Planning and GIS services
built for tribal sovereignty,
not around it.
We collaborate with Pacific Northwest coastal tribal nations on climate adaptation planning, housing development strategy, comprehensive plan formulation, and geospatial data infrastructure. We listen substantively before we propose. The tribe retains full directional authority throughout the engagement.
Start a ConversationMost planning consultants don't understand the federal tribal funding ecosystem.
Coastal tribal nations are currently navigating among the most complex planning conditions in the Pacific Northwest: sea level rise threatening villages that have sustained Indigenous communities for millennia, housing shortfalls that IHBG formula allocations alone cannot close, federal grant applications demanding increasingly sophisticated geospatial documentation, and comprehensive planning frameworks that must reflect tribal governance structures rather than imported state land use paradigms.
Many consulting firms lack sufficient understanding of the fundamental distinction between fee-title tribal land and federal trust land, or the profound jurisdictional implications that distinction carries for permitting authority. Fewer still are prepared to operate within tribal governance structures and community-driven timelines rather than imposing external project management templates upon a sovereign government.
We make no claim to have resolved these systemic challenges. We are a small firm — visitors on these lands, still early in our tribal government practice — and we are building this capacity deliberately, prioritizing relationships over proposals and deep listening over prescriptive service offerings. What we contribute is substantive coastal regulatory expertise, advanced GIS capability, and an explicit commitment to engagements that build tribal capacity rather than consultant dependency. Most critically: we understand that for planning staff, a project is an assignment; for tribal nations, decisions about land, water, and housing are decisions about homeland — sacred, relational, and permanent. We work accordingly.
Services for Tribal Nations
Climate Adaptation & Coastal Hazard GIS
The situation: Three Pacific Northwest coastal tribal villages are presently engaged in active relocation planning. Numerous others will confront the same existential reckoning within the coming decade. Sea level rise projections, tsunami inundation zone delineations, and fluvial flood modeling collectively determine where a community can feasibly relocate and what capital investment will be required. The analytical foundation must be unimpeachable.
What We Build
- → Sea level rise vulnerability mapping — FEMA FIRM panels, NOAA tide gauge projections, LiDAR elevation data integrated into a single parcel-level exposure scoring model
- → Tsunami inundation zone overlays with risk scores at the parcel and structure level
- → Managed retreat siting analysis — candidate site screening, infrastructure access, environmental constraints, comparative scoring to support community and council decision-making
- → Flood and coastal hazard documentation for BIA Tribal Community Resilience Program grant applications and FEMA BRIC
What You Receive
- → A documented, reproducible GIS dataset your team can update and extend
- → A browser-based interactive map portal — no GIS software required to view, share with council, or present to community members
- → All source data, methods, and documentation, so this analysis can be handed to another consultant or expanded by your own staff without starting over
Relevant programs: BIA Tribal Community Resilience Program · FEMA BRIC · NOAA Climate Resilience Regional Readiness
Housing Needs Analysis & NAHASDA Funding Strategy
The situation: Every coastal tribal nation we have researched exhibits a quantifiable housing deficit. IHBG allocations are formula-driven and chronically insufficient to close the gap. The nations successfully developing new units — Siletz, Coquille, Quinault — are layering multiple funding streams, a strategy that demands documentation and analytical rigor beyond the capacity of most Tribally Designated Housing Entities to produce internally.
What We Build
- → Housing needs assessment: enrolled member households, current inventory by type and condition, gap analysis by bedroom size, 10- and 20-year projections
- → IHBG formula factor analysis — what drives your allocation, what project data affects it, and how to present your need accurately to HUD
- → Layered funding strategy: IHBG + Title VI loan guarantees + USDA Rural Development + Oregon Housing and Community Services, mapped to your project type with application sequencing and match requirements
- → Grant narrative support for ANA-SEDS, EDA, and USDA housing applications
What You Receive
- → A plain-language document your TDHE and tribal council can use, and that HUD reviewers will find credible
- → All spreadsheet models and data files, transferable to your staff
Relevant programs: HUD IHBG · NAHASDA Title VI Loan Guarantee · USDA Rural Development · ANA-SEDS · EDA
Comprehensive Plan & Land Use Framework
The situation: Tribal comprehensive planning is not merely Oregon land use planning reframed with different letterhead. Tribal land governance operates entirely outside the state's Goal framework and statutory planning apparatus. A plan that imports state-law planning structures onto tribal land — without substantive adaptation to tribal governance, sovereign authority, and community values — is a plan that will sit unused on a shelf.
What We Build
- → GIS base mapping: parcel inventory, land status (fee-title, trust, allotted), environmental constraints, infrastructure, cultural resource zones as designated by the tribe
- → Land use needs analysis and buildable lands assessment within trust and fee-title areas
- → Community survey design and facilitation — structured to fit your governance process, not ours
- → Written plan document: goals, policies, implementing actions, maps, built with and for your community
- → Land use standards and code language for tribal land governance
What You Receive
- → A plan document that reflects your nation's governance structure, not borrowed municipal planning templates
- → All source data, maps, and community engagement materials
Relevant programs: ANA-SEDS · EDA Planning Grants
GIS Data Infrastructure & Interactive Map Portals
The situation: Approximately 55 percent of tribal nations currently lack dedicated GIS capacity. Maps produced for discrete projects — a grant application, a comprehensive plan — frequently cannot be updated or extended once the engagement concludes, because the underlying data, methodologies, and procedures were never transferred to tribal staff.
What We Build
- → Tribal land and parcel database (ArcGIS Online or open-source QGIS — your preference and what your staff can sustain)
- → Environmental constraint layers: wetlands, floodplain, coastal zone, DSL jurisdiction, critical habitat, cultural resource areas
- → Infrastructure inventory: roads, utilities, structures, service areas
- → Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) documentation layers — spatial records of traditional use areas, culturally significant sites, resource harvest zones, and ecological stewardship areas, structured to support federal land management consultations and co-management proposals
- → Browser-based interactive portal: toggleable layers, legend, zoom, shareable without GIS software
- → Staff training — 2 to 4 sessions, documented procedures, everything transferable
What You Receive
- → A GIS system your staff can maintain and extend when this engagement ends
- → Full documentation and training so there is no dependency on us
Multi-Agency Permit Coordination (Fee-Title Coastal Land)
The situation: Tribal fee-title land along the Oregon coast frequently falls within the jurisdictional purview of Oregon DSL, the Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA, and FEMA — the same multi-agency review architecture that renders coastal permitting protracted and complex. Trust land operates under substantively different regulatory frameworks; this service is specific to fee-title parcels.
What We Build
- → Jurisdiction determination: which agencies have authority, what type of permits are required
- → Removal-fill permit application preparation and submittal (Oregon DSL)
- → Army Corps Section 10/404 coordination
- → NOAA essential fish habitat consultation support
- → Comment response and agency coordination through approval
What You Receive
- → A complete permit file and documentation of agency correspondence
- → Clear explanation of regulatory outcomes for council and planning staff
Federal Land Co-Management Planning & GIS Documentation
The situation: Tens of thousands of acres of BLM and Forest Service land lie within the ancestral territories of Oregon's coastal tribal nations. Federal law — the Tribal Self-Governance Act, the Tribal Forest Protection Act, and the Clean Water Act's Treatment as a State provisions — creates concrete mechanisms for tribes to assume co-management authority over these adjacent lands. Few tribes have the planning documentation and GIS analysis needed to initiate these proposals. The opportunity is underutilized.
What We Build
- → Adjacent federal land analysis — BLM, Forest Service, and NPS parcels overlapping or abutting tribal land with documentation of historical, cultural, and geographic significance (TSGA § 458cc(c) criteria)
- → Fire, disease, and resource threat mapping for TFPA contract eligibility — identifying federal land posing demonstrable risk to tribal forest or rangeland
- → TEK integration mapping — spatial documentation of traditional use areas and ecological stewardship knowledge to support co-management proposals and MOU negotiations
- → Water quality jurisdiction analysis under CWA Treatment as a State (TAS) status — mapping upstream dischargers and reservation boundary waters for TAS eligibility assessment
- → Draft co-management framework language — MOU template language, scope-of-authority definitions, and sovereignty-protective provisions informed by TSGA and FLPMA precedent
What You Receive
- → A documented GIS package and written analysis your tribe and legal counsel can use directly in TSGA funding agreement negotiations or TFPA contract applications
- → All source data, maps, and documentation — transferable to your planning staff or legal team
Relevant programs: Tribal Self-Governance Act (TSGA) § 458cc(c) · Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA) · CWA § 518 TAS · FLPMA · Endangered Species Act
With Tribal Nations
No unsolicited proposals.
Initial conversations are oriented toward understanding your nation's planning priorities and governance context — not toward presenting a predetermined service menu. If a substantive fit exists, we articulate it candidly. If it does not, we say so with equal directness.
You own everything we produce.
Source data, GIS files, analytical reports, and all documentary outputs. We retain no intellectual property rights to the work product. Every deliverable is designed to be immediately usable and independently extensible by your staff.
We work at your pace.
Tribal governance and community consensus processes require the time that tribal decision-making requires. We construct project timelines around your institutional process, not around our own project management conventions.
Scope agreed in writing.
No scope expansion occurs without your explicit written approval. We only begin work after a clear, detailed scope has been agreed to in writing.
Capacity, not dependency.
Upon engagement conclusion, your staff should possess the capability to update geospatial data, extend cartographic outputs, and maintain all deliverables without requiring our continued involvement. If that condition is not met, the project remains incomplete.
Relationships before contracts.
We initiate conversations to understand your nation's context — not to present a service menu. Agreements with tribal nations must be grounded in trust built and proven over time, not in a letter of request against a constrained deadline. We invite you to reach out when the time is right for your nation, and we recognize that means it may be years before any contract is appropriate.
Confidentiality is yours to define.
Before any engagement begins, we agree in writing on which aspects of our discussions — about cultural sites, traditional practices, community priorities, or internal governance — may be documented, referenced in work products, or disclosed publicly, and which remain confidential. Your nation sets those terms. We follow them.
Consent, not compliance.
We work toward the standard of free, prior and informed consent articulated in UNDRIP Articles 19 and 32 — not the procedural minimum required by Section 106 NHPA. That means your nation retains the right to say no, to pause, and to revise the terms of the engagement at any point. Consultation is not a box to check.
Mamook is Federal Procurement–Eligible
Your tribe can fund Mamook services through your own procurement authority and federal funding sources. We're registered as a federal contractor, which means your government can contract with us under tribal procurement rules, not federal timelines.
Federal funding sources we support:
- IHBG (Indian Housing Block Grant) — housing assessments, strategic planning
- NAHASDA (Native American Housing Assistance & Self-Determination Act) — housing documentation, GIS analysis
- FEMA BRIC (Building Resilient Infrastructure & Communities) — coastal hazard mapping, grant documentation
- ANA-SEDS (Administration for Native Americans — Sustainable Energy Development) — energy planning, GIS
- EDA (Economic Development Administration) — economic development planning, analysis
- NOAA Climate Resilience programs — coastal adaptation, sea level rise documentation
- TSGA (Tribal Self-Governance Act) — off-reservation program transfer analysis, co-management documentation, TSGA § 458cc(c) proposals
- Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA) — adjacent federal forest analysis, fire/disease threat documentation, tribal contractor eligibility packages
All deliverables include the compliance documentation and federal grant administration support you need to close these grants.
Federal Contracting Credentials
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SAM.gov Registered
UEI KXVUQK4RNQ91 (active through May 2027)
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OregonBuys Vendor
Vendor ID V00051695 (17 NIGP codes registered)
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COBID ESB — Application in Progress
Oregon Emerging Small Business certification — application in progress (not yet certified)
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Professional Insurance
Liability, professional indemnity, and compliance documentation
TERO Compliance
We understand Tribal Employment Rights Ordinances (TERO) and structure our engagements to comply with your tribe's hiring and employment requirements — whether for direct tribal hires or subcontractor relationships.
If your tribe has adopted a TERO ordinance, we work within those frameworks for staffing, subcontracting, and contracting decisions.
A Small Firm, Building Deliberately
Alex Rau is the principal of Mamook LLC. He holds a Master of Community and Regional Planning (MCRP) from the University of Oregon (2023) and is actively pursuing AICP certification and the GISP-E credential. His practice is conducted as a visitor on lands profoundly shaped by Indigenous presence for millennia prior to European contact.
We named this firm Mamook — Chinuk Wawa for “to make” — because the language, and the Indigenous nations who shaped and sustained it, belong to the coastlines where our practice is situated. The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde is actively revitalizing Chinuk Wawa, including within their tribal school curriculum. We carry that word as a continuous reminder of whose ancestral place this is.
SAM.gov registered entity (UEI KXVUQK4RNQ91, active through May 2027). COBID Emerging Small Business (ESB): certification application in progress.
We are not the appropriate partner for every tribal nation.
If you would like to explore what your planning department is currently undertaking and whether Mamook might contribute value — a substantive conversation, not a sales presentation — we welcome you to reach out directly.
Alex Rau · [email protected]