They’re getting help to restore everything back to pre-colonization.
Last week, a 2.2-acre (.9-hectare) parking lot was returned to the Ohlone people where they established the first human settlement beside San Francisco Bay 5,700 years ago. In 2022, more than 500 acres (200 hectares) of redwood forest on the Lost Coast were returned the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a group of 10 tribes.
The ’O Rew property represents just a tiny fraction of the more than 500,000 acres of the ancestral land of the Yurok, whose reservation straddles the lower 44 miles (70 kilometers) of the Klamath River. The Yurok tribe is also helping lead efforts in the largest dam removal project in U.S. history along the California-Oregon border to restore the Klamath and boost the salmon population.
Plans for ‘O Rew include a traditional Yurok village of redwood plank houses and a sweat house. There also will be a new visitor and cultural center displaying scores of sacred artefacts from deerskins to baskets that have been returned to the tribe from university and museum collections, Clayburn said.