Indigenous Land Stewardship, Conservation Reform, and Land Return with Lee Clauss

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Lee Clauss, Southern California Project Manager with The Trust for Public Land and Principal Consultant at LSC Consulting, specializing in Indigenous land stewardship, sovereignty, and cultural resource management. Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
1:31 - Nic's New Job!
7:13 - Interview with Lee Clauss Starts
22:37 - What needs to Change?
33:03 - What is the Process of Giving Land Back?
40:36- #Fieldnotes with Lee!

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Lee Clauss at Lee Clauss | LinkedIn 

Guest Bio:
Lee Clauss currently serves as a Project Manager on the Trust for Public Land’s
California Land Protection team.  She is an applied anthropologist/archaeologist and
advocate for Native American communities' sovereignty. She has 25 years of
experience in historic preservation and environmental law, regulatory compliance and
public policy analysis. Her background includes Indigenous lands and cultural
stewardship, curation, and community-based planning and research. Clauss regularly
provides training on land return pathways, repatriation, Indigenous science, Tribal
consultation, environmental justice, and data sovereignty.  Prior to her time at TPL, Lee
worked for and with multiple Tribal governments in Arizona, North Carolina, and
California.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, I asked Nic questions about his job at a large consulting firm. We interview Lee Clauss about indigenous land stewardship, conservation reform, and land return. And finally, there are rescue otters. 

Sorry for everyone else who saw this on their Facebook, but when I did, I was so excited. The rescue otter's name is Splash. It's an Asian small, clawed otter, became the world's first search and rescue otter after being donated from a zoo in Arizona at just 4 months old. He was trained by Michael Hadzel of Peace River Canine Search and Rescue in Florida, and Splash can detect the scent of human remains underwater, and he's clever on land too, once pushing his crate across the floor, opening a door and letting himself outside to play with the dogs. I just love this. I have to meet him. So cute. 

Hit that music!

This year, NAEP is hosting their annual conference and training symposium in Anchorage, Alaska from Monday, May 11th through Thursday, May 14th. The conference is a great opportunity to learn about new projects, share technical knowledge, network with other industry professionals, and engage with environmental leaders. Not a member yet? Join NAEP with special discount code EPR for $25 off your membership. Register now at www.NAEP.org.

Let's get to our segment!

So Nic, Sam and I were chatting, and it became very clear to us that neither one of us really know anything about your new job. What do you do now? Oh, it's a, it's a great question. It's a lot of different things, and it's funny, I was actually doing a, an event for NAEP where emerging professionals were asking us questions about what it's like to work in the industry and, you know, advice and all those fun things, and I think my favorite question was one where someone asked, what's the difference between a project and program manager, right? And so at Dawson, I was a program manager at Jacobs IM. A department lead for the East Central Environmental Planning region, which is both bigger and smaller than the towns, but they're similar roles, and they're kind of, you know, like project management, you're focused on, you know, a few projects at a time. You're focusing on client interaction, execution, etc. As a program manager, you're focusing on, OK, getting projects in like what are we going to be working on long term? What is the strategy for getting those things? How do we win that work? What do we do if we don't? Do we have the right staff to handle what's coming in, and your kind of in a way, a, you're managing personalities, right? So you have people like, oh, these people are working together on this project. They're not getting along. Is this something we need to change the way that's happening and put different people in? Is it mitigate, you know, can we mitigate some of the damage that's been done or whatever that is? And so there's this, that kind of string, I guess that that kind of you're weaving through. And at Jacobs, I am working basically two different groups of team members, really 32 different kinds of planners, federal planning and state and local planning. 

So that's 2 different things, state and local are grouped together. And then the biologists, right, that are in the east, and so that's not really tied to a region, and it's extra complicated, and I feel like I have just now gotten around to figuring out what most of that means, and uh Which is what you're saying is the minute you enter a new role, you don't know everything. That's, yes, you spend a lot of time learning, even at a higher level, so all you youngsters or emerging, changing career professionals, you don't have to know it all on day one. No, no, you should know it at some point, but yeah, it's uh I think if you don't know it. But at some point, they're going to uh say sayonara. Yes, that's very fair, and I think it's been drinking through a fire hose in a way, but so was the last job, you know, it kind of, it's just different, it's different people and different avenues. You're trying to find pathways through to get answers. That's really what it is. It's like solving a mystery, solving a puzzle. Yeah, so, but the last job you did a lot of fieldwork. Are you still doing actual like field work, or are you just managing people now? Well, I mean, I started doing fieldwork at my last job, but I kind of stopped doing that too, and I'm not really doing, I haven't traveled at all this year. I haven't traveled at all. And um I don't think I had noticed that. That's a big change. I was traveling a lot for Dawson, and, you know, you're trying to cover the whole country, and your clients are in San Diego, and Hawaii, and, you know, Florida, then you're going all over the place and trying to stay on top of things, and in a way, I don't have to do that as much. 

There are other people doing similar things. That's actually not a bad thing. I don't mind. I love to travel, don't get me wrong, and I will be doing that. It just has been a lot less, especially early, cause it's kind of like, let's figure out how the engine works before we turn it on, right? That's kind of what I am doing, and so, there might be more travel, but the way that this is going so far, I think will be pretty, it's not that I won't travel, I just won't do it as much, and that's OK. Actually, it's been a nice transition to getting other people involved and engaged in a way I used to be. Yeah, and are you doing EPA projects still or different types of projects, because that's where this actually came up from. We were trying to come up with ideas for the segment, and I was like, does he do habitat restoration? What do you do now? What are the projects that you have now? I mean, so Jacobs does everything, right? There's nothing that we don't do. I mean, my group, there are a lot of planners, and I say planners specifically to avoid saying NEPA planners because it's not just NEPA, that is a big component of what's going on, and there are specific clients that Jacobs has throughout the country, but some that I'm in charge of and some that I'm working on becoming in charge of and kind of navigating that space and making sure we're crossing our T's and dotting our lowercase j's and making sure that, uh, you know, we don't, it's almost like you wanna make sure you're not, you know, stepping on people's toes, you wanna make sure that you're doing things respectfully, that's always hard, especially if you're new. 

Yeah, it's just a different kind of space. So it's the biologists are doing a lot of surveys, but they're doing all kinds of surveys. So some of them are like, we have divers that are doing deep sea surveys, we have, or that are doing sea surveys, we have divers that, you know, did he eat an otter? Yeah, yeah, like an actual like literal otter. I hear splash is looking. Yeah, um. I did see that. That was wonderful. Um, no, I mean, but they're doing all kinds of surveys, the wetlands delineations, all that fun stuff that's still happening. The team at large does everything, and there's nothing from an environmental perspective we're not doing. Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure Jacobs is doing field surveys on Mars, so yeah, pretty much, yes, yeah. You joke, but that is one of the projects, one of the projects that are, that is closing up is the uh Falcon Heavy SpaceX EIS. Like that was a project that is wrapping up now. It's almost done. And that's the ship that's going to take astronauts to the moon. So, you know, yes, it's the short answer to that. All right, awesome. Well, I think I have a clearer picture now. Yeah. So, let's get to our actual interview. Cool, very good. 

Welcome back to EPR.

Today we have Lee Clauss with us. Lee is a Southern California project manager with the Trust for Public Land and principal consultant at LSC Consulting, specializing in indigenous land stewardship, sovereignty, and cultural resource management. That all sounds like fantastic work. So glad to have you here, Lee. Thanks so much, Laura, very honored to be here and to be asked. Thanks. All right, well, let's dive in. So there's so much to unpack here, it just sounds like, like looking on your LinkedIn, your, your whole background sounds amazing, but I'm curious if you had a chart, choose, if you had to go back and choose a starting point. In your career, the moment that started everything, what would that be? I think from a career standpoint, the moment that started everything was when I made, I feel like a very auspicious decision to go to Southeast Missouri State University. In their historic preservation program. It's rare to have that kind of program at the time that I enrolled, and it's still relatively rare to see those kinds of applied history programs or even applied anthropology programs, but I feel like that set me on the course really for the rest of my career, understanding that there's so much good work to be done outside of academia and within a regulatory space, and I think much to the chagrin of some of my professors, I became enamored with the regulatory. Work, especially my archaeological professors, they were like, no, we need you in the field. And I just wanted to talk about, you know, CFRs. And so, I feel like that was likely really the impetus for me for the rest of my career. I, I knew I was interested in applied history, but I really gained a much deeper respect and appreciation for it going through that program, and it set me up fantastically well for graduate work and, and work to come. 

So I say, I can't say enough good things about my experience there. Awesome, that's really cool. I know for me, like when I went to school for biology, it was wetlands class that's just, I fell in love with. And so, for you, was there something that you were in that course of that work, you're just like, oh, this is, this is, I have to do, learn more about this. I think for me, I came in at a time when there was a good. A bit shifting within the cultural resource management world, going back to that topic of regulatory archaeology. At that point in time, prior to 1990, 1992, indigenous peoples had not had a seat at the table with respect to their own heritage. And just as I'm coming into these disciplines, all of a sudden there's a watershed moment. Where tribal peoples now are being given opportunity to have a voice around their own heritage, and that was through the National Historic Preservation Act amendments in 1992. In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Was passed, took a couple of years for those regs to come out. But nonetheless, the 90s, interestingly enough, was a really important time for a person like me who is very interested in making those disciplines far more relational. And respectful of the peoples that were being spoken about, right? If we go much further back in time, I always get a question about, well, what made you want to do regulatory work that would benefit indigenous communities? Like that's a very, seems a very unique niche thing to choose and how in the world would you know that at 17. And I will just tell you that when I was a child growing up in the South, I grew up in West Tennessee, that's where my family's from for a very, very long time. And I knew, even as a young person, when I would go to state parks that had earthen mounds, or when I went to battlefields that were related to the Civil War. That many people's stories were not just not being told but were intentionally being erased. And that was particularly poignant for me in a lot of the sites that had native heritage. I realized that the story was the vacant quarter theory, AKA they've disappeared. 

They don't exist anymore. Or there was this not just physical removal of a people, but also this erasure of their agency and even building those. You know, megastructures, right? And that was concerning to me because I knew it was fundamentally untrue. I grew up in a household where I had a father who read voraciously, read a lot of history books, and I was super familiar with the history of the space that I inhabited. And so, it's troubling to me to see so many stories not being told. And so that is really why I got interested in using the applied work that I was learning in college to try to be to the degree that anyone wanted me to be, you know, sort of an. Assist, to help, a support to indigenous communities trying to now navigate this very new space that was becoming available in the 1990s through this very Western legalistic space, right? It's like, we will now allow you to sort of play in this sandbox, but then folks had to work in a very odd structure and something that is not aligned with their culture, right? And so I found myself in a sort of a translator space. Train very western ways of working and knowing and processing and bridging that with indigenous worldviews and values and needs. Yeah, that's amazing. I feel like when people say, how did you find this work? Well, maybe it found you. I mean, I, when I was that age, I was fascinated by Native American history myself, but not in the same way that you were. I've read, watched documentaries, read books, like, I tried to learn all the different names of the tribes around the country and try to like, we have some Native American in my background, so like, because my grandfather and my dad was very interested in that history, but I wasn't interested in the way that the engaged, let me solve this problem way that you are. So, you know, I feel like time and place, place especially can really. You know, plant that seed in your brains. I think that's really awesome. But it's definitely felt like, like cosmic at a certain level, right? I had that interest, even just 10 years prior, it would have been ill-timed and misplaced. And so, being able to get in on the front end of those conversations, I think was incredibly. Helpful, but you're also right. I tell people all the time that I don't think that I chose this career and that it chose me. And, you know, Laurie, you're from Florida, so maybe you've heard this before, but we often say in the South, there's always a need, right? But it doesn't mean it's a call. And I feel like this was a call, right? 

And so there's lots of needs out there, but this is another level to your point. Yeah, absolutely. I can feel that already. So fast forward, what is it that you do now in your daily work? Yeah, so for the last nearly 3 years now, I have been a project manager with the Trust for Public Land here in Southern California. It's a very different work in some regards to the work that I did prior. Most of my work prior to coming to Trust for Public land was working in and for tribal governments, individual tribal governments across the country in their tribal historic preservation offices. I've been a tribal historic preservation officer, but just again, doing the heritage. Stewardship work, the regulatory work, but there is a little bit of an intersection, right, between the two spaces in that long before Land back was a hashtag, I was working with indigenous communities to bring their ancestral homelands back into their hands. And so, again, before it was ever. You know, kind of the cool kid thing to do. Tribal peoples have been working very hard to regain, reclaim, restore their rightful stewardship of their homelands. And so I had the great honor to be able to help a couple communities to do that. And so fast forward to Trust for Public land. They're an entity that's been around for just about 53 years, got their start in San Francisco, so they're a California-based organization, although they're national now, and they have long had a commitment to gaining land that is in private hands and putting it into public hands. That's the name, Trust for Public Land. And the whole idea is about connecting as many people as you can to the outdoors, and we do that. Through large land scale land conservation work, but also through creating parks in places that are underserved with green spaces, trail systems. We also do schoolyards work, really reclaiming like giant, you know, seas of concrete and making them real oases for children and communities. So TPL has a very broad reach across a lot of different kinds of programming that we do. I am on the land protection side. Uh, interestingly enough, that's what it's called, right? And so we do the large-scale land conservation. And for me, it was an opportunity in many ways. I'd spent years working to alter the course of my chosen profession, right? Archaeology, anthropology. In terms of how it serves indigenous communities, and I saw an opportunity to do the same thing in conservation, to take something that has frankly been very Americanized, very settler colonial in the way that it looks at its relationship with people and rethink how we can make land conservation best serve its original stewards and them not being an afterthought or just, you know. 

Sort of a pale recipient of perhaps some benefit at some point, right? Really make them the center of the work and not just a footnote. Yeah, so can you talk about that a little bit more? So when you started working with tribal nations, what was it that you were seeing specific and kind of touched on a little bit? What about the conservation system that needed to be adjusted, and then do you have like a, a project that would demonstrate that? Yeah, happy to talk about that. So, when I had one of my very first, uh, land returns with a tribe that I was working for at the time in North Carolina, it was, I will say, quite an education for me. This is in the early 2000s, so I'll sort of set the stage with the timing on this. So not that long ago, right? But a little bit, a little bit of age on it, and I was surprised when the tribal government that I was working for. was making their bid to have acreage from the National Park Service returned to them. It was acreage that had been illegally taken from them on the floor of the Senate. It was acreage that had been part of their treaty lands that was always supposed to be theirs and then changes happened without their knowledge or their blessing when it was actually ratified in the Senate. And so for decades, this community had been trying to regain this land. And especially because it was flat valley floor land and they had otherwise been pushed up into the mountains, which is so much the story of lots of indigenous folks, right? They're pushed into the least attractive lands, no arable land. And so, I had an opportunity again, right place, right time to help make a real case with an. National Park Service to have that acreage returned to the tribe that necessitated, of course, that we went through some public comment periods, right? Again, harking back to the regulatory requirements and many of the most vocal opponents to returning that land to the tribe were environmental organizations. 

I will not name them nor shame them. But at that time, I began to understand that sort of the beginnings of the American conservation movement were alive and well, that there had not been much of a philosophical or intellectual revolution within that particular discipline. And what I mean by that is that the origins of American conservation are very settler colonial. They are romantic in their notions. The entire point of conserving land in the West was because they had ruined the East, and they write about this, right? So, these are well-heeled, mostly male corporate types, right, who have an affinity for the outdoors and want to set aside these places recognize. that much damage has already occurred in lots of spaces. And in setting aside those lands, which sounds fairly innocuous, right? A fairly high ideal, they were removing people from those lands. And so, a number of tribes were forcibly removed from places that are now national parks and some of our most iconic and oldest national parks. And so it was that understanding. And I realized in that moment working with that tribal community in North Carolina and seeing that pushback that those ideas around this is for us and not for you, were still alive and well. And that public didn't include native people, the public was someone else. And also, the fact that for so many folks, they even struggle to see wilderness in people in a symbiotic space with the idea of conserving wilderness or the. The concept of wilderness is this idea of, you know, it's hands off. It's untouched and untrammeled, to use some regulatory words, right? There's nothing accurate about that.

We don't have, you know, land in the United States that's untrammeled. It wasn't untrammeled, you know, in the early 1800s and it's assuredly not now. And so, I also realized philosophically that was very different from indigenous understandings of being with land. Number one, land is a being. It is not an object. It is a member of your community. It is not a commodity. It is something to be in right relationship with. It is not something to extract from or use for your own purposes. And so, I had the great honor of sitting with people who helped me understand that land is healer, it's teacher, it's protector. It's not. Not something to serve your purposes. And so, I realized in that moment, conservation's still sitting in that headspace. And that's not to say every single conservationist, right? Or every single organization. One of the things that drew me to TPL is the fact that they've long had the mission of connecting people to land and the idea of land for people. And so immediately that was sort of tearing down some of that philosophical structure around land needing to be separate from people or managing people's interaction with the land in some pretty draconian ways, right, for the benefit of land. And so, I thought this may be a place that's really opened to moving the needle in this conversation. And then I realized they also had historically had a tribal and indigenous lands program. 

And that they were looking to stand that up again. And so again, I feel like right place, right time, that individual who runs our program literally came on board 4 months after I started at Trust for Public Land. So, it was just, again, I think kismet in many ways that I found myself in that space and I do see movement in all good directions about under you know, understanding the relationship. Relationship with, with and between people and land in a very different way and not seeing it as extractive and really seeing it as a reciprocal relationship and frankly, a responsibility. So. Yeah, how do you think or what things do you think need to be changed? It's just people's mindsets? Is it the regulations themselves, a combination? What obstacles are still out there in this area? They are far and wide, Laura. So, I wish I could say that. Yeah, top 3. I do think you see this at all levels. There is the sort of philosophical conceptual values-based system that still, you will have people who frankly also say, well, return of land to indigenous peoples takes that out of the public hands. So, I'm not about that, right? That seems anti-recreation or, you know, anti-traditional conservation. So, that is still alive and well in some spaces. Similarly, you still have structures at the policy level and policy level that can affect not just laws and statutes, regulations, but also funding opportunities. Through like federal grant programs, state grant programs, whereby sometimes tribes are not eligible applicants for grants that would encourage land conservation. Sometimes where they are, they still have to have a champion at other levels of government because they're not treated as the same as like, say, state government. Even in the spaces where they are, and we're starting to get a little bit more parity at that level. Tribes are still asked to uphold certain kinds of deed restrictions on the land, perhaps, right? 

A bit of uh someone looking over your shoulder when it comes to managing the land. And so I do think that we still have work to do at that philosophical level and that affects not just the folks who do the work, right? In terms of conservation, but also in philanthropy, folks who want to give to that kind of. Work and understanding the value of returning the land to its original stewards and how that does benefit everyone, not just the tribal communities, but that everyone is going to be best served by having the people who are best placed to manage that land now stewarding it once again after a few 100 years of being displaced and dispossessed from the ability and from the land, right? Yeah. So, it's sad, sad to say, right? I do think there's a lot of work still to be done, but at the same time, I think that there's a lot of folks, some of whom, of course, are in TPL who are up for that challenge and day to day are making inroads in the policy sector, in the philanthropy. Be in funding sector in those spaces around the profession and just, like you said, the values and the philosophies that guide the profession. Right. So, when you talk about reparations or land return, that has to be so complex. So, what are some of the things on both sides that need to be communicated or educated upon to make it happen in an effective way. So, I think that some of what I was mentioning earlier is foundational. It's how one conceives of land, and it has for the Western world always been a commodity. It has always been a mark of status, a highly desirable thing to own, and. So the idea is one amasses it and hoards it and extracts from it. And so, trying to help folks understand from an indigenous worldview, land is identity land is nothing less than exactly who you are in all the ways that you are. It is wellness in all the ways it means. 

To be well, spiritual, biological, mental, emotional, one requires one's ancestral homeland to be able to be fully well in this life and so land is not something to extract from land is something again to be in relationship with because it is a being, but also because in being in that relationship, being in the right relationship. Means community health and it means the provision of all of your needs beyond even just health, right? Subsistence and traditional life ways. Land is really key to language revitalization uh within communities and so I think some. Of what can be difficult to overcome is just very different cognition around land and interacting with land. And then I think beyond that, the difficulty is some of the. Regulatory hurdles, you know, I think on the tribal side, some of the difficulties can be folks feeling like they have the readiness, the internal capacity once you've been dispossessed and underserved for many, many generations. It can create a sense within a community and sometimes even not just a sense, but a reality. That bringing very large amounts of land back into tribal management can feel like it's quite onerous, and not just because of the sheer operations and, you know, maintenance aspect of managing land, but all the things that the Western superstructure has created around that, paying taxes, wheat abatement, right? I mean, like the really boring, you know, administrative world that now exists around land because of what it means in the West. And so that can feel like it is a bar too high for some communities. And so that's a reality. And one of the things that we're actively trying to do. At Trust for Public Land, and I've done prior to my work at Trust for Public Land is find lots of different pathways by which we meet communities where they are. And we say, even if fee title ownership feels out of reach in this moment, what can we do to get you what you need in this moment that's most critical? It could be access. It could be fulfilling treaty rights that have long been ignored. It could be the combination of those two things. Maybe it looks like co-management, maybe it looks like a conservation easement, right? It's figuring out how the community again can still be served, even maybe just shy of that fee title ownership if that feels like something that, like I said, is a step, a step too far at this moment. And then how do we build the capacity, right, for tribal folks who feel like they can take that back in. 

So, you know, part of it is that part of it is if folks aren't donating the land, it takes a lot of money sometimes to buy land. I'm in Southern California. It doesn't get much more expensive, right? Until you think about tribal folks and just having the financial wherewithal to even be able to make those kinds of real estate purchases. So even beyond just that capacity that may feel like knowledge, staffing, right, those kinds of things, it can also be the financial capacity to even purchase that which has been taken. It would not surprise you, Laura, to know that a lot of folks aren't raising their hand to just give the land back. Free and clear, right? Folks still want their payday. So that can be a challenge still to overcome. I think the other thing that comes up a good bit is communities trying to ascertain their priorities. You know, you walk into a tribal community and they're a government like any other government. They have to think about housing, they have to think about food security, they have to think about education, they have to think about medical care. You have to think about what condition are the roads in today, right? Natural disasters that occur and how to do that response to those things that are happening to and within their communities. And then you add this piece in, which is so aspirational and so lovely, right? Being able to bring that back and you're still trying to figure out how to fit that in to just trying to survive your day to day. So, that's something that has to be overcome sometimes as well, is how do you. Factor that in because now it is an opportunity that you haven't had for so long. So where does that, I mean, where does that get placed, right? Again, what funding is available? What staff do you have available? Do you need to upstaff? 

Do you need to find grants? It all becomes very heavy work. It's legacy work, it's critical work, but in no. No manner isn't easy work, and that's much like doing the cultural work. Most tribes did not have the wherewithal to build out language vitalization programs, right? Or tribal historic preservation programs. Those things are a luxury when you're just trying to put roofs over heads and foods and bellies, right? So, sometimes I think the work with land, as critical as it is, like I said, to identity, to wellness, it's still trying to figure out how to get that done in the midst of just trying to get through the day to day. And also, if you feel like you can now maybe regain access to relationship with your ancestral homelands, where do you start? And so even just trying to figure out those priorities, what are the priorities. Landscapes, every community can look at that differently. Is it a sacred site? Is it a place where your ancestors have been laid to rest? Is it both of those things? Is it a space where you have a fish, you know, sort of harvest opportunity or plant harvesting or it's buffalo grasslands? It's sort of like. 

And then when the world becomes your oyster, right? It's like, how do you go about ascertaining what's best first? And so that can be a very long and heady deliberation within communities as well and just always wanting to do right by the land, not approaching it flippantly, cavalierly, taking advantage of opportunities as they come, but at the same time being very thoughtful about what the ramifications of that will be long term. When again, you haven't necessarily had that opportunity heretofore, so it's new for the community to have that opportunity. Right. So how does the project come to be? You find the land first, someone comes to you and says, we want this land back, like, how does the process look for returning property back? There are so many different pathways. I think it's what you would likely assume, Laura, that, you know, sometimes we do have landowners who say, you know what, the kids and the grandkids aren't interested in keeping the farm, or a developer, frankly, gets finally put into a corner because they can't get their entitlements, right, through a county or a city to do the development they wanted to do. And, So, sometimes folks do approach us for lots of different reasons and simply say, it looks like maybe a conservation outcome here, right? Is maybe the only play that I have left. Sometimes those individuals and entities might actually have a conservation value somewhere, right? With just in their pantheon of values. But sometimes it really is sort of last-ditch effort. I'll not color it in any other way. Sometimes it really is, well, I suppose that this is all that's left, right? And it's not because they were actually valuing a conservation outcome. So, those things can happen. Sometimes it's really us just looking to see what's on the market. It's no one approaching us. We wouldn't even know if we didn't do our homework. So sometimes it's us looking at MLS, right? Just looking at real estate listings, especially large ranch and, you know, landholding kinds of MLS listings and seeing what folks have already put up for sale and what might meet some of our priorities, right? 

Or in this case, if we're talking about tribal land return, it's what are the community's priorities. And yes, sometimes communities will come to us, and they'll say, we're really interested in being able to have, you know, XYZ landscape returned to us and then it's on us as well as working with the tribal entity to figure out, is there a willing seller there? Because sometimes these aren't things that are listed, right? We've not had any outreach from the current owner. But we are aware that it's of interest to the community. So, we can do the cold call outreach at the same time, sometimes it's about us just putting together that list, right? Sort of the priority list and always keeping that in the back of our mind, like the moment that becomes available, right? Jump on it, knowing that it's already a priority for a community. Some of our deals we can get done in 1.5 years. Some of our deals, we've been at for 30 years, and they'll, I lovingly call them my zombie projects, right? Because they just keep coming back to life, you know, just when you think, you know, it's absolutely dead and it will never be, and, you know, the opportunity has come and gone, sometimes it will come back around. And again, sometimes it's because folks do get to the end of their other options. Sometimes they do have a change of heart. Sometimes the financial support wasn't there. We do a lot of our work through, you know, private and both public funding. So, sometimes the financial support wasn't there, and now it is. And so, there's lots of different reasons why a project either kicks off or doesn't, right, and completes or doesn't. In like a relatively quick timeline. So, yeah, there's lots of different ways that projects come to us. Frankly, sometimes too, even outside of tribal communities, we will have state entities or federal entities let us know that there are priority landscapes for them. You know, a really good example of that is a lot of federal land has checkerboarding, so there's a lot of private inholdings, and that's something that a lot of federal entities.

Of long work to identify and sort of reclaim, right? Get into federal hands so that you don't have those kinds of inholdings. It can cause issues when you're just trying to manage large landscapes, or you're thinking about wildlife migration corridors, all kinds of things. So, sometimes those are the entities that might reach out and say, we really need your help here. So yeah, it comes to us lots of different ways. Well, it definitely sounds like you stay busy. But before we kick off to our, you know, final segments more about you and things that you do, what advice do you have for someone who wants to just be a better tribal relations steward? Wow. I think so much of just being a better ally, I'll use that word, I think sometimes it's overused, but I'll use it in this context, is to educate yourself, to really do. The work to understand who your ancestral communities are, right, in your area, who your affiliated peoples are, and then actively work to make some outreach to make those introductions and treat those introductions as a first connection in a much longer journey. Go into that. Space in a really relational way, thinking about it like a long-term relationship, that you're starting something that if done correctly, will likely last your lifetime. And so, having that kind of duty of care around that interaction, knowing that this is something that you're going to be investing in long term, hopefully, I think often changes how people interact with one another. The difference between a one-off, right? A very superficial touch. Versus something that you hope to build into a really meaningful, mutually beneficial, you know, interaction long term. So, I think that's a lot of it is really thinking about from a best practices standpoint, right, to use that phrase. I always talk, and many people talk, it's not just me and it's not something that I personally created, but most people who do this kind of work like I do talk about the 4, the 5 R's, and its respect and its relationship. 

And it's reciprocity, right? And it's responsibility. Some people will also put in a 5th R and talk about restitution, or things along those lines. But I think if you can approach your relationships using those 4 Rs as your, you know, real guidepost, but also making sure that you've been doing your homework going into it, right? Bring some level of understanding to your engagement, but then otherwise be willing to sit as a learner. Like, even if you're doing that education, still walk in saying, I've got a lot to learn and just whatever expertise you have, setting it aside. And that's not because you don't have that expertise, and it's not because it's not valuable, but in that context, when you're trying to create a relationship with the people you don't know, I will say sometimes our quote unquote expertise gets in the way. So, putting that to the side is often very helpful. Those of you like maybe my top three, Laura. So, that's great. That's really good advice. I feel like, you know, a lot of times when you are an expert or you had a lot of experience, I think maybe the R's fight with the E's experience and you go and can add some other ones in there, but it's hard to hold back and not try to, you know, tell people what you know, but I think that's, that's really good advice. But if you're all listening, notice Nic's just arrived. Hi Nic, what are you talking about? I've been here the whole time. He was just finishing his lunch, I guess.

 So, um, almost right, yeah, well, we got through all the really fun stuff about her job, so you know, now you get to take over the even more fun stuff about I was about to say now you give me the, the fun part, um, and Lee, it's great to talk to you, and, um, I'm really excited to ask you the fun questions at the end of our interview, you here and we, uh, we have a segment we love to call, that we call Field Notes and it's where we ask our guests to share memorable moments of them doing their jobs. And so, we ask our listeners to send us their funny, scary, awkward field stories so that we can read them on a future episode, which you can do. At info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. So Lee, you shared an experience about learning from elders in Western North Carolina and chose not to document what was said. So can you tell us about the significance of that experience? I can, and thank you for selecting that one, Nic. I really appreciate it. I think there are so many good lessons in this story, not just for me. But for other people that I've encountered doing this work. So yes, as I mentioned earlier, when speaking with Laura, I worked in Western North Carolina with a tribal community, and part of my job was to sit with elders. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to sit with Cherokee elders in this community and talk to them about their cultural world. 

And I was doing so for very regulatory purposes, pretty dry, legalistic reasons why I'm having to ask them these questions. And in these spaces, oftentimes, of course, you're needing to ask very specific questions and get very direct answers and record that so you can supply that, right, to the entity who is seeking this information for consultation reasons to check a regulatory box. But in these instances, working with these elders, they made it clear to me that when I spent time with them, I needed to never be writing. That it was uncomfortable. It made them feel less, I think, maybe that they felt like they could be less themselves, right? And maybe a little less transparent, maybe withhold a little bit more of that personality because I was writing, I was recording, you know, everything that they were saying. And not just what they're saying, but their tone, right? That's coming with that. At the same time, I had one particular elder who said, well, the other reason why it's really important for you to not write when you're with us is not just because, frankly, it kind of makes us awkward, but it's also because white people write things down to forget. And I had to take about 10 minutes. And sit with that. You know, I'm a historic preservationist and anthropologist and archaeologist, and if you know anything about those ologies, is we spend a lot of time writing. Uh, everything we do is documentation. And documentation to a meticulous degree. And so, to have one, someone say, you write to forget was so the opposite of anything I'd ever been taught in the university system. But I understood immediately where she was coming from is because this is very different than both withholding, and I mean that in the best ways like holding, right? And sharing information through an oral tradition. And of course, all native peoples have an oral tradition. In terms of how they both remember and share and perpetuate information. And I realized in that moment that it was going to be imperative for me to not rely on my note-taking skills. And rely on the listening skills that I had also learned in my disciplines. 

And so, I would sit with folks for sometimes 2 and 3 hours, and sometimes they're speaking in Cherokee, which I do not speak, and still try to remember at least phonetically in my own head what was said and then actually go write things down. They were fine with me writing things down after the fact, just not in front of them. But write things down for the purposes that I needed to fulfill hours later and then going and sitting with the tribal linguists some of the time to say, this is the word I thought I heard. And this was the conversation, and this was the context, and this was the question. And with all those context clues, right, going back to like early reading comprehension, right, with all those context clues and my phonetics, we could establish what words were being said and then I could write them both in English and, and in Cherokee with a linguist's assistance. And so that's been one of my greatest moments of learning, I think, is to. Be able to really sit in a space and truly absorb what is being told to you to the point that you can repeat it verbatim if asked to, um, in honoring that oral tradition. When you think about any real conversation you've ever had, you would never like in the middle of it like, hold on one second, I just gotta make sure I, I write down what you just said. It's super like it's almost like obviously it's rude, right? It just, you don't think about it because you're like, oh this is what I'm supposed to do, but if it was just like one of your friends or your family members and you're having a conversation, you'd never do that. And so yeah, it's a great, great point. So much in our culture. Especially in the business world, if you're not writing, people think you're not paying attention. Yes, yes, that's true. To write, right? To write is to signal that you're paying attention and that you're engaged and that what they are saying has value. We put value on writing things down, right? And we never say any of that in a room. But that's how you feel, right, when you're talking and someone's diligently taking notes, you're like, yeah, you know, like they're super, like they're just, they're getting it and look at me being super important in this moment to their lives, right? And yeah, to, to sit in community and sit in a culture that says, frankly, that's really off-putting. Yeah. 

And we're concerned that if you're just writing, you're not listening. Yeah, exactly, exactly, and yeah, so I mean, I mean it's tough to be this close to out of time, so I guess we can only ask you fun questions from here on out. I'm sorry, um, but, uh, you mentioned too that you only watch TV shows that are British, Australian, or New Zealand murder mysteries, so shout out to Broadchurch for those of you who haven't seen it, you should, cause that's a great one. How did you, how did you stumble onto that? Why that genre? You know, the stumbling was really, I have to give it to streaming services. I'll not name one, like this is not a product plug, right? But that, and I will give a shout out to PBS, right? Between the streaming services and PBS that was really my exposure. It's not something I grew up with at all. It's something I have found in my adult life and more recently in my adult life. I just, I've always been a murder mystery person. I mean, I'm the Nancy Drew girl, right, from like 3rd grade, like read every single book in the series kind of thing, right? Um, so I've always liked that genre even to read for fun. Um, so I think it's interesting. I find myself drawn to that with television programming as well, but yeah, I, I find the writing and the characters. Just more engaging and more real. And I also love looking at people who age gracefully on a screen. 

Maybe it's the gray hair that's finally decided to emerge, right, in my own life, but, um, I, it's comforting watching television with people who are 60 and look 60, right? Um, you know, and still are treated as having, yeah, still treated as having value in this world, you know. So, I don't know, I think for all those reasons, yeah, I got enamored with British television and some of those streaming services offer some of the television out of Australia and New Zealand as well, and so I've enjoyed that too. Yeah. No, that's absolutely fantastic and uh. It's amazing you say that because one of my mentors is Scottish and he's the one that turned me on to Broadchurch and that's exactly, he said the same exact thing. He's like, isn’t it amazing to have a female lead who looks her age and it's no problem whatsoever? Isn't that great? I'm like, yeah, I hadn't even, yeah, that's a great, great point. And bright and intelligent, right, and, and some and witty and sometimes tough as nails, and I just, I do, I so. Appreciate that. But yeah, we could talk probably forever, Nic, if you like Broadchurch, it's like I've got recommendations, but yes, Broadchurch is, is extremely good, uh, not knocking Broadchurch, but that's one of the things I do love about the offerings like on Brit Box, Acorn, right, BBC, things like that, is I find that there's just lots of extremely high quality shows. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, when, once we stop recording, you can give me all, all your other. Facts, because I love it. 

I was looking for the next one, so, uh, I appreciate that. Um, OK, OK. All right, I'm gonna give you one more shameless plug here for yourself as well. You were a vocalist since the time you were 5. So, you love to sing, and you know that's which is also fabulous. What do you like to sing? There are few genres that I don't enjoy, and I think that's because. Most typical folks who grew up in the South, my earliest entree into music was the church. And so, I initially started singing, you know, hymnals and things like that, you know, out of hymnals rather. And so, I have an affinity for that type of music because it's nostalgic to me. It reminds me of my earliest beginnings in that space. But then that parlayed into being in choir in the K through 12 system, and so I got to sing everything from, you know, Handel's Messiah to medieval madrigals to pop music, right? It was sort of the whole pantheon of music, and I just never met a score I didn't like. And in terms of the things that I like to listen to and sing. I like the, you know, maybe much like my TV, Nic, I like my strong female leads. And so, you know, uh, I like the gals who can belt it. That's fun singing for me, you know, if I need a whole room and the car can't contain me, that's like, you know, the singing that I like to do. And so, and whether that's an Ella Fitzgerald, right? Or if that's an Adele, or if that's Hart. Right? That's a good one, right? So many, right, really great, just female vocalists, and that's probably the most fun that I get to have singing is when you're just near screaming the whole song. Yeah, that's, that's the best. Turn around bright eyes. Let's do it. Don't tempt me. I mean, I'm right there with you. I, I love it. I was literally also having that conversation this week about it's like, I love songs that I can just sing at the top, not just sing, but like sing fully, you know, it's super fun. So, I love that we are running out of time, but I wanted to ask, is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we let you go? I don't think so. You know, I really appreciated, Laura, your line of questioning earlier. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to just highlight. 

What I think can be done differently within American conservation to really honor the first stewards of the land, and I think me being able to voice that alone meets my goal for the day. Say that. That's fantastic. OK, and last but not least, where can people get in touch with you if they'd like to? I do have a LinkedIn page, and so you can find me at Lee Clauss, and so I know you guys will have my name on your podcast, so there's that. I otherwise am a complete Luddite and have no social media presence whatsoever. So, um, I alarm people because I have no Instagram. I was never on Facebook. I'm old enough to say I was never on MySpace. Um, so yeah, other than LinkedIn, I am a ghost. But you can find me there and I'm very responsive and that's right. That's right. And if folks want to reach out to me through LinkedIn and want to have a conversation, you know, over email, right, or connect over the phone, always happy to do that. So I am one of those folks who does answer my LinkedIn's. Very cool. Great. Thank you so much for being here. That's our show. Thank you, Lee, for joining us today! 

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