< Government, Tribe Clash Over Bison-Care Contract

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

Heard on Morning Edition

March 5, 2007 - RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And in Moiese, Montana, a wildlife refuge for bison has turned into a turf war between tribal and non-tribal communities. It's also the focus of a dispute within federal government agencies charged with managing the refuge, a dispute that came up after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cancelled a unique contract which had allowed two Indian tribes to help manage the range.

Kathy Witkowsky reports.

KATHY WITKOWSKY: The National Bison Range was founded nearly a century ago in northwest Montana on land that once belonged to the Salish and Kootenai tribes with bison descended from animals saved by tribal members. In the years since, it has become a treasured part of the federal wildlife refuge system.

(Soundbite of geese)

Mr. STEVE KALLIN (Bison Range Manager): You can't come to this area and not fall in love with it.

WITKOWSKY: That's Bison Range manager Steve Kallin. His job is to ensure that the refuge is maintained according to Fish and Wildlife Service standards, standards he says weren't being met after the Salish and Kootenai tribes took over some responsibilities at the range two years ago.

For instance, he says some of the bison weren't being fed properly.

Mr. KALLIN: When you would drive up, you would see most of the herd standing right behind this gate waiting to be fed because they were hungry. They weren't getting as much feed as they needed.

WITKOWSKY: Kallin says that's only one example of how the tribes failed at their duties, which is why the Fish and Wildlife service cancelled their contract.

Mr. KALLIN: The tribes were paid to do a job and there were certain important jobs that were not done properly.

WITKOWSKY: Tribal Chairman James Steele Jr. has a completely different explanation for why the shared management deal blew up.

Mr. JAMES STEELE JR. (Chairman, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes): It was a premeditated attempt to get the Indian people off of the Bison Range. That's pure and simple what it is.

WITKOWSKY: Steele acknowledges that the tribe's performance may not have been perfect, but he says that the Fish and Wildlife Service personnel sabotaged their efforts.

Mr. STEELE: There wasn't a willingness to collaborate with the tribal employees. There wasn't a willingness to give the tribal employees direction, and if there were problems to work with them collaboratively. But there was an attempt to undermine the tribes and to see them fail.

WITKOWSKY: Former Montana congressman Pat Williams believes the problems at the Bison Range underscore deep mistrusts.

Mr. PAT WILLIAMS (Former Montana Congressman): It was an angry relationship, fraught with suspicion from the beginning. The tribal members' suspicious that they had to do their job better than anyone had ever done it, and the people who weren't Indians were suspicious that the Indians would never be able to do these jobs correctly. So both came at this with expectations that probably doomed it from the beginning.

WITKOWSKY: The Bison Range was one of the places Williams had in mind back in 1994, when he helped pass legislation making it possible for Indian tribes with connections to certain federal lands to run programs there. He still has a lot of faith in the Salish and Kootenai people.

Mr. WILLIAMS: There's nothing in their history that says they can't make this work.

WITKOWSKY: Williams never agreed with critics who saw the tribe's involvement as the first step in privatizing the refuge system. But he does believe that the way the contract was set up, with tribal employees answering to their own tribal supervisor rather than the Bison Range manager, made the arrangement unworkable.

By December, the Fish and Wildlife Service came to the same conclusion and pulled the contract. But the decision was reversed less than a month later when the Department of Interior, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, announced its intention to reestablish a contract with the tribes. Lynn Scarlett is deputy secretary of the interior.

Ms. LYNN SCARLETT (Deputy Secretary, Department of Interior): On the one hand, we have the responsibility to fulfill our role as manager of the refuge: to make sure that we protect the Bison, that we maintain the land in good condition. At the same time, we have a role in trying to help ensure that tribes have economic opportunities.

WITKOWSKY: But given the tensions between the tribes and the Fish and Wildlife Service employees, putting Humpty Dumpty back together again won't be easy. The management contract at the Bison Range was intended to serve as a model for other such agreements between the Fish and Wildlife Service and native tribes. At this point though, it appears to be more of a blue print for what to avoid.

For NPR News, I'm Kathy Witkowsky.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.