A conservation group is returning guardianship of hundreds of acres of redwood forestland to a coalition of Native tribes that were displaced from the land generations ago by European American settlers.
Save the Redwoods League purchased the 523-acre area (known as Andersonia West) on the Lost Coast of California's Mendocino County in July 2020. It announced on Tuesday that it had donated and transferred ownership of the property to the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a consortium of 10 Northern California tribal nations focused on environmental and cultural preservation.
The forest will be renamed "Tc'ih-Léh-Dûñ" — which means "fish run place" in the Sinkyone language — as "an act of cultural empowerment and a celebration of Indigenous resilience," the league said in a release. The tribal council has granted it a conservation easement, meaning use of the land will be limited for its own protection.
"Renaming the property Tc'ih-Léh-Dûñ lets people know that it's a sacred place; it's a place for our Native people. It lets them know that there was a language and that there was a people who lived there long before now," said Crista Ray, a tribal citizen of the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians and a board member of the Sinkyone Council. She is of Eastern Pomo, Sinkyone, Cahto, Wailaki and other ancestries.
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