Trust Magazine

Tribal Nations Announce First Ocean and Coastal Protections in U.S.

The Yurok-Tolowa-Dee-ni’ Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area sits off the California coast

In this Issue:

  • Spring 2024
  • A Change to Federal Methadone Regulations
  • A Journey to Earth’s Last Great Wilderness
  • Art With a View on History
  • Expanded Protections for a Biological Hot Spot
  • Honduras’ Coastal Wetlands
  • Insights on What Communities Need to Thrive
  • Majorities Say Social Media Is Good for Democracy
  • Americans Say Officials Should Avoid Heated or Aggressive Speech
  • Return on Investment
  • The Digital Divide
  • The High Cost of Putting a Roof Over Your Head
  • The Pantanal in South America
  • Tribal Nations First Ocean and Coastal Protections in U.S.
  • What Does Being Spiritual Mean?
  • View All Other Issues
Tribal Nations Announce First Ocean and Coastal Protections in U.S.
The newly designated Yurok-Tolowa-Dee-ni’ Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area, which runs from the California-Oregon border to south of Trinidad, California, is home to rich wildlife and plant biodiversity—and stunning coastal vistas.
L. Toshio Kishiyama Getty Images

Three Tribal Nations on the West Coast achieved a major milestone in conservation in September when they designated the Yurok-Tolowa-Dee-ni’ Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area (IMSA), the first such protection enacted by Tribal governments in the United States.

The Yurok-Tolowa-Dee-ni’ IMSA—which spans coastal forests and dunes from the California-Oregon border to just south of Trinidad, California, and extends three miles offshore into the Pacific Ocean—is home to species of high cultural value to the Tribal Nations, including mussels, kelp, abalone, salmon, shorebirds, and eels.

The nations—the Resighini Tribe of Yurok People, Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, and Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad Rancheria—aim to safeguard the area from environmental threats, including sea level rise and coastal erosion, by enhancing Tribal stewardship and applying their Indigenous knowledge. Working together, they seek to improve water quality, reverse ocean acidification and species and habitat loss, manage offshore development, and mitigate other climate impacts affecting their communities.

The Pew Charitable Trusts has provided funding and technical assistance to the nations’ efforts on the IMSA since late 2022. At the time, several area Tribal governments had just launched the Tribal Marine Stewards Network, an organization built from years of groundwork and collaboration. The network coordinates marine monitoring projects and Tribal community engagement activities, including ethnographic interviews, youth camps, beach surveys, and workshops.

One example is the Tribal Intertidal Digital Ecological Surveys (TIDES) project. In concert with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, several Tribes are using a relatively low-cost and easily replicable method of engaging communities directly in research on and management of their coastal areas.

By suspending high-resolution cameras above rocky intertidal habitat, teams capture thousands of images, which are then stitched together using software to create 3D habitat maps. These large-area imaging surveys are repeated biannually to create a long-term monitoring database that captures seasonal variation in biological conditions, aiding Tribes in documenting often-dramatic changes in their ancestral waters.

In identical proclamations of the Indigenous Marine Stewardship Area on Sept. 22, each of the Tribes stated, “[W]e … can no longer wait to act to preserve and protect this culturally and ecologically important place.” In their resolutions, the Tribes invite “other federally recognized Tribal governments with ancestral connections to this area, as well as the government of the United States and the government of the state of California, to work with us in achieving our vision for reclaiming Tribal stewardship.”

The announcement of the IMSA aligns with efforts within each Tribe to bolster natural and cultural resource management capacity. These efforts have included learning from similar Indigenous-led programs around the globe, including the Indigenous Ranger and Protected Area program in Australia and the Coastal Guardian Watchmen program of Coastal First Nations along Canada’s Pacific coast.

In recent years, the Tolowa-Dee-ni’ Nation started a program called Netlh-‘ii~-ne, roughly translated as “the ones who care for or look after.” This program seeks to build capacity among Tribal members as active managers of natural resources within their ancestral territory and specifically to enforce harvest policies enacted by the Tribe, with a focus on six keystone species: lhvmsr (surf smelt), ch’uy-xee-ni (night smelt), met-’e (razor clam), dee-lhat (mussels), lat (seaweed), and chii-la’-lhsrik (surfperch).

For millennia, these and other Indigenous communities in the U.S. have stewarded their lands and waters—for food, medicine, ceremony, and other customary uses—and many continue to do so today.

"We all share a common culture and way of life that needs protecting."

The California government has not yet formally responded to the IMSA announcement, but there are indications that state leaders will back the Tribes. In a 2019 executive order, Governor Gavin Newsom (D) apologized to the state’s Native American peoples for a legacy of “violence, exploitation, dispossession, and the attempted destruction of tribal communities” and noted that California now recognizes many of those communities as sovereign governments.

And in April 2022, the California Natural Resources Agency released its “Pathways to 30x30 California” report, which commits the state to strengthening partnerships with Tribes and specifically prioritizes IMSAs as a collaborative approach for furthering California’s objective to protect at least 30% of its lands and waters by 2030.

In February, the California Department of Parks and Recreation and the Resighini Tribe of Yurok People signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on public land and water management, including a commitment to incorporate Indigenous traditional knowledge to better protect and preserve state parks and cultural resources. Later this year, the California Legislature will consider Assembly Bill 1284 to better define and implement co-management of natural resources between Tribal Nations and the state. The Pew-supported legislation was written by Assembly Member James Ramos (D) and sponsored by the Resighini Tribe of Yurok People and the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation.

“Our Tribes have a responsibility to steward, protect, and restore the ocean and coastal resources within our ancestral territories,” says Jeri Lynn Thompson, chairperson of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation. “We seek to establish long-term, consistent engagement with state and federal agencies while implementing Indigenous traditional knowledge and Tribal science into management practices within the IMSA.”

Coordinators of the Tribal Marine Stewards Network are seeking to create an endowment to sustain its work into the future. “We all share a common culture and way of life that needs protecting,” says Fawn C. Murphy, chairperson of the Resighini Tribe of Yurok People, “and we share the same desire to leave something for future generations to be proud of.”

John Briley is a Trust staff writer.

Americans Say Officials Should Avoid Heated or Aggressive Speech A Change to Federal Methadone Regulations
Trust Magazine

Indigenous Leaders Protects Canada's Boreal Forest

Quick View
Trust Magazine

A steady breeze carries the smell of smoking goose and beaver meat to a circle of people gathered on the shore of lake Pekuakami on a brilliant mid-June day in the Ilnu community of Mashteuiatsh, Quebec. The group is sharing stories about working together, some for more than two decades, on a campaign to conserve the lands and waters of the boreal forest in Canada, which spans 1.3 billion acres from coast to coast and is one of the largest intact forest and wetland ecosystems on Earth.

 A closeup of the face of an elephant seal, with waves crashing in the background.
 A closeup of the face of an elephant seal, with waves crashing in the background.
Press Releases & Statements

UK Expands Marine Protections in Remote Southern Islands

Quick View
Press Releases & Statements

LONDON—The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project, working in partnership with the Great Blue Ocean coalition, today applauded the UK and local government’s decision to vastly expand marine protections for the frigid, nutrient-rich waters surrounding South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI).

Baffin Bay
Baffin Bay
Article

Arctic Oasis Sustains Northernmost Inuit Communities

Quick View
Article

Between Canada and Greenland lies the most biologically productive ecosystem north of the Arctic Circle: an 85,000-square-kilometer (32,800-square-mile) region of ocean known in Greenland as Pikialasorsuaq (the Great Upwelling) and in Canada as Sarvarjuaq.