Day 17, January 22, Kansas City, Missouri

Our most interesting meetings were with leaders from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Regional Tribal Operations Committee. This committee has representatives from nine tribes in the EPA’s “region seven,” which includes parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri. They work with the EPA to resolve air and water issues, which are befuddled by questions of jurisdiction between reservation, county, state and federal governments.

Here, in a nutshell, is the root of the problem: The federal government negotiated treaties in the early to mid 1800s that set reservation boundaries for each tribe. But the Dawes Act of 1887 went further, assigning 160-acre parcels to each person within each reservation. In many cases, when each person in a reservation got his or her allotment, the reservation still had many acres left over. Through the Dawes Act, these acres were allotted to European settlers. While Europeans got to homestead on the land, it was still under the control of the reservation — based on the original treaties. This has created chaos in terms of tax, liquor, police and environmental jurisdictions over these lands. With water degradation (due to fecal coliforms, nitrates and pesticides, for example) becoming more common, particularly in agricultural areas, tribal councils and farmers are at odds. Some jurisdictional disputes are in court right now. In cases of water quality, the EPA is stuck in the middle.

The most interesting person we met today was Ira Salvini. He is the “tribal liaison” assisting the EPA. He is also an elder. Ira’s father was Italian and his mother a Paiute from Nevada. His mom died young, and his father left shortly after. So Ira grew up with his aunts and uncles, and went to residential schools. He does not seem bitter about any of it. He finished high school, then went to Haskell Indian Nation University at Lawrence, Kansas. He was a prof and then a dean at Haskell from 1960 to 1990. Haskell was created over 100 years ago, and it’s the only university of its kind in the U.S. In recent years, the EPA, Kansas State University and other institutions have worked with Haskell to bring its standards up to state or national equivalents for teacher training and science. We didn’t have time to hear any more of Ira’s story, but I have his business card and look forward to contacting him again.