Title:

Private conservation and Indigenous groups with contested identities: how are New Hampshire land trusts navigating recognition politics and controversy?

New Hampshire has no state or federally recognized Indigenous tribes, and the identities of its self-recognized Abenaki tribes have been publicly contested by Canadian scholars and the Odanak and Wolinak First Nations. As a result, conservation practitioners within New Hampshire land trusts face challenges in making decisions about collaborations, cultural access, and land management involving tribal entities. Our research thus explores how land trusts currently incorporate Indigenous relationships in their operations, and how these practices may be affected by (a) an absence of tribal federal recognition and (b) the publicly contested nature of a tribe. We conducted six semi-structured interviews with conservation staff of land trusts in New Hampshire in the spring of 2024. Results suggest that land trusts in New Hampshire have engaged with contested Abenaki groups by supporting information exchange and educational programs, providing harvesting access, and stewarding culturally significant lands. Land trust staff feel limited in their engagement with Abenaki groups by confining organizational structures, such as governance documents with limited scope and low staff capacity. More significantly, staff feel challenged by confusion surrounding government recognition and public controversy involving Abenaki groups. Staff expressed divergent opinions regarding relationships moving forward with contested Abenaki groups. This study offers context and considerations for the conservation field, where questions of equity and responsibility in the face of Indigenous identity controversy are becoming increasingly nuanced and consequential.

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