Episode 219: Cris Stainbrook, Indian Land Tenure Foundation

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Jul 25

Today's guest is Cris Stainbrook, President of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF).

ILTF is a national community-based organization serving Indian nations and Indian people in the recovery and control of their rightful homelands. They work to promote education, increase cultural awareness, create economic opportunity, and reform the legal and administrative systems that prevent Indian people from owning and controlling reservation lands. The organization has provided over $98 million of grants, loans and services over the past 20 years.

We cover a lot in this episode, including some of the history of Indian land, how ILTF got started, some of the organization’s early tactics and how those tactics have evolved. We also talk about climate change, how Indian nations and Indian people think about risks, and which aspects they're most concerned about. We even dig into carbon markets, offsets and credits, as well as additionality and some of the ways ILTF is facilitating these solutions. It's a fascinating discussion and we hope you take the time to listen because if we all understand these perspectives better, it can help us chart not only a path of least resistance to decarbonizing our global economy, but also embracing justice and equality along the way.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 (me), @mcjpod (podcast) or @mcjcollective (company). You can reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded June 30, 2022.

In today's episode, we cover:

An overview of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF)
How the organization came to be and its mission to restore rightful land ownership of 90 million acres
Cris' personal climate journey
His background in fisheries biology and transition to Indian land
The role of the federal government in Indian land ownership
The Dawes General Allotment Act
ILTF's tactics at the beginning and how they've changed over time
Importance of education for Indian history and land issues
The organization's theory of change and how they measure progress
Changes on tribal land related to climate
How climate impacts day-to-day life of tribal members
How the tribes became interested in carbon markets and some of the issues they're working to overcome
The Indian Land Capital Company, a CDFI subsidiary of ILTF
Buyer incentives for the tribe's carbon credits
The National Indian Carbon Coalition and its assessment of additionality credits, setting prices, finding buyers, etc.
What Cris sees as the biggest barriers to moving forward on climate change
His thoughts on government's role in solving certain issues
Cris' message to listeners both in terms of the problem of climate change and Indian lands

Jason Jacobs (00:00:00):
Hey, everyone. Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey or MCJ, as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but they were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members. There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing. There's four criteria we screen for, determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent and we're not wasting our time for trying, and a collaborative spirit. Beyond that, the more diversity, the better. There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community, a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you want to learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co, the website, and click the Become A Member tab at the top. Enjoy the show.
Jason Jacobs (00:01:34):
Hello, everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (00:01:56):
Today's guest is Cris Stainbrook, president of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation or ILTF. ILTF is a national community-based organization serving American Indian nations and people in the recovery and control of their rightful homelands. They work to promote education, increase cultural awareness, create economic opportunity, and reform the legal and administrative systems that prevent Indian people from owning and controlling reservation lands. We cover a lot in this episode, including some of the history around the land that Native Americans did own and what happened when the American settlers moved in and some of the decisions that the government made and some of the control that they exerted over these "sovereign" people and their land that were treated as anything but sovereign. We talk about some of the work of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, the why behind it, some of the tactics that they use, and given that they've now been around for 22 years, we talk about the initial tactics and how those tactics have evolved from the time that Cris helped start the organization so long ago. We also talk about climate change and some of the risks associated with climate change and how Native Americans think about those risks, internalize those, and which aspects of it they're most concerned about. We also talk about opportunity and we talk about things like carbon markets and offsets and credits. We talk about additionality and some of the ways that the Native Americans and tribes are starting to embrace these offsets and projects, but also some of the concerns they have, some of the worries, some of the fears, some of the anxiety and the things that are important to them when they're deciding how to utilize these tools and which ways go against their values. It's a fascinating discussion, and I hope that you take the time to listen to it because I think if we all understand these perspectives better, it can help us chart not only a path of least resistance to decarbonizing our global economy, but also embracing justice and equality along the way. Cris, welcome to the show.
Cris Stainbrook (00:04:25):
Thanks for having me. It should be fun.
Jason Jacobs (00:04:28):
It's interesting. I think the way I got to you was that I tweeted and asked Twitter what topics on the podcast we hadn't covered yet that we should. Tim Luckow, who's the co-founder of a company called Farm that we're a small investor in, got in touch with me privately and said, pointed me to your work and Native Americans and tribal lands. It's such an important topic, especially in my world where I'm focused on climate change and how to rewire our global economy to be more in harmony with the planet and each other, and part of that is the planet, but part of that is each other. So understanding the history, understanding the challenges, understanding the issues that are front and center for Native Americans, it's just so important, and it's a topic that I don't claim to be well-versed in at all and I'm eager to learn more about. So really fortunate to have you on the show and have a chance to learn.
Cris Stainbrook (00:05:25):
It's good to be here and discuss these topics because I think, one, there's a fair bit of misunderstanding about Indian people and Indian lands, especially as it relates to the climate, global changes that are going on. We have for years, I think, the tribes have been trying to raise, and Indian people generally, have been trying to raise some of these issues because we tend to be in these days, both within this country and North America generally, in place. We aren't as fluid as the rest of the population in terms of moving around. So we sit and we experience the changes in the same location and there have been dramatic changes in climates that we experience.
Jason Jacobs (00:06:15):
Well, I have lots of questions there. Before we get too far down the path, can you just frame the discussion and talk a bit about the Indian Land Tenure Foundation and your work?
Cris Stainbrook (00:06:26):
So the foundation's relatively new. We started in 2002. I guess that's 20 years ago now.
Jason Jacobs (00:06:32):
Is there an expiration date on being able to say new because 20 years seems like a long time?
Cris Stainbrook (00:06:39):
Some days I would give you a quick answer to that. On other days, I would say it's been a long time since we've started.
Jason Jacobs (00:06:49):
Yeah. Well, that's life, right? Life goes by incredibly slowly and also in a blink.
Cris Stainbrook (00:06:54):
Well, that's right. Well, the work we do has its ups and downs, and so it adds to is it a long day or a short day.
Jason Jacobs (00:07:02):
Right, and it'd be great to understand the work you do, and also how and why the organization came about it. We know the when part. We got that fire.
Cris Stainbrook (00:07:09):
How it came about was Northwest Area Foundation out at St. Paul, Minnesota. I was working there as a senior program person and the board decided to change the style of grant making to focus more on a select number of communities within their eight state region that they served. One of the communities that they considered was the community of interest, being those people working on Indian land issues, and because I had done that before I went to the foundation, the board said, "Bring us ones you know." So we took in several different community groups and types and they selected Indian Land Tenure Foundation as one of those that they would work with. Over time, I ended up leaving Northwest Area Foundation coming over to be the initial president of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. It really started with a long community process of planning. When we first started at Northwest Area Foundation, we organized meetings of folks throughout the eight states, which included Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. For some folks, they will recognize that as the original territory served by the great Northern railroad. The funds for Northwest Area Foundation actually came out of the long time inheritance around James J. Hill, the builder of the great Northern railroad, and the railroad, of course, ran across a lot of Indian land as well. So it was full circle in that regard.
Cris Stainbrook (00:08:44):
We ended up meeting and taking input from literally thousands of Indian people about Indian land issues, and virtually, everyone mentioned that if nothing else, the land inside the reservation boundaries should be returned to Indian ownership, management, and control. The way it was alienated was through the Dawes General Allotment Act, which took the communal property the tribes had under treaty and divided that to individual Indian families, the 160 acres, 320 acres in some cases, and 80 acres in other cases, a lot of those lands to the individual heads of household. The rest of the land on the reservations was declared in excess of Indian needs and taken by the federal government and opened for homesteading or sale to timber companies or mining companies, other types of businesses, and that land was lost. 90 million acres of the land was declared basically in, well, 60 million was declared in excess of Indian needs, and another 30 million was alienated through the sale of some of the original allotments by Indian people to non-Indians. So in 1881, there was 138 million acres inside reservation boundaries that basically had been reserved through treaty or executive order that was reserved for the exclusive use and occupation by Indian people, and then in 1887 with the Dawes General Allotment Act, of course, that all changed. We had the allotments. We had the alienation of property that was in excess of Indian needs. Today, we have right at about 56 million acres in Indian ownership, management, and control inside the reservation boundaries.
Jason Jacobs (00:10:49):
So it was 138 million through the initial agreements with the government, and then the government essentially just decided, "Oops, we gave them more than they need, and so we're going to renegotiate without any merit because we want more for ourselves."
Cris Stainbrook (00:11:06):
More or less. I mean, they were getting pressured to open Indian lands to outside interests. So ostensibly, they were going to have Indian people become farmers and ranchers in the European style and decided that 160 acres was what it would take.
Jason Jacobs (00:11:25):
The farmers and ranchers, did the Indian people express desire to be farmers and ranchers or that's just what the government had in store for them?
Cris Stainbrook (00:11:33):
That's what the government had in store for them. In fact even today, you'd find a number of Indian people laughing about those days because many of the tribes had been pretty much what they would suggest to you is nomadic in that they would move around during the year to various places to hunt and gather. Now, they were allocated this reservation and then allocated 160 acres to make a living off of. They had no experience. Well, I shouldn't say that. I mean, this is hard because we have 560 some tribes recognized today by the federal government. Of course, they all have a different history and a different land history. So some tribes were sedentary tribes. They would stay in one area, even do some amount of what you would call farming and ranching today, but other tribes were hunters and gatherers and moved around regularly and had no experience with being on 160 acres and trying to make a living from it. That was the ostensible reason for doing it. The real reason was they wanted the land and they wanted to open the land up to other uses by non-Indians.
Jason Jacobs (00:12:49):
So back to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, so then what is the primary charter of the organization?
Cris Stainbrook (00:12:56):
Well, it's to get those lands, the 90 million acres back, plus some of the sites outside of the reservation boundaries where the tribes still hold a cultural or religious reason for wanting the property back, places like Bear Butte in South Dakota or Echelon in the black Hills, various sites where the tribes still practice their cultural beliefs.
Jason Jacobs (00:13:23):
Now, I made a note because I know exactly where I want to go with a followup question on the work of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, but before we do that, we talked about the origin story for the organization, but even in our prep call, we didn't talk about the Cris Stainbrook origin story. So can you talk a bit? Did you grow up feeling like you wanted to make your livelihood about getting this land back or how did this all come about and what's your story for how you arrived at doing the work that you do?
Cris Stainbrook (00:13:51):
I'll give you the reader's digest version. When I got out of high school, I realized I did not want to be in the small town in Iowa I grew up in, and I always thought it would be interesting to be in the Pacific Northwest. So I had a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa and recognized that a bachelor's degree in general science wasn't going to get me very far. So I ended up in Oregon and getting my master's degree at Oregon State in fisheries biology largely because I really wanted to go into aquaculture and rearing a fish on a massive scale and a facility type. Got my master's in fisheries, worked on the Columbia River for the tribes and doing fisheries biology, primarily political fisheries biology. I was assigned to work on the Northwest Power Planning Act and allocations on the Columbia River of US v. Oregon lawsuit over salmon harvest on the river and minimum stream flow hearings throughout the state of Oregon.
Cris Stainbrook (00:14:54):
Actually, at one of the hearings in Eastern Oregon where we met with some members of another tribe before the hearing and we were having dinner and I was complaining about, "I have this degree in fisheries biology, but you can't see salmon. Everybody's trying to kill salmon. It's hard to even project how many salmon might return." One of the tribal leaders from the other tribe, Antone Minthorn from Umatilla, turns to me and he says, "Well, if you think that's hard, you ought to try Indian land." It was on the drive home that I was sitting there thinking, "How hard can that be? No one's trying to kill that land and it stays in one place." The hubris of youth said, "I'll go do that and then I'll come back to fisheries biology." So here, 45 years later, I'm sitting here having been deeply engrossed in Indian land for the last 35 years of that.
Jason Jacobs (00:15:51):
When you initially started focusing on Indian land, what was the driving motivation? What was the goal of that focus and how has that evolved over the four plus decades that you've been working on it?
Cris Stainbrook (00:16:03):
Well, it evolved a lot. The first thing I came to realize was this wasn't the easy thing I thought it was going to be where you say, "Okay. Let's recover some land and go out and do that." You quickly learn on the front end, I quickly learned that the federal government plays a huge role in Indian land because when they divided the reservations into the allotments, they declared all Indian people and tribes incompetent to handle their own affairs land-wise. That's how they took the land into trust, and the federal government then took ownership of all that land and hold it in beneficial use for tribal people and the tribes. In doing that, of course, it was subject to the whims of the federal government, and it was at that point fairly early on that I realized the complexity of land on reservations was going to be far beyond what I ever envisioned it would be. Ever since then, it's been a learning experience all the time because the federal government changes rules and regs related to Indian land on a fairly regular basis.
Jason Jacobs (00:17:15):
That's surprising. I mean, it seems so functional overall, the federal government.
Cris Stainbrook (00:17:23):
Yeah. Right. That's why during an extended lawsuit over proceeds from that land that the federal judge declared it to be, the Department of Interior Management, to be one of the more archaic and arcane bureaucracies he's ever seen. It's a weird combination between this trust status and tribal control. Courts generally have held that the tribes are sovereign nations and the tribes are sovereign nations. They know they're sovereign nations, but you have this trust relationship. Of course, nothing says sovereignty asking the secretary's permission to do something.
Jason Jacobs (00:18:13):
It's a terrible analogy, but it reminds me of the Britney Spear's conservatorship, where it's like she's got to ask permission to get a coffee and justify her actions versus just being able to go. I mean, if you're sovereign, then why can't you act sovereign?
Cris Stainbrook (00:18:28):
We had a young lady come in and do some work for us as an intern, and we assigned her to look at what were called the competency commissions. When they wanted more land, they weren't satisfied with what they got, apparently. The only way to get it is if Indian allottee sold it, and they couldn't sell trust land without the permission of the government or they had to be declared competent. So these commissions went out and declared people competent and then sell their land. It is exactly like Britney Spears.
Jason Jacobs (00:19:02):
So I mean, the organization's been around I think you said for 22 years or so. Is that right?
Cris Stainbrook (00:19:07):
That's right.
Jason Jacobs (00:19:08):
What were the tactics when you first started the organization, and then fast forward, what are some of the tactics today and what are the biggest changes tactically from when you started to today?
Cris Stainbrook (00:19:20):
When we first started, we thought, "All right. How do you create a movement?" So we've pondered that for a while and we looked at the movements that had gotten started in the United States, anti-smoking, recycling, the big movements, and they all started with kids. So jeez, our first five to 10 years really was about education. We created curriculum from kindergarten to 12th grade. We have a tribal college curriculum, one for universities, and we even have one tribe ask us if we could do a coloring book for Indian land for their head start program. So we even had that. We've done teacher training. We did at least 80% to 90% of our work initially was around education, not just of the general public, but also the Indian public because as one gentleman put it, we've been disconnected from our land for so long that we don't even understand it, and we need to do education around that.
Jason Jacobs (00:20:27):
It reminds me of the Holocaust where it's like the more years that pass and the less people that were alive at the time, the easier it is to forget that it ever happened. To have circumstances unfold where it might happen again, well, how does that happen? History repeats because with the passing of time, the knowledge transfer doesn't keep up, and people, it's not even that they forget, it's that they never know.
Cris Stainbrook (00:20:52):
That's right. Indian history is not really taught well in schools, generally. I mean, it's usually the day before Thanksgiving and the kids make their little paper mache hats and feathers and stuff, and that's the exposure they have to Indian issues. So we wanted to change that as best we could. I think now we have the curriculum taught in something like 1500 school districts. We have about 4,000 or 5,000 teachers who have been trained to use the curriculum.
Jason Jacobs (00:21:27):
What was the bet in starting with education, Cris, in terms of so if you educate the kids, then what? What's the theory of change there?
Cris Stainbrook (00:21:35):
Well, the theory is if you educate the kids, they will grow up with a different sense of Indian country and Indian people, and they'll understand why the tribes are where they're at, why they're there, and how they still survive as sovereign nations, particularly at the upper end. I think having that understanding among high schoolers and university students, you see a different mentality around Indian reservations and the existence of the reservations and why they can do certain things and can't do other things, and there's just better understanding.
Cris Stainbrook (00:22:14):
We see the change even occurring today in the sense that county commissioners who are getting elected have had some more exposure to Indian land issues and are enlightened or at least informed as they make decisions. When we first started, most county commissioners on the boundaries and on land that county had under jurisdiction, they were 65, 70-year-old guys who didn't really have ... How do I want to say this? They didn't have great feelings toward the tribes. Now, we see tribes and counties working together, realizing their economies are intertwined, particularly in the more rural areas where tribe may be the largest employer in the county, in the economic engine of these various counties largely because you're having a depopulation of a lot of rural areas. So the percentage of Indian people in the county is much higher now than it was. We saw all that change really occurring over the last few years. So you asked about how our tactics changed. In 2006, started the Indian Land Capital Company as a subsidiary of two groups, Indian Land Tenure Foundation and the Native American Community Development Corporation. Elouise Cobell and I, Elouise was a banker from Blackfeet, and she and I were talking about the way banks lend to the tribes for land purchases and other activities. We said, "Well, they really should be lending to the tribes the same way a bank would lend to let's say the state of California."
Jason Jacobs (00:24:05):
How were they doing it?
Cris Stainbrook (00:24:06):
They were treating them as high risk loans and charging exorbitant interest rates and convincing the tribes that it was a big risk for them. They really should have been doing it on full faith and credit, and that's how, when we set up the Indian Land Capital company, we set it up on full faith and credit loans. We were basically told we'd go out business in no time because the tribes wouldn't be able to pay us back. We have yet to have a loan to a tribe go to default. We've now been doing that for almost 15 years of loans. We've done upwards of $50 million in loans, and literally have not had one go into default.
Cris Stainbrook (00:24:51):
We've had that got behind on their loans, but as we tell people, the tribes will work out something on money, but if they get land back, they aren't interested in ever giving that land up again. So we don't take land as collateral. We do them on general obligation of the tribe. We've done more of that. We've really moved toward doing massive amount of estate planning work with Indian people because what happened by declaring them incompetent way back when, the land would be subjected. If the allottee died, the land would be subjected to state probate courts initially, and then subsequently the federal government put together a probate code for trust land, those lands that the federal government held in trust, but decided that the land should never be divided, only the title. So over a number of generations, you have this division of the land title among heirs, and we've had, oh, as many as 3,000 interest holders, undivided interest holders in 160 acre allotment. So if you can imagine sitting down at dinner with 2,000 of your closest relatives and saying, "How are we going to manage the 160 acres this year?" it's an impossible conversation.
Cris Stainbrook (00:26:20):
So what we've been doing for the past 17 years is really working on getting Indian people to write wills so that the land doesn't get further fractionated, the land title doesn't get further fractionated, and even doing various processes like gift deeds and other mechanisms in order to consolidate those undivided interests, get it down to where you might have two or three interests in an allotment rather than two or 3,000 in allotment. That way, Indian people can get back their control and management of the land. So those are probably the two biggest tactical shifts that we've made.
Jason Jacobs (00:27:03):
In the longest time time over the last 22 years, is it as simple we started with X land and now we have Y land and therefore there's a delta and then we're just going to push that down and that's the primary metric through which we measure success or how have you tracked progress along the way, and the natural followup, of course, to that will be, and how has it been going?
Cris Stainbrook (00:27:25):
Our board has given us 22 measures that we report onto them all the time. Some of it being how many students are being exposed to the curriculum. Some of it is how many wills are we writing other pieces or how much land are we actively involved in consolidating the undivided interest in? Then some of it is in just straight return of land to the tribes in terms of acres. As I was saying earlier on the curriculum side, that continues to grow. We're literally training or exposing the curriculum to thousands of students each year. On the estate planning side, I think we've written something like a little over 10,000 wills, and we'll probably do upwards of 500 in the coming year. Then in terms of acres returned, I think we just crossed 150,000 acres, which on the one hand doesn't sound like much, but on the other hand, I mean, most of this is willing seller, willing buyer. So it comes down to the tribe identifies a property that's up for sale and then we help finance that property.
Cris Stainbrook (00:28:42):
We were looking the other day and we estimated that we're somewhere between 260 million and 300 million in terms of land value that has been leveraged for the tribes. It's a long ways from 90 million. That's why our mission statement is a 150-year mission statement. It took us 120 years to get to this point with Indian land and it's going to take us a long time to give it all back, and we recognize that. Our goal at the foundation with the staff that's here, we understand advances in medical science, but we don't expect to be here 120 years from now. So it's how do we put the foundation in a good place that it continues well beyond our time here and is continually growing. Of that 150,000 acres, probably 50,000 of that happened in the last two years. So we're picking up speed as we go along.
Jason Jacobs (00:29:44):
You mentioned before when we were talking about how here in North America we're less nomadic than in other parts of the world and, therefore, because we stay in the same place, then we have a benchmark of how the climate was and, therefore, can see more acutely when it changes because we're seeing it relative to the place that we've been and understand the history. Can you talk a little bit more about that? You said that things have been changing a lot. What are the biggest changes that you've seen on the tribal land?
Cris Stainbrook (00:30:14):
Certainly for the coastal tribes, they're seeing it all the time, higher tide levels, more violent storms coming off on shore. So those tribes are seeing a lot that way. We're also seeing changes in the fauna and flora, the local fauna and flora for tribes in land. So we've got longer droughts. We've got floods. We've got the violent storms of tornadoes, and haboobs, and all the big wind storms. We see temperatures going way higher than we've seen them in some places. I mean, all of these things. I can tell you on a personal side of this. My wife and I moved to Minnesota back in 1990, and when we moved here after a couple of years, she decided that she would do some farming for the farmer's market. So of course, the seed catalogs come out and you look, and you say, "Well, we're in zone three of USDA's plant survivability map." We were in zone three. We were just north of the Twin Cities. They've reposted the new survivability map and we are almost, well, we are in zone five now. So in essence, what that means is we can grow plants that were basically when we moved here limited to about St. Louis, Missouri, about 460-470 miles south of where we live. We're now able to grow those plants on our farm. Most of zone three has been pushed as far north as Canada. There's just a little bit of zone three left in the state of Minnesota.
Cris Stainbrook (00:31:59):
I use that as my objective measure because the seed catalogs don't have any dog in the fight, right? They just want to sell you the seeds that'll grow, and they aren't out there saying, "Well, this is climate change," or any of that. They're just saying, "This is what will grow," and I think that's a dramatic shift. I mean, that's dumbfounding dramatic shift for me personally. For the tribes, it really becomes, "How do you adjust to that?" We've been working with a band in Northern Minnesota, and recently, they were offered by a donor a thousand trees, and the question becomes, "What trees do you plant? If you're going to go out and do reforestation, will the trees that were once indigenous to the area, will they even be able to grow given the warming temperature or should you be focused on plants from a 100 to 200 miles south from there and plant those?" Interestingly enough, the University of Minnesota has research up there, not that far from where the band is located, and they're doing climate change research on the effects on different plant species. Some of that will inform how we go forward and how they go forward with their selection of the trees, but still, if we continue to see the acceleration of climate change at the rate we're seeing it now, I'm not sure we'll ever catch up to it. I think that's worrisome for me personally, and I know it's worrisome to the tribes as well.
Jason Jacobs (00:33:43):
Now, obviously, that has implications existentially in terms of the overall quality of life and interdependence of all the different living creatures, and trees, and oceans, and all of that, but from a day-to-day livelihoods of the tribes, yeah, I mean, you mentioned the seeds, and the changing patterns. How much is that putting the tribes at risk? Is it mostly the big picture or are there actual implications and threats as it relates to how they put food on the table this year, next year?
Cris Stainbrook (00:34:17):
Well, in a big way, even in the day-to-day life of a lot of tribal members, I mean, you look at here in Minnesota, one of the measures that always gets used is the wild rice production. It only takes a drought and you can lose a whole year of wild rice production. Other years, you maybe flooded out. So people who rely on wild rice, both for a livelihood selling it commercially, but also as a sustenance, that becomes a day-to-day type of piece. The same with maple syrup and syruping, sugaring. On the Great Plains, of course, you get these droughts that can last for years at times, and temperatures that are too high for agricultural production, just basic agricultural production. Somewhere between 65% and 70% of the land remaining on reservations is ag land, and so your day-to-day living is coming off of the land and people are being impacted all the time by that. I mean, it's hard to go down this list of impacts because in California, of course, the tribes are all scrambling around trying to avoid wildfire season, which is now a stretch from a couple of three or four months to most of the year. So I mean, you have these imminent dangers along with everything else. Of course, now we're in that, what are they saying, a 1200-year drought, basically, and the Colorado River is running dry, and that doesn't just affect Indian people. That affects major, major cities with millions and millions of people, but a lot of the tribes are the tip of the spear on some of that.
Jason Jacobs (00:36:12):
You'd mentioned in the pre-chat that we did before the episode that you were spending more time thinking about carbon markets, carbon credits, offsets. Can you talk a little bit about the nature of that interest and why the carbon markets matter to you and the tribes?
Cris Stainbrook (00:36:33):
We first got in it because there were farmers and ranchers on a couple of big reservations who were entering the carbon market on the Chicago carbon exchange, and we thought, "Well, if they're getting paid for doing the same practices they've been doing for a long time, why can't the tribes get paid for the same thing?" So we backed into it that way. Then once the carbon markets emerged, if you will, it was one of those opportunities where in Indian country, we always get these scammers coming in first, right? So the tribes were being approached to sell all of their carbon credits in advance to these fly by night groups coming in saying, "Well, we'll give you $4 a ton or $2 a ton." Sound like a good deal, but when the carbon markets really started taking off of, it was not a good deal.
Cris Stainbrook (00:37:35):
So we started the National Indian Carbon Coalition largely as an educational piece for Indian people in the tribes to understand what's a good deal and what isn't a good deal, and what does it mean to enter a carbon market, what does it mean to accumulate carbon credits. Over time, what happened was we were asked by several tribes to develop carbon projects on their properties because they trusted us and they trusted that we wanted to leave them the revenues from these carbon sales at the tribal level and not take a bunch of profit out of it. So now, two weeks ago, we actually ended up registering our first two tribes and their carbon tonnage, and we're in the process now of selling that to the voluntary market, not the California Air Resources Board auction process, but rather through voluntary sales.
Cris Stainbrook (00:38:37):
The issue we still have, and it's one that we're working on solidifying, if you will, is we didn't get into it and the tribes don't get into it to not have some effect on carbon in the air. I mean, we want to say, "This is how it was practiced. This is the additionality that can be had, and it's the additionality that should be in the carbon market not just how we're doing this," and we're recognizing carbon in the soil, let's say. So we're modifying some of the practices and how we look at what carbon is over and above what the current practices have been in selling those carbon credits that are truly additional to what the practice was before. It's our belief that that should be the standard for all of the carbon market is that it's the additionality. It's not just simply saying, "Well, we're doing no till drilling and, therefore, we're leaving carbon in the soil." Well, they've been doing no till drilling for 30 years and then somebody says, "Well, you can get carbon credits for that."
Cris Stainbrook (00:39:57):
So a lot of where the carbon market really focuses, of course, is on timber because that's a lot of carbon that could be sequestered relative to other sources and pieces. The issue and what really concerns me personally is that carbon can be 40 years in the making or in the capture. So what does that mean? Does that mean we're changing carbon in the atmosphere fast enough to offset what's going on? I have real concerns about that. I think either we start reducing carbon at the source or all the carbon work we do with trees and other capture methods isn't going to change our outcome.
Jason Jacobs (00:40:43):
In terms of the carbon markets from an economic standpoint, is it more about improving the livelihoods of the existing landowners in the tribes or is it also a tool to help get more land back in the tribes' control?
Cris Stainbrook (00:41:00):
Oh, it's both. So with our first two projects, they're both on wholly owned tribal lands, and really for them, it's about not having to harvest the trees on those properties. It helps offset that economic costs there, but it's also to protect the rest of the environment. So the one project you can clearly see that they want to protect the land around their rice lakes, protect the water quality around the rice lakes. In the past, because they owned so little land, they would've had to cut some fair bit of that timber in order to get the economic return from it. Carbon credits allowed them not to have to cut those, the acres, and protect the rice lakes. Similarly on the second reservation as well, they also have lands that they want to protect. They couldn't afford just to set them aside. So there's that. We also just completed a major purchase from one of the large timber industrial forests in Northern Minnesota, but all of the financing for that will be returned through the carbon sequestration on those industrial lands.
Jason Jacobs (00:42:26):
By taking land that where the trees would've otherwise been cut and not cutting them and therefore getting credit for keeping those trees intact.
Cris Stainbrook (00:42:34):
That's right. It provides a whole number of ancillary benefits from hunting and fishing and access to the land that they didn't have. These are on reservation lands that had been alienated during the allotment process. So the band hasn't had access really to these lands for the last 150 years, and now they own that land and will manage it on a landscape level as opposed to these lands were mixed in with tribal ownership lands, but there wasn't any coordinated management of those properties together. Now, they've got this much more consolidated landscape that they can manage over.
Jason Jacobs (00:43:24):
I'm sensing that we're uncovering here a tension that needs to be navigated. I'm not sure, but I'm going to put it out there and I'm curious what your thoughts are and that's that, I mean, the organization exists to get this land back and there's a lot of it that belongs to the tribes that is not currently in tribe control. You also care a lot about additionality and not just pushing paper around, but actually doing good for the long term health of the planet and of the people and other life forms that inhabit the planet. Are there situations where less additionality would lead to more land returning faster, and are those incentives at odds?
Cris Stainbrook (00:44:10):
Well, they shouldn't be. Well, when it comes right down to it, I mean, one of the things we were told by all the tribes as we've entered into this carbon market situation is they didn't want to sell carbon credits to polluters just to let them pollute more, and that's why a number of the tribes don't want to enter the carbon market in California is because it's an auction, and those companies that are buying the credits oftentimes are buying them just to pollute more, if you will. So they're looking for, in doing our sales on the voluntary market, they're looking for companies that just want to offset their current carbon footprint, not necessarily increase their carbon footprint. So that becomes, for the tribes, that's a big issue. We've had offers from a number of oil and gas companies who would like to buy our carbon credits and the tribes aren't interested in selling to. In our process, we allow the tribes to select who they're going to sell. We try and get a portfolio of companies lined out so the tribes have some options on selling the carbon credits through the coalition.
Jason Jacobs (00:45:31):
So I mean, that covers the incentives of the buyer's piece, but what about the additionality of the projects themselves? Are there types of projects, for example, that could be more profitable to the tribes sooner that you stay away from, which could mean that you are slowing down the ability to reclaim land, which is what the organization's mission is all about?
Cris Stainbrook (00:45:55):
That's right, and we explain that to the tribes on the front side, and they're largely very comfortable with the approach we've taken in terms of really getting down to this additionality piece. The thing that's interesting with the additionality piece and being more restrictive around that is that a number of companies have come to realize that not all carbon credits are the same. So they're looking for these high quality carbon credits. If you restrict it to additionality, those are really considered high quality credits. So rather than pay $15 a ton, they pay $20 a ton for the high quality. I think that's where the whole industry's probably going to head simply because right now you can offset that cost difference by just saying, "Okay. These are only additionality credits." You get higher price point but fewer credits and it offsets that way.
Jason Jacobs (00:47:02):
How do you go about doing that assessment and how do you go about keeping inventory of the project and how do you go about setting prices and how do you go about finding buyers? I'm sure I'm missing dozens of other how do you go abouts, but it seems like it requires both resources and expertise that wouldn't be natural for an organization like yours. So one is that true, and two, if so, where does that expertise come from and what expertise are you leaning on the most?
Cris Stainbrook (00:47:28):
We hired a very competent person to be the head of the project program director for the National Indian Carbon Coalition, and he's been for the last four or five years fully engaged in those types of questions. I think understanding the market and understanding the various accreditations of carbon credits, you do a lot of education of people on both sides, not just simply on the tribal side, but also on the market side. In order to even get these carbon credits accredited, you have to go through a fairly lengthy and diligent process for doing actual measurements of the carbon availability in the forests or on the soils requires bringing in survey crews, and doing transacts, and dividing the properties up into smaller sections so that you do sub-sampling. Each one of these projects, just the nearly two years it takes to put them in place and be able to document all this, the first two projects cost us about $150,000. That's the other thing, too, that we do, that for-profit carbon folks don't do is we upfront all the costs and we pay for all of the surveys, all of the work that gets done.
Jason Jacobs (00:48:59):
Is that cost on a per project basis or was some of that cost that you need to get the infrastructure in place that you can then utilize for subsequent projects over time?
Cris Stainbrook (00:49:08):
It's on a project basis. So we get reimbursed for our upfront costs if the tribe follows through on the project and the sales happen. We get reimbursed out of the sales, and then we also stay with the tribes for 40 years is our intention. So the project every year has at least some updating of the project and the actual documentation of the carbon projections that were done, and then every five years, they do a full survey again. We stay with them on that. A lot of the for-profit companies don't do that. They'll come in, they'll set up the project, take out their share of the profits at about 30%, maybe 35% of the project on the front end. We take out 13% to 18% over time. We're in the process of trying to put together a pool of funds for these projects because at any given time now, we have four or five of the projects going on and it really stretches the foundation resources very thin to upfront these and then wait for the sales to begin rolling back in and paying off those costs.
Jason Jacobs (00:50:25):
In terms of certification, are you doing that assessment and certifying yourselves or do you work with any of the existing established standard bodies?
Cris Stainbrook (00:50:37):
Yeah, no. We work with the standard certification and registries. So right now, the two projects we've gotten done are with the American Carbon Registry. There are two other major registries that we've been examining and looking at how do they certify them and what are the protocols, but right now, it's the American Carbon Registry.
Jason Jacobs (00:51:02):
Some of these certification bodies have taken a lot of heat for things like additionality, things like transparency, things like permanence. Do you worry that just because it's certified doesn't mean it's actually as high quality as you aspire for it to be?
Cris Stainbrook (00:51:19):
Yeah, absolutely. That's why we're looking at others, too. Now, I'm not saying ACR is bad in that way, and they've been changing some of their protocols as well, but I mean, it's a concern for us as much as anything because we don't want people to question whether or not we're doing something good for the environment. So we want to be assured that we're meeting this additionality piece. So if one protocol seems like it's not measuring up to having additionality in it, then we move to a different protocol.
Jason Jacobs (00:52:01):
Some people say that even with additionality, the whole carbon markets are just a one big permission to pollute machine, and that we'd be better off if we just got rid of them and just did the hard work to actually stop the emissions that we're pumping into the atmosphere every day, every week, every month, every year. Do you worry about that?
Cris Stainbrook (00:52:21):
I don't worry so much about it because the tribes, of course, as I said earlier on the voluntary market, they're attempting to at least sell only to those who are offsetting their carbon footprint, not polluting more.
Jason Jacobs (00:52:36):
Do you worry that giving them the ability to offset their existing decreases the urgency for them cleaning up their existing?
Cris Stainbrook (00:52:44):
Yeah, but I worry about that across the board. We've known this has been a problem for quite some time and we as society don't seem to grasp the urgency of it. So am I waiting for Joe Biden's one big fell swoop cut down the pollution and meet the Paris protocols? No, I'm not waiting for that anymore. In fact, in some ways, you could make the argument that Trump, actually, by just turning a blind eye and canceling the agreement with Paris accord actually caused people to wake up a little bit more to it and more people to get serious about it because they didn't like him either, but I think if we don't work on both sides of this, we as a human species may not make it on this planet.
Jason Jacobs (00:53:43):
Yeah, and I got that from you before we started recording. I mean, it sounds like you're not an optimist and it'd be interesting to understand in your view. So this is Indian land aside, and the important work that you do aside, and just looking at it from a climate change and overall sustainability of the planet. What are the biggest barriers to doing what we need to do? If you could wave a magic wand and it would proceed in a way from where we are because you can't forget about where we are, you have to factor in that the population does operate in a certain way, the markets do exist, there's all this history and infrastructure and institutional knowledge and laws and international politics, what exist exists, so given that, if we could move forward in any way that you dreamed, what does that look like?
Cris Stainbrook (00:54:35):
I don't know that I'm the right person to ask that question.
Jason Jacobs (00:54:38):
I'm not either. That's why I do this show. I'm trying to understand it because I certainly don't have the answers.
Cris Stainbrook (00:54:44):
For me personally, it comes down to the choices in things like what I do, what I buy, what I don't buy. For a long time, I waffled around about buying a log splitter as opposed to splitting it by hand with a splitting maul, I mean, a long time. Finally, I got to the point where I'm 69 years old and I'm out there trying to split this wood, struggling in the middle of winter trying to split a wood and I said, "Well, it's time to get a log splitter." Rationale behind that was, "Do I really need to spend more fossil fuel on this wood, and what am I gaining by that in the end?" but it get to a point where I needed to split more wood than I could split.
Jason Jacobs (00:55:33):
Do you think all that? I mean, just as a theory of change, I mean, I get the guilty conscience as an individual because you don't want to be contributing to it, but from a voluntary behavior change standpoint, someone argued that that's just a distraction from doing the necessary systems change that we need, and others would argue that it all starts with us as individuals. How do you think about that?
Cris Stainbrook (00:55:54):
Well, I think it's across the board. It's not one or the other. I think having a personal responsibility on some of it is absolutely necessary from people. At the same time, I do think there are bigger pieces. There's a gentleman out of Seattle who has been pushing for years this notion of solutionary rail, moving from the diesel engines in the trains that run all over to going to electric. If you look at it, it makes all the sense in the world. I mean, the diesel on an engine of a train is just turning the generator. It's not turning the wheels. It's turning the generator, which is electric. Moving to solar and wind along the rail tracks to provide the energy to move the train saves billions and billions of tons of carbon going into the air. Those types of level of change need to happen, too, not just individual level, but bigger system change level. It's difficult given the infrastructure we've built to just make those kind of changes overnight without thinking about how do we make that equitable across the board for everybody to share in some of the burden of that, but I do think there are systems changes that should and could occur if we could just get our minds collectively around some of it. I think that the failing is we're all sitting around to some degree waiting for someone to do the moonshot that solves the problem. Well, technology will save us, and I don't see that. Maybe somebody is working it out somewhere, but I don't see it readily apparent.
Jason Jacobs (00:57:45):
Yeah. We can talk all day about what we should do, but what do you think we will do? Is it going to be status quo and things are just going to get continually worse and then we'll just fade away or how does this all play out?
Cris Stainbrook (00:58:01):
Well, and this is my more pessimistic days. I'd answer that question real quick like, "Yeah, we're just doomed." On my more optimistic day, I think there are increasing signs that people are confronted with that begin to say, "This has to change." So I don't know if it's in this administration or the next one or the one after in this country around global change, but I do think we're starting to see all these manifestations at a personal level or a community level that ultimately will coalesce, but the tough part with carbon is you don't see it. So people are not confronted with carbon every day, but changing environment, and if we change too late, will we have gone past that point of no return? We're watching the polar ice caps melting at an abnormal speed this week or last week in the Midwest. We had cattle dying in the stock pens because the heat was too high during the evening and they couldn't cool down, and so they just perished. I think there were several thousand. I mean, those types of things are starting to hit home and closer to home for people. I think that's what, hopefully, it will enlighten folks to the need for some real action, national level action.
Jason Jacobs (00:59:39):
So I'm curious then, as it relates to things like plane travel and should we do it, as it relates to things like eating meat, alternative protein, for example, like plant-based burgers or better soil practices for regenerative ag or things like that or even growth in general or electricity like the billion plus people who don't have access to basic electricity, should they? I don't know that much about it, but this whole concept of degrowth and returning to the stone age is essentially, are you a proponent? Do you think it would ever happen? Even if it could, do you think it should?
Cris Stainbrook (01:00:14):
I don't think it will ever happen, but I do think that we're going to see a scaling back of many of the things that we've taken as creature comforts.
Jason Jacobs (01:00:23):
Like what?
Cris Stainbrook (01:00:24):
Like heating and cooling. I had a conversation the other day about a housing development that one of the tribes wanted to do. I said to him, "Well, you're surrounded by all these other developments, and if you look at their roof, they have all these solar panels on them," and I said, "Why not align your whole development so that you can take advantage of that type of solar power as opposed to worrying about how big the electric lines got to be coming into the development?" We have to do that kind of planning and we have to get out in front of it. The other thing I think we're going to see, I think this is going to be sooner rather than later, and the economy's going for some of it, but I think we're going to see smaller houses built and more efficient houses built. Those are the kind of things that may delay the inevitable, but at the same time could end up having really sufficient decreases in the carbon we're putting out. I think one of the big pieces that really needs to be addressed in a harsh and hard way is really the methane releases from oil and gas facilities. If you drive on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, I mean, it looks like Saudi Arabia at night where all the gas flaring off of the wells in the Bakken region are visible for 50 miles, and there's lots of them, and all they're doing is flaring off the methane. I think that's one of the bigger things that could be contained. Methane has gone under the radar for a lot of people between agriculture and the oil and gas. Methane is the bigger issue.
Jason Jacobs (01:02:06):
What do you think government's role should be in all this? You said that you're not going to sit around waiting for the heavy hand of government to force our hands as a society, but if it would, do you think that would be a good thing?
Cris Stainbrook (01:02:18):
Yeah. I do think it would be a good thing. Well, let's say the methane coming out of the oil and gas. One of the things has been discussed I know by a number of Indian people up at Fort Berthold is that methane has a value. You can burn that methane through flaring it or you could pipe it and they're supposed to pipe it and then use the heat for heating and cooling and other things. Maybe it becomes the financial incentive and you push those incentives and say, "If you're going to do that, you're going to pay us for it." So I think there's ways for the federal government and for the tribal governments and others to look at their activities and the activities in land and say, "We got to change this thing." Really, if you look at it, there were people writing about the carbon economy back in the '90s. Basically, what's happening is the bill is coming due. We owe this planet a debt and we just keep building the debt. We don't pay the bill.
Jason Jacobs (01:03:28):
Cris, knowing that there's a wide variety of types of listeners that listen to this show, you've got entrepreneurs and people that have been working in climate for a long time in various ways, whether that's on the NGO side or in academia or IPCC scientists, you've got sitting electeds and their climate teams, you've got journalists. So you never know what you're going to get. I mean, it's primarily North American, but only about 70%, so 30% rest of the world, and that's a growing number. So we're trying to get more global over time both in terms of audience and in terms of coverage, but what message do you have for them? What do you want them to hear? I'll ask that both about your work and about the Native American people and Native American lands, but also about the problem of climate change since, of course, that's why this podcast exists.
Cris Stainbrook (01:04:17):
Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of folks, tribal folks out of Nevada and they were asking me, they wanted my impressions on where the economy was headed and are we headed for a recession, and I was giving them some pieces behind that. They wanted know what they should focus on. I told them that, "You really need to focus your investment locally." If there's lessons to be learned coming out of COVID, it's that individual locales were suffering more from one thing or another than others. If you take a lesson from that and you go back, let's say into the 1960s or 1950s, the communities weren't all trying to compete on a global level. A lot of the communities, the smaller rural communities, were virtually pretty much self-contained. They produced most of their food locally, provided most of the services locally. If we looked at those communities that did well during the COVID shutdown, those were the communities that still retained some of that. So they weren't driving cattle out of Nevada to an Iowa packing plant and then shipping the cuts and hamburger back to Nevada. There's that kind of thing that if we started looking more locally we could begin to change that, I wouldn't call it comfort level, but more assurance that you're able to survive a decent living level, but it isn't costing the planet the arm and leg to do it. I think that's more or less what we're aimed for at the Indian Land Tenure Foundation is to really be able to recover the land that we lost, but then use that land locally, not have it become let's go sell all our products to China type of thing, but let's first assure our people that we're going to be able to live on our reservation and use land productively for ourselves, not be a third world country where all our resources get exploited for some other purposes.
Jason Jacobs (01:06:37):
Well, this has such a fascinating discussion, and it's taken us in all sorts of directions. It's personally given me a lot to think about and reflect on. Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or do you have any parting words for listeners?
Cris Stainbrook (01:06:56):
I would hope it has been enlightening for some of your listeners just to even hear more about Indian country.
Jason Jacobs (01:07:03):
Actually, that's one thing I didn't ask is just how can we be helpful to you.
Cris Stainbrook (01:07:07):
Understanding. Oftentimes when I give talks in front of live audiences, I put them at ease at the beginning because I think I'm going to hit them up for a check at the end. I don't know. You can relax. All I want you to do is understand us a little better coming out of the other side. I think the same is true of this. It's just understand this a little better. Understand how we got in the situation we are with Indian land and how it's difficult for us to manage that land the way we would like to until we get it back in ownership.
Jason Jacobs (01:07:41):
Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. You definitely opened my eyes in a lot of ways, and I'm planning to continue to dig in deeper and wishing you every success in your pursuits and would love to also keep the dialogue going, especially as you're getting more into those carbon markets and they continue to evolve. I mean, it sounds like there's a number of ways that our paths will cross.
Cris Stainbrook (01:08:05):
Yeah. Well, I hope so. I've enjoyed it. Thank you for having me on.
Jason Jacobs (01:08:10):
Hey, everyone. Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co not .com. Someday we'll get the .com, but right now, .co. You can also find me on Twitter, @JJacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. Before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that. Thank you.