Michelle M Steen-Adams [and three others]

"Multiple aspects of forest land management present research partnership opportunities for the USDA Forest Service and tribal nations. These aspects include forests, fuels, and ecocultural resources that often are appropriate to manage at the landscape scale. The impacts of global climate change heighten the timeliness and need for partnerships. Practices that are appropriate for Forest Service-tribal partnerships generally have not been documented in a designated publication. This report responds to this technical knowledge need by presenting field-based insights about effective practices for partnerships in research about land management. The research method was a synthesis of the literature and of insights accrued by the authors in their research with tribes at sites across the Pacific West (California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska). The main topics of this report are partnership benefits and challenges, effective practices, partnership models, and the partnership-building process. Effective practices can be organized into three categories: institutional context-adapted practices--which are attuned to relevant executive orders or other presidential actions, governmental policies, and authorities (e.g., legal foundation, tribal consultation, and tribal governance structure); tribal social context-adapted practices--which pertain to cultural, historical, and community considerations (e.g., the unique culture and history of each tribe, traditional knowledge systems, and culturally and organizationally appropriate methods); and partnership relationship-adapted practices, which are attuned to supporting--and sometimes repairing--the framework for meaningful dialogue and joint efforts (e.g., early and continuous engagement, and obtaining consent). Partnership models include government, collaborative, and community types. Partnership building develops over a multistage life cycle. Through our experiences in working with tribes, we identified seven stages of tribal partnerships: (1) identify shared goals and explore concerns, (2) develop awareness of the tribal governance structure, (3) coordinate natural and social science frameworks, (4) forge partnership instruments, (5) adapt methods to the tribal context, (6) conduct research and implement management action, and (7) give back. Although several of these stages are not unique to tribal partnerships, all require distinct adaptive actions and associated efforts, as discussed in this report. The process is often nonlinear: partners may loop back to preceding stages, leapfrog particular stages, or advance through multiple stages simultaneously. Partnership building is also characterized by legacy effects. Current partnerships are influenced by the community memory of past experiences regarding aspects of the partnership life cycle. Thus, current partnerships may affect future partnership conditions. These findings may assist scientists and land managers in forging and maintaining effective, productive partnerships with tribal nations."