The indigenous people living on the southern Oregon coast have always understood that the ocean and its creatures must be respected. According to the tribal lore of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw, Thunderbird was the chief of the ocean, and of all the ocean’s creatures, salmon was most beloved. When the people treated salmon carelessly, by dropping it on the ground or burning it, Thunderbird became angry and created powerful storms. The people burned tobacco in their fires and pleaded with Thunderbird to go north.

The lesson? The ocean can be perilous, but it also provides. Margaret Corvi, a tribal member and Environmental Specialist with the Confederated Tribes, knows this very well. “Resource management is embedded into tribal practices and stories,” she says, “and these traditional stories help guide our management-with-respect approach.”

Corvi is one of three tribal natural resource staff, and the only one actively working on ocean and coastal projects. Despite the limited capacity, she has been participating in meetings of the West Coast Marine Planning Tribal Partnership – a group of 10 tribes working to draft marine plans for their individual tribal territories. “This Partnership speaks to the Tribes interest in preserving the marine environment for future generations, and informing both federal and state ocean planning,” she says. “The Tribes understand that the planning process and the development of a marine plan is an important way to exercise tribal sovereignty.”

The tribal Partnership is an effort that is separate from National Ocean Policy implementation and West Coast Regional ocean planning, but Corvi, would like to see her tribe represented on any future federally organized Regional Planning Body for the West Coast. According to Corvi, tribal marine plans will inform regional ocean planning in ways that are proactive and beneficial to tribes. “The goal,” says Corvi, “is to bring completed marine plans to the future federal process.”