TULALIP RESERVATION — Quil Ceda Creek’s deep green water swelled in the grassy marshlands Thursday afternoon near Marine View Drive as the rains poured.
With changing storm patterns and increased development in the area, the watershed is at higher risk of flooding. And the highest risk lies on the reservation.
In a 2015 climate adaptation plan, Tulalip Tribes first laid out the facets of tribal life affected by climate change. They found forests including plants for food, craft and medicine were at risk of burning; shorelines on Tulalip Bay were eroding; and the hydrology of streams was changing.
The Tulalips are now among a dozen tribes and tribal organizations in the state receiving nearly $11 million in federal grants announced this week.
These grants aim to help mitigate the disproportionate impacts of sea-level rise, drought and other climate change-related stressors to the land and water.
Coastal tribes like the Makah and Quinault, who have lived on the shores since time immemorial, have begun moving their communities to higher ground. Other inland tribes have seen the rivers and streams of their homelands become increasingly low, warm and hostile for the fish they rely on.
The grants will help tribes like the Port Gamble S’Klallam and Makah relocate threatened homes and health facilities from shorelines. It will allow the Spokane, Suquamish, Lummi and Tulalip Tribes to lead research on how climate change is affecting finfish, shellfish and other marine resources.
For many, the grants will go toward rolling out the tribes’ existing climate-adaptation plans. For the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe near Sequim, that means being equipped for the next heat wave, bout of unhealthy air quality from wildfire smoke or drought.
“Washington state Tribes are located in the eye of the climate change storm,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in a statement.
The Tulalip Tribes will get about $1.75 million to help put their full climate adaptation plan into action and an additional $150,000 to study how the changing ocean conditions are affecting fish.
Indigenous people have long been aware of the changing climate because of how it’s affected traditional lifeways, said Tulalip treaty rights protection specialist Aaron Jones. Climate change has affected the tribes’ relationship with shellfish, otters and salmon.
“The Tulalip Tribes are the salmon people,” Jones said. “Without them [salmon], we can’t even imagine, or want to imagine, what a world would be like.”
The tribes have largely been leaders in efforts to restore salmon habitat. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
“It’s something our late elder Terry Williams, who passed away in July, was an advocate for,” Jones said.
Williams advocated for changes to help slow the effects of climate change for most of his adult life. In the 1980s, he helped draw up the first Timber/Fish/Wildlife Agreement, a 57-page document outlining plans for a more ethical future for forestry. It led to broader protections of riparian zones, or the vegetative buffers along rivers.
Williams went on to negotiate the Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada and its First Nations, and became the first leader of the American Indian office in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
The funding announced this week is part of $45 million for tribal climate-resilience projects, included in the bipartisan infrastructure law passed by Congress late last year, and fiscal year 2022 annual appropriations.
“This is for the future generations,” Jones said. “Not just for the Tulalip Tribes, not just for our surrounding counties, but everybody in Washington state. If we don’t take action on climate change, then we’re leaving the future generations in a worse situation than what we were left.”
