Tribal Stewardship Planning

The Tribal Stewardship Plan is being developed with Tribes, not simply about Tribes. The Tribal Stewardship Plans are a long-term effort to document the relationships Ahtna people have with the lands, waters, fish, wildlife, plants, and cultural resources throughout Ahtna Territory. Through community interviews, mapping, and collaboration with Tribal Councils, AITRC is working to preserve traditional knowledge, document subsistence practices, and identify culturally important areas. This information will remain under Tribal control and provide Tribal Councils with a valuable resource to support stewardship, consultation, and decisions affecting their traditional lands and resources.

Funded by First Nations Development Institute in partnership with Ahtna Tribes.

Protecting Ahtna Knowledge, Lands, and Subsistence Practices.

At AITRC, our vision is ’Atnahwt’aene — to exercise sovereign authority and stewardship of cultural and natural resources within our traditional territory, ensuring our future self-sustainability.

The Tribal Stewardship Plans puts this vision into practice by strengthening the ability of Ahtna Tribes to document and communicate their own relationships with their traditional lands and resources. Through conversations with Tribal citizens, harvesters, and Elders, the project preserves knowledge about subsistence, cultural resources, land use, and changes occurring across the landscape.

By bringing this knowledge together in a Tribe-specific stewardship plan, Tribal Councils will have a resource they can use to establish priorities, participate in consultation, and advocate for the continued protection and stewardship of Ahtna Territory.

What Is a Tribal Stewardship Plan?

Tribal stewardship is the exercise of a Tribe’s sovereign authority to care for, protect, manage, and make decisions about the lands, waters, cultural resources, fish, wildlife, and plants within its traditional territory. It is rooted in generations of knowledge, relationships with the land, cultural values, and subsistence practices that continue to guide how resources are used and cared for today.

A Tribal Stewardship Plans brings that knowledge, authority, and responsibility together into a resource that Tribal Councils can use to guide future stewardship. Each plan documents traditional knowledge, subsistence practices, culturally important areas, Tribal history, governance, natural resources, impacts to traditional territory, and stewardship priorities.

Through community interviews and mapping, Tribal citizens can document how they use and understand the landscape, why particular areas and resources are important, and how those relationships have changed over time. The resulting plan can help Tribal Councils establish priorities, guide stewardship, strengthen their role in consultation, and exercise sovereign authority when decisions are being made that affect their traditional lands and resources.

What Information Are We Gathering?

AITRC's Tribal Stewardship Coordinator works directly with Tribal citizens to document how people interact with and depend upon the landscape.

The project uses structured interviews developed by AITRC's Tribal Stewardship Coordinator, GIS Specialist, and Anthropologist. The surveys were developed using ArcGIS Survey123 Connect, allowing participants to answer questions while also identifying important stewardship areas on a map when they consent to mapping. Questions may explore topics such as:

Where do you harvest fish, wildlife, plants, berries, fungi, or other resources?
What resources do you harvest within those areas?
Who did you learn about these places and resources from?
What cultural resources or knowledge are associated with an area?
Have the places where you search for or harvest resources changed?
If your harvest areas have changed, why?
Have government actions, regulations, development, or land management decisions affected your subsistence practices?

These conversations help document more than points on a map. They can show how people use the landscape, why particular areas are important, how knowledge is passed between generations, and how access to traditional resources has changed over time.

Data Sovereignty.

Central to this work is Tribal data sovereignty. The information shared through the Stewardship Plan remains protected and under Tribal control, allowing each Tribal Council to determine when and how its information is used. This strengthens the ability of Ahtna Tribes to exercise stewardship, communicate their priorities, and protect the lands and resources that have sustained Ahtna people since time immemorial. Information collected through the Tribal Stewardship Plan may include sensitive cultural and subsistence knowledge. This information is kept within AITRC and is not intended for public distribution. Information specific to a Tribe will only be provided when that Tribe's Council requests it. This approach helps ensure that Tribal knowledge remains protected while allowing Tribal Councils to determine when and how their information should be used.

How will the Information Be Used?

The information gathered through the Tribal Stewardship Plans will support Tribal Councils in identifying important lands and resources, documenting generations of Tribal connection and use, and establishing priorities for the stewardship and protection of those areas.

Tribal Councils may choose to use this information during consultation and decision-making involving infrastructure development, fish and wildlife management, land management, resource development, and other activities that could affect traditional lands, cultural resources, or subsistence practices.

Because the information remains under Tribal control, each Council can determine when and how its information is used. This allows sensitive knowledge to remain protected while providing Tribes with a valuable tool for communicating their priorities to agencies, land managers, developers, and other decision-makers.

The final stewardship plans are intended to include information addressing Tribal history, governance, stewardship principles, impacts to traditional territory, and actions that can be taken to advance Tribal goals and objectives.

By documenting both generations of knowledge and the continued use of Ahtna Territory today, the Tribal Stewardship Plan helps ensure that Ahtna knowledge and Tribal priorities are represented when decisions affecting these lands and resources are made.

Protecting Knowledge for Future Generations.

Ahtna people have maintained relationships with the lands and resources of Ahtna Territory since time immemorial. Those relationships include generations of knowledge about where resources are found, how they are harvested, how landscapes have changed, and how people care for the places that sustain their communities.

The Tribal Stewardship Plans create a way to document that knowledge without giving up control of it. By pairing traditional knowledge with mapping and contemporary planning tools, AITRC is helping Tribes develop resources that can support stewardship today while preserving important knowledge for future generations.

Ultimately, the Tribal Stewardship Plans are about more than collecting information. It is about strengthening Tribal sovereignty, stewardship, self-governance, and the ability of Ahtna Tribes to help determine what happens on the lands and waters that have sustained their people for generations.

Project Leads: David Miller | Questions on this project?

Send us a message!