Recentering ecological restoration with tribal perspectives
| Authors: | Jonathan W. Long, Ron W. Goode, Frank K. Lake |
| Year: | 2020 |
| Type: | Magazines or Trade Publications |
| Station: | Pacific Southwest Research Station |
| Source: | Fremontia. 48(1): 14-19 |
Abstract
Ecological restoration is central to the wellbeing of Indigenous communities, who have tended, burned, and harvested a variety of resources across diverse ecosystems in California for millennia. Despite having more tribes and more Native Americans than any other state, California has less land under tribal control than most of the states west of the Continental Divide. Consequently, tribes in the state disproportionately depend on public lands for their well-being. However, through “ecocultural restoration,” both ecosystems and their interconnected Indigenous communities can once again fourish.
Here we describe several examples that show how expanding the scope and vision of ecological restoration can support the interests of American Indian Tribes and Indigenous communities in California. Trough examples of meadow, oak grove, and cultural resource restoration projects, many of which have been led by the North Fork Mono Tribe, we highlight several themes that illustrate how restoration can be broadened to recognize, include, and value Indigenous people and their relationships to ancestral lands in California.