Spring 2024 Newsletter

AMLT’s Partnership with State Parks Revitalizes Indigenous Stewardship of the California Coast

By Mohini Narasimhan, AMLT Development and Communications Manager

On a sunny afternoon out in Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve, a group gathers to hear Valentin Lopez, Chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, and Rob Cuthrell, Director of Native Plant Stewardship for the Amah Mutsun Land Trust (AMLT), introduce them to the land they currently stand on. This group represents district superintendents, tribal affairs liaisons, and memorandum of understanding specialists from California Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks) districts across California. As many other State Parks districts are at long last entering into partnerships with tribal communities, many of which through Memoranda of Understanding signings, these district superintendents sought an existing partnership to learn from. Brought together by Parks California, a nonprofit partner of State Parks, the group was gathered that day to hear about the remarkable and long-standing partnership between the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, Amah Mutsun Land Trust, and State Parks.

Quiroste Valley, a 225-acre portion of Año Nuevo State Park, is a sacred and historic site of the Quiroste Tribe. Since 2007, AMLT has been working with a multidisciplinary team of scientists to research the relationships between Indigenous people and the Quiroste Valley landscape. Due to the presence of significant archeological, historical and ethnobiological resources in the valley, the land was designated as a cultural preserve in 2008, and since then State Parks has been working collaboratively with AMLT to protect and steward cultural and natural resources. Today, the landscape of Quiroste Valley looks much different than it did when Indigenous people tended it. State Parks had managed the land as a wilderness area, and much of the former open coastal prairies are now overtaken by coyote brush shrubland and Douglas fir forest. Restoring this land to a thriving coastal prairie and a place where Tribal members can harvest plant resources has become a flagship project of the partnership between AMLT and State Parks.

Beginning summer 2015, AMLT Native Stewards, AMLT staff, and State Parks employees worked together to reduce the number of encroaching Douglas firs, poison hemlock plants, and other selected invasive species. The initial contracts to work in Quiroste Valley arose from Año Nuevo State Park’s General Management Plan, a land management document that formalized the designation of Quiroste Valley as a cultural preserve. Written in consultation with the Tribe, this general plan is the first in California to include co-management language, stating that State Parks would work with Indigenous peoples to steward the land within the park’s boundaries. However, the true success of the partnership was ultimately rooted in the relationship and in the trust. The Tribe and AMLT have experienced that building this trust takes many steps and takes time. From the archeology research beginning in 2006, to vegetation management in 2015, to now experimental plant propagation, trust has been built and continues to build through every meeting, conversation, and project together. It is strengthened by the many instances of pursuing shared funding, of reaffirming a shared goal to restore Mother Earth, and of course, by spending many hours together on the land.  Alexii Sigona, Tribal member and Chair of the AMLT Lands Committee, reflected how “State Parks folks were working really hard alongside us, rolling up their sleeves and putting in sweat.” When considering the factors that strengthened the partnership, Michael Grone, Senior State Archaeologist for State Parks explained: “It really came down to the strength of the individual relationships. I don’t think this partnership was formed by two groups that didn’t really know each other. It wasn’t a partnership formed over Zoom or email. People were working side by side together on the land and getting to know each other as individuals for many years, and that’s a very important part of partnership building.”

The partnership between AMLT and State Parks was bolstered through support from additional partners, including the San Mateo Resource Conservation District and Parks California. In 2020, Parks CA partnered with AMLT to provide flexible funding through their Career Pathways Grant Program. The Tribe, due to three waves of colonization and forced displacement from their ancestral territory, largely lives in diaspora across California and elsewhere. This creates many, layered barriers to Tribal members returning to do stewardship work in their lands, such as having to travel long distances. Parks CA is able to support the Tribe in this area through their Career Pathways Program, and provides critical gap funding for costs such as transportation, food, additional trainings, and program administration that would not usually be covered in work contracts. 

This partnership was ultimately formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding, signed between Armando Quintero, Parks Director, and Chairman Lopez in 2020. While the MOU does not return land to the Tribe, or grant land rights in perpetuity, it is an important step that formalizes and protects the Tribe’s access to land in their territory. This is especially important for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, which is not federally recognized and is not granted legal land rights to their sacred lands. Entering into a relationship with State Parks, an agency that owns and has historically restricted access to their ancestral land, was a brave and difficult decision for the Tribe. Chairman Valentin Lopez spoke of the Tribal Council’s decision to form a partnership with State Parks: “Our directive from Creator to take care of Mother Earth is absolute; it was clear, we needed to access our territory to return Indigenous stewardship and to do that, we needed to trust.” Through trusting, taking brave steps, and creating new partnership models, the Amah Mutsun are lighting the way for ancestral land return.