The Tongass Futures Roundtable: Distrust, Inequity, and Collaboration in Southeast Alaska

University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2020 The Tongass Futures Roundtable: Distrust, Inequity, and Collaboration in Southeast Alaska Hannah M. Wilson The University Of Montana Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Wilson, Hannah M., "The Tongass Futures Roundtable: Distrust, Inequity, and Collaboration in Southeast Alaska" (2020). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 11572. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11572 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. 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THE TONGASS FUTURES ROUNDTABLE: DISTRUST, INEQUITY, AND COLLABORATION IN SOUTHEAST ALASKA By HANNAH MARY ELIZABETH WILSON B.A. Geology-Environmental Studies, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, 2014 Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Resource Conservation The University of Montana Missoula, MT May 2020 APPROVED BY: Scott Whittenburg, Dean of The Graduate School Graduate School Laurie Yung, Chair Society and Conservation Alex Metcalf Society and Conservation Martin Nie Society and Conservation Shawn Johnson Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy ABSTRACT Wilson, Hannah, M.S., Spring 2020 Resource Conservation THE TONGASS FUTURES ROUNDTABLE: DISTRUST, INEQUITY, AND COLLABORATION IN SOUTHEAST ALASKA Chairperson: Dr. Laurie Yung Collaborative processes are increasingly being used to address complex natural resource management challenges, and trust between participants has been highlighted as a key component of successful collaboration. However, little research has focused on why collaboratives fail and the role of distrust in collaboration. This study examined trust and distrust in the Tongass Futures Roundtable, a collaborative group in Southeast Alaska that attempted to address timber, conservation, and Alaska Native land management issues, but was widely perceived to have failed. The history of conflict between timber and conservation interests as well as between Alaska Natives and other stakeholder groups meant that many people joined the Roundtable with preexisting distrust towards one another. This study employed semi-structured interviews with Roundtable participants to gain insight into participant experience and relationships as well as the process and outcomes of the collaboration. Several procedural components of the Roundtable were problematic--despite organizers using best practices--indicating that there may be tradeoffs between components like inclusivity and consensus-based decision-making. Historic and continuing inequity between stakeholder groups was also a significant problem. Along with failure to sufficiently acknowledge and address historical trauma, inequity was a barrier to building consensus and trust. While previous research suggests that trust may lay the groundwork for building agreement amongst diverse stakeholders in a collaborative process, for Roundtable participants, building trust was not enough to overcome barriers to collaboration. Further, some dimensions of distrust undermined certain types of trust that were built. Therefore, conceptualizing trust and distrust as multidimensional helps to illuminate that it is possible to have one type of trust and not have another, and that different types of trust are not fungible. While trust is very important in collaboration, it does not ensure that participants can bridge fundamental disagreements or that they will necessarily invest in collaboration over other venues for accomplishing their goals if they have better alternatives. For practitioners, it will be important to consider which types of trust are most important in collaboration and the trade-offs involved in different kinds of collaborative process designs. ii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY-INSIGHT INTO THE TONGASS CONFLICT THE TONGASS FUTURES ROUNDTABLE: DISTRUST, INEQUITY, AND COLLABORATION IN SOUTHEAST ALASKA The Tongass Futures Roundtable in Southeast Alaska was a collaborative group formed as an attempt to move past years of conflict and litigation over management decisions on the Tongass National Forest and broker a “grand bargain” of land allocations that all stakeholder groups could agree to. The Roundtable consisted of nearly all of the primary stakeholder groups in the region including national and local conservationists, timber interests, Alaska Native corporate and tribal interests, the Forest Service, and the State of Alaska, along with tourism, and fishing representatives. Despite generous funding and widespread political support, the collaborative disbanded without achieving its original goals or making significant progress on forest management issues. This study interviewed 25 Roundtable participants in order to better understand the role of trust and regional history in the Roundtable’s failure to reach its original goals, and the influence of the Roundtable on future conservation and collaboration efforts in the region. The roles of trust and distrust in collaborative success and failure were the primary focus of this study, but findings pertaining to the Roundtable and Tongass extended beyond the trust framework. In terms of trust, this study found that trust stemming from building strong positive relationships between stakeholder groups was not enough to overcome distrust based on past history, procedural challenges, and participants general propensity to be distrusting of one another in the context of Tongass management. Another significant barrier to success was-- despite a generally good process design using many best practices--the choice to require 100% consensus from the group in order to move an issue forward. Many participants reported single individuals stopping agreements that all the other members of the Roundtable had agreed to. This created frustration and distrust among participants and with the process itself and indicated that there is an important tradeoff between inclusion of all stakeholders and consensus-based decision-making. Other challenges the group faced included extremely broad goals for a large area of public land; national and state political agendas and partisan decision-making; and stakeholder groups with better alternatives to potential agreements negotiated at the Roundtable. A prime example of political involvement creating better alternatives for a stakeholder group was the State of Alaska leaving the Roundtable and encouraging timber interests to do the same in order to create a timber task force. This greatly reduced the effectiveness of the Roundtable and ability to reach any large-scale agreements between the rest of the stakeholder groups. Perhaps the largest barrier to successful collaboration was the failure to sufficiently recognize and unpack historic distrust, inequity, and trauma. While there was some level of failure to deal with historic distrust, conflict, and trauma present between conservationists and the timber industry, failure to address those dynamics was most prevalent and problematic between the Alaska Native community and other stakeholder groups. The history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) played a large role in the Roundtable in many ways. For one, the imposition of corporate structure on Alaska Native communities encouraged clear-cut logging of ANCSA lands as a way to make a profit for Native corporate shareholders. This created conflict between conservationists and Alaska Natives over Native land management practices. Further, some conservationists and Roundtable organizers attempted to use the iii Roundtable to settle the final ANCSA land allotment for the Sealaska Corporation. This proved to be an inadequate and inappropriate venue to address finalizing an existing agreement between the US government and sovereign Alaska Native group. The context of relations between Alaska Natives and other Tongass stakeholders and failure to adequately address that context ultimately drove Native members of the Roundtable to demand a reframing of the Tongass as a Native Place. This was in direct retort to conservationists calling the Tongass a “salmon forest” and perceived attempts by conservationists to minimize the human history and culture of Southeast Alaska. While this reframing was seen by most participants as an important step in the right direction to address historical dispossession and inequity, it also profoundly changed the trajectory of the Roundtable and derailed it from reaching its original goals. Reflecting on the Tongass post-Roundtable, participants reported feeling that although the group failed to reach its original goals, relationships built during the collaborative were still in place today. Also, participants almost all agreed that the Roundtable provided a valuable way forward for more intentionally including and highlighting Alaska Native voices and starting conversations about historic and ongoing inequities and indigenous land rights. Finally, some participants felt that the issues brought to light during the Roundtable were the genesis for regional projects and organizations

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