Collaborating for the Tongass: How Indigenous Leadership and Strategic Partnership are Transforming Forest Conservation

Community-led collaboration to envision possible futures for Southeast Alaska. Photo: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich

The Tongass National Forest, an expansive temperate rainforest in Alaska, is a vital ecological and cultural treasure. The largest national forest in the U.S., it covers most of Southeast Alaska and is home to dozens of communities, including Alaska Native nations. How the forest is managed affects everyone in Southeast Alaska, directly or indirectly. 

Guidelines for the forest's management, protection, use, and monitoring are set out in the U.S. Forest Service’s Tongass National Forest Plan, originally developed in 1997 and last amended in 2016. The Forest Service recently embarked on a revision of this plan, aiming to update forest management strategies and policies to better meet current ecological, social, and economic needs. The revised plan will be in place for at least the next 15 years. For Spruce Root, a Native Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) with a mission to foster a regenerative economy across Southeast Alaska by providing business coaching and capital to underserved entrepreneurs who live and work in and around the forest, the forest’s future and the revision of the plan are integral to its mission. 

In an effort to shift how the Forest Service engages with communities while developing the new plan, the agency partnered with Spruce Root to support a more collaborative, creative, and relational process. This collaborative approach to revising the plan underscores the organisation’s crucial role in amplifying local community voices. At the heart of this effort lies transformative collaboration.

To help facilitate the collaboration that will be critical to the project’s success, Spruce Root tapped its relationships with Reos Partners and the Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP). SSP is a diverse community network that works to address complex social, environmental, and economic challenges through purposeful collaboration. Reos Partners facilitates transformative collaboration with organisations across the globe using its transformative scenario planning (TSP) approach.

Indigenous and community leaders envision the Possible Futures For Southeast Alaska. Photo: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich

After learning about Reos’ TSP process, Spruce Root and SSP saw how they could use scenario planning to inform their work in the region, including supporting the Forest Plan revision process. Reos worked with Spruce Root and SSP to bring together a group of diverse stakeholders to engage in the TSP process through a series of sessions. “We built out these scenarios over the past year with a group of about 40 people from across Southeast Alaska, a diverse group from both within and outside the SSP Network that’s representative of the perspectives in our region,” said Spruce Root Executive Director Alana Peterson. “We designed the scenarios, and now we're starting to put them to work.” 

In one example of how the scenarios are being put to use, Spruce Root hosted an implications workshop with the Forest Service and regional stakeholders that will help inform the Forest Plan. “It's rare to find an organisation that does this type of facilitation work really well in a place-based way,” Peterson said of working with Reos Partners. “It says a lot about an organisation when you come into a place that is not your place, and you get welcomed back again and again.”

In the following conversation, Peterson shares her experience with the Indigenous and community-led collaborative approach and the significance of the Tongass National Forest Plan revision process.

Complex challenges require a collaborative approach

Can you share about the collaborative approach to community development that Spruce Root and the Sustainable Southeast Partnership are leading in Southeast Alaska? Where did the need for this approach come from?

Peterson: In our first few years, we tried different things as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) to identify entrepreneurs in the region and support local economic development investment at the community level. Many challenges arose in those early years. One was the difficulty of building deep connections to communities where we don’t live. There are geographic barriers, such as mountains and waterways, which means you can’t just drive there. We needed effective collaboration rooted at the community level, and to do that, we needed people in the community to validate and advocate for our work and be liaisons for our organisation. On top of that, the many entities involved — non-governmental organisations (NGOs), for-profit organisations, conservation groups, the state — were sort of at odds. There was all this baggage that prevented people from actually being able to collaborate and create programs or outcomes that would accomplish what we all wanted, which was to raise our communities up in a way that's founded on the community’s priorities. 

That’s where the stars aligned. The Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP) was just getting going, and we joined early on. It took many years, but over a decade of work through the SSP we created relationships at the community level that allowed organisations like ours to have some buy-in or street cred, so we could show up, work with people, and partner. It started to break down those barriers that had prevented us from collaborating effectively. 

We brought folks in to help teach us how to actually collaborate, considering different frameworks and systems change. We were co-creating, figuring it out as we went, and healing relationships.

It's about connecting individuals and forming relationships because regardless of what's going on at the organisational level, individuals are where change can happen.

So that's where the SSP spends a lot of time. We also invest heavily in storytelling, because we know how impactful it can be for us to hear one another's stories, to share our own stories, and to learn through the stories that are told. Sharing stories inspires a lot of change that is hard to track or quantify, but we definitely have seen the shift over the past decade.

Community-led collaboration to envision possible futures for Southeast Alaska. Photo: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich

Centring Indigenous knowledge systems

What are some ways this work centres a non-colonised perspective and respects the traditional knowledge and cultural practices of Indigenous communities in Southeast Alaska?

Peterson: We are heavily informed through Indigenous ways of being. Many people who are part of the network are Alaska Natives, Tlingit, Haida, or Tsimshian, specifically. As a network, we have a set of shared values, but we really work to acknowledge that this is a native place, and the best wisdom is found within the knowledge systems that Indigenous people have followed to steward these lands since time immemorial.

We look to that wisdom for everything we do. We often bring Indigenous culture and practices into our work and collaborative space.

We try to make it more accessible for everyone, whether you're Native or non-native, to understand the culture and that it’s not this thing that used to exist. The people are here, and the culture is alive and present. Our non-colonised perspective is that everyone who lives here deserves to thrive, regardless of their heritage. 

It requires everyone to push and pull one another to remember what each community cares about and honour that those individual communities are separate. There's no blanket approach we can or should take, which is what traditional economic development models tend to do. We have people in each community informing where the priority work should be, and then the network can collectively support that. Each community is forging its way forward, and although we have a lot of the same struggles, challenges, and issues, each has its unique history and micro-ecosystem. Oftentimes, the work does overlap and look similar across communities because when one community succeeds in some way, another community often looks at that and says “How did you do that? How can we repeat it?”

That ability to share lessons and not recreate the wheel is one of the wonderful things about the network.

Growing a network for systems change 

How did Reos Partners’ previous scenario work in Hawai’i inspire or inform the approach taken in Southeast Alaska? What experiences resonate between both efforts? 

Peterson: Myself and others in the SSP network liked the idea of scenarios, but there was a gap between “sounds cool” and “let's do it.” Reos’ transformative scenario process (TSP) with the Hawai’i group helped them build relationships and a network. 

We asked Reos to help us facilitate our retreat, and Paul Hackenmueller (a senior consultant with Reos Partners) asked if it would be okay to invite someone from Hawai‘i to learn from what we were doing. So Kamana'o Crabbe (a member of the Rediscovering Hawai‘i’s Soul core committee) came down. We went on a walk during our retreat, and Kamana’o said everything that we were doing was what they needed. I asked him how they use the scenarios, and we agreed we need scenarios here. That was the thing that clicked. We agreed to stay in touch, continue to share and inform, and do more exchanges if possible.

I was invited to be a collaborator on a project accelerator workshop that RHS was doing in Hawai‘i. It was really helpful to see Hawai‘i using their scenarios in action. It's one thing to read the Hawai‘i’s Soul document. It's another to see people in Hawai‘i referencing it across these different topical areas and then working through something. That's when I got very excited and could really see how this could work for us too. 

Although it looks very different in our respective ecosystems, there are similarities in our work, what matters, and how we drive forward. I walked away from that experience saying we need to do more exchanges. If all of us Indigenous people could come together and see that we're working in the same areas, and we’re all striving to get the federal government, our states, and these other organisations to shift behaviours in certain ways, it could unlock a lot of potential.

We are a power, we are a force, and we need to come together. We need to be more connected in this way and bring these types of forceful groups together. 

Moving forward together 

What is the Spruce Root scenario project, and how does it work? 

Peterson: The scenario project was an opportunity to explore how we, as a collective, could look at our work today and move forward together in a similar direction or be more creative in what that looks like.

If we had future scenarios for Southeast Alaska, and we all considered those potential futures together, it might change and shift what we're doing right now in a way that feels more unified or at least more cohesive.

Because everyone thinks it needs to be done this or that way, and everyone is moving toward their vision. We think it’s the same vision, but sometimes how we get there doesn't connect. The scenario project felt like an opportunity to get more connected. 

We built out these scenarios over the past year with a group of about 40 people from across Southeast Alaska, a diverse group from both within and outside the SSP network that’s representative of the perspectives in our region. We designed the scenarios, and now we're starting to put them to work. They are challenging and make people think. There's something to love and hate in every scenario. I feel like we did a pretty decent job of capturing important, relevant, challenging scenarios that force us, as organisations or individuals, to reconsider what we're doing and how that does or does not connect to what we want to happen or not happen.

The Sustainable Southeast Partnership Retreat in Sitka, Alaska. Photo: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich

We launched the scenarios this last spring, and over the summer we did training for people in the network about how to use them. We're gearing up to do an implications workshop with the U.S. Forest Service, revising its plan for the Tongass Forest that will cover the next 15 years. This is the first time in decades that the forest plan has been revised, so it's a significant moment, and we can really use the scenarios to help inform that project. The Forest Service engaged with people across the region to gather feedback on peoples’ priorities for Southeast Alaska and the priorities the Forest Service should focus on for the Tongass. Now, going into the implications workshop, we have what people said they want, the scenarios about what potential futures could be, and we can discuss how to piece it all together in the plan in a way that feels productive. It's an exciting and very different approach for the Forest Service.

Building scenarios for strategic planning

How are the transformative scenario planning approach and collaboration with Reos Partners influencing collaboration in the region? 

Peterson: The Forest Service collaboration is really significant. It's tough to get things done in a bureaucracy, whether on the inside or outside. There has been a lot of tension over the years due to political factors and the fact that we’re considering the future of the forest we live in, causing people to walk on eggshells to avoid getting called out for “messing things up”. With this implications workshop, we're trying to create a safe space for everyone to be creative and explore ideas about what the plan revision can look like without feeling it's on the public record. Spruce Root is hosting a two-day implications workshop and invited staff from the Forest Service as well as some people from the region. That helps foster collaboration, allowing us to identify and leverage our strengths and bring creativity to the process. Reos Partners has been key along the way.

The Tongass Implications Workshop in Juneau, Alaska. Photo: Val Massie

What’s really exciting is Reos has taught us how to continue this process ourselves. Earlier this summer, we held a “train the trainer” workshop, and last spring, we had them conduct an implications workshop for the whole network to build our collective capacity within the region to lead those. We’re doing this with Reos in a deliberate way to impart knowledge. We’ll also share the scenarios on our website, including a short instructional video designed by an artist who attended the workshop.

Another thing that’s been exciting to see is the scenarios being used in strategic planning across various organisations and communities. People are incorporating them into their SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses. If all these different organisations use the same scenarios to consider the future, the result could be powerful. Imagining what that could mean for how we develop our strategic plans and move forward is very exciting. We could be more connected in how we think about driving toward the future we want. 

About Reos Partners

For organisations and collective initiatives interested in exploring transformative collaborative processes and scenario planning, connect with Reos Partners to learn how we can support your collaborative efforts and build a sustainable future together.