Transcripts - International Institute for Indigenous Resource ...

International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management
Third Annual Tribal Energy Policy Roundtable
Tribal Energy Policy: Climate and Technology Challenges
March 18-20, 2008
Radisson Hotel Denver Stapleton Plaza
3333 Quebec Street, Denver, Colorado
Transcript of Proceedings

Tuesday, March 18, 2008


Merv Tano: Good morning. Aloha. I'm Merv Tano with the International
Institute for Indigenous Resource Management. Welcome to our Third Annual
Tribal Energy Policy Roundtable. We'd like to start off with a prayer and
we've asked Stuart Harris, someone I've known for going on 20 years so we
think he's old enough to open up our meeting with a prayer. So Stu, can you
do that?

Stuart Harris: [Native language.] Oh, Creator, we've all traveled
somewhere to get to here and things happen because they're supposed to
happen and we wouldn't have been here if we weren't supposed to be. Before
I left, I went and walked on our lands that we consider our home and looked
at the snow and the new growth that is occurring, watched turkeys run
across slopes, and it's really a beautiful sight to see - these magnificent
birds and growing on our land. We saw elk and deer. Down on the river we
saw a family of otters. It was good. And then we got on to travel down
here and meet with all you people. I just hope that your houses, when you
go back home are the same way that you left them and the people are the
same as when you left them and then things that you hear and see hear that
are given to you by the people that have come to speak are useful and that
you take them on and share them. And I hope that all of us at some further
time have a chance to meet together again. Life is pretty short. It
wasn't too long ago that -- you know in every tribe I know, we miss lots of
people for this reason and that, and when you stand above those people
before they're finishing up throwing dirt on them -- so remember that what
you do here in this life is reflected in history. It makes sense to
reflect on that. Take these teachings from these people and make good.
[Native language.]

Merv Tano: Thank you. Some of you have been to our roundtables and you
generally know how we operate. We have a very rough agenda that's in your
folders here, and some people have been prepped to respond to certain kinds
of issues, but generally what happens is that it turns out to be a highly
interactive, very conversational meeting. Our intention here is not to, in
a sense provide a lot of the answers, but try to figure out what are the
questions we need to be dealing with as we deal with tribes, native
peoples, energy, in this dynamic environment where we're seeing political
upheaval, economic upheaval and certainly the kinds of impacts we're seeing
now with the climate. So the idea here, then, is to converse with one
another and to share our wisdom in charting out the future agendas for
starting off with attorneys or educators, government officials, for tribal
officials, tribal resource managers, tribal energy, developers, a whole
range of publics who need to be informed about the kinds of issues that are
important to native peoples.

A couple of ground rules, if you will. If you have something to say, if you
would just stand your nametag on end and we can start keeping track of
who's next in the queue. We can do it that way. We've got the coffee and
refreshments there. We're not going to have any formal break time. Just
whenever you feel a need to, break in place. The restrooms are back to the
right here. I think other than that, what we'd like to do then is to
start.

Now one of the things that we talk about is new legislation, new energy,
tribal energy programs. I just came back from a meeting in Phoenix where
we were talking about the renaissance of nuclear energy. One of the things
that is often missing in these kinds of discussions about what's new,
what's exciting, what's on the horizon, is the past. I've asked Glenn Ford
-- oh, I'm sorry, what we need to do is have introductions, that's right.
So very quick introductions - I'm Merv Tano. Just who you are and the firm
or the institution or outfit or Tribe that you're with, and as you start
engaging with each other, you can expand on your interests in these issues.
So we'll start with Jeanne.

Jeanne Rubin: Jeanne Rubin. I'm General Counsel with the International
Institute for Indigenous Resource Management.

Jo Render: Jo Render. I'm a manager of environmental and social
responsibility at Newmont. I've been there about a year.

Fred White: I'm Fred White, Deputy Division Director for Navajo Natural
Resources.

Stuart Harris: Stuart Harris, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation. I'm the Director of the Department of Science and Engineering.


John Echohawk: I'm John Echohawk, a citizen of Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma.
I'm a lawyer and Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund in
Boulder, Colorado.

Bull Bennett: Bull Bennett, North Dakota Association of Tribal Colleges.

Roger Taylor: I'm Roger Taylor with the Department of Energy's National
Renewable Energy Laboratory, Tribal Energy Program.

Caitlin Rood: Caitlin Rood. I work with Tetra Tech, I'm a sustainability
engineer.

Robin Smith: I'm Robin Smith, I'm a transportation planner with the
Federal Highway Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of
Transportation.

Rajul Pandya: I'm Raj Pandya. I work at the University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research.

Shannon McNeeley: I'm Shannon McNeeley. I'm a PhD candidate at the
University of Alaska-Fairbanks, but I'm based here in Colorado at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research where I've been since 2000 in the
Institute for the Study of Society and Environment.

Wendell Jim: Good morning, Wendell Jim, Confederated Tribes of Warm
Springs Tribal Council.

Richard Holman: Good morning, Richard Holman. I'm with the Department of
Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. I am Manager of Energy Workforce
Initiatives and also Deputy Director of Idaho State University's Energy
Systems Technology and Education Center.

Karen Smith: I'm Karen Smith. I'm with Argonne National Laboratory. I'm
located here in Colorado with the Environmental Science Division and Energy
Studies.

John Topping: I'm John Topping. I'm the President of the Climate Institute
in Washington, which is the NGO that has dealt very much with climate
change and I guess, on the side, that I've been involved with some
colleagues of Oceana Energy [Company] which is dealing a lot with tidal
energy which you know sometimes can have implications in areas that tribal
peoples would be particularly concerned with.

Glenn Ford: Good morning. My name is Glenn Ford. Spokane Tribal Council.

Ben Hoisington: My name's Ben Hoisington. I'm a project administration for
Dine' Power Authority which is an enterprise of the Navajo Nation. It's
identified under the Code of Navajo Nation for energy development projects,
both renewable and non-renewable.

Patty Limerick: Patty Limerick from Center of the American West at the
University of Colorado.

Merv Tano: Okay and Merv Tano, International Institute for Indigenous
Resource Management, originally from Honolulu, Hawaii. I've been here, just
about forever. So with that, Glenn, how do we connect up the past with
today and the future -- from your perspective?

Glenn Ford: From our perspective it happens, I'd have to say clean up what
we have that's been sitting there since the '50s. What we have is a mine
up on our reservation. It was one of the first uranium mines that we
opened. We had two up there, actually. One was started in the '50s, it's
called Midnight Mine. To this date that has not been reclaimed. We had
another mine that opened up in the mid-70s, late '70s, called Western
Nuclear. That operated for a while and then the price of uranium was so low
it ended up closing down. They reclaimed that. That one's been reclaimed.
The reason why I came to this conference is because of the fact that we are
starting finally to get to the place and time where reclamation is going to
take place. It's been identified as a Superfund site. There's still
litigation going on between the mining company and the federal government,
but they're planning on moving forward with a reclamation plan in about a
year and a half. So actually I served on the council in the '80s and I just
got back on the council in July. So I kind of went through the phase of
when we did the reclamation for Western Nuclear. We were involved with CERT
back in those days. The tribe got involved in other things like gaming and
some other economic development things, so they kind of got away from it.
Now that we're getting ready to go back into reclamation again, I went back
on the Council, so now I'll probably be more involved with this
organization. But some of the things that -- well, us being such a small
tribe, we don't have a lot of technical expertise within our Tribe so we
rely on people from outside of the Tribe to help us with making decisions
on what, what needs to take place as far as the reclamation. We've got a
lot of issues as far as people that have suffered as a result of that mine.
It's starting to come about now -- starting to show up now through deaths
and people that are, you know, becoming very ill. So we're just now
working on a process of trying to get those people or their estates some
compensation which we just became aware of not too long ago. It's my
understanding that the Navajos have already worked through this and we'll
be working with them to try and get caught up. But we just recognize all
the problems that are a result of that uranium mine, the uranium resources
that we have our rez, and we still have -- you know there still is a
resource there, but because of all of the problems that we've had with it,
it's highly unlikely that we would ever consider mining the rest of that
resource. Right now we're just more conc