Tribes deserve their place at the table

The hiring of a liaison for environmental issues between 27 American Indian tribes and the state of Nevada is a good first step and one that's been long in coming.

The Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection used a grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to set up a first-of-its-kind partnership.

Tansey Smith, a Pyramid Lake Paiute and Western Shoshone who has a bachelor's degree in anthropology and has spent the past four years working with the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe on environmental projects, will fill the liaison position.

She accurately summarized much of the history of the state and its tribes when she described an all-too-familiar habit: Don't talk to the Indians.

Tribal leaders are rarely consulted on environmental issues or any other long-range growth or planning decisions. Transportation, water, development - all basic policy decisions with which local and regional governments grapple constantly, yet they have no formal process for including tribal governments.

If this new partnership can open doors and lead to local, regional and state agencies regularly inviting the tribes' point of view on environmental matters, the next step will be to invite similar participation on all planning discussions.

One of the most glaring gaps currently is the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, given broad authority over the Lake Tahoe Basin. The tribes of Nevada and California should have a seat on that board.

The common goal for the partnership between the tribes and the state's environmental division is "to make the air cleaner, the water purer and the land protected," according to Gerry Emm, environmental director for the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

The solutions usually lie in the ability to best utilize available resources. It's about time they turned to a little-used resource - the knowledge and history of several hundred years of experience as represented by Nevada's native tribes.