator Murkowski introduces legislation to protect tribal land in Alaska
On Monday, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, introduced the Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA) Amendments Act of 2024, aimed at expanding tribal forest protections.
According to a press release from Murkowski, this piece of legislation, S.4370, promotes greater indigenous management of Federal Indian forest and rangelands.
The purpose of this new legislation is to correct previous oversights. For example, the 2004 TFPA law was set forth to protect Indian forest lands and resources from threats like wildfires. This was accomplished by allowing them to reach agreements with Forest Service or BLM to perform forest management tasks on federal lands that are “bordering or adjacent to” lands under tribal jurisdiction.
Thus the 2004 TFPA law has inhibited Alaska Native Corporations that received millions of acres in land from the federal government from participating. So, Murkowski’s new legislation aims at correcting the oversight and expanding upon the original language.
“The TFPA was meant to empower Tribes to take an active role to facilitate treatment and collaboration between the federal land management agencies and Indian Tribes to improve forest health. But the law was so narrowly written it excluded Alaska from fully participating and prevented Tribes across the country from being able to protect ancestral resources simply because they did not border tribal trust lands or resources. These are inequities that Congress has a responsibility to correct,” said Senator Murkowski.
“There are literally thousands of years of wisdom in these amendments. Sealaska maintained title to a tiny fraction of our aboriginal territory, but our relationship with the entirety of the Tongass is ancient,” said Joe Nelson, Sealaska Chairman.
“The Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA) is important statutory authority which allows Tribes to carry out forest management projects on federal lands in order to protect Indian forest lands and rangelands from wildfire, disease, and other threats posed by federal lands. However, TFPA as currently authorized limits the scope of the federal lands that Tribes can effectively manage in furtherance of protecting Tribal lands and communities” said Cole Miller (Chairman, Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community) and Kari Jo Lawrence (CEO, Intertribal Agriculture Council), Co-Chairs of the Native Farm Bill Coalition.
By: Leah Thom
Source: KTVF
