From WA to Alaska, coastal tribes face displacement with insufficient financial help Crosscut Doc
On April 11, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it would invest $46 million in funding to tribal communities to address the unique impacts of climate change in Indigenous communities. The funding is a piece of the $466 million to the Bureau of Indian Affairs through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to address tribal infrastructure in Indigenous communities. Securing enough federal funding for relocation expenses, infrastructure investments or efforts to strengthen climate resilience and adaptation has been a major hurdle for many tribes. While these investments are appreciated, many tribal communities believe that ecological restoration still isn’t enough of a priority.
“While we celebrate the Biden Administration’s plans for restoring the broken infrastructure of this nation, we call for ecological restoration to be the top priority,” a Suquamish Tribal Council statement said on Earth Day in response to President Joe Biden’s visit to Seattle.
The Hoh, Makah, Quileute tribes and the Quinault Indian Nation have stewarded the lands on the Olympic Peninsula since time immemorial. But these communities are losing what ancestral lands they have left to climate change, seen in the eroding coastline and rising sea levels. Their reservation lands now face yearly flooding, something these tribes used to experience once every decade.
Crosscut’s 2019 documentary, The Rising, spotlighted Quinault leaders’ efforts to relocate the villages of Taholah and Queets from their homelands, where over a thousand people face increased tsunami risk as the sea rises inch by inch, year by year.
In Central Washington, the Colville Tribes are dealing with deadlier fire seasons than ever before. “The fire burned so hot in some spots that it burned the dirt,” Monique Bourgeau, a Colville teacher of the nxelscin dialect of Salish, told Crosscut.
https://crosscut.com/news/2022/04/wa-alaska-coastal-tribes-face-displacement-insufficient-financial-help