'Do Good Things for the Fish': Organizational Innovation in Tribal Governance

Abstract

This dissertation examines the organizational aspects of fish and wildlife management for Native American nations. Fish and wildlife management is an arena of great importance to many Native nations in subsistence, economic and cultural realms. Additionally, fish and wildlife, being common-pool resources, offer interesting management challenges. My research focuses on what happens when Native American nations exercise self-determination in this arena which requires them for both political and practical reasons to interact with state and federal governments and for economic reasons to deal with markets, all while attempting to meet the needs of their nations. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and drawing upon survey and case study research with Native American fish and wildlife programs, I examine how tribes manage their fish and wildlife resources and with what results.This research helps identify under what conditions tribes may achieve various management goals. In some important ways, tribes are limited in what they can do, particularly in regards to land base size and degree of jurisdiction over non-Indians. More importantly, however, this research identifies some of the many ways tribes can work to take charge of or support tribal fish and wildlife management without having to appeal to outsiders. While there are some very real limitations to fish and wildlife management external to tribes, within those limits, tribes have opportunities to assume and be effective in resource management.This dissertation also provides evidence to suggest that as tribes are better able to determine their own management and governance paths, elements of clan structures and logics develop where the organizational literature would predict they would not. Studying tribal fish and wildlife programs in particular offers an examination of these clan-like features typically found only on the societal fringes. Perhaps even more importantly, this dissertation research demonstrates that there are different governance structures, or logics, co-existing and operating in hybrid forms. For tribes, these hybrid structures create some challenges and inconsistencies that more pure governance structures would not. Nevertheless, these hybrid structures also allow for flexibility and effectiveness in responding to the diverse stakeholders invested in or influencing tribal fish and wildlife management.