MUCKLESHOOT RESERVATION — Indigenous leaders from across the Northwest know climate change intimately, from the rising tide gnawing at Cape Shoalwater on the Pacific Ocean, to shorelines thick with dead fish due to low water levels or oxygen and wildfires racing through the ponderosa pines.
And they have lessons to share.
Some have found instructions while looking back to their ancient teachings, others in partnering with research institutions to braid traditional ecological knowledge and Western science, and many in collaboration.
In a moment with more combined federal and state dollars available to act on climate than ever before, Indigenous nations are providing a road map to heal ecosystems, with restoration projects and wind and solar energy development across the region.
About 500 people representing at least 120 tribal nations, environmental organizations, researchers, energy developers and state, federal and local agencies converged in Muckleshoot last week to learn and collaborate on solutions. It was the sixth climate summit hosted by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.
The organization was formed in 1953 by tribal leaders in the Northwest and today represents 57 tribal nations from Oregon, Idaho, Washington, southeast Alaska, Northern California and western Montana.
“Your presence here underscores a shared commitment to advancing tribal climate policies and heightening awareness of the critical impacts that climate change continues to inflict on our communities,” Shoalwater Bay Chair Quintin Swanson said, addressing the crowd. “We are gathered here as stewards of our land united by a common duty to safeguard our heritage and secure a sustainable future for generations to come. The challenges posed by climate change is profound, but our resolve to confront them must be even stronger.”
Discussions through the summit spanned developing public education programs about cultural burns, conservation plans across the 49th parallel, opportunities for cross-generational collaboration from young leaders eager to weave traditional ecological knowledge and Western science, and lessons learned.
Some Indigenous leaders shared experiences from the front lines of climate change.
At Shoalwater, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, Swanson described unrelenting erosion.
Shoalwater Bay is losing land at an unprecedented rate with some of the worst erosion on the West Coast.
Cape Shoalwater has been losing about 100 to 130 feet of land per year for the last century, Swanson said. Relentless winter storms have forced the relocation of a cemetery and have claimed a schoolhouse, a lighthouse, a Grange Hall, a Coast Guard station, a clam cannery, homes and close to 2 miles of land.
A tool provided by the University of Washington projects that if greenhouse gas emissions remain high, the sea will rise half a foot on the reservation from 2040 to 2059. If the sea level were to rise by 2 feet, estimates suggest Tokeland would be underwater.
The tribe plans to move the village to higher ground.
Meanwhile, Meade Krosby, a senior scientist at the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, and Amelia Marchand, a citizen of the Colville Confederated Tribes and the senior tribal climate resilience liaison at affiliated tribes and the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, led a discussion on a project they are co-leading to support climate readiness of Northwest coastal tribes.
Through a series of listening sessions with 37 people representing 12 tribes from the Washington and Oregon coasts, the collaboration of academics and tribal partners funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is building an assessment of the greatest needs amid climate change.
The report will not be released until it is reviewed by the project’s tribal advisory group and representatives from each of the tribes included in the report.
“The hope is that the report will be a useful tool for tribes,” Krosby said. “So it’s not just [the tribes] saying this over and over again, it’s here: It’s in this report. And for them to be able to put that report on the desk of a lawmaker or a funder or any other entity that is standing in the way of them getting done what needs to get done.”
The messages of elected and other leaders were hopeful. Some shared stories of launching food sovereignty programs, buying back land in floodplains or from private timber companies to restore balance in rivers and forest ecosystems, and proposed new ways to use money raised by the state’s carbon market to train a new workforce devoted to climate projects.
Stewardship is a core value of a lot of tribal nations, said Tanya Pelach, natural resources program manager for the affiliated tribes. Tribes are not a monolith, Pelach added, but they tend to share these values. And when tribes are at the table, rather than just consulted with on solar or wind energy development projects or environmental restoration projects, they can provide guidance from their experiences and understanding of a place.
“How do we respond to climate change according to our teachings? I think every tribe here represented, you can look at your original instructions and go, that’s what we’re supposed to do,” said Loni Greninger, vice chair of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. “When we think about climate change, the duty doesn’t change for us. We still have to steward the land and the seas, the air, the people; we still have to be there for our brothers and sisters of creation.”
Jamestown S’Klallam has been using grants and tribal funds to buy back pieces along the Dungeness River, remove buildings or levees, restore the natural flood plain and let it breathe again.
Brook Thompson mapped out the history of her ancestors on the Klamath River on a stir stick. The whole stick represents the thousands of years the Yurok people lived in harmony with the river, and the tip, they said, represents the years since contact with colonizers. If so much of that relationship could be unraveled by settlers in just over a century, imagine what healing could come in the same amount of time.
“We can never necessarily go back to the way things were before because nothing is ever necessarily the same, but I think we could even make things better with this framework of Indigenous knowledge mixed with more modern scientific techniques and use them to benefit each other, which is something we’ve never had the opportunity to do,” said Thompson, a restoration engineer for Yurok and doctoral student. “I think if given the chance, the right people and power and enough resources we’d be able to do a lot of good within the next 150 years.”
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