The problem with giving others political control in the hope they will advance your goals is that respect for the dignity of individuals is contingent on their policy agreement with you. The treatment of tribes by some on the environmental Left is a recent case in point.

The purported respect from some on the environmental Left for tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, and tribal stewardship of nature is conditioned on tribes doing what the environmentalists want. When tribes fail to comply with that political agenda, greens can quickly become dismissive.

Three recent examples stand out.

Recently, Governor Inslee vetoed a section of our state’s new CO2 cap-and-trade bill relating to tribal consultation. Some tribal leaders reacted strongly to the surprise veto, most notably Fawn Sharp who was, until recently, President of the Quinault Nation. She called the governor a “snake” for suddenly vetoing the language without consulting the tribes in advance. When asked about that criticism by a reporter, the governor replied that “real” tribal chairs agreed with him, adding for emphasis, “the person you just mentioned is not a tribal chair.”

The governor is using a semantic game to dismiss Sharp. It is true that she is not technically a “chair” because she recently moved from President of the Quinault Nation into the position of Vice President while she assumes the role of the President of the National Congress of American Indians. It is pretty glib to dismiss her just as she assumes the presidency of the largest national tribal organization.

Perhaps even more remarkable is that during the recently completed legislative session, Sharp was one of the biggest supporters of the governor’s climate bill. At one time the governor liked her enough to appoint her to his climate task force. Once she criticized the governor, however, he decided she was no longer a “real” tribal leader.

The second example comes from a recent article from the Yale environmental newsletter about tribal stewardship of natural resources. This is an area where Washington Policy Center has done a fair amount of work recently. Our findings show the tribes have made some excellent progress in improving the health of tribal forests and innovating ways to increase salmon populations.

Much of the Yale article praises the work of tribes, saying, “It’s hard for outsiders to fathom how differently many Indigenous cultures perceive the landscape and wild creatures, and their relationship to it, but it is clear their lives have been deeply intertwined with the natural world in a very different way than non-Indigenous cultures.”

The tone changes later, as the article notes, “there are some concerns about possible downsides to tribal management. Will tribes allow hunting in places where it hasn’t been allowed because of tradition? Or will a change in tribal administrations alter policies toward ecologically important lands that no longer favor protection?” Environmental activist George Wuerthner was quoted criticizing the Blackfeet for allowing oil and gas leases on tribal land, saying, “One hopes that if the tribe is given co-management of [an area near the reservation], they will treat these public lands better than they treat their reservation lands.”

Suddenly “outsiders” seem pretty comfortable criticizing the tribal relationship to nature and wildlife. Despite the flowery language, when it comes to politics, environmentalists’ respect for tribes and decisions about managing their land is conditional on doing what activists demand.

Respect conditioned on conformity is not respect.

These two examples are on top of the recent lawsuit by the Kettle Range Conservation Group which is trying to stop forest health work in the Colville National Forest that has been requested by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. The Sanpoil Forest Health Project would reduce the risk of fire by “thinning small trees, reducing fuel loads and ladder fuels; increasing fire breaks through landscape heterogeneity and employing fire as a management tool; and establishing a low-fuels buffer on the northern boundary of the Colville Indian Reservation.” The project goal is to create a healthy and sustainable forest. The location was specifically identified by the Colville Tribes as an area of cultural significance.

Despite that, the Kettle Range group is trying to stop the project, leaving the area at risk of catastrophic fire that would harm an area where the tribes continue to exercise rights congressionally established by the 1891 agreement and would threaten to spread fire onto the present day south half reservation forests.

These three examples happened within just the last month. Showing respect for the sovereignty of tribes – or for individuals in a free society – means respecting the decisions they make for themselves, even when we disagree, working with them to find mutually agreeable solutions rather than using political power to impose one’s preferred policies and to shutdown different views.