Kira Kay: On the foggy banks of the Klamath River in Northern California, members of the Yurok Tribe are casting their fishing nets. The salmon harvest is finally good again, after a worrying spring - almost 90 percent of the juvenile salmon died, from a parasite caused by overly warm and poorly flowing water upstream. 

 

Salmon fishing is central to The Yurok’s identity and survival, as are the forests that cover almost half a million acres around them. But these assets became attractive to settlers.

 

Frankie Myers: As America grew, its appetite grew as well. Its need for lumber, for building supplies.

 

Kira Kay: Frankie Myers, the tribes’s Vice-Chair, says an 1887 law changed everything. 

 

Frankie Myers: We had timber resources. We had salmon resources, but we also had the Allotment Act, which privatized tribal land. The vast majority of our land was immediately transferred to timber barons, after the act was passed. 9,800 acres, the next day.  

 

Kira Kay: In recent years, a growing movement has begun to form around the slogan “land back”, to demand the return of appropriated land to tribal jurisdictions. There have been some successes: In December, Congress passed legislation that restored all 19,000 acres of the National Bison Range in Montana to ownership by the Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

 

But much of the appropriated land ended up in private hands. In the yurok’s case, it was eventually owned and logged by Green Diamond Resource Company. Thirteen years ago, the Yurok began negotiations to try to get it back.

 

Frankie Myers: We tried to at first to have discussions about the wrongs that had happened, the atrocities that we went through, the theft of our land to see if there was a way that we could simply have the land transferred back to the tribe. That met… that met with not a positive reception.

 

Kira Kay: Finally, in what Myers describes as “a nexus of doing good and making a profit”, Green Diamond agreed to start selling plots of the forest back to the tribe. Over the past decade, The Yurok have bought back more than 70 thousand acres of their original territory. 

 

Myers took me on a 6-hour dirt road trip through the regained forest, land on which he once trespassed, by cutting through gates. 

 

Frankie Myers: I think one of the hugest benefits that we've seen to date is having our members, being able to go to their traditional hunting grounds. I can openly raise my children now to come out here to harvest, to practice. They're not criminals, and I'm not a criminal for showing them. 

 

Kira Kay: At the end of the road: the pristine and sacred Blue Creek.

 

Frankie Myers: Blue Creek has some of the densest diversity in the entire nation. We have four runs of salmonids. We have bear, bald eagles. We have a diversity of plant species. We have beautiful redwoods. This is a true jewel. 

 

Kira Kay: To help The Yurok buy the land, an environmental group called Western Rivers Conservancy raised government grants and donations. But the tribe still had to take out a 21 million dollar loan. ...to pay it back, the tribe pushed to join California's carbon cap and trade market. Now, they get paid for each metric ton of carbon dioxide their forests convert to oxygen on behalf of companies emitting more than their cap allows. 

 

Frankie Myers: This could be how we could meet our needs. We wouldn't have to log all of our land. We could implement our land management and we could also at the same time pay our debt that we had for it.

 

Kira Kay: But some environmental groups question both the efficacy and the ethics of carbon offset. There are critics though. 

 

Frankie Myers: Absolutely.

 

Kira Kay: It allows polluters to keep polluting. How do you feel about that?

 

Frankie Myers: I was a critic of the carbon offset program. I had questions about the morality of carbon offset. I questioned whether or not it was really going to make an impact. We think that the good outweighs the negative. And we work diligently to make sure that our partners are truly making a difference that are truly making a change.

 

Kira Kay: They won’t reveal how much they make; but the income is enough to pay down their loan, put money towards more land purchases, invest in local businesses and their school, and implement conservation efforts that meld current technology with indigenous practices. This includes improving the habitat for the four types of salmon so crucial to Yurok life.    

 

Frankie Myers: It's just like us. You know, we, we have a better home. You have a better life. You have a better family. You feel better. We're doing that same thing for salmonids.  But that starts with the data, we got to figure out what's here. We have a world-class fisheries design team. They rebuild the Creek to create new habitat, to create new, uh, channels that will benefit our Salmonid population.

 

Kira Kay: Meanwhile, The Yurok are sustainably logging their regained forests, thinning to allow more mature trees to flourish, and to reduce the risk of uncontained fire. The Yurok were encircled with forest fires this summer, along with much of the Pacific Northwest. 

 

Frankie Myers: When we talk about fire, there is a conversation that happens with the assumption that fire is bad. That's not our view as indigenous people. Fire is no worse for the environment than the river that runs through it, or the rain that falls. What we want on the ground is nice, slow, cool burning fire, as opposed to high intensity, canopy catastrophic fires. 

 

Kira Kay: Today Frankie Myers can take his son, Sregon, salmon fishing on the Klamath River, knowing that part of their ancestral land is back in their hands.  The tribe is now exploring buying more parcels. But underpinning this success is the reminder that the land wasn’t donated back, or even won through a legal battle.

 

Is there a risk though that you're, disincentivizing the handful of organizations or people who may have wanted to just give it back if there's money to be made, why do the right thing?  

 

Frankie Myers: I think that's a, that's a good question. I think after 150 years, if we haven't been given the land back yet, they're not going to give it back to us. End of the day, this is still America. There are still profits that need to be made. We did have to have a lengthy internal discussion about whether or not it was okay for us to buy land that was stolen from us. My elders, the people who came before me they gave us direction. Get your land back, whether it's right, doesn't matter.

 

Powwow Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen good evening from Kamiah, Idaho.

 

Kira Kay: The Chief Lookingglass Powwow is the cultural and social event of the year for The Nez Perce Tribe. It is first and foremost an intense dance competition, held on the grass of the community center on the Tribe’s Idaho reservation. Last year’s powwow was cancelled because of COVID-19, so this is also a bittersweet reunion, with families camping together for the weekend. 

 

Powwow Announcer: Here we go, Junior Girls Traditional. 

 

Kira Kay: Dancers of all ages compete in various categories. Your rhythm and footwork are important… so is your personal flair, including the design of your regalia. 

 

Karen Umtuch:  These are elk teeth; imitation. But the real ones, only two comes with every animal. So if you have this many on there, your husband would have to be a very, very good hunter!

  

Powwow Announcer: You have nobody to blame but yourself if you are out of shape, because you had a whole year to get into shape!

 

Kira Kay: Amidst the lighthearted banter and the impressive athleticism, there is also a nod to the tribe’s tragic history: its war with the US army and expulsion from its homeland. 

 

Powwow MC: We recognize our ancestors and the struggle and sacrifice that they went through. And it was during that time in 1877 that our people were driven out of this valley.

 

Kira Kay: The Nez Perce fought, and fled, across 1800 miles of some of the most difficult terrain on the continent. Old women and newborn babies were killed. The bloody pursuit ended in surrender and confinement for the survivors. 

 

Shannon Wheeler: Where Oregon, Idaho, and Washington now sit, I like to call that -- they're a part of the United Kingdom of the Nez Perce! And, and so each of those states have portions that lie within our territory.

 

Kira Kay: We met Tribal Vice-Chair Shannon Wheeler in the Wallowa Valley of Northeast Oregon. He’s been coming here all his life, as a visitor. 

 

Shannon Wheeler: The first thing you notice of course is Wa-walmuks, the mountains here. The second thing I noticed was the water when I’d come over here as a kid.

 

Kira Kay: But you would come and stay in a hotel on your land. 

Shannon Wheeler: Yes, yes. Or a tent. Yeah.

 

Kira Kay: IT REMAINS A SACRED AND SPECIAL PLACE FOR THE TRIBE.  

 

Shannon Wheeler: Our people are buried all over here and there have been many inadvertent discoveries and their remains not handled correctly.

 

Kira Kay: The Nez Perce had lived on this land for 16,000 years. The US government granted them rights to 7.5 million acres, including the Wallowa valley, in an 1855 treaty made in exchange for access to trade routes to the pacific. 

 

Shannon Wheeler: We agreed to live in peace. We agreed to do the things that we promised within the treaty and our people upheld those things. 

 

Kira Kay: And the US. had accepted that

 

Shannon Wheeler: Yes

 

Kira Kay: And then changed their mind? 

 

Shannon Wheeler: After gold was discovered. And so it took like 14 years, and then the United States army, well we’re going to forcibly remove you now. 

 

Kira Kay: Their land was reduced to a reservation only 5 percent of the size of the Tribe’s original territory. Much of their sacred spots and rich farmland excluded. At the heart of the lost territory sits Am’saaxpa, or land of the boulders, where the most famous of The Nez Perce leaders, Chief Joseph, held his council. Today the nearby town of Joseph, Oregon has become an artsy tourist destination, celebrating Chief Joseph but with little hint of the ethnic cleansing that led to the creation of towns like this. 

 

Am’saaxpa became the Hayes family farm. But the last of the Hayes family died in 2014. And then, last year, a Tribal official got word: the property was for sale. Another bidder wanted to put a housing development on the land. but The Nez Perce pulled together 3.3 million dollars to buy it themselves. 

 

Coast to coast, other tribes are also buying back their lost land when it hits the market. In Maine, the Passamaquoddy saw a real estate listing and, with the support of an environmental consortium, bought back Pine Island.

 

Dwayne Tomah: What an honor to be above our land! 

 

Kira Kay: They had been given it in thanks for their assistance to the colonists during the Revolutionary War, but lost it when Maine became a state in 1820.

 

Near California's Big Sur, the Esselen Tribe bought the 1,200 acre Adler ranch, again with the help of a nature conservancy. An Esselen representative likened it to getting back the Tribe’s Sistine Chapel. 

And just a few hours north, The Yurok tribe has spent 10 years slowly buying back more than 70 thousand of the half a million acres once taken.

 

Back at the Idaho powwow, Nez Perce tribe members see their purchase as a reassertion of their identity.  

 

Lucii Simpson: The government has had control over us, the army has had control over us, the Christian Churches have had control over us.  And now we are getting back some of the power that we had in the past.

 

Stella Sammaripa: It does bring that healing and it also brings a responsibility for us to take care of that land again.  I can't wait to go camp on that land, you know, just to set up a teepee, set up a tent! 

 

Kira Kay: And this past July, a moment 144 years in the making: The Nez Perce returned on horseback to the land they now again own, for a blessing ceremony.  

  

Shannon Wheeler: Those same bloodlines that had to leave are still alive. And that's what this ceremony was for, to be able to let those emotions out, so that our people could walk from this day forward with a better heart. 

 

Kira Kay: Behind this good news though is the lingering question of whether paying for land rewards historical wrongs. The owner of this land though, he called it a business transaction. 

 

Shannon Wheeler: Yeah. He was definitely all about business, uh, uh, and he benefited from it. 

 

Kira Kay: There are people who might watch this and say, “Problem solved. They’ll just pay for it.” Are you worried that you’re setting a bad precedent?

 

Shannon Wheeler:  If we set a precedence of this is the way that we have to do it, then that’s what we’re having to do. Uh, as, at some point in time in the future, we would hope that the federal government would see that well, we, what we did was wrong.… The, the, this tribe and these people need to be compensated for that.  We have to fight for every ounce that we get and if we have to pay for some of it, then that’s what we have to do.

 

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	TIMECODE	LOWER THIRD
1	0:53	FRANKIE MYERS VICE-CHAIRMAN, YUROK TRIBE
2	1:11	[COURTESY] UNDERTOLD STORIES PROJECT
3	1:23	[COURTESY] IN THE SPIRIT OF ATATICE
4	1:51	FRANKIE MYERS VICE-CHAIRMAN, YUROK TRIBE
5	3:46	FRANKIE MYERS VICE-CHAIRMAN, YUROK TRIBE
6	8:11	KAREN UMTUCH POWWOW PARTICIPANT
7	9:22	SHANNON WHEELER NEZ PERCE VICE-CHAIRMAN
8	11:24	[COURTESY] SUNLIGHT MEDIA COLLECTIVE
9	11:51	[COURTESY] WESTERN RIVERS CONSERVANCY
10	12:23	LUCII SIMPSON NEZ PERCE MEMBER
11	12:39	STELLA SAMMARIPA NEZ PERCE MEMBER
12	13:04	SHANNON WHEELER NEZ PERCE VICE-CHAIRMAN