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Native Lands

Something remarkable is happening in Indian country; Tribes whose lands were once taken from them are setting an example for how to restore the environment.

/2010/08/native-lands/img/01-puye-cliff-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-01.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico When drought dried the land around 1580, New Mexico's Puye Cliff dwellers abandoned their homes. Their descendants, the Santa Clara Pueblo, are restoring the nearby watershed.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320145 /2010/08/native-lands/img/02-goat-rock-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-02.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico Goat Rock]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320140 /2010/08/native-lands/img/03-duckweed-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-03.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Big Cypress Reservation, Florida In the green firmament of a slough, galaxies of duckweed are stirred by slow moving waters. Florida's Seminole call this section of swamp the Jurassic.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320143 /2010/08/native-lands/img/04-saw-palmetto-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-04.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Big Cypress Reservation, Florida Saw palmetto]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320144 /2010/08/native-lands/img/06-tan-oak-moss-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-06.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness, California The ten tribes of the wilderness council are careful custodians of a temperate rain forest rich in moss-covered tan oak and redwood and closed to commercial logging.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320139 /2010/08/native-lands/img/05-wolf-creek-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-05.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness, California The "sacred ecosystem," as executive director Hawk Rosales calls it, is threaded by waters like Wolf Creek (right), focus of a project to restore salmon habitat.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320137 /2010/08/native-lands/img/07-montana-mission-range-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-07.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness, Montana The Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness embraces the western slopes of Montana's Mission Range, where the elevation ranges from 3,000 to nearly 10,000 feet. "These are in-your-face-mountains," says Tom McDonald, Fish, Wildlife, Recreation and Conservation Division manager for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320148 /2010/08/native-lands/img/08-post-creek-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-08.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness, Montana Post Creek stairsteps down through the Grizzly Bear Management Zone, an 11,000-acre section of the Mission Mountains Tribal Wilderness closed to humans in summer so bears can feed on army cutworm moths. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes designated 92,000 acres as wilderness in 1979, but the way had been paved earlier. In 1974 a pending timber sale threatened old-growth trees. Three grandmother elders, or yayas, appeared at a tribal council meeting. "They straightened their scarves, spoke of their concern for generations to come, and refused to leave until the council banned logging," said a witness. It did.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320141 /2010/08/native-lands/img/09-wind-river-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-09.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Wind River Roadless Area, Wyoming No signs point the way here, only the arthritic limbs of a pine gesturing to an endless sky. It is the wildest of the wild, a glacier-scoured terrain unmarred by roads, tugged at by wind, on the shoulder of the Continental Divide. This preserve of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho dates back to 1937, decades before the United States passed the Wilderness Act, in 1964.

]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320142 /2010/08/native-lands/img/10-rolling-fort-peck-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-10.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Fort Peck Reservation, Montana The rolling terrain of mixed-grass prairie on the Fort Peck Reservation in northeastern Montana is bison country once more. The settlement of the West practically wiped out the nearly 30 million bison that roamed over prairie and woodlands. By the start of the 20th century their numbers had dwindled to fewer than a thousand.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320150 /2010/08/native-lands/img/11-reservation-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-11.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Fort Peck Reservation, Montana At home on the range, bison graze the slopes of their refuge on the Fort Peck Reservation. Support from the Defenders of Wildlife helped add more than 4,000 acres to the original 5,000 the Assiniboine and Sioux set aside in 2000. The reserve sustains 200 buffalo and could support more if the tribal council can buy or lease additional acreage.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320153 /2010/08/native-lands/img/12-nez-perce-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-12.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Nez Perce Precious Lands, Oregon "For a short time we lived quietly. But this could not last," Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said. In 1877 the federal government forced the Nez Perce from the fire-clad mountains of Oregon's Wallowa Valley. Joseph spent his last days in exile, dying, his doctor said, of heartbreak. With assistance from the Trust for Public Land, the tribe has regained 16,286 acres of its Precious Lands, as they are rightly called. Native grasses are being replanted. The graceful flight of a white-throated swift has been noted. The green-banded mariposa lily unfurls its lavender petals. Renewal is in the air; it is not just restoration of land but of spirit.
]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320138 /2010/08/native-lands/img/13-joseph-canyon-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-13.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Nez Perce Precious Lands, Oregon Dawn's soft light illuminates mule's ears in Joseph Canyon in Oregon, part of the Nez Perce Precious Lands Wildlife Management Area. In 1996 the Nez Perce reacquired some of the ancestral lands that the U.S. military had forced them to leave in 1877. Restoration is now under way—rooting out invasive species like cheatgrass and planting native species like Idaho fescue and bluebunch wheatgrass. "Our traditional relationship with the Earth was more than just reverence for the land. It was knowing that every living thing had been placed here by the Creator and that we were part of a sacred relationship," Elsie Maynard, a Nez Perce elder, once said.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320147 /2010/08/native-lands/img/14-fort-apache-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-14.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Fort Apache Reservation, Arizona Flowering spikes of sotol, or desert spoon, frame the Salt River Canyon on the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona's White Mountains. The tribe monitors fish populations in the Salt River drainage area, gauging the consequences of stream runoff in the aftermath of the Rodeo-Chediski wildfire, which consumed 280,992 acres of reservation forest in the summer of 2002.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320152 /2010/08/native-lands/img/15-pacheta-falls-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-15.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Fort Apache Reservation, Arizona Pacheta Falls tumbles down from the Mogollon Rim in White Mountain Apache country in eastern Arizona. These waters hold the Apache trout, one of only two trout species native to Arizona. Efforts by the White Mountain Apache Tribe, as well as many federal agencies and environmental groups, have retrieved the species from the brink of extinction and restored it to much of its historic range.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320149 /2010/08/native-lands/img/16-red-lake-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-16.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Red Lake Reservation, Minnesota Northern Minnesota's Red Lake—Miskwagamiiwiizagaiganing to the Chippewa, who regard it as sacred—was so overfished that in 1997 tribal leaders shut down its walleye fishery. Federal and state agencies, the University of Minnesota, and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa joined forces to put a management plan in place. Less than ten years later the walleye had rebounded; the lake that the Chippewa call "the food storehouse" was again open to commercial fishing.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320151 /2010/08/native-lands/img/17-thunder-lake-714.jpg /2010/08/native-lands/img/lands-60-17.jpg Photograph by Jack Dykinga Red Lake Reservation, Minnesota Sunset flares over Thunder Lake, one of 14 small lakes on the Red Lake Reservation managed by the tribal fisheries department. It feeds Red Lake, sacred to the Chippewa and once again thick with walleyes—fish with a glassy stare revered for their sweet, snowy flesh. By 1996 decades of overfishing had decimated the Red Lake fishery. Tribal, state, and federal agencies, along with the University of Minnesota, cooperated to set up a management plan. Fishing was suspended. Walleye fry were stocked. In less than ten years the fish population exploded from 200,000 to eight million, and tribal members were allowed to resume commercial fishing.]]> http://national-geographic.cafepress.com/art/s_1320146