The Yurok will be the first Native people to manage tribal land with the National Park Service under a historic memorandum of understanding signed Tuesday by the tribe, Redwood National and State Parks and the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
The agreement “starts the process of changing the narrative about how, by whom and for whom we steward natural lands,” Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League, said in a statement.
The tribe will take ownership in 2026 of 125 acres (50 hectares) near the tiny Northern California community of Orick in Humboldt County after restoration of a local tributary, Prairie Creek, is complete under the deal. The site will introduce visitors to Yurok customs, culture and history, the tribe said.
Much of the property was paved over by a lumber operation that worked there for 50 years and also buried Prairie Creek, where salmon would swim upstream from the Pacific to spawn.
What help? A white elephant to put in generations of resources to restore an exhausted piece of land? Just Google toxic land returned to natives and read several different stories.
It’s not perfect. It can never be perfect. But at least the gov’t is recognizing they have to start somewhere.
“Perfection is the enemy of progress.”
A really good quote that I live by. It was also popular with the Nazis, unfortunately, so if it’s not a self-illustrative example then I don’t know what is.
By giving them a multi generational financial burden and poisoned land.