Principles for Authentic Tribal Engagement

We must approach this work with the understanding that we are going to make mistakes. I am deeply grateful to the Tribal Elders and Representatives who have offered me the grace to learn when I stumbled, and whose guidance helped me correct mistakes and move shared work forward.

Humility does not mean passivity. It means listening carefully, asking better questions, accepting correction, and staying committed to the relationship even when the work becomes uncomfortable.

Authentic relationship-building means moving beyond division and working toward mutual understanding and shared success.

During the March 2025 community event in Niwot, Southern Cheyenne Elder Chester Whiteman captured this responsibility: “We want to sit at the same table and talk this thing through and make something positive happen for this valley… and cause it to really happen.”

Southern Arapaho Elder Fred Mosqueda emphasized the same principle: “We can both be successful by using what each other can bring to the table. But let’s bring it to the table, and that’s where we can start.”

Their words offer a practical model for Niwot and other local communities: sit together, listen honestly, bring what each community can offer, and turn conversation into action.

Tribal Representatives must be engaged at the beginning of an idea, not after plans have already been made.

Too often, institutions seek Tribal input only after a project is fully designed, a report is nearly finished, or a public decision is already moving forward. That is not meaningful engagement. It is notification.

Fred Mosqueda has cautioned against this kind of performative outreach, especially when agencies or communities claim they have consulted after decisions are already in place. In those situations, Tribal Representatives can be treated as tokens rather than partners.

Authentic engagement starts early enough for Tribal knowledge, concerns, corrections, and priorities to shape the work itself.

Consultation should not be treated only as a legal checklist. At its best, consultation is an opportunity for collaboration, learning, repair, and relationship-building.

Even when formal consultation is not legally required, local communities can still choose to act with respect. They can invite Tribal Representatives into conversations early, compensate their expertise, provide adequate time for review, and allow Native perspectives to shape public history, land stewardship, educational programming, and community decisions.

Doing only what is legally required may reduce risk. It does not necessarily build trust.

Losing institutional memory destroys trust.

When local staff, elected officials, board members, or volunteers change, Tribal Representatives should not have to restart the relationship-building process from the beginning. Communities need systems that preserve what has been learned, document commitments, and help new leaders understand the history, relationships, and responsibilities they are inheriting.

This can include formal agreements, shared records, internal briefings, staff education, transition documents, and clear points of contact. Relationship-building should not depend on one person’s memory or one leader’s interest. It should become part of the institution’s culture.

Email is not a relationship.

Written communication can support coordination, but it cannot replace sitting together, walking the land together, sharing meals, listening in person, and making time for conversation. Many of the most meaningful moments in Niwot’s relationship-building work have happened face to face — during site visits, public talks, informal conversations, and shared time in places connected to Arapaho and Cheyenne history.

In-person engagement creates space for nuance, trust, emotion, humor, correction, and healing in ways that passive outreach rarely can.

Local communities must be careful not to replace Indigenous history with romanticized settler myths.

In Denver’s We Are the Land report, Fred Mosqueda reflected on the deep sting of historical erasure, describing how Arapaho names remain visible across Colorado while public knowledge of Arapaho people has often disappeared. That erasure is not accidental. It is one of the lasting effects of removal.

To counter that erasure, communities must create meaningful opportunities for Tribal Representatives to guide, review, correct, or author educational materials — with compensation and adequate review time where appropriate. Public history should not be built around Native names while excluding Native voices.

This also means granting clearly defined review periods before publication, correcting errors when they are identified, and avoiding the temptation to simplify complex histories into comfortable local legends.

Some Indigenous knowledge should not be made public.

Communities and institutions must establish safeguards to protect sensitive cultural information, including information about sacred sites, burial areas, ceremonial knowledge, culturally significant landscapes, and traditional knowledge that Tribal Nations or Representatives do not want publicly disclosed.

Withholding this information is not secrecy. It is cultural care. It is also an expression of Tribal sovereignty and a recognition that not all knowledge belongs in public reports, websites, maps, archives, or open records systems.

Authentic engagement requires asking what information can be shared, what should remain confidential, who has authority to decide, and how sensitive knowledge will be protected before it is ever collected.

Communities must stop treating Tribal consultation and cultural guidance as unfunded labor.

Tribal Representatives, Elders, cultural experts, historians, language keepers, artists, and knowledge holders bring deep expertise. That expertise deserves compensation. Local governments and organizations routinely pay engineers, architects, consultants, facilitators, and technical experts. The same respect should be extended to Tribal expertise.

Compensation may include honoraria, consulting fees, travel reimbursement, lodging, meals, per diem, and support for the time required to review materials, attend meetings, prepare remarks, and consult with other Tribal leaders or Elders.

Respect is not only expressed through words. It is also expressed through budgets.

Meaningful engagement moves at the speed of trust and consensus, not a developer’s 30-day permitting calendar.

Tribal Representatives may need time to review complex documents, consult with Tribal leadership, speak with Elders, evaluate cultural concerns, and determine what can or cannot be shared. Communities that are serious about relationship-building must adjust their timelines accordingly.

Rushed engagement often produces shallow outcomes. Adequate time allows for better understanding, better decisions, and stronger relationships.