MLPA Stakeholders Draft Resolution to Address Disregard for Tribal Rights

MLPA Stakeholders Draft Resolution to Address Disregard for Tribal Rights

by Dan Bacher

During a conference call/webinar on February 25, members of the North Coast Regional Stakeholders Group for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative agreed upon the proposed text for a recommendation to the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force on the topic of tribal uses of the ocean.

This is powerful, long needed language that addresses the disregard that MLPA officials and the state of California have demonstrated towards the traditional seaweed harvesting, fishing and ceremonial rights of California Indian Tribes since the process began in 2002 under the Davis administration. The initiative, after being put on hold because of lack of funding, was reinitiated with private funding by the Resource Legacy Fund Foundation under the Schwarzenegger administration in 2004.

That resolution states "That the MLPA Initiative shall appropriately acknowledge that California tribes and tribal communities have aboriginal rights to take marine resources and to use and manage coastal areas for traditional subsistence, cultural, religious, ceremonial, and other customary purposes."

In spite of the pleas by the Kashaya Pomo and other tribes, tribal members and other fishermen will banned from harvesting seaweed, mussels and abalones off their traditional gathering areas off Stewarts Point in Sonoma County and Point Arena in Mendocino County starting April 1. Hopefully, this resolution will be adopted to not only address tribal rights on the North Coast, but on marine protected areas already designated on the Central Coast and North Central Coast and those slated to be approved on the South Coast by the California Fish and Game Commission this year.

I applaud the tribal representatives, fishermen, seaweed harvesters, environmentalists and other stakeholders that developed this proposed language to address the environmental injustice foisted upon tribes and tribal communities by the MLPA!

The concerns of tribes and tribal communities in the North Coast Study Region will be discussed in this Monday's 3/1/10 Blue Ribbon Task Force Meeting at CV Starr Center, 300 S. Lincoln Street, in Fort Bragg at 9:00 am.

For more information about the MLPA Initiative, please visit http://www.dfg.ca.gov/mlpa

Here is the draft resolution:

The NCRSG promotes the following to the BRTF:

1. The NCRSG recognizes that California tribes and tribal communities are inadequately
dealt with in the MLPA framework, including the Master Plan;

2. That the NCRSG requires policy guidance on how to address this issue and that without
such guidance, the NCRSG is unable to properly discharge its function and runs the risk
of developing proposals that are less than robust;

3. That the MLPA Initiative shall appropriately acknowledge that California tribes and tribal
communities have aboriginal rights to take marine resources and to use and manage
coastal areas for traditional subsistence, cultural, religious, ceremonial, and other
customary purposes. The tribal coalition will provide draft language to the NCRSG,
BRTF, and SAT.

4. The NCRSG suggests establishing a separate tribal advisory group to the BRTF
consisting of BRTF members, policy officials from DFG / Natural Resources Agency,
appropriate federal agencies, and California tribes and tribal communities (at a minimum
the NRSG representatives) for the purposes of developing appropriate policy guidance
to the NCRSG and to the CA Fish and Game Commission, and with a view toward
amending the Master Plan.