In the United States, Native Americans have stopped years of environmental deterioration. Their lands are today an example of environmental recovery.
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Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico
The drought that fell on this land around 1580 drove the inhabitants of the cliff of Puye, in New Mexico. Their descendants, the Indian people of Santa Clara, are restoring the nearby river basin.
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Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico
Goat Rock
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Big Cypress Reserve, Florida
On the surface of a swamp, water lentils form a kind of galaxies removed by slow water currents. Florida’s Seminole Indians call this part of the wetland “the Jurassic.”
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Big Cypress Reserve, Florida
Palmito Sawn
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Intertribal Natural Area of Sinkyone, California
The ten tribes that make up the council of this natural space are the jealous guardians of a temperate rainforest where the upholstered mossy lithocarps abound and the redwoods of the coast.
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Intertribal Natural Area of Sinkyone, California
This “sacred ecosystem,” as Hawk Rosales, executive director of the council, calls it is crossed by currents such as Wolf Creek, a central point of a salmon habitat recovery project.
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Tribal Natural Space of the Mission Mountains, Montana
This natural space houses the western slope of Montana’s Mission Range, with peaks ranging from 900 meters to 3,000, former territories of the Salish and Kootenai tribes.
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Tribal Natural Space of the Montes Mission, Montana
The Post Creek makes a stepped descent through the Grizzly Management Zone, a section of 4,450 hectares of the Tribal Natural Space of the Montes Mission, which in summer is closed to visitors so that Bears can feed on exons. In 1979 the Confederation of Salish and Kootenai Tribes declared natural space a territory of 37,230 hectares, but the road had been opened years before. In 1974, when a sale of wood threatened the primary forest, three older women, or yayas, showed up at the tribal council meeting. According to a witness, “the shawls were fixed, expressed concern for future generations, and said they would not leave until the council banned logging.” He did so.
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Roadless area of the Wind River, Wyoming
No sign indicates the road. Only the arthritic branches of a pine gesture towards an infinite sky. It is the wildest territory, a land scratched by glaciers, windswept and without roads, in the middle of the continental divide. This reserve of the northern arapajós and the eastern shoshón was created in 1937, long before the United States passed the Law of Natural Spaces, in 1964.
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Fort Peck Reserve, Montana
Safe and in its shelter, the bison pace on the slopes of the Fort Peck Reserve. The support of the Defenders of the Wild Life contributed to add more than 1,600 hectares to the 2,000 that the Assiniboine and the Sioux managed to convert in reserve in the year 2000. The place houses 200 bison, and there could be more if the tribal council can buy or lease more land.
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Fort Peck Reserve, Montana
Safe and in its shelter, the bison pace on the slopes of the Fort Peck Reserve. The support of the Defenders of the Wild Life contributed to add more than 1,600 hectares to the 2,000 that the Assiniboine and the Sioux managed to convert in reserve in the year 2000. The place houses 200 bison, and there could be more if the tribal council can buy or lease more land.
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Valuable Lands of the Nez Percé, Oregon
«For a brief period, we live in peace; but it couldn’t last,” said Joseph, chief of the Nez Perce. In 1877 the federal government expelled the Nez Perce from the hillside populated with fir trees of the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. Joseph spent his last years in exile until, according to his doctor, he died of sadness. With the help of the Trust for Public Land, the tribe has recovered 6,590 hectares of
their “valuable land,” as they are aptly called. They have begun to plant native grasses, the agile flight of the gorgiblanco swift has already been seen, and the maculated calocorto unfolds its lavender-colored petals. The renovation is in the air; not only the earth recovers but also the spirit.
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Valuable Lands of the Nez Percé, Oregon
The soft light of dawn illuminates the Joseph Canyon in Oregon, a part of the Nez Perce Valuable Lands Wild Life Management Area. In 1996, the Nez Perce bought some of the ancestral lands that the US army had abandoned in 1877. The restoration is now underway, eliminating invasive species and planting other native species. “Our traditional relationship with the earth was more than reverence. It was the certainty that every living being had been placed here by the Creator and that we all had a sacred relationship,” said Elsie Maynard, an old Perce nez.
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Fort Apache Reserve, Arizona
Sotol flowers enhance the landscape in the Salt River Canyon, in the Fort Apache Reserve, in the state of Arizona. The tribe controls the fish populations in the Salt River, calibrating the consequences on the river flow of the fire that in summer 2002 consumed more than 2,000 hectares of the forest reserve.
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Fort Apache Reserve, Arizona
The waters of Pacheta Falls plummet from the Mogollon Rim, in the Apache territory of the White Mountain, in eastern Arizona. These waters house the Apache trout, one of the two native trout species of Arizona. The efforts by the Apache tribe of the White Mountain, as well as the federal agency and some conservation groups, have managed to prevent the extinction of the species and recover its population to reach historic levels.
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Red Lake Reserve, Minnesota
The Red Lake in northern Minnesota – Miskwagamiiwiizagaiganing for the Chippewa, which they consider sacred – was subjected to such high levels of overfishing that in 1997, tribal chiefs dismantled their perch fishery. Federal and state institutions, the University of Minnesota, and the Chippewa tribe of Red Lake joined forces to launch an action plan. In less than ten years, the perch has recovered; The lake, which the Chippewa call “the supermarket,” has been reopened to commercial fishing.
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Red Lake Reserve, Minnesota
Twilight burns over Lake Thunder, one of the 14 small lakes in reserve managed by the tribal fishing department. It is connected to the Red Lake, sacred to Chippewa Indians, and once again full of golden-eyed perches, much appreciated for its snowy and sweetmeat. In 1966, decades of overfishing had decimated the fish population of Lake Red. Tribal, state, and federal authorities, as well as the University of Minnesota, collaborated to establish a management plan. Fishing was suspended, and gold-eyed perch fry was introduced. In less than ten years, the fish population increased from 200,000 to eight million, and the tribe was able to practice commercial fishing once again.