RE: Tribal

[Dean Suagee <dsuagee@vermontlaw.edu>]

In the NEJAC document captioned "Guide on Consultation and Collaboration with Indian Tribal Governments and the Public Participation of Indigenous Groups and Tribal Members in Environmental Decision Making," (herein the "Guide") we used the term "collaboration" differently that it is being used by most of the people whose comments I have read today.  (And I have not read them all.)  You can download this Guide from the Office of Environmental Justice website < http://www.epa.gov/oeca/ej >.  

We used collaboration to describe the potential role of non-federal entities, such as tribal governments, in carrying out a decision.  In other words, you might consult in the decision-making process, but if the process leads to a decision that the tribe really buys into to the extent of having a role in carrying it out, we would use collaboration to describe the implementation of such a decision.  See the Guide at page 13.

I realize now that people participating in this dialogue attach a different meaning to this word, though I confess I'm not clear on what people think it means.  

The way we used the term, it would make perfect sense to say that an agency such as EPA could collaborate with a tribe.