Returned to California tribe

Nearly 1,000 acres near Yosemite National Park returned to California tribe

'It's a sanctuary, and a place where we can go and be, and have our own sovereignty'

By Sam Mauhay-Moore

Nearly two centuries after the Southern Sierra Miwuk people were displaced from present-day Mariposa County, 900 acres of land west of Yosemite National Park have been returned to the tribe. 

Sandwiched between the park and Sierra National Forest, the property is set along Henness Ridge, a crest rich with conifer and oak woodlands that separates two branches of the Merced River. Its forested vistas look out over the Sierra and the mouth of Yosemite Valley to the east and the Central Valley to the west, and it once acted as a key migration route for Miwuk and Mono tribes traveling from low to high elevations between seasons.

Its return marks the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation’s first modern real estate transaction, according to Tara Fouch-Moore, the nation’s secretary. 

“Now we finally have this piece of our land that we can go to. We don’t have to ask permission to be there,” Fouch-Moore said. “We relied on this ecosystem for thousands of years, and now we don’t have to ask permission to gather our foods and medicines there anymore. It’s a sanctuary, and a place where we can go and be, and have our own sovereignty over how we want to exist on the landscape.”

The land was transferred to the tribe from the Pacific Forest Trust using funding from the California Natural Resources Agency’s Tribal Nature-Based Solutions Program, which has facilitated the return of thousands of acres across the state back to Indigenous stewardship. The agencies and the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation also partnered with local groups like the Sierra Foothill Conservancy to facilitate the deal, Fouch-Moore said. 

The ridge sits along a historic deer migration route from the Central Valley and is rich with springs, meadows and wildflower blooms, according to Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust. 

“You walk up to the top of the ridge, and the world unfolds in front of you,” Wayburn said. “When you look to the south, you see the river winding like a little shining ribbon, and to the north you see the mouth of the Yosemite Canyon itself. But what’s truly amazing is that on a clear day, to the west, you can actually see the Pacific.”

The land was originally proposed by John Muir — who had an often-buried history of holding deeply derogatory views toward Native Americans — to be part of the park, Wayburn added. But the land was owned by timber companies at the time and used instead for logging. It was then sold off in tracts and was placed under private ownership or absorbed into Sierra National Forest prior to being acquired by Pacific Forest Trust. 

“It’s really wonderful for this to be returned to people who value it as part of their culture and their identity, as opposed to just as a commodity, whether for real estate or for timber,” Wayburn said. 

The Southern Sierra Miwuk people are among several groups whose homelands include present-day Yosemite National Park. When tribes in the area were driven out of the western Sierra by settlers, many sought refuge in Yosemite Valley — only to be displaced once again when the land was declared a national park. 

“As time progressed and as the park developed, it became more of a situation where you could only live in Yosemite if you were an employee of the park or one of the concessionaires. And that’s still true today,” Fouch-Moore said. 

The return of Henness Ridge, she said, marks an opportunity for the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation to once again employ its traditional land management and stewardship practices, including cultural burns and the restoration of pollinator habitats. 

“That’s why it’s so important for us to have land of our own, so that we can implement Indigenous stewardship the way our ancestors have done it, and pass on that traditional ecological knowledge amongst ourselves and to future generations,” Fouch-Moore said. “This can show modern land managers how it could be done, how it used to be done and how it should be done.”

The California Natural Resources Agency program that provided funding for the deal has returned large swaths of land to several California tribes this year, including 17,000 acres to the Tule River Indian Tribe and 1,000 acres to the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel.