In Oregon, a coastal piece of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indian’s ancestral territory have been restored. Monday's announcement coincides with the 47th anniversary of the tribe regaining federal recognition.
The 27-acre section of Cape Foulweather, on the Oregon Coast between Newport and Lincoln City, has been reacquired by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. The tribe purchased the land from the McKenzie River Trust last month, with a $2.01 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Other partners include Lincoln County, The Nature Conservancy in Oregon, and the Oregon Dept. of Land Conservation and Development. A major focus for this collaborative effort is to conserve and tend to ecologically significant areas of the Oregon coastline.
“It really is an amazing opportunity for us to become stewards again,” Angela Sondenaa, director of the CTSI’s Natural Resources Department, told KLCC. She hopes to reintroduce cultural burning to the coastal prairie section, to rejuvenate its ecosystem.
“The Cape Foulweather area is an incredibly diverse and sensitive ecological area," she said. "It’s been a cultural gathering site for millennia for our people.”
In a release issued by the CTSI, tribal council member Robert Kentta said “Before settlement, this land was home to our families, who fished from the rocks and canoed in the ocean, and gathered mussels from the rocky shore. Now we will have the opportunity to reinvigorate our connections to traditional lifeways.”
In the same release, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said that the return of Cape Foulweather to the CTSI “is of monumental historic significance. I want to express my gratitude to the local government partners and community-based organizations that came together to protect a beautiful place and support the efforts to return ancestral land to the tribe.”
Sondenaa added that it’s been a good year for the Siletz. Last December, President Biden signed a bill sponsored by Representative Val Hoyle, restoring gathering, fishing, and hunting rights to the tribe on their ancestral lands.
“And it will provide direct opportunity for tribal members to gather and resume subsistence harvest in the rocky coastline there,” Sondenaa said.
The Siletz reservation was established in 1855 by Congress and President Franklin Pierce. It was further diminished through land cessions.
Then, in the 1950s, Congress began eliminating many tribes’ federal status through legislation. This included the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act of 1954, which authorized ending the government-to-government relationship with the CTSI, as well as the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.
On Nov. 18, 1977, after years of land loss and economic disruption, the CTSI regained its federal status. This event is marked by a “Restoration Pow-Wow” every year.
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