Photo: Billy Huynh | Unsplash
More than 500 acres of the redwood forestland in Mendocino County, Calif. Is being transferred to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council thanks to the Save the Redwoods League. The land, dubbed Tc'ih-Lh-D (Fish Run Place) in Sinkyone language will be protected by 10 tribes who have inhabited the area for thousands of years. Priscilla Hunter, chairwoman of the Sinkyone Council, said it's fitting they will be caretakers of the land where her people were removed or forced to flee before the forest was largely stripped for timber. It's like a healing for our ancestors. I know our ancestors are happy. This was given to us to protect, said Hunter. For so many decades tribal voices have been marginalized in the mainstream conservation movement. It's only until very recently that they have been invited to participate meaningfully and to take a leadership role, said Hawk Rosales, former executive director of Sinkyone Council. The transfer marks a step in the growing Land Back movement to return Indigenous homelands to the ancestors of those who lived there for millennia before European settlers arrived.
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