Episode 34: CA Native Water Rights, Stewardship, & Protection
“When I think of water rights in California, I think of who was able to be at the table in the 1851 - 1853 period, that was the land claims act period, when you had an opportunity to file on land in California, and with the land will come the water right.”
A conversation with Dr. Beth Rose Middleton Manning (UC Davis) about water rights, hydroelectric infrastructure, easements, and conservation in California. Released April 1, 2022.
guests on the show
Dr. Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Dr. Beth Rose Middleton Manning (Afro-Caribbean, Eastern European) is a Professor of Native American Studies at UC Davis. Dr. Middleton Manning’s research centers on Native environmental policy and Native activism for site protection using conservation tools. Her broader research interests include intergenerational trauma and healing, rural environmental justice, indigenous analysis of climate change, Afro-indigeneity, and qualitative GIS. Dr. Middleton Manning received her BA in Nature and Culture from UC Davis, and her Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. Her first book, Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation, focuses on Native applications of conservation easements, with an emphasis on conservation partnerships led by California Native Nations. Her second book, Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River, focuses on the history of Indian land rights and hydroelectric development in northeastern California. Follow Dr. Middleton Manning @brmiddleton1
Transcript
Faith Kearns
Welcome to Water Talk. Today we're excited to have the opportunity to talk with Beth Rose Middleton Manning. Dr. Middleton Manning is a professor of Native American studies at UC Davis. Her research centers on Native environmental policy and activism for site protection using conservation tools. Her research interests include intergenerational trauma and healing, rural environmental justice and Indigenous analysis of climate change.
Her first book, Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation, focused on Native applications of conservation easements with an emphasis on conservation partnerships led by California Native nations. Her second book, Upstream: Trust, Lands and Power on the Feather River, focused on the history of Indigenous land rights and hydro electric development in northeastern California.
Beth Rose’s research is really interesting. She's been working for a couple of decades on a set of issues that are becoming more and more relevant every day, related to Native peoples management of land and water in California. And I think particularly as we talk about water rights in California, the perspective Beth Rose brings on Native rights to water is really, really important. Sam and Mallika, what are you looking forward to talking about with Beth Rose today?
Mallika Nocco
I'm just very curious to learn more from Dr. Middleton Manning about how Indigenous communities and Native nations were included in cases where they may have been included, but also left out of the water rights platform, the body of knowledge in the existing water rights and existing water usage in the existing knowledge base and frame for thinking about and water, how that relates to how we're using and thinking about water. I was just looking up some of the areas that Dr. Middleton Manning has studied on a map and I'm just really curious to learn more about the Feather River and just how it relates to our entire water conveyance and storage system here in California. And to hear some more about that place-based work that she's been doing in that area.
Sam Sandoval
The first trip when I became an extension specialist was to that part of the Sierra [Nevada]. And [when I went] to Lake Almanor Mountain Meadows Reservoir, it was outstanding. Later, I went back and I did some fieldwork. And that was the time when really a river broke my heart. The North Fork of the Feather River below Lake Almanor, and how affected, how damaged, it was compared to just three or four miles upstream. Then having that appreciation that I mean, in that case, it was myself only for one day. But some of the Indigenous communities live in this area for a long time.
One of the things is revisiting that part of the state that I care a lot [about]... and the other one is some of the perspective that she brings in her books. I would like to quote one from Upstream… Right at the beginning she quotes Farrell Cunningham… “With these lands we have an opportunity to begin righting a great wrong. We may be frightened of outcomes that we are unsure of but we should be even more frightened of living in a world where the foundation of injustice is honorable and the perpetuation of that injustice acceptable…. We cannot change the past but neither [can we] ignore it… We must make a future of justice. In that way, living in that manner, our past will, inevitably, become good too.” And that perspective of not ignoring the past, and accepting it, that can help us to have a better future.
Mallika Nocco
When people talk about water history, just starting it in 1850 is just such a colonial frame. And even with the laws kind of coming in, like when we talked about in our Water Law 101 episode, which is a great one to catch up on and, really, complimentary.
Faith Kearns
Well, without further ado, let's get into our conversation with Dr. Beth Rose Middleton Manning.
Beth Rose, welcome. We are so excited to have you on Water Talk. We would love to start by asking you just a bit more about you and your career path as someone who was born and raised in California and who is now working on such critical issues in the state, particularly water and Indigenous land and water rights with a focus in the area where you were raised, Amador County. What was your path like to get where you are now?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Well, first, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here with you on the Water Talk podcast. And yes, I was born in Jackson, California. Miwok Country, Central Sierra Miwok. My family is from far flung places around the world, though. My father's family is from Belize, also Jamaica and Honduras. So in the Caribbean and Central American-facing Caribbean. And my mother's family is Eastern European from, actually, the area of Ukraine. And I was born and raised in rural Amador County, outside of Pioneer. And I think that the way I grew up, we didn't have electricity, we had a pretty small house, no close neighbors and I spent a lot of time outside, out in the forest.
Also as a person of color as an African American, and my parents are a mixed race couple, I just was aware of racism and also got discrimination and kind of being different from an early age. And I think my current path kind of came from just continuing to follow, doing the work that I love to do. I love to be outside, I love to be with the plants by the water, and be with people who also feel this kinship to the natural environment. So I went to college at UC Davis, which is the closest University to where I grew up. I didn't want to go too far from home, I feel really connected to the California foothills and the [Central] Valley [of California] and to that whole area.
At UC Davis I was a McNair Scholar, which is a program for underrepresented students to encourage them to pursue higher education past the bachelor's degree. And in that program, I was matched with an advisor and the advisor was Dr. Cat Anderson, who wrote the book Tending the Wild. And Cat was an enormous influence on my life. She introduced me to many people, including members of the mountain Maidu community in Plumas County. And I completed my McNair undergraduate project there, which was about 75 interviews and surveys about attitudes towards forest management, and an attempt to kind of bridge gaps and look for areas of commonality between very different groups of people that live in rural areas, similar to where I grew up.
So between loggers and environmentalists and people of different ethnicities, people, especially in Native communities, who are from those areas, whose homeland that is and there's all this debate about how it should be managed. So that was some of my work as an undergrad. And as I mentioned, Cat introduced me to members of the Maidu community. And after I graduated, I went to work for Sierra Institute. It used to be called Forest Community Research and Sierra Institute shared office space with the Maidu Culture and Development Group. So I ended up working for both organizations.
In that time, I worked with Lorena Corbett, who was a Maidu elder and she was creating this incredible hand drawn map of the parcels of land under what is now Lake Almanor. She and others were working to find out what had happened to those lands, some of which had been designated for her ancestors and other mountain Maidu people in the community, but had somehow left, left their hands, left their jurisdiction and been flooded to create that reservoir. They're at Big Meadows, which is a very significant reservoir for the North Fork Feather River hydroelectric projects, as well as the State Water Project. So my work with her and seeing kind of the fallout of what had happened with the seizure of mighty lands, and the lack of restitution, really set me on a path that has continued to this day.
Faith Kearns
Thank you so much. It's really interesting to sort of connect some of those dots from your, from your history of which I only know a few of them. So thank you for sharing that with us. Your first book, Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation, focused on conservation easements and how California Native nations can lead the way. Could you talk a little bit about this work and some of the water implications of conservation easements?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Yes. I started working on this kind of concept of how conservation easements might be used for different purposes than which they were created. Still a conservation purpose, but broadening to a cultural purpose and a justice purpose intertwined with conservation. So while I was working for these different nonprofit organizations, I was also close with a family, a Maidu family, whose land had fallen into private hands, a private non native rancher who was looking at subdividing this land and selling it for a home development. And this land was very culturally important, it had their ancestral village site, and many other important places to their family.
I spent time out there on this land, camped on this land with this family and I really felt the importance of this place to them. All the culturally important plants there, the creek that ran through and all of the life in the creek in their relationship with it. And then there was a local non native land trust that had good relationships in the Maidu community (it often had a board member who was Mountain Maidu) and they were stepping in to see if they could help with the situation to help with protecting that land from sale and subdivision and development. So they asked me to kind of brainstorm about, what are our opportunities? How can we structure this, such that, you know, we're doing right by this family and that it's connected to Native values? How do we raise the money to purchase and set aside and protect this land? So that's when I started doing the research for trust in the land, probably back in about 2002 or so, and it was published in 2011. So it was a long journey of looking at different examples of collaborations between tribes and land trust.
To link to water, oftentimes the conservation initiatives did have a lot to do with water because these water corridors are very culturally important in terms of people's relationship with the fish and the different marine species, and the plants. These relationships go back to creation so there's a deep stewardship commitment, reciprocal commitment by Native people to care for these waterways. And from the conservation side, there is concern about maintaining these corridors and maintaining the health of the creek for broader watershed health and the protection of different species. So there's a meeting point of interest, one more, I guess, biologically conservation based and one more culturally based. And so those were some of the examples that I found of Tribe and Land Trust collaboration that were along waterways.
But some were focused on different species, different ecosystems, maybe oak woodlands, for example, maybe mountain meadows. And when I think of conservation easements, I think really of three terms: access, stewardship, and protection. Because many private lands, whether these lands are in conservation ownership, or in some type of even industrial ownership or development, in any of those scenarios they can be closed off to Native people whose homeland that is. So wanting to deal with the issue of access, so that people could come onto their traditional lands, continue carrying out their responsibilities there, whether or not that’s care for stewardship, or ceremony, or different types of tending and fire or all of those aspects together. But having access to homelands is central and easements can function well in that space because even if you can't purchase a property outright, or put it into conservation ownership, you could have a kind of a hand on the property through an easement and it can make access permanent for particular purposes on that property.
Then stewardship is the second key element, again, access to be able to care for a place. I'm really an advocate for conservation that is active, and that is engaged and that's about, you know, coming in and, and fulfilling the human role in an ecosystem. So cutting back plants, stewarding, bringing in fire, cultivating and encouraging certain plants that grow in association with one another, or that provide good habitat for animals, as well as multiple other species.
Easements again, offer that opportunity to access land and implement stewardship activities that contribute to a broader conservation, purpose, and then protection. All lands really are culturally important places and being able to protect cultural sites; to protect burials; to protect plants that are important for food and medicine; to protect sites of cultural heritage where you can see where people ground acorn or where people lived; to protect those places can be difficult, especially if they're in private ownership. So the easement allows us to set certain priorities and parameters such that land can't be developed or certain areas can't be disked or otherwise managed such that it would destroy cultural places and the values there. So I see conservation easements as really enabling access stewardship and protection when used by Native people.
Faith Kearns
That's so interesting that you started working on that issue essentially two decades ago. And it seems like the relevance is growing every day. We hear a lot about Native land stewardship and ownership and sovereignty, so I appreciate the work that you've been doing for the past couple of decades on these issues.
Your second book, Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River builds on your first by focusing in even more on native land rights and hydroelectric development, which is something that we don't get a chance to talk about a lot on water talk. And you focus specifically on the North Fork of the Feather River. This is an issue and an area of the state that doesn't get a lot of attention. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the importance of the North Fork of the Feather River, and how hydroelectric development has played out there?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Yes, thank you for asking about this. I'm pretty passionate about talking about water, and water in California, in particular. And, you know, generally from a bird's eye view, much of the precipitation falls in the north part of the state and in the Sierra. But much of the population is in the south, or a little bit on the coasts, but mostly in the south. And so for folks who are looking at developing California, they wanted to think about how do we move the water from the north to the south, and how do we store it, and then release it slowly for development and for agriculture, and do so in a way that really completely changed the landscape.
They were thinking of flood control, but this is a natural floodplain in the valley, the water would come down from the Sierra and spread out over the floodplain and then go out through the delta. And it's a complex ecosystem. So all of this infrastructure that was put in throughout the 20th century, from the early 20th century to really a zenith, I think, of dam building around the mid 20th century. And now we're seeing a lot of the impacts, and some people have been seeing them for many years, but I think the broader society is awakening to a lot of the impacts of this approach to water.
I spent time in the State Water Resources Archives. And it was kind of disheartening, really, because it was this management of water, this view of water, that was really seen as an engineering problem and it was seen as a way to prevent so called “waste”. There was no recognition of Indigenous people's cultural relationship to water stewardship, of water identity, as related to water, and also no discussion really of ecology.
I'm working on a project on dams right now with the Open Rivers Fund of the Resources Legacy Fund. And one of the rivers I'm looking at is actually in Alaska. And one of the things that's fascinating about it, and troubling, deeply troubling, is that the river was completely de-watered by these hydroelectric and water conveyance projects. At the time the projects were developed, the value of keeping water in the river was completely absent. And there was also a lot of racism towards the Native people for whom that is their river, that they're related to, that they harvest from, that they care for, that they have ceremony with. It's really absent from the engineering literature on early water development.
So I've been looking at this problem, and again, it's really been moving to me. It really touched my heart to hear from elders and people who are connected to the North Fork Feather River and that whole upstream system, what were a series of springs, and what is now Big Meadows. Lorena Gorbet, who is Mountain Maidu, one thing she often says is that when the dams went in, not only did people lose the culture of fishing, trading and going up and down the North Fork Feather River, but they also lost the songs and stories. I hesitate to say “lost” because I think people keep a lot of these memories, that they're just sleeping, that they will come back the language and the songs will come back when people are in these places and listening, but that is not to undercut the impact of the series of dams.
The North Fork of the Feather River is extremely important. As folks probably know, there are two main water conveyance systems in California: the State Water Project, for which the North Fork Feather River is the headwaters; and the Central Valley Project which comes out of the Pitt River and the Trinity and the McCloud all of those rivers where the Shasta Dam and Shasta Reservoir is and runs down the Central Valley. So the North Fork Feather River was seen as a prime site by engineers for development, both because of the steep canyon and the water drops that facilitate the generation of hydropower. This was developed by private companies, with investors from banks all over the United States, around the turn of the century. And then later it also became a focus for water storage and conveyance for Agricultural Development and residential development downstream.
But through all of that, Mountain Maidu people, this is their homeland, the North Fork Feather River. There's many different stories of world maker's journey, moving up the upper part of the North Fork Feather River and going out up and around there through Susanville out into the Great Basin. So it's a landscape full of culturally important places, full of stories, places that you can see if you know what to look for, if you know the stories.
It's so problematic that I can't even find the words, that problematic is too mild of a word, but the disregard for Maidu people and Indigenous people in general, in almost all of these dam projects is so deep. In terms of complete lack of consent. If we think in terms of the free prior and informed consent language in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international covenants. There was no consent for the flooding of people's lands and the damming of rivers, which stopped the migration of multiple different types of species and really changed the whole ecosystem.
So that was my focus in Upstream to really call attention to that injustice that seemed so long buried, but yet just below the surface, so that we could think about ways to address it in the present. Changing some of the infrastructure, transferring lands back to Indigenous peoples that lost their lands, such as in Mountain Maidu country, and under that reservoir and along the North Fork Feather River that lost their lands without any restitution.
And one of the more hopeful aspects of the book, I was looking at the Maidu Summit process with the Pacific Watershed and Land Stewardship Council, which was developed out of a settlement with PG&E around 2000. It was tasked with putting into conservation ownership, or some sort of conservation protection, 140,000 acres of PG&E lands, many of them in headwaters areas that were not directly used for hydropower.
So it was being there, and being part of, and following this advocacy by Maidu community members, and members of other communities and other places. The Maidu community members on the North Fork Feather River, to call attention to this history and say, you know, this didn't just happen on a blank slate, this happened in our homeland, and we are still suffering the consequences.
Faith Kearns
It is very nice to hear the hopeful note. It really does seem like there's a lot more activity and discussion on some of these issues. And some of the things that you've worked on provide some potentially really interesting models. Stepping back a bit and knowing that you've touched a bit on these issues already, I'm wondering if you could delve a little bit more into the water rights issues specifically?
There are starting to be a lot more conversations about water rights reform in California, and so it seems like a valuable time to talk about something that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention, which is Native water rights. So how did and didn't the current system account for Native water rights?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Yes, thank you. This is a good question. When I think of water rights in California, I think of who was able to be at the table in the 1851-1853 period, I think that was the Land Claims Act period, where you had an opportunity to file on land in California, and with the land would come water rights. And so at this time, you know, when the state was founded in 1850, the first law was the 1850 Act for the government and protection of Indians, which was anything but protective. It enabled violence toward Indigenous peoples, indentured servitude or slavery of Native children.
The law was one piece, but the whole climate set by the first governor, who talked about a war of extermination, was one of violence. There was a bounty on California Indian people. Payment was made to militias for killing Native people of California. So in that period of time, it was really white male settlers. It was definitely not Native California people who could file for recognition of jurisdiction over a parcel of land, which would carry with it water rights. So I find it painful to think of senior water rights being understood as senior prior to Native California people who were here, but were barred from participating in a system that would recognize their water rights.
So moving forward a little bit, in the late 19th century, there's the establishment that set aside reservations, as well as reserves or rancherias around the turn of the 20th century. There's allotments, which I detail in Upstream, where individual Indian people could file for allotments on the public domain. And this was all against the backdrop of a failed treaty making process, which took place in 1851 and 1852, in which agents from the federal government came out and negotiated with California Native Nations or who they deemed representatives of California Native Nations negotiated a series of 18 treaties, which would have set aside land throughout the state.
It itself was an imperfect process, but even worse was the fact that people signed these treaties in good faith, and then the treaties were taken to DC, and because of the value of the land, as I understand it, there was a lot of advocacy against ratifying the treaties. So the treaties were just hidden away. And during that time period, from about 1851 to the early 1900s, people thought they had lands protected, but they didn't. And this was also the time in which there was payment made to militias for murdering Indian people. So it was just a horrible time of violence and lack of protection. But within that time period, some parcels of land were set aside as reservations, as reserves, as allotments and as rancherias. But sometimes people were forced onto these parcels, forced out of their home areas out of their villages and communities, onto these areas set aside for Indian people for what were deemed homeless California Indians–homeless within their own homeland.
So I bring up those areas set aside because under the Winters Doctrine pertaining to a 1908 case, every reserve, or land set aside for Indian people, carries with it a water right. And that water is a federally reserved water right, in order to make that land livable to cultivate it for agriculture. And it's based on the land base itself, not the number of people who live there.
There was a really interesting case in 2015 and 2017 the Agua Caliente Banda Cahuila Indians versus Coachella Valley Water District. And in that case, Agua Caliente asserted two different areas of water rights to the groundwater under their homelands. And they asserted both the Winters right and they asserted an Aboriginal rights. That is very powerful because the Aboriginal water right has not been recognized by the court–the right of the people in their homeland to waters that they have always lived in relation with. What has been recognized is the Winters water right, or the Federally reserved water right, that carries with it the land base. But of course, another very interesting aspect of Agua Caliente was that it focused on groundwater. So that's just a little bit about water rights.
Faith Kearns
Yeah, thank you so much. I remember that Agua Caliente case and a lot of conversation about, again, whether that could be sort of a model or a precedent setting case. And I'm very curious to see how these issues unfold over the next decade or two. It's also just so interesting, the relationships between land ownership and water rights and who had access.
To pivot a little bit, but on a related issue, you recently participated in the workshop that I had co-hosted with some colleagues at UCLA, Greg Pierce and Peter Roquemore, on this really emergent but critical issue, of how wildfires are beginning to directly affect water infrastructure in California. And I know you have some really unique insights, particularly related to the more rural and forested part of the state and to tribes and Indigenous peoples in California. Can you share a little bit about your thoughts on what we might be doing differently to think about water and wildfire perhaps more holistically?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Yes, so to return to the same context in which I was talking about water rights, that 1850 act for the government and protection of Indians, also explicitly outlawed fire. Fire is one of the paramount stewardship tools used by Indigenous peoples in California and beyond. So my advisor, Cat Anderson, worked with many different Native people around the state of California, for many different nations. So many articulated the importance of fire for maintaining traditional landscapes, maintaining culturally important plants, maintaining ecosystem health, creating space for animals, reducing pests and disease, etc.
But with the development of the new state, they outlawed fire, and they also attempted to completely eradicate Indigenous people. This led to so many intertwined consequences, both personally within communities, kind of just dealing with that legacy and the disinvestment as well as ecologically. And so I think that the current condition of forests in California, particularly in these upstream areas, and also landscapes more broadly, is really an outgrowth of that racist policy of barring Native people from doing land stewardship. And that you have forests that are overgrown, overcrowded, really drawing up a lot of water in brush, you have fuel ladders, lands that have been uncared for.
These are Native homelands that were just assumed to be part of forest reserves, national forests, Bureau of Land Management (used to be the General Land Office) just absorbed and claimed these Native homelands, and then pushed people out and told them, you can't be here anymore. You can't be harvesting plants and caring for them and carrying out your ceremonies and responsibilities. Stewardship is intertwined with ceremony and identity. So with the onset of the new state, the different agencies and private landowners, that land care was pushed aside in so many places.
Today you have these unhealthy ecosystems. And then you also have climate change, increasing heat and aridity. And it creates a terrible, perfect storm for catastrophic fire. And then you have these horrible fires just destroy landscapes and communities, and impact water infrastructure and impact the upstream condition of the watershed. And I'm really an advocate for stewardship. And when I think of land back, I think of stewardship and land care. Reinvigorating the health of these landscapes, through traditional teachings in combination of thinning and prescribed fire, also, to restore these places. And I've been really grateful for working with Chairman Ron Goode at Northfork Mono, who really speaks a lot about the relationship between fire and water. And when you do effective landscape care and stewardship, which involves cultural fire, you also bring back and restore the water and raise the water table and increase the cleanliness of the water.
I also want to acknowledge Margo Robbins from the cultural Fire Management Council who recently spoke to our Keepers of the Flame class. And one of the things she mentioned was cultural fire creating this layer of charcoal from a low intensity burn on the landscape and then when the water falls it filters through that and it's a natural filtration system so it contributes to the cleanliness of the water. All of this nuanced landscape care, much of it with a deeply cultural basis, can really contribute to the health of watersheds as part of these greater ecosystems.
Mallika Nocco
Thank you so much. I've really appreciated and enjoyed the conversations thus far Dr. Middleton Manning. Many of us on Water Talk here, myself, Faith, Sam, we all are involved in the land grant system and involved in cooperative extension. I know that one of the areas that you're working in now is the University of California and part of that land grant system of the United States and it can work with Native nations to address its identity as a land grant institution. This is really a big topic. But can you tell us a little bit about how you're thinking about the relationship of the land grant institution in the land grant systems and the relationship with Native nations today?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Yes, I'm glad you asked about that. I've been thinking a lot about real place-based understanding of an unpacking of colonialism in order to move toward more inclusive systems today that address some of that context.
So I think we have to be really straightforward in understanding the history of the University of California. How lands were seized either repurposed for the university or for experimental stations or research stations, or they were sold to fund the development of the university. And I think that's very important to really unpack and think about very specific parcels so we can trace that history and think about who was impacted and how, and what we might do about it today.
A few different kinds of accessible options come to mind. I think free tuition for Indigenous California peoples is important; I think the foundation of the university is built on California Native land, and there wasn't restitution. And I don't think people who are admitted today, who carry that heritage, should be paying for an education at an institution that's built on their homeland, without restitution to their ancestors, for its construction. So I think that's incredibly important.
I think that we need to think about our different landscapes that we steward and how we might partner with Native nations with cultural knowledge keepers, with traditional land stewards, to bring back stewardship, and return access and ensure protection of culturally important places on some of the different types of facilities and lands that we care for. And beginning from a foundation that we, many UC folks really care for the land, as well. But thinking through this is homeland, and how can we be in a more right relation with the first peoples of this place who are still here, and still working to access and protect it?
I also think about our mission of public service and research, teaching and service in the public interest, which I find very, very powerful about University of California. But how can we think about that, in the context of our relationship to Native nations? What are we producing or developing that is supportive to initiatives led by the nations whose homelands we are within? How can we partner on areas of mutual interest for research? And for teaching? How can we, to the extent that it's appropriate, really elevate the knowledge of Indigenous California people who have kept alive the deep understanding of how to take care of California, and how to maintain culture and identity here in California?
I also am a big advocate for thinking through the government to government relationship. Do we have formal systems of liaisons between the university and tribes to really invest in that high level of communication? Recognizing tribal governments, but at the same time, always being inclusive and aware of the fact that Indigenous knowledge holders may or may not be federally recognized because of the history of California policy. I know in my courses I really try to foreground Indigenous California histories, help students and I really think through the development of institutions, reach out to and collaborate with Native nations, with traditional knowledge holders, invite them to speak, support their time, of course, and just recognize their expertise.
Mallika Nocco
Thank you so much. And I appreciate too, that you gave several options and choices and levels and in all have varying degrees of complexity for how we can start thinking about these issues. So thanks for that.
Sam Sandoval
Thank you Beth Rose for sharing your expertise and perspective with us. I really like that you bring us the perspective of the Indigenous communities that we are part of the environment, we as humans, are part of the environment and as such, we should be active in maintaining it. So we always like to end our podcast by asking our guests what the three of us and also our audience can support you and the work that you do, your efforts?
Beth Rose Middleton Manning
Well, thank you for that. I have been able to work for the last decade or so with an amazing group of Native land trusts, so I always encourage folks to look them up and support them. Native American Land Conservancy in Southern California, Kumeyaay Diegueno Land Conservancy down in the San Diego area, Kumeyaay homelands, the Native Conservancy in Alaska in the Eyak country led by Dune Lankard, and the Maidu Summit Consortium up in the North Fork Feather River watershed, Amah Mutsun Land Trust in the South Bay Area, as well as Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, which is an urban Indigenous women led Land Trust.
All of these organizations are really moving forward with Indigenous led stewardship on lands under a variety of jurisdictions from tribal land, land under tribal jurisdiction to public land to private land, and they use many different tools, including cultural easements, conservation easements, stewardship agreements, etc, to advance their work. So I really want to advocate support for these Native conservation nonprofits.
Also I'm always learning about and looking respectfully for ways to support tribally led conservation initiatives. I have one real positive story in which we had a student who was an undergrad several years ago, from a California Native nation. Her tribe, as well as other tribes and some Native nonprofits were really interested in growing plants out for restoration, particularly certain species of culturally important Native plants. She came to UC Davis and as part of her education she was trained in the Arboretum on plant propagation, and then was able to work with these different tribal partners on growing out the plants and then putting them in the ground in different restoration projects, tribally led restoration projects, so that was just such an incredibly positive project. That student is Ellen Sanders Rugosa and that was a partnership with the Intertribal Agriculture Council, the UC Davis Arboretum and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
So those types of really positive partnerships where I think we harness some of the many incredible assets of the University and also think really critically about our role and how we can be good partners to support tribally led conservation initiatives. I think that's the future.