Title: Tribal Lands Provide Forest Management Laboratory for Mainstream University Students
Abstract: Northern Arizona University (NAU) faculty and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) foresters initiated a partnership to expose NAU School of Forestry (SoF) graduate students to tribal forest management practices by incorporating field trips to the 1.68-million acre Fort Apache Indian Reservation as part of their silviculture curriculum. Tribal field trips were contrasted and coconvened with field trips to national forests to allow students to gain a unique perspective of the specific differences, challenges, and diversity of management and silvicultural practices ongoing in Indian Country. Field trips were intended to educate students beyond the dominant paradigm of forest management and to consider the broad diversity of management and forest types that exist on tribal lands. This article presents perspectives from the White Mountain Apache Tribe, BIA Fort Apache Agency staff, and faculty and graduate students in the SoF on the value of incorporating tribal lands as part of graduate students' forestry curriculum. Management and Policy Implications Recent forestry graduates will be faced by complex ecological issues in the 21st century where balancing social, ecological, and economic needs will be a growing challenge. Further, current literature suggests that there is a need for developing forestry students' nontechnical skills, such as human dimensions and professional interactions. This article presents an evaluation of a field program that attempts to address these needs by involving field trips to tribal lands to showcase the differences in forest practices on tribal and nontribal lands. This experienced-based learning fostered students' affective skills and broadened their perspectives regarding the cultural values that forests provide to Indian people. Perspectives from faculty, students, and tribal natural resource professionals indicate high field program success, and the framework could provide other institutions with a model for developing similar curricular activities for student engagement.