For several years, Fawn Sharp has seen her tribe on the coastline of Washington state lurch from crisis to crisis: Rising sea levels have flooded the Quinault Indian Nation’s main village, and its staple sockeye salmon in nearby rivers have all but disappeareda direct hit to the tribe’s finances and culture.
Now Sharp, the 49-year-old president of the Quinault, plans to move the tribe to higher ground, restore the fishery, and diversify its economy. The projects are foundering, she says, because of a lack of federal money to help Native Americans adapt to climate change.
The Quinault’s struggles reflect the broader challenges of Native Americans, who are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because their tribes are tied to reservation land and rely on natural resources for subsistence and trade, according to the National Climate Assessment report written by federal agencies.
Southwestern tribes such as the Navajo Nation face acute water shortages as the Colorado River dries up. Northern tribes including the Bar River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa are losing access to wild rice and walleye due to warming in Lake Superior, which has heated faster than any other U.S. body of water.
Tribes are ill-equipped to adapt their reservations to increasing threats from storms, flooding, drought and wildfires because their communities are typically poor and because federal programs offer scant support. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs provides $10 million a year for tribal climate resilience planning nationwide, and FEMA provides another $20 million to tribes under a fund to protect communities from natural disasters.
That’s not much when spread among more than 500 tribes, said Sharp, who has made climate change the top issue in her newly acquired additional role as president of the National Congress of American Indians, which represents 535 registered tribes.
In addition to lobbying for more federal support, Sharp has set her sights on industries that contribute to climate damage. To finance a relocation of some tribe members, she plans to propose a carbon tax for companies doing business on the reservation, which features rich timberlands and a port. The measure would make it the first tribe in the United States to price carbon.
She’s also considering a lawsuit against big oil companies she believes should help pay the tab for climate-damage mitigation.
Those who are directly responsible for causing the damage should be paying, she said, for generations of exploitation.
The Western States Petroleum Association industry group declined to comment on potential lawsuits, saying only that oil companies and tribes should be working with each other and not against each other.
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