Accountability or merely "good words"?  An analysis of tribal consultation under the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historical Preservation Act

 

By: Matthew J. Rowe, Judson Byrd Finley, and Elizabeth Baldwin

 

Abstract

 

The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) brought issues of environmental justice, energy development, and Native American sovereignty to worldwide attention. Central to this dispute was the definition of “meaningful” consultation within the context of the National Environmental Policy Act (1969) and the National Historic Preservation Act (1966). Many cases document the failure of the consultation process during NEPA and NHPA review, but this line of research does little to propose

actions to mitigate these failures. This paper compares three

projects involving Tribal governments that underwent NEPA and

NHPA review and resulted in three different outcomes....