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Audio segments from Trees Radio Hour!
Interview with Hawk Rosales, Executive Director of InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council |
Eugene, Oregon | March 6-9
The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council will participate in Tribal Wilderness Land and Conservation Easements and Tribes as Trustees panels at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene March 6-9. Panelists include Sharon Duggan, Priscilla Hunter, Laurie Wayburn, Eric Goldsmith, Dune Lankard, and Hawk Rosales.
- Learn more about this event (Download PDF)
- Learn more about the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council
- See also Wikipedia's commentary on the PIELC
Founded in 1986, the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, is a California Indian peoples' environmental consortium working to re-establish local Indian stewardship within the Sinkyone region of Northern California through land conservation, habitat restoration, and traditional resource management. The Council established the 3,845-acre InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness, the first of its kind in the country, to support and sustain local traditional Indian cultural land use, and to restore and protect the Sinkyone's cultural-natural resources and wilderness values for present and future generations of local Indian peoples. Sinkyone's original peoples suffered forced removals and massacres from the mid through the late 1800's to make way for white settlers and the subsequent destruction of the region's old-growth redwood rainforest.
The Council is comprised of 10 federally recognized Northern California tribes with direct ties to the Sinkyone region, which is located 200 miles north of San Francisco. Each of the Council's member tribes appoints by tribal resolution a delegate to serve on the Council's board of directors. Board members are all volunteers. Starting in 1987, the Council and its allies waged a ten-year fight to protect Sinkyone land from further clearcut logging. The Council raised $1.4 million and convinced the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, the State of California (Coastal Conservancy), and Trust for Public Land to approve a sale to the Council of the Sinkyone land, which was completed in late 1997. The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness is located adjacent to and east of the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. Local tribes, numerous individuals, environmental organizations and foundations, Bay Area Friends of Sinkyone, the indigenous Ainu people of Japan, and a major grant from Lannan Foundation provided support for the acquisition. The Council developed conservation easements to protect in perpetuity the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness' cultural-natural resources.
The Council has undertaken successful projects in cultural resource protection, land management planning, reforestation, salmon stream restoration, and watershed rehabilitation. To date, the Council has developed more than fifty seasonal jobs in these project areas for local tribal members. The Council developed successful collaborative research projects with U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University to inventory and evaluate several areas of Sinkyone's natural resources. The Council produced an award-winning 45-minute documentary film chronicling the fight to save the Sinkyone rainforest and return it to local Indian stewardship. The film premiered at the American Indian Film Festival and screened at the Sundance Film Festival and nine other film festivals nationally.
The multi-faceted InterTribal Park Program emphasizes traditional cultural uses by local tribal members, resource restoration and stewardship, and ecology education. The Council believes the InterTribal Wilderness can provide an example to other Indian peoples of a successful model for community activism leading to the empowerment of Indian peoples through re-establishing their historic role as the stewards of their lands. InterTribal Wilderness priority projects the Council currently is engaged in include:
* Development of public access low-impact campgrounds and trails that will link directly to the Lost Coast Trail which traverses the longest stretch of coastal wilderness in the lower 48 states.
* Continued salmonid habitat restoration work at Wolf Creek and other Sinkyone streams.
* Tribal Heavy Equipment Operators Training Project 2003-05 for the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park's Watershed Rehabilitation-Roads Removal Program.
* Development of a Forest Management Plan and an Integrated Resource Management Plan to guide the InterTribal Park's long-term stewardship.
* Partnership projects with California State Parks on the adjacent Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.
Your tax-deductible contribution will enable the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council to continue its work to preserve, protect, and restore Sinkyone land.
Contact Information
Who to Contact: Priscilla Hunter, Chairperson or
Hawk Rosales, Executive Director
InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council
December 10, 2007
Since 1986, InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council has worked to return indigenous tribal stewardship to lands that, 150 years ago, were violently taken from Native peoples. The Council, a consortium of 10 federally recognized sovereign tribes, conducts its work to honor the Sinkyone Indian ancestors who have gone before us, and for the sake of generations yet to come. Returning Indian stewardship to Sinkyone has been a process of community activism, intertribal organization, and collaboration. This process halted clearcut logging in Sinkyone's coastal rainforests, and led to establishment of America's first InterTribal Indian Wilderness. (read more)
InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council
April 24, 2007
In December 2006 the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The Council may be the best-known example of Indian land conservation in the U .S. It was formed in 1986 to protect threatened Sinkyone coastal redwoods from further logging and to return local Indian stewardship to this land. In 1997 the Council purchased 3,845 acres for the first InterTribal Wilderness area, which has been permanently protected through conservation easements. The Council conducts its work in collaboration with a wide variety of project partners. (read more)
EcoCultural Recovery and Indigenous Communities in Northwest California
November 15, 2006
Until not very long ago, the focus of life for human inhabitants of Northwestern California was daily sustenance taken from the diversity and abundance of the land, which provided the countless foods, medicines, and materials necessary for a good life. Every aspect of Indian people's life was informed by their close relationship with the Earth. Indian people understood and lived in accordance with the land's natural laws, which dictate that in order to sustain life one should take only what is needed. Their belief in natural law is reflected in the structure of their societies and religions, which set specific limitations on the times and quantities appropriate for harvesting plants and animals. These limitations were established in order to prevent depletion and to ensure that the future generations of humans and other species would have enough. (read more)
The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council: Indian Consortium Protects and Restores Coastal Wilderness
April 28, 2004
The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council completed critical work this past year in its continued efforts to protect, preserve, and restore the cultural-natural resources of the Sinkyone wilderness area. The Council implemented several projects designed to reestablish traditional cultural stewardship within the Council's 3,845-acre InterTribal Wilderness property and the adjacent Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. (read more)
Sustaining the Earth's Life
For millennia, indigenous Indian people of the Sinkyone region practiced a sustainable way of life based on instructions they received from the Creator and their ancestors. The essence of sustainable living was based on the understanding that human beings were only part of the natural order of life on this Mother Earth. Humans were no more important than all the other animal and plant relations because each helped sustain the other's life. For North Coast Indian people, sustainability meant sustaining their community, including all life--its well-being and longevity. (read more)
Contact Information
Phone: (707) 463-6745
P.O. Box 1523 Ukiah, CA 95482
