Blog: West Coast tribes take lead on ocean planning committee

The Tolowa Dee-ni’ of the Smith River Rancheria in California have always been the caretakers of the ocean and coast. During the summer months, Tolowa families set up camps to fish for smelt on the local beaches. Caught smelt are elaborately arranged on the sand to dry while Tolowa fishermen and women watch carefully as their shiny skins turns opaque in the sun.

Like her other tribal members, Briannon Fraley is intimately connected to her place in the world. And just like the generations before her, Fraley harvests and gathers important marine resources for ceremonial and subsistence purposes – practices integral to her tribe’s way of life. Thousands of years of traditional knowledge gives her and her tribe a distinct perspective, one they will use for the first time to inform marine planning in their ancestral territory.

“We have a responsibility to assure the health and vitality of this rich environment and its resources for future generations,” says Fraley. She is also her tribe’s Self-Governance Director. “As a self-governance tribe, we are developing strategies that will ensure long-term, sustainable marine stewardship.”

On a crisp fall day, Briannon is hard at work on two projects that reflect this goal. She and her tribal government are actively engaged in what they refer to as proactive Ocean Governance initiatives. They are working with other West Coast tribes to create a framework for capturing tribal knowledge and data that reflects tribal values. The second project will put that framework to use as they collect tribal data related to marine protected area monitoring in California.