The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, in collaboration with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and with funding from the National Park Service, has published a study, Best Practices Study on Tribal Consultation in Historic Preservation [PDF 3.67mb]. The study examines best practices in tribal consultation for Section 106 undertakings.  It provides federal agencies and tribes with guidance on how to engage in successful consultations, based on a nationwide survey of all federal preservation officers and federally recognized tribes.  The study’s results affirm the value and importance of early consultation. Tribes define success differently than their federal agency partners, however, viewing the establishment of good relations as more a measure of success than completing a project and coming to an agreement on resolving adverse effects.

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Hoover Dam Bypass Project. The management team for this project won national recognition for its multiple agency partnering and coordination efforts, particularly in the area of tribal consultation. This project involved extensive consultation with tribes about impacts to significant archaeological resources. Stan Rice, President of the Yavapai Prescott Indian Tribe stated, “We have reviewed the materials prepared by the government-to-government consultation on the Hoover Dam Bypass Project and concur that consultation was held in an exemplary manner.” See related article in NDOT News, Winter 2002 Edition [PDF 2.71mb].

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Tribal Consultation Workshop, April 12, 2005 [PDF 5.15mb] The FHWA Ohio Division, with assistance from the Ohio Department of Transportation, sponsored a workshop for Federally Recognized Native American Tribal Governments located in Oklahoma and surrounding states which are recognized as having ancestral ties to Ohio. The workshop was intended to strengthen government-to-government relationships and streamline the coordination of transportation programs and projects with tribal governments. The workshop was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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Federal Highway Administration – Pennsylvania Division Intertribal Summit, 2003 [PDF 1.16mb].  In September 2003, the Pennsylvania Division of FHWA, in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), hosted an Intertribal Summit on Section 106 issues. The report on the summit serves as a primer on organizing an intertribal summit, and provides information on logistics, costs, protocols, format, etc. The primary goal of the summit was to establish a foundation for future consultation among non-resident Federally-recognized tribes, the Pennsylvania FHWA and PennDOT.  The report also includes information on similar tribal summits that have been held in Iowa, Idaho, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Washington State. 

In response to the intertribal summit, the Pennsylvania FHWA and PennDOT have developed a newsletter that summarizes the results of three intertribal meetings held in Wisconsin and Oklahoma. View the Winter/Spring 2005 Issue (3) [PDF 387kb].

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To facilitate consultation with tribes, TxDOT has created a layer in the statewide GIS database that indicates areas of concern to tribes. This data layer is accessible to all TxDOT staff. When TxDOT staff work on a project, they can pull up project area maps at their workstations and identify which tribes need to be contacted given the county or counties in which the project is located. With this GIS layer in place, TxDOT has dramatically reduced the number of documents that have to be sent to tribes, and tribes now have much less paperwork to deal with.

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