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Native Americans



This article is more than 8 months old


NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES RECLAIM CALIFORNIA REDWOOD LAND FOR PRESERVATION

This article is more than 8 months old

Group of 10 tribes inhabiting the area since thousands of years will be
responsible for protecting the land dubbed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ

Save the Redwoods League transferred more than 500 acres on the Lost Coast for
preservation. Photograph: Max Whittaker/AP
Save the Redwoods League transferred more than 500 acres on the Lost Coast for
preservation. Photograph: Max Whittaker/AP

Dani Anguiano and agencies
Tue 25 Jan 2022 19.32 GMTLast modified on Wed 26 Jan 2022 12.11 GMT
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The descendants of Native American tribes on the northern California coast are
reclaiming part of their ancestral homeland, including ancient redwoods that
have stood since their forebears walked the land.

Lake Tahoe ski resort changes name to remove racist and misogynistic slur
Read more


Save the Redwoods League, a non-profit conservation group, announced Tuesday
that it is transferring more than 500 acres (202 hectares) on the Lost Coast to
the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council.

The group of 10 tribes that have inhabited the area for thousands of years will
be responsible for protecting the land dubbed Tc’ih-Léh-Dûñ, or “Fish Run Place”
in the Sinkyone language.

Priscilla Hunter, the chair of the Sinkyone Council, said it is fitting they
will be caretakers of the land where her people were removed or forced to flee
before the forest was largely stripped for timber.



“It’s a real blessing,” said Hunter, of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians.
“It’s like a healing for our ancestors. I know our ancestors are happy. This was
given to us to protect.”

The transfer marks a step in the growing Land Back movement to return Indigenous
homelands to the descendants of those who lived there for millennia before
European settlers arrived. In 2020, the Esselen tribe of northern California
regained more than 1,000 acres of its ancestral homeland with a $4.5m deal
involving the state and an Oregon conservation group. Such arrangements have
become more common in recent years, allowing for the conservation of land and
wildlife.

The league first worked with the Sinkyone council when it transferred a 164-acre
(66-hectare) plot nearby to the group in 2012.

The league recently paid $37m for a scenic five-mile (eight-km) stretch of the
rugged and forbidding Lost Coast from a lumber company to protect it from
logging and eventually open it up to the public.



Opening access to the public is not a priority on the property being transferred
to the tribal group because it is so remote, said Sam Hodder, the president and
CEO of the league. But it serves an important puzzle piece wedged between other
protected areas.

Steep hills rise and fall to a tributary of the Eel River that has steelhead
trout and Coho salmon. The property was last logged about 30 years ago and still
has a large number of old-growth redwoods as well as second-growth trees.



“This is a property where you can almost tangibly feel that it is healing, that
it is recovering,” Hodder said. “You walk through the forest and, even as you
see the kind of ghostly stumps of ancient trees that were harvested, you could
also in the foggy landscape see the monsters that were left behind as well as
the young redwoods that are sprouting from those stumps.”

The league purchased the land two years ago for $3.5m funded by Pacific Gas &
Electric Co to provide habitat for endangered northern spotted owl and marbled
murrelet to mitigate other environmental damage by the utility.

PG&E was set to emerge Tuesday from five years of criminal probation for a 2010
explosion triggered by its natural gas lines that blew up a San Bruno
neighborhood and killed eight people. It’s been blamed since 2017 for sparking
more than 30 wildfires that wiped out more than 23,000 homes and businesses and
killed more than 100 people.

In an effort to reduce its liability and the chance of vegetation contacting
power lines and sparking fires, PG&E has been criticized for destroying many
large and old trees.

“Thanks to Save the Redwoods League for seizing on any opportunity to protect
lands on the Lost Coast that are vital to its conservation,” said Michael
Evenson, the vice-president of the Lost Coast League, which advocates for
protecting water and wildlife in the area. “But PG&E getting a green merit badge
after all the destruction they are doing … is not palatable.”

Hawk Rosales, the former executive director of the council, said the new
property adds a significant holding to the 4,000 acres (1,618.7 hectares) the
group protects for cultural and ecological purposes.

More importantly, it recognizes the tribal group’s importance in caring for
lands.

“For so many decades tribal voices have been marginalized in the mainstream
conservation movement,” Rosales said. “It’s only until very recently that they
have been invited to participate meaningfully and to take a leadership role.”

Hodder said the league was trying to remove barriers and increase the scale of
land managed by tribal communities and return Indigenous knowledge and
practices, such as setting small controlled fires to clear out undergrowth that
lead to healthier forests. Experts have said reintroducing fire to California’s
landscape, along with reducing fossil fuels, is essential to combat the state’s
increasingly extreme and destructive fires.

“These communities have been stewarding these lands across thousands of years,”
Hodder said. “It was the exclusion of that stewardship in many ways that’s
gotten us into the mess that we’re in.”

Topics
 * Native Americans

 * California
 * Conservation
 * news

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