Squaring the Circle: Reinventing Northern Cheyenne Resource Management in the Digital Age

Over a decade ago, in early 2011, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Montana initiated a series of conversations with Northern Cheyenne traditional elders and officials at Chief Dull Knife College (CDKC) regarding ways to enhance resource management cooperation between the federal agency and the tribe. The BLM wanted to adjust--and in some ways reinvent--their conventional approach to the tribal consultation requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA). Typically, federal land management agencies consult with tribal officials on a case-by-case basis. The BLM Montana office wanted to understand entire ecosystems from the perspective of the Indian tribes that have occupied North American landscapes for millennia, and whose traditional knowledge concerning cultural and natural resources could inform future land-use planning initiatives. In 2013, after nearly two years of formal and informal planning, a supporting tribal resolution, and the development of a detailed scope of work, BLM leadership in Washington, DC, approved funding for a multi-year pilot project entitled the Northern Cheyenne Ecoregional Ethnographic Assessment (NCEEA), which was completed in May 2024. It was intended to provide the BLM with a computerized planning tool containing tribally sourced information and simultaneously to furnish the Northern Cheyenne tribe with a custom database they could use to store cultural and environmental information. CDKC agreed to host the project and provide management and administrative support.