Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic
ENV 962 Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic
Professor Patrick Gonzales-Rogers
TF Joshua Friedlein and Molly Johnson
Meeting Time Wednesday 9:00AM – 11:50AM
Location TBD
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.
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.
· 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.
· 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.
