Culture, corporation and collective action: The Department of Energy's American Indian consultation program on the Nevada Test Site in political ecological perspective

Abstract

In the western United States, Numic-speaking Indian peoples wield more power today than ever before. Following centuries of depopulation, land and resource loss, and directed change interventions aimed at assimilating them into mainstream society, they are revitalizing traditional culture and renewing their claims to lands and resources by demanding equal participation in national-level activities that affect land and resources that were once under their control. In 1994, representatives of Numic Indian tribes representing three ethnic groups involved in consultation with the U.S. Department of Energy on the Nevada Test Site (NTS) decided by consensus to "incorporate" themselves as the Consolidated Group of Tribes and Organizations (CGTO) to defend their common interests in and claims to NTS lands and resources. What caused 16 distinct, autonomous, sovereign American Indian tribal entities to incorporate themselves as a corporate organization? Using a political ecology perspective, this study examines the social, cultural and political processes operating at multiple levels of analysis and applies social and cultural theories of (1) ethnic cultural persistence, (2) the emergence and evolution of collective action groups for defending cultural interests in "common property," (3) the role of corporate and organizational structure and culture in the articulation of social relations between contending groups, and (4) the related shifts or changes in the distribution of structural power as a result of changing policy environments to a case study-based ethnographic analysis of an ongoing program of American Indian consultation.