Giving Compass' Take:

• Sarah Holder recounts how the Native American Wiyot tribe was driven from the Duluwat Island in 1860 and after decades of lobbying finally got it returned.

• How can donors support community-based efforts to lobby for the return of native land? Are there assets in your community that could be returned to indigenous people?

• Learn about investing in native communities.

Cheryl A. Seidner sat on a folding chair near the dock, wearing a basket-woven ceremonial cap. She looked out over the sharp stalks of grass and the flurry of long-billed curlews perched in the marsh and said: “This is a blessing, to be able to come out here.”

The mile-long island where Seidner sat basking in the October sun is in the middle of California’s Humboldt Bay, near downtown Eureka. This land has long represented loss to her and the other members of the Wiyot Tribe, the region’s Native American people, who call it their spiritual home.

After more than a century, Duluwat Island—also called Tuluwat Island, or Indian Island by non-Native people and Google Maps—belongs to the Wiyot people again. In October, the city of Eureka signed the island’s deed back over to the tribe, in what the National Congress of American Indians calls the United States’ first known voluntary municipal land return achieved without sale, lawsuit, or trade.

Deals to get tribal land back have been brokered, but most involve tribes paying landowners in exchange for the deed. Others have been achieved through national legislation: In Western Oregon, a Tribal Fairness Act approved by President Donald Trump restored more than 30,000 acres of public land to tribes in the region this year.

After two unanimous city council votes across two different city councils, Eureka declared Duluwat Island surplus land in December 2018. On October 21, 2019, an official transfer ceremony was held.

So how did the unprecedented happen in Eureka, a small city of 27,000 on the North Coast of California? The story is about decades of persistence by Seidner and other tribal leaders, strong partners in Eureka’s city council, and a gradual self-reckoning among Eureka locals about an ugly piece of the town’s history.

Read the full article about the return of Duluwat island by Sarah Holder at City Lab.