Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic

(SP23) ENV 962 Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic

Professor: Patrick Gonzales-Rogers, pat.rogers@yale.edu 
Teaching Fellows: Joshua Friedlein, joshua.friedlein@yale.edu and Molly Johnson, molly.johnson@yale.edu
Meeting Time: Wednesday 9:00AM – 11:50AM
Location: Kroon 321

The clinic will be offered both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in both semesters and priority for spring semester will be given to students enrolled for fall.  

Applications are now open for ENV 962: Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic. This clinical-focused course is taught by Patrick Gonzalez-Rogers, former Executive Director of the Bears Ears Coalition. Through lectures, this course will provide students with a foundational understanding of Tribal Sovereignty, the trust duty, co-management and shared stewardship, and contemporary case studies of successful co-management between tribes and partners. Students will also examine colonial systems and thought in relation to conservation and resource management. 

In the clinical portion of the course, students will be placed with a partner organization and participate in projects for their behalf. More details regarding the clinical work can be found in the course application. The clinic has been offered in the Fall 2022. The Spring 2023 offering will have the same teaching team and its clinical projects will continue, but the lecture topics and guest speakers will be different. The course enrollment will be capped at ~30 students. Students who are enrolled in the course in the Fall semester will be given priority for Spring semester, but there are 10+ spots that are being added to the course this Spring semester to respond to student interest. Please apply if interested.

TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THIS COURSE, YOU MUST SUBMIT AN APPLICATION, USING THIS FORM, BY 11:59PM EST ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2022.

STUDENTS WILL BE NOTIFIED OF ACCEPTANCE OR WAITLIST STATUS BY FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2022.

Course overview and learning objectives:
Understanding Tribal Resource Management: We will identify and describe the varieties of tribal resources focusing on public lands and the limitation of the management prerogatives facing Tribal Nations under the current legal regime. We will explore those resources governed by the trust duty and the federal government’s role. The emerging green economy is revealing new resources and opportunities for tribes. We will investigate the relations between tribes, states, and private actors in this sector. 

Co-management, the trust duty, and tribal sovereignty will be the main themes around which the clinic will be structured. The priority of this course is the project outcomes that will be accomplished for our tribal partners. There may be a Spring Break field trip to the Bears Ears National Monument, at the discretion of the teaching team and YCEJ.

This will be a graduate-level course. This course has no prerequisites and is not capped. It requires an application. It is designed for master’s and Ph.D. students at the Yale School of the Environment, students at the Law School, the School of Management, and the Divinity School. The course is open to Yale College undergraduates and graduate students from elsewhere in Yale with the approval of the instructor. If you are an undergraduate student or a graduate student from elsewhere in Yale, please email Patrick Gonzalez-Rogers and the TFs with your request. 

As a clinic-based course, students will be assigned to groups that will work with partner organizations on a project. Project descriptions are found in the Project Guide, located here.

This course will enable students to:

1. Gain familiarity with concepts in natural resource management problems;
2. Develop an appreciation of the complex dialectic between policy formulation and the different levels of government, as well as other stakeholders;
3. Assess the implications of incorporating different forms of knowledge (disciplinary knowledge, local knowledge, indigenous knowledge, expert knowledge, and citizen knowledge);
4. Develop a critical theoretical and historical underpinning for their work, develop a personal self-reflexive stance of openness to various forms of knowledge and different community values, and sharpen their written and oral analytic skills.
5. Students working on this project will integrate technical forestry and policy expertise with other disciplines to create research that can be communicated to forestry and non-forestry decision-makers. In addition, students should have a willingness to learn to work with tribal staff and assert inherent sovereignty at the local, state, national and international levels by coordinating policy, law, and business.