Chumash people in California to co-steward marine sanctuary in historic partnership
For more than 10,000 years, Native Americans have lived along California’s central coast, an area of breathtaking beauty with stunning turquoise waters rich in biodiversity. Now, in the first partnership of its kind, the area will soon be part of a new national marine reserve that indigenous people will manage jointly with a federal agency.
It will give the Chumash people, once the largest cultural group in California, a say in how the marine sanctuary is preserved. The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, designated last week by the Biden administration, is the first tribally nominated sanctuary in the United States.
It covers 116 miles (187 kilometers) of California’s coastline. The more than 11,655 square kilometers of coastal and offshore waters that will be included are home to diverse marine life that is increasingly threatened by climate change and pollution from human activities.
The designation, which was announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will take effect after Congress has 45 days to consider it.
The Chumash people, which includes several tribes including the federally recognized Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, have long depended on the ocean for fishing and shellfishing, and today some are involved in environmental monitoring and advocacy.
Some collaborative projects include, for example, signage along the coast, or scientific studies along the coastline where indigenous villages may have been located in the past and are now underwater.
“The waterways bordering Native territory are areas that our tribes have thrived and lived on for many years,” said Kenneth Kahn, chairman of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. “The legacy of all the Chumash people in the namesake Marine Sanctuary is certainly very important.”
The shrine comes almost ten years later originally nominated by the late Chief Fred Collins of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council in 2015.
“When he passed away three years ago, he asked me to finish this for him, and I promised him I would,” said Violet Sage Walker, chair of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.
There have been other national marine sanctuaries that have involved collaboration with tribes, but this will be the first where it is written into the final management plan, with Indigenous partners involved in the conversation from the beginning, Walker said.
A growing one Landback movement has returned indigenous homelands to the descendants of those who lived there for millennia before European settlers arrived. Native American tribes have seen that will play a greater role in restoring rivers and lands as they were before they were expropriated.
Earlier this year, the Yurok Tribe of Northern California became the first indigenous people to manage tribal lands with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed by the tribe, Redwood National and State Parks and the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
The Chumash Marine Reserve extends from the San Louis Obispo County area of central California to the border of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Santa Barbara and represents a unique blend of ecological zones of the northern and southern portions of the coast. , said Professor Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University, who conducts research in this area.
The waters are home to at-risk species such as snowy plovers, southern sea otters, leatherback turtles, abalones and blue whales. It also includes ecologically rich features such as the Rodriguez seamount, formed from an extinct volcano.
When Palumbi and his team examined a range of silvery fish called grunions that beach themselves when spawning in the southern part of the coast, they brought their findings to their partners at the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.
“They said, ‘Oh yeah, we usually get them in the south, just like you see, but you know, just a few generations ago we could get them further north,'” said Palumbi, giving an example of the value of the tribe members’ knowledge.
The newest national marine sanctuary will further that of the White House America the Beautiful initiative, which sets a goal to conserve and restore at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
Some advocates had originally hoped that the sanctuary’s boundaries would extend north to the edges of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, beyond Diablo Canyon, home to California’s last operating nuclear power plant. However, after concerns from wind energy companies, NOAA decided to designate an area planned for offshore wind farm development, but laid out a process for possible expansion of the sanctuary in the future.
“It’s really a balancing act as we try to meet the renewable energy goals of the Biden-Harris and Newsom administrations and America the Beautiful,” said Paul Michel, NOAA regional policy coordinator.
The final management plan includes a co-stewardship framework involving an advisory group with one voting seat for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians and two “voting seats for Indigenous cultural knowledge,” as well as a policy council composed of the Santa Ynez Group. Band, NOAA and the California Government.
“Not only were we protecting our homeland, but we were also protecting our spiritual connection to our ancestors and our future generations for all,” Walker said. “This is something that will live on long beyond my lifetime.”