This article was published on: 03/10/24 3:53 PM
SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) — The Oregon Court of Appeals on March 1 received two amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs, asserting that the state Land Use Board of Appeals discounted indigenous expertise and erred in its conclusion earlier this year regarding how Tribes invoke and use Treaty rights in land use proceedings.
The two briefs were submitted in support of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon’s request of the court to return the January 12 LUBA decision to address issues that the Warm Springs Tribe raised in connection with the proposed modification approved by Deschutes County commissioners of Thornburgh Resort’s Fish and Wildlife Mitigation Plan.
The two briefs include:
The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Nez Perce Tribe
In their brief, the Tribes state that the LUBA decision discounts the value of indigenous enterprise in local land use planning and decision-making, failing to give equal weight to traditional ecological knowledge. They say that the conclusions reached by indigenous expertise are distinct from those found in Western science, and both are legitimate in their own right.
They write, “Presently, Deschutes County employs a top-down approach that marginalizes indigenous communities by dismissing their cultural traditions as groundless while simultaneously imposing external values, policies, and actions upon native communities, landscapes, and treaty resources. Not only does this disregard decades of Tribal-Federal-State collaborative management, it also discounts indigenous expertise.”
Columbia River Gorge Commission
Pulling from its nearly 40 years consulting with and working with the four Columbia River Treaty Tribes, which include the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation, the Gorge Commission shared how it developed appropriate treaty rights protection policies for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
The Gorge Commission notes that the National Scenic Area standards do not distinguish between science that has been peer reviewed and published and tribal indigenous knowledge. The tribes have impressed upon the Gorge Commission that their knowledge and practice of their treaty-reserved rights are cultural traditions passed from generation to generation and are thus themselves a part of the treaty right itself.
In its brief, the Gorge Commission says, “LUBA erred in concluding that the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation did not preserve its treaty rights issue because it did not express certain specific arguments before Deschutes County.”
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