Consultation Corral

Tribal Consultation is a foundational part of how the U.S. Federal government attempts to uphold the trust responsibility to tribes. This government-to-government process is meant to elevate tribes in the rulemaking process for federal agencies, allowing tribal leaders to impart essential Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and considerations that make these policies more durable and inclusive in the long-run. Federal agencies issue thousands of proposed rules each year in order to implement policies passed by Congress. Since 2000, federal agencies have been required to determine if tribal consultation is necessary (i.e., does this rule have the potential to significantly impact tribes and/or tribal lands?) and if so, to engage with tribes in a process outside of the open comment period. 

Unfortunately, the Tribal Consultation system is really arduous for tribes to navigate. Agencies are supposed to post these opportunities with advance notice (typically 30 days or more) to the Federal Register and/or their agency website, but the Federal Register can be complicated to use, requiring hours of staff time to sift through thousands of filings by different agencies.  They are also supposed to send ‘dear tribal leader’ letters directly to tribal governments to invite their participation, but sometimes those 'dear tribal leader’ letters come too late or get lost in a spam filter. Sometimes, a tribe with an interest may not get invited even if they want to submit a comment. For example, an agency may propose a rule that impacts a specific land-base that does not include tribal lands-in-trust. However, those lands are almost certainly ancestral territory for one or more tribes - and those Nations may have a vested interest in shaping the final rule that governs those lands.

There are also national and regional Native-led advocacy organizations and inter-tribal councils that often submit comments or request consultation during rulemaking in a number of policy areas. These organizations comb through the Federal Register, agency websites, list-servs and rely on members receiving ‘dear tribal leader’ letters to create a list of opportunities. Then, they have to work to prioritize those based on a number of criteria. Because these agencies propose rules on different timelines in separate processes, tribal leaders are often bombarded with multiple requests that take place at the same time or with very short deadlines to respond.

With limited time and capacity to respond to these requests, having a concise list of opportunities to consider would go a long way in helping tribes and Native-led advocacy organizations to advocate on issues of highest importance to them - from federal land management issues to broadband access to healthcare equity.

Corral is an online clearinghouse where tribal leaders and Native advocates can access tribal consultation opportunity information in real time, and search for information in a way that is intuitive to tribes. Our process automates the work of tribal governments and Native-led advocacy organizations to pull together tribal consultation opportunities. Using the Federal Register API, we can pull the text into a back-end, large language model and automate this workflow. This is an open-government project geared at making tribal consultation communication and existing data work for us. 

Tribal users would then be able to search consultation opportunities by date, agency, policy area, tribe(s) invited, and other search criteria determined in our focus group process. This would save tremendous amounts of time and resources, allowing tribes to focus on the business of running our Native governments and formulating impactful comments for the proposed rules that impact our people. 

Corral is built to serve any US-based tribe interested in expressing sovereign power by participating in the government-to-government consultation process with US government agencies. As part of my research, I have spent the past 12 months speaking with experts on all sides of this issue to better understand the flow of information from the Federal government to tribes regarding these Tribal Consultation opportunities. As outlined, the next step in this process is to formalize this process by working with Native-led advocacy organizations to build a replicable workflow for the model and then beta test with both advocates and tribal leaders to ensure this tool works for a variety of search needs. The idea for Corral was generated directly by listening to tribal leaders and advocates to better understand this challenging pain point in exercising this aspect of tribal sovereignty. Thankfully, this is an issue we can address by harnessing the power of machine-learning and open API to scrape and organize information in a way that serves tribes in their effort to participate in Tribal Consultation. The response from sharing the potential solution with Indigenous leaders both through informal conversations and more formal pitches at conference settings have been very positive. Importantly, the solution will be created by Native developers in collaboration with Native-led organizations.

Given my training, background and community ties to a broad range of tribal advocates, I am uniquely positioned to lead this project. I am a policy and research professional with almost fifteen years of experience in public service. My professional experience includes policy advocacy, community-led research, strategic planning, and building the capacity of civic and non-profit organizations to deliver tangible outcomes for the communities they serve. In these roles, I have managed multi-million dollar public-service programs.

Currently, I am finishing my PhD in American Politics, researching the conditions under which tribes win our policy fights in American political institutions (the courts, legislature, and executive bureaucracy). Part of my work is focused on understanding how tribal consultation has changed over time, putting quantitative analysis behind the often-discussed changes tribal leaders have been articulating regarding volume and quality of tribal consultation during rulemaking. In this process, I have interviewed tribal leaders, staffers at Native-led advocacy organizations, lawyers representing tribes, the regulatory offices at federal agencies, federal data officers, and librarians at the National Archives to consider the current challenges tribes face in participating in consultation opportunities. It became apparent through these discussions that access to information in a timely and easy to use format is the next logical step in advancing our position when these opportunities arise. 

As a citizen of Osage Nation, I have witnessed what happens when tribal communities are not at the table with federal agencies to determine rules that impact our land, natural resources, people, and culture. I want to create a tool that allows all tribes to assert sovereignty and prioritize their own involvement in this process, one that is currently controlled by the federal government. Our next step in bringing Corral to life is to hold more formalized focus groups and interviews with the staffers and advocates who currently do the work of sifting through tribal consultation data. My experiences at ASU’s Indigenous Leadership Academy, the Udall Foundation Congressional Intern Program, and as a Scholar-in-Residence at Advance Native Political Leadership helped me cultivate the necessary cross-tribal network needed to make Corral a useful tool for advocates working in multiple policy areas. 

I am a trained data scientist with proficiency in R programming language, an open-source and highly adaptable language for working with API data. As a former social issue lobbyist, I also understand the core processes involved in making government data accessible and usable for the general public. In building Corral, I am dedicated to working with a wide-range of tribal stakeholders and Native advocates to ensure the tool serves the varied needs of our different tribal governments in making the most of their seat at the policymaking table.

As Corral is in the concept stage, we have not yet coded the model or created our workflow. At this stage, I have spoken with tribal leaders, Native-led advocacy organizations, agency rulemaking offices and shared the idea at the recent U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit for feedback. These conversations have validated that Corral would be an incredibly impactful tool for asserting our sovereignty and improving our ability to participate in Tribal Consultation opportunities. I have also formed a partnership with a national Native-led advocacy organization with expertise in supporting tribes during consultation to inform this work (MOU pending).

Note: I selected all of the UN Sustainable Development Goals because Corral will enhance the ability of Tribal Governments to advance sovereign interests in all of these areas. Agencies propose thousands of rules every year that impact each of these goals, and it's critical that tribes are at the table to make policies that are inclusive of Indigenous Knowledge (IK).

There are four key questions that our team will need to answer in moving Corral to the next phase and where I believe a SOLVE Fellowship would be uniquely suited for this project:

1. What should the User Experience look and feel like? How can we build this tool so that staffers in tribal governments and advocacy organizations will actually use it? This involves conducting a series of focus groups with those who already do the work of consolidating consultation opportunities manually to help understand and replicate their workflow. 

2. Which large language model should be used to train the back-end workflow for Corral? Proprietary models like GPT boast quick processing times and enhanced usability. However, there are questions about the long-term cost and access to models like these. Using open-source models may be one answer, but these require access to advanced computing power (e.g., Bloom recommends 700GB of space for operation). 

3. What is our model for sustainability? Even if we do receive seed funding, we will need to consider what mechanisms are appropriate to sustain the maintenance and updates to this product. For example, we may want to have a sliding scale where tribes with greater resources pay more so that tribes with little to no revenue may still use Corral free of charge. Or, we may consider grant funding or other avenues to make this product as accessible as possible to tribal interests. The goal is to support tribal sovereignty efforts and that has to remain at the forefront of our revenue model.

4. Should we include state-based opportunities for tribal consultation in Corral? The Federal Register has an API that is open to the public. However, state-based opportunities for tribal consultation are scattered across state agency websites throughout the 50 states. As certain policies have been relegated to the states, and some states have tribal engagement offices, we may want to consider how to include these important opportunities as well by scraping or some other automated means.

Corral will need technical guidance to help (a) design the focus group series; (b) consider and select a revenue model; (c) and design a long-term plan for phased improvements. The MIT SOLVE network is well-suited to these challenges and Corral would benefit greatly from the expertise available through the Fellowship. Additionally, Corral will need a logo and branding strategy to ensure that the tool cuts through the ‘noise’ and gets into the hands of advocates and tribal leaders who need it. If awarded monetary support, that would go toward paying for coding, hosting, and marketing expenses in addition to paying stakeholders for their time in validating the beta tool during testing. 

Elise Blasingame is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation, Pawhuska District. She has worked previously as a summer graduate intern for the Osage Mineral Council working on data and strategic planning projects. Elise has served as a Udall Congressional Fellow in the Office of the Assistant Secretary - Indian Affairs at the Department of Interior, as well as a Scholar in Residence with Advance Native Political Leadership. Elise’s goal is to use her training to create data-based tools and strategies that advance tribal sovereignty priorities. 

Disclaimer: the information submitted in this application is produced as independent research and does not represent the views of the Udall Foundation, Advance Native Political Leadership, the U.S. Department of Interior, the University of Georgia, or any tribal government. 

Corral represents one of many data issues facing tribes and advocates. In particular, Corral presents a model for how we can ‘wrangle’ data from American governments to better prepare tribal governments for their policy fights. In an age where open-data and the FAIR principles of data management have become common discourse - this project models how tribes can reclaim power using advanced data tools where other projects may not be culturally suitable. For example, large language models can also be used by private interests to exploit or extract culturally significant data from tribes in an effort to sell a product to the general public. Consider here the use of AI art to generate images based on culturally significant iconography from tribes to sell in the public market. In these cases, using LLMs or machine learning products, especially those that are proprietary, run the risk of allowing private interests access to tribally-held information, not appropriate for public-access. But with Corral, we are using data generated by the Federal government to advance tribal interests without sacrificing any data sovereignty of our own. 

If Corral provides this much needed service to tribes regarding consultation, this will generate further discussion about how other data sources might be wrangled in service to sovereignty-goals. There are so many different processes that tribal governments use to do the business of governing - many which could be aided by the use of automated data processing through the lens of tribal governance. 

Corral will help tribes maintain and enhance tribal sovereignty in a number of policy areas with the US by making it easier to engage in government-to-government Tribal Consultation opportunities on proposed rules that impact Native people, culture, lands and resources.'

Step 1: Corral puts all Tribal Consultation opportunities on one, easy to search site. No more missing 'dear tribal leader' letters or searching multiple sources to compile!

Step 2: Tribal leaders choose consultation opportunities based on their priorities, capacity and sovereignty-goals. Focus is put into the areas that matter most!

Step 3: Tribes have a real and lasting influence on US-developed rules that impact Native people, culture, lands and resources.

GOAL: Tribes, Intertribal Councils and Native-led Organizations shape federal rules to advance sovereignty-related goals of tribes.

Measured by:

• Increase in tribes attending consultation and/or providing comment to federal agencies during the rulemaking process.

• Tribal leaders/staffers report feeling greater knowledge around when consultation opportunities are taking place.

• Tribal leaders/staffers report being able to weigh in on more policies that could have a critical impact on their people, lands, resources, and culture.

GOAL: More federal policies reflect the priorities of Tribal Nations, indicating agency respect for the trust responsibility and sovereignty of tribes.

Measured by:

• Tribal leaders/staffers report fewer instances where they ‘missed out’ on a consultation due to lack of information.

• Increase in the number of policies that have changed from proposed version to final, based on the Indigenous Knowledge (IK) imparted during consultation.

• Stories of success shared by tribal leaders, Native-led organizations and federal agencies regarding the importance of Tribal Consultation. 

Corral uses existing API alongside machine learning to replicate the workflows of hardworking tribal advocates. First, we can replicate current advocate workflows by using a pre-trained large language model (LLM) to identify our data of interest. After feature selection, we can connect the backend API from the Federal Register to our model to fetch data, clean it, and transform that data into the searchable front-end for users.

While the technology for the actual product is based in modern machine learning, the purpose of Corral is rooted in traditional knowledge. The entire goal of creating Corral is to ensure tribes can include, at their discretion, Indigenous Knowledge (IK) into rules that impact our people, culture, language, lands and natural resources. From economic development to natural resource management, tribes have incredibly resilient strategies for doing the business of governing. Ensuring we have a seat at the table for making these rules is an integral part of asserting our sovereignty and creating better policy for everyone. 

Atlanta, GA

Atlanta, GA

As Corral is in the concept phase, there is only one team member. However, the plan is to add the following with funding:

(1) Project Lead (current)

(2) Software Engineers (preferrably contractors found through Natives in Tech)

(2-5) Community Partners (MOU's with Native-led advocacy organizations to test the product)

(1) Marketing Consultant/Designer (with experience working across Indian Country)

12 months of research

The purpose of Corral is to even the playing field for tribes to engage in government-to-government relations with US political institutions. At its core, the mission of Corral is to decrease the burden placed on tribes to navigate this often frustrating process. Importantly, Corral is born from an understanding that tribes have diverse needs and considerations when it comes to engaging in Tribal Consultation. Whether a tribe has federal recognition, or their ancestral lands are impacted by a proposed rule, they should have the right information in a timely manner to decide if and how they want to engage. As such, it is important that we work with a variety of community partners that represent different regions, economies and policy interests, recognition status, and other factors that make our tribal communities unique. Our project lead has worked on multiple data projects aimed at challenging inequitable access for marginalized communities and will bring that expertise to developing processes that make partners and users feel valued and supported.

Corral will provide a much needed data-access service to Tribal Nations, law firms representing Tribal Nations, and Native-led advocacy organizations working to sustain and enhance tribal sovereignty in the United States. The product itself is an application that helps tribal advocates search and prioritize Tribal Consultation opportunities with US governments so they can focus their energy on the important work of governing and creating impactful comments for their consultations. Right now, these advocates often miss opportunities due to delayed or lost ‘dear tribal leader’ letters, short timeframes for responding, and the hours of staff time it takes to sift through the Federal Register, agency websites, and advocacy organization list-servs to compile opportunities of importance. Corral funnels all of this information into one easy to search, online repository where advocates can easily decide where to spend their precious political energy and staff resources.

This is one of the core reasons a SOLVE Indigenous Communities Fellowship would be so impactful for building out Corral. As stated, we want to be very intentional with how this tool is funded. With the fundraising experience of our project lead, we could very likely leverage the $10k SOLVE funds to identify and secure grant funding for at least the first year or so. Afterward, it may be necessary to consider a subscription model to sustain funding for maintenance and upgrades to Corral. However, it is really important that equitable access remain at the forefront of this project. For example, we may want to have a sliding scale where tribes with greater resources pay more so that tribes with little to no revenue may still use Corral free of charge. Or, we may consider other avenues to make this product as accessible as possible to tribal interests. The MIT SOLVE network would be invaluable as we consider which revenue models are appropriate to sustain Corral. The overarching goal is to support tribal sovereignty efforts and that has to remain at the forefront of our revenue model.