California tribe becomes the first to manage land with National Park Service
Source: The Guardian/AP
Wed 20 Mar 2024 07.00 EDT
California’s Yurok Tribe, which had 90% of its territory taken from it during the gold rush of the mid-1800s, will be getting a slice of its land back to serve as a new gateway to Redwood national and state parks visited by 1 million people a year.
The Yurok will be the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed on Tuesday by the tribe, Redwood national and state parks and the non-profit Save the Redwoods League.
The agreement “starts the process of changing the narrative about how, by whom and for whom we steward natural lands”, Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League, said in a statement.
The return of the 125 acres (50 hectares) of land – named ’O Rew in the Yurok language – more than a century after it was stolen from California’s largest tribe is proof of the “sheer will and perseverance of the Yurok people”, said Rosie Clayburn, the tribe’s cultural resources director. “We kind of don’t give up.” For the tribe, redwoods are considered living beings and traditionally only fallen trees have been used to build their homes and canoes.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/20/yurok-tribe-land-gold-rush-redwoods-national-park-service
Link to NEWS RELEASE - Save the Redwoods League, the Yurok Tribe, and Park Partners Sign Historic Agreement to Return Tribal Land
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It was taken to exploit the natural resources, like the redwoods that went to the sawmills.
But this is a good step:
“The restoration efforts completed by the partners on this site link the large-scale watershed restoration upstream by the Redwoods Rising collaborative with downstream landowner-led efforts to restore the Redwood Creek Estuary, healing the land while healing the relationships among all the people who inhabit this magnificent forest.”
They are starting to get some of the wildlife back.
