Indigenous leadership in Nature Conservancy hope to build tribal support
Kalle Benallie
ICT
John Waconda, Isleta Pueblo and Laguna Pueblo, came out of retirement to work with The Nature Conservancy in the fall of 2021. He is the first Indigenous Partnerships program manager in the conservancy’s New Mexico chapter.
The Nature Conservancy was founded in 1951 and has made an impact on conservation across the world in 79 countries. The nonprofit environmental organization has more than a million members.
Waconda worked in the federal government for over 30 years and started out in New Mexico’s Bureau of Indian Affairs as a forestry technician firefighter, then in forestry management and was an agency superintendent. Then, for about 10 years, he worked in the U.S. Forest Service.
“I came out of retirement because I’m concerned about losing traditions and culture and being able to protect and preserve the land, water, and resources that sustain us,” Waconda said. “We want the best for our children. My hope is to leave our homelands in better shape than what I had.”
He joined another Indigenous leader in The Nature Conservancy, Brie Fraley, who leads the North America Indigenous Landscapes and Communities Program. TNC New Mexico also supports the program with a localized initiative, one of the first in the U.S.
“I think the both of us coming from communities, we’re well aware of the challenges much broader than just taking care of the land and the resources. It’s how we’ve relied and lived in those places that are special to us, on how we’ve taken care of that and how we’ve been contained and not being able to freely access and continue our tradition and culture in places that have been taken away,” he said.
Waconda has since been collaborating with many of the state’s pueblos and is currently engaged with four pueblos on conservation projects in northern New Mexico.
Some of which include:
- Collaborating with Taos Pueblo as they develop a cultural fire plan that will protect their tribal wilderness area and community, secure clean water, provide medicinal plants and support cultural traditions.
- Partnering with Jemez and Santa Clara pueblos to create a forest that will adapt to intensifying climate change. About 100,000 drought-resistant seedlings were planted in the Jemez Mountains, where the Las Conchas Fire burned 150,000 acres in 2011.
- Transferring five buffalo to the Nambe Pueblo as part of the InterTribal Buffalo Council buffalo restoration movement. Since its inception, the council has restored more than 20,000 buffalo across 1 million acres of tribal lands.
- Engaging with about 20 livestock producers of Jemez Pueblo and other partners to design a virtual fence pilot project to help tackle the challenges facing this tribal nation’s grazing operation and improve their rangelands and ensure viable businesses.
- Supporting the Santa Clara Pueblo as they implement a Santa Clara Creek watershed restoration plan after severe wildfires destroyed resources and caused cultural disconnection. The work combines Indigenous knowledge with nature-based solutions, such as creating bio-fences with woody debris to better manage grazing.
- Partnering with the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, through New Mexico’s Rio Grande Water Fund, and pueblos in New Mexico, to strengthen tribal capacity and create opportunities for tribal staff to assist in the planning and implementation of cultural and traditional fire use.
Waconda said working with tribes requires developing trust, a relationship that includes support based on tribal priorities and working on creating networks that tribes can have with other tribes.
“It is an emerging attention that has been neglected. It’s how our organization can and should connect with Indigenous communities for the future of conservation,” he said. “Our organization is in a great opportunity because our reputation and experience — practicing conservation, protecting lands, waters in different areas — now can include priorities in working with our Indigenous communities.”
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He hopes the relationship between tribes and a non-government organization will band together to help tribes elevate their voice to help gain more attention in social groups and entities that need to be educated whether that be at the county, state level or federal level.
“To me that could only be helpful if we do it in a more unified, stronger voice environment within our tribal communities,” Waconda said.
(Photo courtesy of Brie Fraley)
Fraley, who is a citizen of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, which is on the California-Oregon border on the coast, said friends ask why she works at The Nature Conservancy and she said it has a lot of influence around the world.
She previously worked as a cultural director and tribal preservations officer for the Wiyot Tribe in northern California and was a self governance officer for the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation.
Initially, the North America Indigenous Landscapes and Communities Program was created as a strategy in 2019 and was sponsored by the western division within the conservancy. But Fraley coming onboard prompted the conservancy to prioritize it and transition it as a regional office.
‘One of the things we’re working on is making shifts in the organization — from transactional to relational, from predominant western science organization to a knowledge based organization understanding Indigenous epistemologies have rigor and value and that we should be at the table making decisions collectively together,” Fraley said.
She is currently working on an Indigenous rights relations program that will launch in January and has been working with the InterTribal Buffalo Council on the buffalo restoration initiative.
“It’s definitely a challenge, we’re evolving as an organization,” she said.
Fraley said working with tribes closely is the morally and ethically right thing to do.
“It’s the way all conservation should be working. When I was hired I was asked ‘what does success look like to you in this line of work?’ and I said the vision of success is the healthy framing of Indigenous communities because when the environment is healthy and healed, we will too. When we are healed as Indigenous people, our knowledge can be shared and passed down and activated,” she said.
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