Identifying Stakeholders
Stephen Thom
CRS Mediator, Los Angeles Office
Question: How did you identify the parties?
Answer: We went to each of the families over a period of months.
Question: You define a family as?
Answer: All the stakeholders that we could find. The Native American Heritage Commission keeps a list of most-likely descendents to any geographic area. Through a list of people that Larry had provided we went down that list and worked with those families who likely had relationships to the remains. Later, we met with leaders of those families, and eventually brought the leaders of those families to one large gathering of the tribe.
Question: Over what period of time?
Answer: I would say that it took at least a two and one half months. We had at least 10 meetings. You always have a lot of hits-and-misses - people don't show up for meetings, so you have to go back... we were driving all the way out to these rural areas and meeting with people, only to find that the right leaders weren't there. So we'd have to come back and meet again. It was an exhausting pre-mediation process.
