California Completes Largest-Ever Native Land Transfer

California just completed the largest-ever transfer of land to a Native American tribe in state history.

On May 30, the Yurok Tribe completed the acquisition of a 47,097-acre parcel of land along the lower Klamath River, including the pristine Blue Creek watershed, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The deal, valued at $56 million raised from public and private sources, was completed in phases by Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit Western Rivers Conservancy.

Prior to the transfer, the land was owned and heavily logged by Green Diamond Resource Company. The land is now owned and managed by the Yurok Tribe as the Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary and Yurok Tribal Community Forest.

“To have this land back, it’s a beautiful day and a beautiful milestone in the lives of the Yurok people,” Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, told the Chronicle. “This is a place of beauty. It’s a place of well-being. It’s a place of balance. It’s who we are.”

The Yurok is California’s largest tribe with more than 5,000 members. Most reside on or near the Yurok reservation based in the Del Norte County community of Klamath near Redwood National and State Parks. The tribe has remained on a portion of its ancestral lands for centuries. Today, it operates a small casino, restaurant and hotel on the reservation.

Regaining access to miles of waterfront along Blue Creek and the Klamath River is both a logistical and sacred victory.

“The drainage is not just important to the natural resource, but it’s a place of high prayer for us,” James said.

Yurok leaders plan to help the land recover from a century of industrial timber harvests by removing old logging roads and nursing back redwoods, mixed conifer forests and native grasslands. Most of the roughly 15,000 acres acquired in the final phase of the deal will be a protected salmon sanctuary in Blue Creek.

The Yurok Tribe has been regaining pieces of its ancestral lands with the help of the Western Rivers Conservancy for more than a decade. The nonprofit first began discussing a potential land deal with Green Diamond Resource Company in the 2000s, and between 2009 and 2017, the organization bought pieces of the company’s property which were then transferred to the tribe.

— Chris Malone Méndez