Linking Conservation and Environmental Justice: Exploring Relationship-Building Between a Land Trust and Four Pacific Northwest Tribes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Conservation organizations around the world are addressing exclusionary policies and implicit biases that have alienated segments of society from both the conservation movement and natural places. Native American tribes make up one segment of society with a particular interest in and deep ties to land and resources. Vancouver, Washington-based Columbia Land Trust recognizes tribes' special relationships with their ancestral lands and resources thereon, but has struggled to develop policies that involve tribes in conserved areas and conservation plans. The conception among mainstream scientists that western conservation science is better equipped than Indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) to determine best practices is one part of that struggle. Another part, however, is the organization's limited capacity to holistically review and revise its policies and to engage respectfully with multiple sovereign nations in a coordinated and ongoing manner. Using political ecology as a lens for examining the asymmetry of power over land and resources, this research explores the most appropriate path forward in Land Trust-tribe relationship development. I conducted a combination of semi-structured interviews with tribe and Land Trust representatives (N=11), a survey of Land Trust staff, board members, and volunteers (N=47), participant observation among Land Trust staff, board members, and volunteers (N>20), and a review of literature pertaining to relationships between other conservation organizations and tribes. Overarching questions addressed each party's concerns and expectations around Land Trust-tribe relationships, and what cultural differences might challenge these relationships. Additional questions pertaining to tribes' histories, rights, treaties, and the impacts of colonization were directed at Land Trust participants to gauge their preparedness to engage respectfully with tribes/sovereign nations. An analysis of interview transcripts and descriptive statistics from survey data revealed three main themes: 1) Indigenous culture and IEK challenge conventional western conservation science, but in practice there is (or will be) significant overlap in conservation objectives and approaches; 2) Land Trust-tribe partnerships make practical sense and help to advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) goals; and 3) while all parties seem prepared to respectfully engage, some apprehension remains on the part of the Land Trust to commit to taking that next step -- an increased and dedicated effort may be necessary to initiate negotiations, draw up agreements, and orchestrate ongoing partnering efforts. These findings, in conjunction with existing literature, substantiate my argument encouraging Columbia Land Trust to institute policies and a strategy for involving tribes in regional conservation planning and in restoration and stewardship projects
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".