The Tribal Lands Viewer allows users to view different layers of data in map form. Image courtesy of CEMML. BY JODI PETERSON
In central Colorado, Peterson Space Force Base sits on land that was once the territory of several Native American tribes, including the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Jicarilla Apache, and Ute. The same holds true for the rest of the roughly 26 million acres that the Department of Defense oversees nationwide. Indeed, just about every acre of what’s now the United States was once a place where Indigenous peoples lived, hunted, fished, collected plants, built villages and camps, and held gatherings and ceremonies.
While many tribal members no longer live on ancestral lands, they often maintain strong traditional, religious, and cultural ties to them. Military installations are legally required to consult with interested tribes on a government-to-government basis when projects could affect natural or cultural resources. But it hasn’t always been easy to determine which tribes may have an interest in an installation’s lands or airspace.
A tool developed by CSU’s Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center is addressing that problem. The Tribal Lands Viewer helps military commanders and their staff determine which tribes to contact when planning projects or managing resources on the installation. The project is part of the much larger Air Force Environmental Geographic Information System program, which includes a multi-year partnership with CEMML.
Many of the 574 federally recognized Native American tribes, bands, and communities have reservations that are located hundreds of miles from their ancestral lands. Relevant maps and data are often difficult for installations to locate when initiating consultation with tribes.
To address this problem, the Tribal Lands Viewer tool collates information from more than 15 sources at both state and federal levels — 19th-century maps from the Library of Congress, data from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, land cessions, Census Bureau information, ethnographic reports, maps of modern reservation lands, House reports, and more — and adds DoD installation boundaries, infrastructure, flight paths, and airspace.
“The whole idea is consolidating all these different data sources so it’s easy for an installation to know they’re talking to all interested tribes in an area to determine how military operations may affect them,” said Gwynn Ellis, GIS program analyst at CEMML.
The Tribal Lands Viewer is hosted on an Air Force dashboard and available only to military users. Although the tool is Air Force specific, it includes maps of all DoD installations.
“The Viewer provides a more complete, more detailed picture of the relationship between tribal lands and DoD installations than we previously had,” said Alison Rubio, deputy federal preservation officer with the Air Force Civil Engineer Center. “Using the tool’s contact list, tribal liaison officers and cultural resource managers can connect more easily with tribal leaders for decision making.”
Rubio emphasized that the Viewer is for planning purposes only, and that follow-on consultation and communication with tribes is necessary. “The data displayed in the tool is for illustrative and reference purposes only and is not an authoritative source. Nothing can replace listening to tribes about what areas and resources they want to consult with the Air Force on,” Rubio added.
To see tribal lands in a specific location, users can drop a virtual pin on a map or enter the name of an installation. The tool displays proximity to current reservation lands, shows historical land cessions, and provides geographic context. Reconciling all the different maps to add to the Viewer was a challenge, said Ellis, noting that “it was a fun little puzzle to overlay various sources and boundaries and get all the pieces to line up properly.”
The team used natural boundaries as reference points, because they are stable over time. They overlaid data sets for features such as rivers to improve accuracy. Some information existed only in hardcopy, so the team digitized it.
Installation staff can use the Viewer to determine where proposed military operations intersect with current and historical tribal lands. They can then cross-reference that information with their current list of tribes affiliated with the installation lands and airspace. Viewing and printing customized maps is also supported.
The CEMML and AFCEC team continues to expand and improve the Tribal Lands Viewer, which has been available to all Air Force and Space Force installations for more than two years now. Their latest effort is to link the Viewer with a database of digitized treaties developed by Oklahoma State University Libraries. The database includes treaties signed between 1778 and 1886, complete with margin notes, links to more information, and an index. The team also continues to streamline the tool and make it easier to use, add direct links to tribal websites, and ensure that its information stays up to date.
“Air Force and Space Force installations have identified 360 tribes and native Hawaiian organizations affiliated with installation lands in 36 states. That’s an increase of 32 tribes since the Viewer’s launch in 2021. We foresee that number continuing to grow. More importantly, we are seeing the quality of tribal consultation increase as the Air Force emphasizes to installation leadership that this consultation is a priority,” said Rubio. “By developing tools like the Tribal Lands Viewer, we support leadership, tribal liaison officers, and resource managers in carrying out the Department of the Air Force’s goal of robust, informed, and effective consultation with tribal nations.”