Restoration and management of cultural ecosystems often lack consideration of the values and knowledge of the Indigenous communities that stewarded these landscapes for millennia. Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast have a long history of cultivating and caring for camas prairies and oak woodlands to support a suite of plants used for food, medicine, and fiber. Indigenous stewardship, including harvesting of first foods and cultural burning, was severely disrupted in most prairies and oak woodlands of the region during the past 200 years, as Euro-American diseases decimated Indigenous populations, and colonizers forcefully alienated Indigenous people from their homelands and their land stewardship practices. One step toward restoring Indigenous priorities and practices into prairie management is through Tribal co-stewardship efforts. Co-stewardship necessarily involves access to ancestral lands, shared decision-making, on-the-ground stewardship actions, and trust between partners. In several Northwest Coast prairies, partners have worked together to strengthen relationships, identify and increase safe access to camas harvesting areas, bring awareness of Indigenous practices and cultural connections to both Tribal and non-Tribal communities, and reintegrate cultural practices into the prairie restoration process. These careful efforts are aimed at developing a shared understanding of what Indigenous co-stewardship of these rare landscapes could look like through collaborative restoration planning and implementation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
Cascadia Prairie-Oak Partnership
Providing coordination for the technical prairie community in the Willamette Valley, Puget Trough, Georgia Basin (WPG) ecoregion and beyond.