Guest – Robert Gough


ROBERT GOUGH is an attorney with graduate degrees in sociology and cultural anthropology, specializing in cultural ecology, who has worked with Indian Tribes on cultural and natural resource issues over the past twenty years. He was the 1997 Indian Law Fellow at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota, specializing in research on energy and telecommunications utilities and tribal jurisdiction. In 2000, he was the El Paso Energy Research Fellow at the Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, working on technical and policy issues involved in connecting reservation based renewable generation onto the federal grid. Mr. Gough was the first Director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Utility Commission, and presently serves as a consulting attorney to that commission, participating in negotiations with the Western Area Power Administration for allocations of federal hydroelectric power to the MniSose Intertribal Water Rights Coalition of Tribes in the Missouri River Basin. Mr. Gough currently serves a Rosebud Sioux Tribe delegate to, and Secretary of, the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy, an organization created to provide information on rights and resources for utility services on tribal lands with respect to regulatory authority, legislation, policy, and economic opportunity through partnerships in telecommunications and energy development. Intertribal COUP is composed of federally recognized Indian tribes in North and South Dakota and affiliates throughout the Great Plains. Mr. Gough is co-chair of the Native Peoples/Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop, part of the national assessment on climate change and variability through the United States Global Change Research Program. He also maintains a private practice in indigenous rights.