As the Tribal Coordinator for the West Coast Region, Amilee revamped the Tribal Relations Training Program. She also served as a founding member and Co-Chair of the NOAA Native American/Alaska Native Employee Resource Group. She was often consulted as an expert to assist with tribal relations issues across the agency. Amilee has more than 25 years of experience working with Native American Tribes in the private, state, and federal sectors. She has gained extensive knowledge and experience with tribal histories, treaties, sovereignties, self-governance, protocols, customs, and traditions.
What is your key responsibility?
NOAA Fisheries is committed to advancing equity and environmental justice, including equal treatment, opportunities, and environmental benefits for all people and communities. We are also building on continuing efforts and partnerships with underserved and underrepresented communities. I use NOAA Fisheries’ Equity and Environmental Justice Strategy and its goals and objectives to guide my work as the Alaska Region’s Tribal Relations Coordinator.
My key responsibility is to improve NOAA Fisheries’ relations with Alaska Native tribal and coastal communities. This includes providing technical support on tribal consultation, sovereignty, governance, and protocols during the development of projects and programs. One objective is to establish and maintain strong cross-cultural relationships with tribal leaders, councils, and technical staff to help them ensure equitable access to cultural and natural resources important to their lifeways. In addition, I develop, recommend, and distribute tribal policies, issue tribal program procedures and guidelines, and prepare a wide variety of reports in response to internal agency work. For example, I have recently established and chair the Alaska Regional Tribal Engagement Team. This increases internal agency collaboration and communication on outreach to Alaska Native tribal and coastal communities. The team also helps staff to stay on top of what each of the divisions in our agency’s Alaska Region are doing in tribal relations and provides opportunities to partner on tribal outreach.
Original source can be found here.
