SWS November Webinar:

Hunting, Gathering, and So Much More: Wetland Prairie Prioritization for the Quinault Indian Nation

Speaker: Janice Martin 

The Dawes Act of 1887 authorized the President to break up communally held Native American reservation lands into individual parcels to force assimilation of Native Americans into European-American farming practices. The Native Quinault people did not practice traditional crop farming because their rich coastal environment provided abundant food through fishing, hunting and gathering. The dense, rugged rainforest terrain made crop agriculture unattainable. Over time these allotments were sold to non-Indian and Indian persons, or passed down to descendants and were broken into 40-acre allotments having several owners, sometimes more than a hundred owners in either fee or trust land ownership. As a result the Reservation is made up of a patch work of ownership that inhibits access and resource management. The Quinault Nation is restricted to conduct resource land management only on Quinault owned parcels, and the community can only forage and hunt on QIN owned parcels. Recognizing this, it was determined that Quinault needed to purchase back more land in and around Wetland Prairies. This requires a systematic approach. The Quinault Natural Resource committee tasked the Wetland Program to lead the efforts in helping to prioritize which areas and parcels to purchase.
Under the EPA Core Element “Voluntary Restoration and Protection” the QIN Wetland Program proposed to work with the QIN land manager and other staff to select properties for purchase as monies became available. Janice Martin the QIN Wetland Specialist for the past eight years will share a powerpoint that is a condensed version of the larger StoryMap which was presented to the Quinault Tribal Community for their valuable input on the prioritization of properties for purchase.

About the Speaker:

Janice Martin a Washington native, has been a Wetlands Scientist for over three decades graduating from the University of Washington with a double degree in Botany and Environmental Science. She focused on wetlands ecology and gained a passion for the conservation of fens and bogs. Having worked both in the private and public sectors, she has held a Professional Wetland Scientist certification with the Society of Wetland Scientists since 2006. Her expertise includes jurisdictional wetland hydrogeomorphic determination and delineation, functional assessment characterization permit acquisition and mitigation compliance and design. Her knowledge includes wetlands mapping and The NWI, ArcPro GIS and database management. As the Quinault Indian Nation Wetland Specialist since March 2018, she has provided ecological oversight on projects for the Reservation and on the Tribal ceded lands, such as the continuing Clean Water Act changes, the Westport Scottish Golf links, the BHP Potash project, a Fiber Optics installation and so much more including the relocation of both Taholah and Queets to higher grounds and outside of the Sea level rise flood zone.