Summary Notes from the Tribal Risk Assessment Conference
Author:
Members of the Tribal Risk Conference
Date Published:
12/1998
Description:
The Intertribal Risk Assessment Committee (IRAC) is comprised of tribal representatives to focus on the myriad of risk issues facing tribal communities; to promote tribal views on environmental risk management including assessments and other guidelines, methodologies, and decision-making processes affecting tribes; and, to facilitate communication on risk between Indian tribes and federal agencies. Available online, it was last accessed at http://www.epa.gov/osp/tribes/pdf/vegaspro.pdf on June 22, 2015.
Members of the IRAC have reached a level of experience and knowledge to recognize the lack of uniformity in the risk assessment process and the terminology of risk, and that standard risk assessment models and processes fail to address or include impacts to tribal cultural integrity, fail to protect and preserve cultural resources (which includes natural resources), and fail to honor treaty-protected subsistence rights, such as hunting, gathering, and collecting.
To IRAC members, a tribe's cultural integrity is paramount and must be considered from a holistic viewpoint. It is an oversimplification to attempt to evaluate how an action might impact only a specific aspect of tribal culture. Mainstream science errs, for instance, when evaluating a contaminant in the environment that impacts a treaty-protected right (i.e., subsistence fishing) because the technical risk analysis does not and cannot comprehend the total impact of such a loss to the tribe's culture as a whole. If the fish are lost, likely to follow will be the loss of related ceremonies, stories, songs, and selected terminology within the language. The IRAC has been working to help ensure that these concerns are included in risk assessment models and analysis.
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