Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar: Indigenous Faith and Climate Policy

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Thank you for joining us.

As a reminder, today’s webinar is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

We’re delighted to have Amelia Marchand here with us to discuss the intersection of Indigenous faith and climate policy, as well as the role of faith-based Indigenous leaders in combating environmental challenges and advancing sustainable solutions for future generations. Amelia Marchand is the executive director of the Indigenous-led L.I.G.H.T. Foundation. She is a researcher, writer, and strategist for more than twenty-seven years of experience in cultural and natural resource management, climate action, and food and water security policy, alongside Indigenous peoples in the United States and First Nations in Canada.

She is a descendant of survivors of the American Indian residential boarding school system and the relocation program for American Indians, and a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, located in Washington state. In 2024, she was appointed by President Biden and became the first woman to hold the Indian Tribe member seat on the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation. And she is an associate scholar and board member for the Center for World Indigenous Studies and a fellow with Yale University’s Climate Change communication program.

So Amelia, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought I would turn it over to you and invite you to give us some background on Indigenous approaches to climate action.

MARCHAND: Thank you so much. Before I get to that, I’ll do an introduction for you all. So just want to say—(speaks in Nimipuutimt (ph) and Nsəlxcin).

So, as indicated in the introduction: Good day, everyone. Hello, my friends. My Nsəlxcin name is Skʷumqnálqs, and my English language name is Amelia Marchand. The opening statements I shared were greetings introducing myself in two of my Indigenous languages, Nimipuutimt (ph) and Nsəlxcin. My mother’s name is Cheryl Mentor Moses (sp), and she’s the youngest daughter of Frances Doherty (sp) and Robert Mentor. And from her, my lineage is European with predominant Irish, Scottish, French, German, and Dutch ancestry. Beginning in the late 1700s or so, they immigrated to the North American continent fleeing religious and political persecution in their home countries, and thereafter migrated across the continent.

My father is Harvey Moses, Jr., who is the eldest son of Ellen Pierre and Harvey Moses, Sr. And from him, my heritage is rooted in the soil, feathers, furs, and flowing in the fogs and waters of what is now called the Okanagan Highlands, the Columbia Plateau, and the Wimahl (sp) Valley of southern British Columbia, eastern Washington State, and northeast Oregon. From my father, my ancestry is traced back in our DNA over 10,000 years and now recognized as First Nations and Tribes of the Okanagan, Sinixt, Palus, Moses-Columbia, and Wal’wama Band of Chief Joseph Nez Perce.

My husband’s name, who I also provided when I did my Nsəlxcin introduction, is Joaquin Marchand. And his parents are Lois Fizicout-Dakotis (ph) and Richard Marchand. And, like me, his heritage includes Indigenous and European ancestry, with French Canadian ancestors and his Sinixt and Blackfoot DNA rooted in the high mountains, deep valleys, long prairies, and cold waters of the Kootenay Rockies, Selkirk Foothills, and Slocan Valley of present-day British Columbia, Washington state, and west-central Montana.

So, as noted, I’m a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation. That is twelve different tribes from a variety of those geographic regions that I mentioned. And the Colville Reservation is located in north-central Washington state. That’s where I was born and raised. Currently, I work and reside within the Lāhui Kānaka Māui in Ahupua’a Maka’ehu. So I’m actually joining this meeting from the Hawaiian island of O’ahu.

And I first—I guess, second, because my introduction was first—want to really express my gratitude and appreciation for the invitation to speak with you today. And especially want to thank the hearts, the hands, and minds of everyone behind the scenes also that worked so diligently to bring us together across space and time zones to have this discussion. So a firm thank you to Irina, Charlotte, Sam—also Sam—(laughs)—and Morgan for—and the rest of the team at the Council of Foreign Relations for hosting and facilitating this webinar.

And ever since I first received the invitation I’ve really thought about the dichotomy of the request. And I’ve shared these with Irina previously, but I feel it’s really important to share them with you now as well. So it is an interesting situation to be in, this opportunity to discuss the sacred aspects of Indigenous beliefs, Indigenous practices, religious practices, sacred practices, which are all components of Indigenous knowledges and culture, while at the same time needing to protect the integrity of those Indigenous knowledges from exploitation and assault. It’s really a fine line to walk.

And even more provocative is that Indigenous religious and cultural practices were considered illegal in the United States for almost a hundred years, in a nation that was founded on religious freedom. So with that, let me make one post into the chat. And let this sink in for just a second. That from 1883 to 1978 the United States made it illegal for Native people to practice their culture and their religion here in the U.S. Ceremonies and feasts to honor and acknowledge the birth, death, achievements of Native peoples, and similar ceremonies and activities to heal, protect, and nourish our bodies, and our minds, our souls, one another, and our relationships, were considered offensive and punishable with incarceration, hard labor, and financial penalties or fines—and/or fines, probably a combination of all of the above. And including withholding access to resources and means that were provided in treaty rights and in reserved rights as nations—tribal nations.

So the gravity of this request to speak today is also even more multifaceted, not just because of the state of the climate crisis, but because of the state of our nation at this critical point in time. And so regardless of how I frame and approach the information that I’ve been asked to present, it’s very likely that I may become a target of the executive branch simply for sharing the truth and educating others about myself, my beliefs, United States history, and climate science. And yet, I still remain. I am willing to present, to be here with you all, despite the actual state of things, because it’s my obligation, responsibility, and my right to do so.

And so this question, the first question before us, how do Indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions shape approaches to climate stewardship and how do those traditions inform broader conservation in international environmental policy and U.S. policy, it stems from the rights of tribal nations and Indigenous peoples in our country to have self-determination, to have sovereignty. Not just our abilities and implementation of self-governance, but—(laughs)—the ability of the federal government and state government to acknowledge, uphold, honor, what tribal sovereignty is. Because tribal sovereignty includes the ability to practice our traditional ways, to practice our Indigenous knowledges.

And reinvigorating those practices, and educating those willing to learn about them in culturally appropriate and respectful ways, is one of the many ways in which I feel we, as a society, will be able to overcome the challenges of the climate crisis. And I’ll just say, the next thirty to fifty years we will be experiencing this rapid transition of food insecurity, water insecurity, and destabilization as a result of that, from the impacts of increased natural disasters which cause social, human health strain on governance systems. And Indigenous knowledges and the values, perspectives, and world views, which include religious practices of Native people, are—I don’t want to say the word “formula,” but it’s definitely a part of the recipe to help heal. Help heal what we’ve been experiencing.

So I know I’ve gone over my ten minutes. (Laughs.) I’m going to go ahead and open for questions.

FASKIANOS: Thank you very much for sharing that. We really appreciate it. And now we’re going to go to all of you for your questions and comments.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

And right now we have no questions, but I’m sure there will be people. This group is not shy.

MARCHAND: (Laughs.) That’s totally fine.

FASKIANOS: We do have one from—I do have one. Thank you, Ani. Ani Zonneveld.

Q: Hi. Can you hear me?

MARCHAND: Yeah.

Q: OK, great.

FASKIANOS: We can, Ani, thank you.

Q: Irina, thank you for this—for reaching out to this—for having this conversation, because I do feel, as an American, we’ve missed out on the wealth of knowledge and the wisdom of the Native Americans. And so I really appreciate this conversation. I wanted to get—I wanted to ask the guest more specifically, Amelia, about the actual—give one or two specific examples of Native American practices and how that—Indigenous practices and religious practices that really is inclusive and mindful of our nature, of the climate change that we’re experiencing. I’m sorry for this cold. (Laughs.) OK.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, Ani.

MARCHAND: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your question. I wanted to start off very kind of broad because this is a very broad and can be a very wide-ranging discussion. I don’t think there is enough time—(laughs)—in the day to cover all the bases. But one example that I will share, from personal experience, is some of the ceremonies that we—that we have, that I know of, require water in the ceremony. Not just—not tap water, not irrigation water. You need to have water from a spring, a natural spring. And if that spring is degraded in some way, shape, or form—polluted, contaminated—or if that spring no longer exists, then that ceremony cannot happen.

And so when you think about how climate change is impacting waters—from flooding to harmful algal blooms to drought and the complete lack of water—those are all different aspects as how everyone is affected by it. But if we valued water as much—(laughs)—as our ceremonies valued water, we would never pollute. We would never cause harm. We would not need water quality standards, because we would not be degrading water. We would not be degrading water. We would not be arguing over definitions of water in the Clean Water Act. And so that’s as an example, just very—one very kind of personal example.

But I also want to share with you—and I’ll put this in the chat—there was an amazing piece of research that came out from the website Water AlterNatives. I think it was published in 2023. And it was coauthored by eighteen Indigenous researchers, exploring the concept of holistic Indigenous relationships with water, in Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the U.S., to provide this framework that centers Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being, as a foundation for how we can think and act towards and with water in the future.

So one of the ceremonies that—kind of one of the sayings, I guess you could say, from our teachings—one of my teachings is, water is first. When we have certain ceremonies, you drink that water. That is the first thing that you partake of. That is the first thing that you pray for. That is the first thing that you give thanks for. And many people, I hope, may recall the rallies by and for Indigenous peoples and in support of clean water and access to and protection of sacred sites during the Dakota Access Pipeline situation. (Laughs.) And we think of that as maybe when the nation realized, oh, Native peoples aren’t—you’re still here. You’re still trying to protect these same activities and practices.

Yes, we are. Yes, we do. And researchers, like those that that authored this water back article, are a handful of some of those individuals that are trying to make those changes happen. Not just in academia but in policy, at different organizations and entities. Trying to help everyone see and understand that you can start again. You can change the way—you can change these laws. You can create better policies to protect not just human rights, not just the right to religious freedom, but the actual practice of having the right to religious freedom.

And I’ll pause there for some more questions.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take the next question from Kira Kay, who’s with The Bureau for International Reporting: I’d like to ask how land returns are enabling Indigenous climate efforts. I covered the return of the Bison Range to CSKT stewardship. That is one example. Could you mention others?

MARCHAND: Yes. Thanks. I didn’t catch the name of that person, but thank you so much for that question.

There’s so much good work now being done in that space of land back. And I have another resource I’ll put in the chat. (Laughs.) I’m trying to, like, pull it up really fast at the same time as I’m speaking, so please bear with me. But one of the reasons why this activity of land back is vital and important for—not just for Native peoples, but for biodiversity, for habitat protection, for watershed and water quality reasons. It is that holistic type of approach. Not just saying, oh, this land would be—let’s say it’s a wetland. There’s so many areas where our wetlands have been drained. They have been—they have lost their resiliency. And when there are severe storms, those areas get flooded. And those people that live there, that work there, that need to use that area for, you know, if there’s a highway or transportation through the area, they are so impacted because the decision was made to disrupt that natural system.

Whereas, Native peoples have been protecting and managing those landscapes. Some wetlands were burned to help increase different types of—we call—they’re tule. I can’t remember the scientific name. But tule is one—such a common wetland plant species. And for many Native peoples, it was—it was used in a variety of ways for material purposes—insulation for housing, mats for decoration—(laughs)—and also for—like, to make boats and canoes out of. And so people managed those wetlands. Native peoples managed those wetlands to retain the wetland function and to support the species there. And that’s still going on, I will say. And now I forgot to pull up the website, but I have it right here. Just a second.

One of the very early land back activities, that I’m so thankful and grateful and appreciative to have been involved in, was the return of almost 10,000 acres of land to the Colville Tribes from a private landowner who their land was—in in some ways, it was right adjacent to the reservation lands. And the landowner, that had obtained those lands during the BLM’s General Land Office days, had not developed the landscape into an urban area. They still kept it in very much its natural shrub steppe habitat. And they had cattle on it. And their family, the Figlenski family, really had an environmental ethic to maintain that landscape.

And working with a conservation organization based out of Seattle, actually, called Conservation Northwest—my husband and I were on the board of that organization for several years. And through massive staff support, fundraising efforts, we were able to get that land returned to the Colville Tribe. And it was done in such a way that there was—kind of like, I think they called it, a conservation covenant was established also. Because those lands, not only are they still in in very good natural sagebrush steppe habitat, but there’s traditional foods and medicines on those lands that Native people of the Colville Tribes—(laughs)—now they have the opportunity to access and harvest those.

Because, for us, we can’t hold the ceremonies if we don’t have the food for the ceremonies to hold. That’s a very important part of—as our calendar, this spring season is where I live back home, this is our root gathering season. And if those roots are not there because of ground disturbance, or drought, or invasive species, or—the list goes on and on—then we cannot harvest. And we will not harvest if there’s not enough, because it’s our responsibility to protect and maintain those species, those habitats, so that they survive. So don’t know if I answered your question. (Laughs.)

But I will share—now I’m going to put it in the chat—there is a chapter—I think a full chapter on land back in a new report that just came out in March, The Status of Tribes and Climate Change Report. I was fortunate enough to be a coauthor on two of the chapters of this report, but the there is lots of other land back examples. And so I’ll put that in the chat. And I please encourage folks to review, to take some time and read through it.

FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Thank you for that resource, along with the others that you’ve posted, which we will circulate after this as well.

So I’m going to go next to a raised hand from Ana Mariella Bacigalupo.

Q: Hello. Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: We can. Thank you. If you could give us your affiliation, please.

Q: Sure. I’m Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, a professor of anthropology from SUNY Buffalo. And I’m also Peruvian. And I’m working with Indigenous people from Peru. My dad is also Quechua. And I really appreciate the way you talked about this tension between teaching others about Indigenous knowledges to manage climate change and so on and also protecting those Indigenous knowledges from being appropriated and used, you know, in inappropriate ways. And I was wanted to ask you, what are the kinds of knowledges that you think would are useful to sort of be able to get non-Indigenous people to recognize that they need to restore a sense of belongingness to the Earth in order to manage climate change?

We’ve been doing this in Peru by reviving sort of Indigenous notions of ancestors, landscapes as ancestors, and by bringing that back. But I was just wondering, into sort of, like, the mainstream—I was just wondering how you thought that might be—you know, come about? How is it that you can—we can use Indigenous ideas to sort of overcome this kind of anthropocentrism that it predominates. I mean, people focusing on human welfare and, you know, money and so on, at the expense of nature and the environment?

MARCHAND: Great question. (Laughs.) I’m going to do my best, because I know we probably have some more questions too. And they’re all such wonderful things to address. I think, first off, I want to say my undergrad was an anthropology. So thank you for the work that you’re doing in helping others see cultures from different perspectives, and respect those perspectives. I think the best way to kind of summarize my experience in this space is—with climate change as, like, the kind of main topic—is we are all experiencing climate impacts, from the person at the grocery store, you know, just picking up mac and cheese, to the person in the fancy restaurant on the top floor of some big hotel.

And for me personally, and for the L.I.G.H.T. Foundation, it comes down to food and water—access to food and water. With my research, my heritage, my background, I know, I’ve learned, I’ve experienced that Native nations have become food insecure not just lack of access to healthy, nutritious foods, but lack of access to our traditional foods and medicines, which heal us and nourish us. Starting before they—before the date that I gave, what was it, 18-whatever—before that date those impacts were happening in tribal communities. And now with climate change, it continues, it perpetuates. And it’s an example that everyone can, I hope—well, not I hope—I imagine people can relate to, is what was experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic—access to food, not wasting food.

And I bring this up because for all of these—for all of us, it’s an issue. But tribal nations are so aware of it because we have—again, we acknowledge that many of our teachings have a responsibility to protect different species in our territories. So for me, for my people, salmon is a huge, huge thing. And many—(laughs)—in the Northwest would say the same. So when we think about climate impacts to that food resource, we need to look holistically at what can be done to address it. And we—actually, the L.I.G.H.T Foundation is on advisory group for—let me put this in the chat—for the Tribal Resilience Action Database. And this is a resource developed by our friends and colleagues at Adaptation International, with funding from USGS—kind of the brainchild sponsored by the Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation—to develop a resource that provides adaptation activities and actions that tribal nations have identified which will help them adapt to climate change.

I’m going to put that resource in the chat because it’s not just for one species, it’s not just for public health, it’s not just for natural resources or infrastructure. It’s a variety of those things. And so, those are activities that I encourage local communities, local governments, state governments to learn from. One of the things that—one of the research projects last year which I participated in was—and I’ll put that one in the chat too—identified and named—and we’ve known this, but it just, like, reiterated it—that tribal nations, specifically in the Pacific Northwest and specifically coastal tribes, are leaders in climate adaptation.

And so they—you know, it’s not always—it’s not always easy, but they are working and collaborating closely with county governments, city governments, that have this shared territory. Not the same jurisdiction, but shared territory of interest and shared territory of impacts. So finding what we have in common and what we’re lacking, what is being stressed, what our needs are, will definitely help us find those areas where we can work towards not just agreement, but holistic action together. So I’ll pause there. And I’ll put those chats—or those links in the chat really fast.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

So I’m going to take the next written question from Michael Strmiska, who is at Orange County Community College. Is currently in Lithuania, so I’m going to read his question: Are different Indigenous/Native American/Indian religious groups working together on climate issues in the U.S.? And if so, could you tell us about one or two particular projects? How could we support, with financial help or otherwise?

MARCHAND: Can you rephrase just the question again, like the first part of the question? Are different?

FASKIANOS: Indigenous groups, religious groups, working together on climate issues in the U.S.?

MARCHAND: OK. So the short answer is, yes. (Laughs.) And there is many—

FASKIANOS: And some examples. Yeah. Yeah. (Laughs.)

MARCHAND: And examples, yeah. So I’ll give a quick example of—hold on. Let me—before I get too far afield—so I did put the Tribal Resilience Action Database link in there. And this other one is tribal coastal resilience—the Tribal Coastal Resilience one is the work that just wrapped up, like, last summer, and then—with coastal tribes in Washington and Oregon. And then the Tribal Resilience Action Database is—provides so many great ways to adapt to climate change. So I encourage folks to look at both.

OK. So there are many, many tribal nations that—and intertribal organizations—that are working together to try to do what we can—(laughs)—to address the climate crisis. And I guess one quick and fast example is our organization, L.I.G.H.T. Foundation. We facilitate and manage two different networks. One is a network which is longstanding, which we just—last fall became the first Indigenous cohost of it. Previously it was housed within and kind of supported by the federal—kind of the federal government, but then also the University of Oregon.

And so this network that I’m referring to—and I’ll put it in the chat—it’s called the Pacific Northwest Tribal Climate Change Project. And every month we hold an open webinar meeting where tribal representatives and then basically ally organizations or individuals from state, local, academia, NGOs, and governments come together. And we share resources and information about climate science, climate funding, policy, job opportunities. And so you can imagine, there’s been a lot to talk about so far this year in our meetings. (Laughs.) And I’m going to put that in the chat really fast. So the Tribal Climate Change Project. All right.

And we also manage another network, which is part of a larger network called Indigenous Peoples prescribed Burning Network. The network that we help to facilitate is in—is kind of more for eastern Washington/northern Idaho area. But we don’t really have hard and fast lines because all of these boundaries are made up. (Laughs.) Native people all agree that the lines between the U.S. and Canada and the lines between states are definitely not helpful when it comes to trying to work collaboratively and in holistic ways.

So we, of course, welcome any support from anyone to try and help these two networks. And the IPBN, the Indigenous People Burning Network that we’re managing, brings together tribal nations in the region, like I said, to help restore and reinvigorate traditional and cultural burning practices, which sometimes it’s referred to as cultural burning, sometimes it’s referred to as good fire. And the STACC report, which is the Status of Tribes and Climate Change report, which I shared previously, has a whole chapter on good fire. Because right now the only thing that people are familiar with is bad fire. (Laughs.) And that’s because of the U.S. policy on fire suppression for the last over 120 years or so. And it came from this idea—this Western, Euro-centric idea, that that the land was untouched by man. Which is completely untrue. And so we, Native peoples, have been managing the land for thousands and thousands of years. And that’s why it was so amazing and so beautiful and bountiful when my European ancestors came here.

There’s other organizations and entities as well. The Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals. They—(laughs)—actually just yesterday—they have started convening a group, a working group, of different tribal nations and organizations and federal and state agencies throughout the nation that are working towards seed saving, restoration of land, advocacy for seed saving and restoration. And we’re happy that L.I.G.H.T. Foundation is one of those participants in that work group. But, again, that’s led by ITEP, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals. And there’s—yeah, there’s many others, but I think in the interest of time, and then wanting to get to some more questions, so that’s what I’ll share. And I’ll put ITEP’s website in the chat.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

So I’m going to take the next question from Frances Flannery. Frances, are you in a place that you can ask your question? Otherwise I can read it.

Q: Sure. Let me give that a try.

FASKIANOS: Great.

Q: Frances Flannery from BioEarth.

And I when I say this I know that the category “Indigenous peoples,” of course, covers thousands of different communities. But overall, we can say some things that, you know, we have evidence for. And as you’ve been saying, one of them is that Indigenous peoples have been far better than non-Indigenous peoples at preserving biodiversity. And so, given that non-Indigenous peoples have so much to learn from Indigenous peoples who, right now, manage 80 percent of the Earth’s remaining biodiversity, and given that Indigenous peoples will be disproportionately impacted by climate change, could you speak to how Indigenous voices have been empowered or disempowered at the U.N. COP climate meetings? And I’d like to know, from your perspective, if you think the meetings are working to protect Indigenous interests and societies, like in Pacifica. And I grew up in Hawaii, so yeah. (Laughs.) Thank you.

MARCHAND: Yes. Thank you. First. I want to say I just want to be clear. I have not yet attended any of the U.N. meetings. I do try to follow what’s going on with the IPCC and with various different groups, like UNESCO and what they’re doing. But so I’m not actively engaged in those activities.

But I think one thing that’s important is the voices are being elevated, but that’s only—that’s only as good as the actions that follow. And what I think we may still continue to lack are the courage and the political will to change. And that’s not just for the United States. I think it’s for many, many nations and state governments. For some reason, there is this continuing desire to—well, we know what the reasons are—capitalism and colonialism are the main reasons—(laughs)—why continuing resource extraction, why maybe giving lip service to UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—why that may get lip service but no tangible, actual fruits of all that labor.

And so we—on one hand, we have a long ways to go to make those changes. And I would say it’s not going to happen overnight. It took—(laughs)—it took hundreds and hundreds of years to get to where we are right now, to have the comfort to be able to participate in this remote discussion where we do all speak right now one language and are communicating easily. And yet, we’re still in such deficit and loss for what to do. But it’s kind of clear. (Laughs.) One of the resources that I’ll share in the chat just came out the end of—or, just came out last week, I think. And it is—it’s from the U.N., the State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. This is actually volume six. And its focus is the climate crisis.

I haven’t had time to read through all of it, but I would—I would wager that a lot of the things that I’ve already shared and just what I’ve spoken about, and then some of the resources maybe that I’ve already provided, have similar key findings. We need to not just protect biodiversity where there’s still biodiversity left, but we need to restore land. We need to reduce greenhouse gas impacts. And that—all those things also mean we need to change our economy. We need to change the values. Because I don’t know about you, but in my country, the United States, I would not want to eat a dollar bill. I wouldn’t want to eat a hundred-dollar bill. It’ll make me sick. Might kill me.

But I know what I do want to eat. And those are the foods of my people. Those are the foods from the local farms here. And the ability to make those changes, I think, is going to be solely based on will. So I’ll put that report in the chat. And maybe we might have time for one more question or so.

I can’t hear you.

FASKIANOS: I’m muted. (Laughs.) How long have I been doing this? Excuse me.

So I’m going to take the final question from Richard Morrison with the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona: Do you anticipate climate migration among Indigenous populations in the United States?

MARCHAND: I believe that there has already been a lot of climate migration to the United States from Indigenous peoples in Central and South America. But as far as Indigenous peoples within the United States, that’s—(laughs)—the history of land dispossession within our country and how it has impacted Native peoples is another long story to tell. (Laughs.) And I think it’s important that, you know, there’s not very many places where we can go because our homelands are our homelands. And for so many it’s a wide swath of area, right? One thing that Lauren Terbasket, a Similk Native woman, shared in a panel that we were on together—she shared, like, non-Indian people, non-Native people are so migratory. They’re so nomadic. They move so often, so frequently, everywhere. They are not place-based.

And I thought about that. And in a lot of ways, that is true. Modern society, people will leave for jobs, they’ll leave for school, they’ll leave for experience and adventure. And then they may never, ever return back to where they came from originally, whether it was they themselves or their ancestors. But Native people, we almost always come home. Almost always. And so the main impact that tribal nations in the U.S., I think, are experiencing are this increase of climate refugees from within the United States. And when I say that, I’m mostly referring to upper-middle class or more wealthier individuals moving to areas that they see as rural to be off the grid, to—like, they have the means and the financial wealth to move their family from California, or—you know, nothing wrong with California. But a lot of the people that are moving into Washington State are coming from California.

And that causes a huge stress on existing infrastructure in rural communities, existing emergency preparedness and disaster preparedness responses for those communities, because they’re already stressed. They already don’t have enough resources. (Laughs.) And especially tribal nations. And so on the Colville Reservation, there’s—that’s one of the impacts that that we have seen and other reservations, is non-tribal, non-Native people from out of the state or out of the region migrating to tribal lands, or near tribal borderlands. And that causes rural sprawl impacts, and, you know, land use impacts. And so those are some additional things to keep in mind that I do not think that Indigenous peoples, writ large, will be migrating away from their homelands because of climate change. And I think that because it’s our responsibility and obligation to protect those lands, and to maintain them for the next seven generations.

FASKIANOS: Amelia, thank you very much for sharing your story, your perspective, your expertise with us. We are so grateful. And to all of you, for your questions and comments. We appreciate it. I apologize that I couldn’t get to everybody, but we did the best we could. And we will share the resources that Amelia Marchand shared with us in the chat. We will circulate them to the group, because there’s so much there that I think people should take a look at and read and reflect upon. So thank you, again. Really appreciate it.

And, of course, we encourage you all to follow CFR’s Religion and Foreign Policy Program at @CFR_Religion on X. And you can write us at [email protected] with suggestions of future webinars and any feedback. So, again, thanks to all of you, and to Amelia Marchand.

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