Tribal restoration planning, based on indigenous ideas and practices,
evolved with the self-determination and self-governance initiatives of
tribal governments in the United States. National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA) implementation was roughly concurrent with the return of management
authority over Indian trust lands to tribes in the 1970s and 1980s. Many,
but not all, of the 556 federally recognized tribal governments have
assumed responsibility for NEPA planning processes. Other planning
processes pursued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Indian trust lands
and those of the State of Washington for educational trust lands offer
significant contrasts; to further delineate these contrasts, the author
overlays tribal planning activities with a four-point methodological
framework. The tribal restoration planning approach begs the question of
how to maintain a dynamic range where human and natural environments are
connected in past, present, and future. Tribal resource planning supports
ecosystem processes and maintains tribal values at the same time. Today,
federal devolution and the effects of previous intervention combine with
accelerated processes of decline resulting from global warming and species
extinction. The future of Indian trust lands as natural and cultural
homelands may depend in large part on the ability of tribes to implement
planning strategies that assure continuous restoration. The case of the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (hereinafter referred to as
“Salish Kootenai”) in Montana offers hope through
landscape-level planning strategies applied to restore that cultural and
natural landscape.