Idaho Wilderness Hearings

Statement:

TRIBAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Mr. Slickpoo. Thank you, Senator. My name is Allen Slickpoo. I am the secretary for the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, which is a governing elected board of our people. So because of the unique relationship that we have with the U.S. Government, I feel that I can say that we are talking from one Government representative to another Government representative. We have like many other people concerned recognized the vital importance of concern for preservation and protection of these areas as being the last of our natural resources. Fish and wildlife habitat faces the continuous onslaught of human greed and mass destruction. Many of us have come to recognize the costly damage and extermination of nature. During our lifetime we have seen the useless way of destruction of our resources that have become so inevitable that unless mankind wakes up, the controlled exploitation of what is left will dictate a serious situation of greater shortages than we have now. Because of the uncontrolled sound management of the society, we, the Indian people, have suffered the impact of bad publicity in the eyes of the public media . .1 exercising our sovereign treaty rights. The shortage of fish and wildlife has been fo cused upon the American Indian as the prime source still ignoring the facts that the manmade devices and uncontrolled multiple use concepts. We have become a political tool in degradation of our treaty with the United States. We realize our Congress has recognized the importance of clean air and clean streams that must coexist with man when it enacted the Environmental Act. Yet we have allowed such protective legislations to come under the influence and pressure of large political powers and special interest groups who have tended to dilute these protective provisions which in reality were designed for the best interests of the American citizen. We have learned that man is destroying the very things that has nutured him at a rapid pace. Our history has taught us that what is not actively protected is lost. All of us in this room have seen the gradual destruction of nature as man encroaches upon what is left. My people are mindful of the importance of our children that they d enjoy the nature and what she had to offer in the same manner that we were fortunate enough to enjoy. The Nez Perce Tribe has no choice but to support more wilderness as a last resort as a means of protecting our treaty rights on conservation of nature's valuable assets since all other management efforts or practices have seemed to fail and are still yielding to man's greed because he has become a slave to his machines. And I would like to remind the Senator and those present that I was present in the Washington, D.C., hearing when I heard arguments that if we do have wilderness, you're going to shut out the timber for production in the sawmills. The sawmills are going broke. The wilderness bill—the present wilderness bill was enacted by Con489 gress and signed into law. The very same sawmills not too long thereafter had to close down not because of the wilderness area but because of the market—the slump in the market and construction. This was the cause for shutting down the sawmills. And, Senator, I would—I had more to say but because of essence of time, we again would like to strongly emphasize that these areas you are speaking of has a significant historical cultural and religious values to our people as they are directly related to our treaty with the U.S. Government.