Do Not Let California Natural Resource Agency Divide and Conquer Native Tribes
DO NOT LET THE CALIFORNIA NATURAL RESOURCES AGENCY DIVIDE AND CONQUER
The Tribal Workforce & Trade Association and its experts reviewed California’s first recorded tribal co-management agreement under AB 1284. Our conclusion: it is too weak to become the statewide standard.
We respect the Pomo leaders who opened this conversation. Because the agreement is a living document—not the final form of co-management—we have an opportunity to strengthen it.
If CNRA negotiates separately with tribes before we establish common standards, limited tribal power can become the statewide model.
The two most important issues are AUTHORITY and ENFORCEMENT.
The agreement speaks of power-sharing but does not identify a single governmental decision tribes are guaranteed authority to make. It does not say which decisions are shared, deferred or delegated, which require tribal concurrence, or who holds corresponding tribal authority.
Tribes may recommend actions, but agencies need not follow them—or explain why they rejected them. Participation is not power.
There is no meaningful enforcement. Tribes receive no defined authority to inspect, investigate, require corrective action, appeal decisions or stop work when resources are threatened. If an agency ignores a commitment, there is no penalty or remedy.
The agreement is nonbinding. Disputes lead only to another good-faith meeting, with no neutral review, findings, appeal or enforceable remedy. Yet contractors may receive binding contracts and legal remedies. Tribes should not receive fewer protections over ancestral lands than contractors receive over payment.
No funding is guaranteed for tribal attorneys, staff, scientists, knowledge holders or monitoring. Workforce development is named, but there is no Tribal Workforce Agreement, TERO coordination, tribal hiring or contractor preference, apprenticeship system or benefits framework.
The project contractor is non-Tribal and non-Native-owned. How can this build tribal capacity while major planning, technical and contracting opportunities flow outside Indian Country?
The agreement also fails to secure tribal authority through planning, design, budgeting, procurement, contractor selection, construction, inspection and stewardship. By construction, much of the money and authority may already be committed.
We recognize this agreement as a beginning. But tribes must slow down, organize and fund independent legal review before it becomes precedent.
The reviewed package is 47 pages. TWTA’s agency-by-agency framework and analysis exceed 20,000 pages. Length alone does not determine quality, but the difference shows how much remains unaddressed.
TWTA calls for an intertribal working group to establish minimum standards, map state powers to tribal counterparts and create enforceable authority from planning through stewardship.
Ask your leaders: What authority is shared? How is it enforced? What happens when the State says no? Who holds the contracts?
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