Head to Heart Conservation

Hello Friend,

Over the past decade, Wallowa Land Trust, together with our colleagues in the Oregon land trust community, has been having heartfelt conversations about how our work has impacted native communities, the original people who cared for these lands since time immemorial. Wallowa County is the ancestral homeland of the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla people. After being violently removed in 1877, the task of healing that wound has been a long road, one that we as a land trust have an important role to play.

Encouraged and supported by you and our peers in the conservation community, Wallowa Land Trust has taken a hard look at how we pursue our mission in NE Oregon. Are we truly meeting our stated goal to collaborate meaningfully with Indigenous people? We started slow, focusing on relationship building and outreach. Today, that effort has evolved into a robust program that incorporates tribal priorities into our conservation work.

This started in earnest back in 2019 after we visited several reservations and held a series of listening sessions. We wanted to hear what was important to tribal members. We visited the Colville Reservation in Washington, the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon and the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho. Common themes emerged from those visits such as concern over diminished access to treaty-guaranteed Usual and Accustomed areas. Tribal members wanted to be able to continue traditional lifeways, which is an impossible task without access to the land. We heard about the importance of gathering First Foods and how that relates to language and cultural survival. Tribal members wanted, needed opportunities to take their children and grandchildren out on the land, sharing cultural knowledge on the ground. It is the difference between talking about riding a bike and actually riding the bike. You cannot truly learn it until you do it.

Yet even if access was available, for many tribal members, Wallowa County was too far away. The nearest reservation is two hours away. Coming to Wallowa County takes resources – time, gas, hotel rooms, food. For many, this created an insurmountable financial barrier. We also heard concerns about not feeling welcomed in Wallowa County. One woman shared an incident that happened in the 1980s which made her not want to return to the County because she didn't feel safe or welcome.

These were hard conversations to have and I often felt my defenses coming up. Or a sense of helplessness in the face of what were huge, systemic problems. It was hard to know what to do with all that information. Everything we heard was the result of over 100 years of colonization and trauma. The question was not just what could we possibly do about it but WHY should we do anything at all?

We are a land trust. We work to protect wildlife habitat. Beautiful open spaces. Farms and ranches. How would stepping into this work with Indigenous people meet that mission? For some of us, this was much easier to conceptualize, while for others, it took a bit longer. There was a lot to learn and even more to unlearn.

The Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts (COLT) was an important part of this journey. Thanks to the Oregon Land Justice Project, we were given the knowledge, the history, context and encouragement to pursue this very difficult work. And over the course of five years, the way I looked at the land was fundamentally changed. It moved from my brain into my heart. And this was a direct result of working with tribes.

The first thing we did after those listening sessions back in 2019 was to reach out to several private landowners we knew to see if they were interested in allowing access to their property for Indigenous gatherers. We raised money to support travel and invited tribal members to Wallowa County to meet landowners and dig roots on these lands. We did all that we could to make them feel welcome and to reduce barriers for coming out. The first year we did this, we had 17 Nez Perce women from Idaho, Washington and Oregon come out and dig on around 1,500 acres of land. Now, five years later, our Wallowa Gathering program has taken off in ways we never imagined. This past year, we had 160+ tribal members gathering in the County for four days. Multiple generations of families gathering foods on more than 85,000 acres of land, and in the process, sharing cultural knowledge, strengthening connections to the land and each other, developing relationships with landowners, and experiencing feeling welcomed in the community.

Over and over again, we have heard about how important and meaningful this program is and how it has been instrumental in starting to heal old wounds. Seeing ancient gardens of biscuitroot/cous tended and regenerating moves the heart in ways no data point in a power point presentation ever could.

As much as this has been healing for us, for native people, it has also been healing for the land. The Nez Perce, Cayuse and Umatilla lived, breathed and cared for that land for at least 16,000 years. They evolved together with the plants and animals. The land was carefully tended to and in turn, the land took care of the people. This knowledge, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, has not been lost, just laying in wait to bloom in our communities as we reconsider our role on the landscape. I am so grateful to the generous knowledge bearers that have shared their wisdom with me, opening my eyes to seeing the land in a completely different way. Reciprocity is at the heart of these lessons – shifting how we think about the natural world around us. Plants, animals, fish, rocks, they are all our relatives, not simply resources to be used. This is what is truly at the heart of this work.

As our relationships with the tribes grew and the way we thought about land stewardship shifted, we began to seriously consider what it might mean to return land to the Nez Perce. In 2023, we made the decision to return a 30-acre parcel of land we owned on the West Moraine of Wallowa Lake to the Nez Perce Tribe. Again, it was with the support and encouragement of you, our members, and the land trust community that we were able to do this. Then, just a few weeks ago, we facilitated the return of another 17 acres on the Moraine to the Nez Perce people. Local landowners David and Dolores Bridges made the monumental decision to gift their land to the Tribe while retaining a life estate. Their generosity and foresight is truly an inspiration and I hope that others will follow in their footsteps. To be a part of that historical moment still blows my mind. When the Nez Perce riders (pictured above) appeared on the ridgetop and approached us in their regalia, whooping with joy, I felt my chest seize up at the enormity of the occasion.

Honestly, this is something that could not have been imagined 20 years ago or even 10. It hasn't come without it's challenges. Wallowa County is 95% white and conservative. Many people have deep rooted fears around native people returning to the County, fueled by our current toxic political climate. But this community here, YOU, give us the cushion, the safety and the encouragement to press on and do what we know to be fundamentally right.

These are small steps, but important ones. The ecological knowledge that Indigenous people carry is a critical piece of tackling the climate crisis that faces us all. Our western way of viewing the world, one that consumes resources, often leaving destruction in its path, is not sustainable. We know that. We believe it is time to make room for tribal voices and tribal leadership.

I know it can be hard to unlearn more than a century of ingrained "truths." I struggle with it every day. But being a part of a larger community gives us strength. Fortitude. Courage. And a lot of gratitude. We know we are not alone, nor should we be.

The reality is, we only have a short window of time to nudge our titanic out of the way of the iceberg in our path, which to me, to Wallowa Land Trust, means embracing the ancient wisdom of our Indigenous partners and trusting their leadership. It is not an easy path and we know we will make missteps, but better to misstep than to not step at all. One foot in front of the other – and I am glad that you are here to take the next step with us.

With much gratitude,

Kathleen Ackley

Executive Director

Wallowa Land Trust