7 ms·

Three NorCal Tribes Announce Nation’s First Indigenous Ocean Protection Area

68 points by genter 3y ago

genter 3y ago
Note that this includes the mouth of the Klamath River, which is currently undergoing a major restoration project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37338753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37338753
pphysch 3y ago
Does this mean the tribes are basically (unilaterally?) claiming economic rights over these waters? It's not clear from this article if this statement is explicitly supported by the CA gov.
- dheera 3y ago
  I mean, they were here before the CA gov, it's just that the CA gov has more firepower, tasers, and handcuffs, so we listen to them. Otherwise I wish the natives would give us some tax cuts too.
  - pphysch 3y ago
    I'm not taking sides, I'm trying to understand the politics of this announcement.
    - junofan 3y ago
      I think they run the casinos up around Redwood.
    - genter 3y ago
      I'm trying to understand it too. > We do not seek the permission of other governments > these waters are also claimed by the State of California, who through its California Natural Resources Agency Pathways to 30x30: Accelerating Conservation of California’s Nature Report, support the concept of Indigenous Marine Stewardship So I guess the State of California theoretically supports IMSAs, but does the state support this one? Does the state need to approve an IMSA for it to be official? Or are tribes independent enough that they can just declare it?
- jker 3y ago
  The statement notes that the waters are “also claimed” by the California state government, which “supports the concept” of tribal stewardship. This whole thing seems pretty insubstantial.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Good question. I have no idea. I doubt there is precedent! And I can’t wait to see how this gets legally tested — native rights haven’t been properly respected and these kinds if tests are deeply important in restoring rightful sovereignty and tribal agency to our hosts and neighbors. I’m chuckling as I imagine they’re going to do a better job of protecting and managing the Earth than the government of California and Oregon have done over the last 150 odd years.
- redavni 3y ago
  "We do not seek the permission of other governments and can no longer wait to act to preserve and protect this culturally and ecologically important place" This is SOP for California politics. CA jurisdictions have been ceding territory to Indian tribes for a while. This is purely an economically motivated cash grab layered under miles of politically correct double-speak. There is an indian tribe in Montana that has a massive coal mine that wanted to run a rail line to a port through the area that was shut down last year. This is possibly another strategy to do the same thing.
  - genter 3y ago
    I don't know what economic value this part of the ocean has. There aren't any fish left. We're currently in the planning stage of a wind farm here, but that's in deeper water outside of this zone.
    - thghtihadanacct 3y ago
      Do you live on the California coast? There are plenty of fish, mostly because of so many protected areas. Maybe you are talking about commercial trawlers or something but if its coming to subsistence fishing there is more than enough to eat. Apparently, these groups claim they know how to harvest mussels during blooms ... Maybe they are immune to cyanotoxins etc. I just wonder where they have been practicing.
  - zopa 3y ago
    Sure but also; > and be it further resolved, these waters are also claimed by the State of California, who through its California Natural Resources Agency Pathways to 30x30: Accelerating Conservation of California’s Nature Report, support the concept of Indigenous Marine Stewardship Do you have any evidence pointing towards this being a money grab? That’s a serious accusation.
    - redavni 3y ago
      Yes, the evidence is that they said it in the same press release. "Tribal and State co-management of critical ecosystems to protect and support cultural lifeways and economies" Follow the money. Everything else is bullshit.
gatvol 3y ago
Agree with the ecological preservation objectives, hard disagree with handing over of sovereignty, whatever that actually means,to a group based on their ethnicity / ancestry.
- jker 3y ago
  A close read of the statement suggests that this is more of a feel-good thing and not much to worry about. If those tribes get actual sovereignty over those waters, they’ll soon find them full of Chinese fishing trawlers.
- TinkersW 3y ago
  I grew up in the area, those shores aren't tribal lands other than a few tiny bits. And most of it is already preserved shore/ocean, so this just appears to be a land grab attempt. I agree that this area should be protected, but giving it to a few people based on ancestry is ridiculous.
  - constantly 3y ago
    Out of curiosity how far back are you choosing to go to designate something as a tribal land?
  - labster 3y ago
    Just curious, are you opposed to land inheritance in general, or just when it comes to indigenous groups?
- hypeit 3y ago
  They're indigenous, nothing is being "handed over" it's land that they were forced to live on when they were forced of their original land in the area. They already have sovereignty.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    A lot of people were forced to leave a lot of land all over the world. Borders shifted constantly within Europe. People were constantly expelled and relocated. Now of course they shouldn't have been, but that was a long time ago and we've generally agreed not to do that anymore. Should former Roman land be given to the Italians? Should the Louisiana purchase be undone because it was the result of a military defeat in the Napoleonic Wars? Should the non-first-nations parts of California be returned to the Mexicans because it was ceded in the Mexican-American War under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? What framework do you propose we use to decide which land is worthy of sovereign rule - and which isn't? Which groups are worthy of sovereignty, and which aren't, and on what basis? I think all groups should be represented within the government and there's no reason to revisit the question of sovereignty because there's no framework that makes sense. There's no easy place to stop that isn't totally arbitrary.
zopa 3y ago
https://archive.ph/pDyh7 https://archive.ph/pDyh7
lacker 3y ago
In the California part, most of this area is already parkland. Redwood National & State Park, Del Norte Coast State Park, Tolowa Dunes State Park. The Resighini Tribe is about 40 people, Tolowa Dee'ni is about 110 people. The biggest one is Cher-Ae Heights, 130 people. The largest tribe in the area, not part of this announcement, is the Yurok, around 3000 people. So this is just a small subset of the local indigenous groups making this declaration. These smaller tribes talk about conservation and the environment, but their main activity is running this casino: https://www.funattheheights.com/ https://www.funattheheights.com/ I do think it is important to preserve the natural beauty of Northern California, but I think the state and national park systems are doing a pretty good job of it, and I wouldn't want to turn the parks over to some local casino operators.
- ecuaflo 3y ago
  I think this misses the point and is honestly derogatory toward these tribes. They are the ones with the ancestral rights and knowledge to manage the land. They had vastly different strategies than we have implemented that more effectively preserved species and conditions for far longer than us. Painting them as merely profiteers without acknowledging that we are the ones who have taken everything they had and forced them into second-class citizenship in our capitalistic society is perpetrating the same colonial violence.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    >They are the ones with the ancestral rights This doesn’t appear to be the case legally speaking. >and knowledge to manage the land. Why do you assume this? Because of their heritage? Americans didn’t move in yesterday, they’ve also been here for centuries and these environmental issues are pretty recent in comparison. You seem to be making a gross assumption here and playing along with their political ploy. Not saying they want the resource wealth but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an incentive to play up the environment for their own territorial gain.
    - ecuaflo 3y ago
      >This doesn’t appear to be the case legally speaking. How can you defend injustice toward them using the very legal system that has subjugated them? >Why do you assume this? Because of their heritage? Americans didn’t move in yesterday, they’ve also been here for centuries and these environmental issues are pretty recent in comparison. You seem to be making a gross assumption here and playing along with their political ploy. Not saying they want the resource wealth but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an incentive to play up the environment for their own territorial gain. It's what I was taught in my forestry program at Cal. Native American strategies that included routine prescribed burning worked better to replenish the forest than ours of absolute fire suppression that has led to more intense and out-of-control fires that decimate forests and their wildlife, for example.
lambdasquirrel 3y ago
I do not see any official press releases from the California state government on this particular topic. To be clear, the Lost Coast Outpost has subtle biases. So I would take this news with a grain of salt until we see official dispatches. The closest thing to a legitimate news source on the matter that I could find was this: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/1130644810/california-tribes-reclaim-200-miles-of-coastline-and-will-manage-it-using-tradit https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/1130644810/california-tribes-...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- genter 3y ago
  Don't disagree on LoCo, but this post is just a publication of the tribes' announcement.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I do not see any official press releases from the California state government on this particular topic. Why would there be an official press release from the California state government?
rfwhyte 3y ago
This is so bare facedly a profit driven land grab. These people don't give a damn about conservation or culture, they just want to use their burgeoning social power to force a kind of "Exclusive economic zone" onto their neighbors so they can implement a commercial fishery for their own exclusive benefit, free of any kind of regulatory oversight or environmental protections. As someone who lives near a bunch of various first nations, I've seen this pattern playing out more and more lately. They come up with some bullshit rationale about "Protecting the environment and their culture," use that to brow-beat the politicians into capitulating to their demands out of fear of any kind of pushback being labeled as "Racist" and then as soon as the first nations groups gain control of an area or resource, they keep doing whatever they claimed they were against even worse than the people who we're previously doing it (ie. cutting down more trees that the loggers, catching more fish than the fishermen) and then once they've cut down all the trees and / or caught all the fish, they just plonk down some condos on their "Sacred land" and turn into rent-seeking landlords.
chrisbrandow 3y ago
I wish there were a clearer explanation of what this means. Obvs if they are declaring legal sovereignty it’s a pretty important development. But there is a big difference between a press release and the first time they take actions that contradict the presumed US sovereignty. But still the article doesn’t make clear to me if that’s what’s actually going on.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Obvs if they are declaring legal sovereignty it’s a pretty important development. But there is a big difference between a press release and the first time they take actions that contradict the presumed US sovereignty. Tribal governments are subordinate-but-concurrent sovereigns to the federal government, similar to states, so while it might sort-of contradict California’s sovereignty, nothing in this story would even potentially contradict US sovereignty. And, actually, it is more complex than that, because tribal governments also exercise concurrent sovereignty within their territory with the states in which their lands are located, rather than exclusive sovereignty, so it wouldn’t strictly contradict California sovereignty, either.

68 points by genter 3y ago

Note that this includes the mouth of the Klamath River, which is currently undergoing a major restoration project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37338753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37338753

pphysch 3y ago

Does this mean the tribes are basically (unilaterally?) claiming economic rights over these waters? It's not clear from this article if this statement is explicitly supported by the CA gov.

dheera 3y ago
I mean, they were here before the CA gov, it's just that the CA gov has more firepower, tasers, and handcuffs, so we listen to them. Otherwise I wish the natives would give us some tax cuts too.
- pphysch 3y ago
  I'm not taking sides, I'm trying to understand the politics of this announcement.
  - junofan 3y ago
    I think they run the casinos up around Redwood.
  - genter 3y ago
    I'm trying to understand it too. > We do not seek the permission of other governments > these waters are also claimed by the State of California, who through its California Natural Resources Agency Pathways to 30x30: Accelerating Conservation of California’s Nature Report, support the concept of Indigenous Marine Stewardship So I guess the State of California theoretically supports IMSAs, but does the state support this one? Does the state need to approve an IMSA for it to be official? Or are tribes independent enough that they can just declare it?
jker 3y ago
The statement notes that the waters are “also claimed” by the California state government, which “supports the concept” of tribal stewardship. This whole thing seems pretty insubstantial.
happytiger 3y ago
Good question. I have no idea. I doubt there is precedent! And I can’t wait to see how this gets legally tested — native rights haven’t been properly respected and these kinds if tests are deeply important in restoring rightful sovereignty and tribal agency to our hosts and neighbors. I’m chuckling as I imagine they’re going to do a better job of protecting and managing the Earth than the government of California and Oregon have done over the last 150 odd years.
redavni 3y ago
"We do not seek the permission of other governments and can no longer wait to act to preserve and protect this culturally and ecologically important place" This is SOP for California politics. CA jurisdictions have been ceding territory to Indian tribes for a while. This is purely an economically motivated cash grab layered under miles of politically correct double-speak. There is an indian tribe in Montana that has a massive coal mine that wanted to run a rail line to a port through the area that was shut down last year. This is possibly another strategy to do the same thing.
- genter 3y ago
  I don't know what economic value this part of the ocean has. There aren't any fish left. We're currently in the planning stage of a wind farm here, but that's in deeper water outside of this zone.
  - thghtihadanacct 3y ago
    Do you live on the California coast? There are plenty of fish, mostly because of so many protected areas. Maybe you are talking about commercial trawlers or something but if its coming to subsistence fishing there is more than enough to eat. Apparently, these groups claim they know how to harvest mussels during blooms ... Maybe they are immune to cyanotoxins etc. I just wonder where they have been practicing.
- zopa 3y ago
  Sure but also; > and be it further resolved, these waters are also claimed by the State of California, who through its California Natural Resources Agency Pathways to 30x30: Accelerating Conservation of California’s Nature Report, support the concept of Indigenous Marine Stewardship Do you have any evidence pointing towards this being a money grab? That’s a serious accusation.
  - redavni 3y ago
    Yes, the evidence is that they said it in the same press release. "Tribal and State co-management of critical ecosystems to protect and support cultural lifeways and economies" Follow the money. Everything else is bullshit.

gatvol 3y ago

Agree with the ecological preservation objectives, hard disagree with handing over of sovereignty, whatever that actually means,to a group based on their ethnicity / ancestry.

jker 3y ago
A close read of the statement suggests that this is more of a feel-good thing and not much to worry about. If those tribes get actual sovereignty over those waters, they’ll soon find them full of Chinese fishing trawlers.
TinkersW 3y ago
I grew up in the area, those shores aren't tribal lands other than a few tiny bits. And most of it is already preserved shore/ocean, so this just appears to be a land grab attempt. I agree that this area should be protected, but giving it to a few people based on ancestry is ridiculous.
- constantly 3y ago
  Out of curiosity how far back are you choosing to go to designate something as a tribal land?
- labster 3y ago
  Just curious, are you opposed to land inheritance in general, or just when it comes to indigenous groups?
hypeit 3y ago
They're indigenous, nothing is being "handed over" it's land that they were forced to live on when they were forced of their original land in the area. They already have sovereignty.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  A lot of people were forced to leave a lot of land all over the world. Borders shifted constantly within Europe. People were constantly expelled and relocated. Now of course they shouldn't have been, but that was a long time ago and we've generally agreed not to do that anymore. Should former Roman land be given to the Italians? Should the Louisiana purchase be undone because it was the result of a military defeat in the Napoleonic Wars? Should the non-first-nations parts of California be returned to the Mexicans because it was ceded in the Mexican-American War under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? What framework do you propose we use to decide which land is worthy of sovereign rule - and which isn't? Which groups are worthy of sovereignty, and which aren't, and on what basis? I think all groups should be represented within the government and there's no reason to revisit the question of sovereignty because there's no framework that makes sense. There's no easy place to stop that isn't totally arbitrary.

zopa 3y ago

https://archive.ph/pDyh7 https://archive.ph/pDyh7

lacker 3y ago

In the California part, most of this area is already parkland. Redwood National & State Park, Del Norte Coast State Park, Tolowa Dunes State Park. The Resighini Tribe is about 40 people, Tolowa Dee'ni is about 110 people. The biggest one is Cher-Ae Heights, 130 people. The largest tribe in the area, not part of this announcement, is the Yurok, around 3000 people. So this is just a small subset of the local indigenous groups making this declaration. These smaller tribes talk about conservation and the environment, but their main activity is running this casino: https://www.funattheheights.com/ https://www.funattheheights.com/ I do think it is important to preserve the natural beauty of Northern California, but I think the state and national park systems are doing a pretty good job of it, and I wouldn't want to turn the parks over to some local casino operators.

ecuaflo 3y ago
I think this misses the point and is honestly derogatory toward these tribes. They are the ones with the ancestral rights and knowledge to manage the land. They had vastly different strategies than we have implemented that more effectively preserved species and conditions for far longer than us. Painting them as merely profiteers without acknowledging that we are the ones who have taken everything they had and forced them into second-class citizenship in our capitalistic society is perpetrating the same colonial violence.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  >They are the ones with the ancestral rights This doesn’t appear to be the case legally speaking. >and knowledge to manage the land. Why do you assume this? Because of their heritage? Americans didn’t move in yesterday, they’ve also been here for centuries and these environmental issues are pretty recent in comparison. You seem to be making a gross assumption here and playing along with their political ploy. Not saying they want the resource wealth but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an incentive to play up the environment for their own territorial gain.
  - ecuaflo 3y ago
    >This doesn’t appear to be the case legally speaking. How can you defend injustice toward them using the very legal system that has subjugated them? >Why do you assume this? Because of their heritage? Americans didn’t move in yesterday, they’ve also been here for centuries and these environmental issues are pretty recent in comparison. You seem to be making a gross assumption here and playing along with their political ploy. Not saying they want the resource wealth but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an incentive to play up the environment for their own territorial gain. It's what I was taught in my forestry program at Cal. Native American strategies that included routine prescribed burning worked better to replenish the forest than ours of absolute fire suppression that has led to more intense and out-of-control fires that decimate forests and their wildlife, for example.

lambdasquirrel 3y ago

I do not see any official press releases from the California state government on this particular topic. To be clear, the Lost Coast Outpost has subtle biases. So I would take this news with a grain of salt until we see official dispatches. The closest thing to a legitimate news source on the matter that I could find was this: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/1130644810/california-tribes-reclaim-200-miles-of-coastline-and-will-manage-it-using-tradit https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/1130644810/california-tribes-...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
genter 3y ago
Don't disagree on LoCo, but this post is just a publication of the tribes' announcement.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> I do not see any official press releases from the California state government on this particular topic. Why would there be an official press release from the California state government?

rfwhyte 3y ago

This is so bare facedly a profit driven land grab. These people don't give a damn about conservation or culture, they just want to use their burgeoning social power to force a kind of "Exclusive economic zone" onto their neighbors so they can implement a commercial fishery for their own exclusive benefit, free of any kind of regulatory oversight or environmental protections. As someone who lives near a bunch of various first nations, I've seen this pattern playing out more and more lately. They come up with some bullshit rationale about "Protecting the environment and their culture," use that to brow-beat the politicians into capitulating to their demands out of fear of any kind of pushback being labeled as "Racist" and then as soon as the first nations groups gain control of an area or resource, they keep doing whatever they claimed they were against even worse than the people who we're previously doing it (ie. cutting down more trees that the loggers, catching more fish than the fishermen) and then once they've cut down all the trees and / or caught all the fish, they just plonk down some condos on their "Sacred land" and turn into rent-seeking landlords.

chrisbrandow 3y ago

I wish there were a clearer explanation of what this means. Obvs if they are declaring legal sovereignty it’s a pretty important development. But there is a big difference between a press release and the first time they take actions that contradict the presumed US sovereignty. But still the article doesn’t make clear to me if that’s what’s actually going on.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Obvs if they are declaring legal sovereignty it’s a pretty important development. But there is a big difference between a press release and the first time they take actions that contradict the presumed US sovereignty. Tribal governments are subordinate-but-concurrent sovereigns to the federal government, similar to states, so while it might sort-of contradict California’s sovereignty, nothing in this story would even potentially contradict US sovereignty. And, actually, it is more complex than that, because tribal governments also exercise concurrent sovereignty within their territory with the states in which their lands are located, rather than exclusive sovereignty, so it wouldn’t strictly contradict California sovereignty, either.