The Implementation Project (TIP) is honored to announce the publication of Walter Echo-Hawk’s, A Tribal Government Handbook for Operationalizing FPIC in the Context of Conservation and Development (2025). The Handbook is for everyone working with Tribal governments to protect Tribal rights and interests in lands, waters and territories. It provides tools to help strengthen the self-determination of Tribal Nations when dealing with outside entities – like federal agencies, state and local governments, other Tribes or private entities – on matters that may affect a Tribe’s lands, territories or resources.
Mr. Echo-Hawk provides Tribal Nations with concrete steps and tools to work toward implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with a focus on the Declaration’s fundamental safeguard of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (“FPIC”). Through thorough research and insightful analysis Mr. Echo-Hawk highlights Tribal law-making on this topic, including the existence of tribal code provisions on consultation, several of which embrace the Declaration’s “FPIC” standards. The Handbook provides a useful and essential resource for any Tribal Nation contemplating such action.
In no small part, TIP owes its very existence to the visionary thinking and leadership of former NARF Attorney Walter Echo-Hawk. Mr. Echo-Hawk is past President of the Pawnee Nation Business Council (2020-2023), an author, attorney, jurist, legal scholar, and international speaker. The author of the landmark treatise on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “In The Light Of Justice: The Rise of Human Rights in Native America and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” Mr. Echo-Hawk has been at the forefront of the movement recognizing and embracing the Declaration as a tool for Indigenous advocacy in the United States. In addition to setting out a roadmap for implementation at the federal level – reforming the current federal Indian law system to comport with the human rights standards articulated in the Declaration – Mr. Echo-Hawk has also advocated for Tribal Nations’ own law-making to advance the Declaration’s implementation. During his term as President of the Pawnee Nation, he oversaw the adoption of the Pawnee Nation Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.
It has been our great honor and pleasure to be able to work with and learn from Mr. Echo-Hawk for many years in various capacities, and we are immensely grateful for his work with us on the present initiative in support of Tribal Nations operationalizing FPIC.