On his tribe’s land, enveloped by the state of Oregon, Jesse Jackson stood at the threshold between two ecosystems: On one side of him, an open canopy bathed grasses and white oak trees in sunlight; on the other, a thick cover of evergreen trees darkened the landscape. A forget-me-not wildflower bloomed in the clearing. This is where the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians have been restoring their Indigenous sovereignty over their oak savanna meadows, after decades of fire suppression and the removal of large, fire-adapted trees under federal management.

In addition to land they bought from private owners, in 2018, the Tribe received 17,519 acres of land from the U.S. government for the Tribe to manage under its own authority. This came as part of the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act; this bipartisan legislation sought to put tribal lands in trust in order to return the restoration Indigenous sovereignty and lands—and the related economic activity and job development they created—to the Cow Creek Umpqua and the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians.

In an effort to restore Indigenous sovereignty, the Cow Creek Umpqua government hired foresters to study the landscape, which was dotted with decades-old Douglas fir stumps from clearcuts. They discovered that before the area had been overtaken by conifers, it was historically an oak savanna meadow, a pocket in the Willamette Valley that stretches the length of the Cascade Mountains and the Oregon Coast Range. This finding matched Tribal elders’ stories about a time when game was abundant, and grasses thrived as the tribe practiced cultural burning to restore Indigenous sovereignty.

“We are not living the way that we want to live,” says Jackson, Cow Creek Umpqua member and education coordinator for the tribe. His ancestors, the Nahánkʰuotana, moved seasonally between homes in the foothills and in the valley. When leaving their summer camps in the foothills of the Cascades, or Umpqua mountains, they would burn the land before moving down to their winter camps at lower elevations. They did the same when coming back up as the weather warmed. The Nahánkʰuotana would return to each place to find healthy soils enriched by the charcoal left from the fire, which came from burned wood and plant debris that acted as a natural fertilizer.

Read the full article about restoring Indigenous sovereignty by Ashli Blow at YES! Magazine.