About the NALC

ORIGINS

It is estimated that in 1769, at a time of limited contact between California Native Americans and the Europeans explorers, there were at least 300,000 Indians living in California speaking over 100 distinct dialects.  These communities made use of much of the 158,000 square miles of present-day California, utilizing the islands, coastal areas, foothills, mountains, valleys and deserts for temporary and permanent village sites, for hunting, gathering, and horticulture, and for religious and ceremonial practices.  Their world would swiftly change with the arrival of the Spanish Catholic Missionary Father Junipero Serra in 1769.  The appearance of Father Serra, who established a string of Catholic missions in California, presaged the beginning of a prolonged and troubled period for California’s indigenous peoples.

California entered the Union in 1850 as part of the Great Compromise in the midst of the struggle between pro and anti-slave factions in the United States Congress, and in the heat and dust of the California Gold Rush. By 1852 eighteen treaties had been concluded between California Indians and the United States that would have set aside 8.5 million acres of land for California tribes. In an unprecedented move, however, the United States Senate refused to ratify the treaties, placing them under seal for 50 years, by which time disease and depredation had reduced the Native American population to between 20,000 and 40,000 people.

Today, an estimated 200,000 Native Americans in California are limited to a land base that consists of approximately 463,000 acres--5% of what they reserved in the treaties of 1852 and a mere fraction of California’s aboriginal territory. As a result of being dispossessed of their lands, the vast majority of areas of historic and cultural importance to Native Americans are no longer under tribal ownership or control. The difficulty of accessing, much less protecting, traditional cultural sites is a fact of life for Native American communities throughout the United States.

The threat to these historic and cultural resources and the heritage they represent is especially acute in previously undeveloped areas with rapidly expanding populations such as Southern California’s Inland Empire (Riverside, San Bernardino, and Imperial Counties). The population of Southern California is expected to double by the year 2040. The most rapid growth will occur in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Imperial, and San Bernardino Counties, the five-county region represented in the Southern California County of Governments. The greatest growth between 2005 and 2025 will be in the Inland Empire region. Even in the relatively remote Imperial County the population will increase by almost 90% between 2000 and 2020, and is expected to have over 1.7 million residents by 2070.

THE NALC Today

The NALC was established in 1998 to pursue a vision of working with tribes to strengthen the connections to their culture, traditions, heritage, and to one another. This vision is guided and brought into focus by an understanding of the importance of sacred landscapes for Native American cultural identity, for connection to the past, and the critical role these landscapes play in helping to bring healing to the Native American community. It is also motivated by a sense of extreme urgency and an understanding that Native American sacred sites are endangered by unprecedented levels of development and a lack of protection under state and federal laws. The vision and management orientation of the NALC are reflected in the NALC’s management goal for the Old Woman Mountains Preserve.

The Old Woman Mountains Preserve will be managed to protect, in perpetuity, its biological, cultural, and historic resources while utilizing it as a learning and healing landscape. All activities in the site will be conducted in a manner that protect sensitive sites and areas, and restore portions of the area that have been impacted by past uses.

The Native American Land Conservancy is an intertribal 501(C)(3) organization dedicated to the protective management of endangered Native American sacred sites and areas. Since its founding, the NALC has acquired threatened cultural landscapes, formed cooperative agreements with tribes, public agencies and conservation groups, and organized conferences to promote the preservation of Native American sacred lands.

The vision has several key elements, including the identification of endangered and unprotected sites, working with tribes as well as other organizations to secure protection of these sites through acquisition or conservation easements, engaging in protective management activities, and utilizing sacred lands as healing landscapes.

The Old Woman Mountains Preserve provides an example of how the NALC seeks to act upon its vision of preservation and protective management. In 1997 the 29 Palms Band of Mission Indians, working with other tribal communities in the Coachella Valley, proposed the formation of the Native American Land Conservancy (NALC). The need for such an organization was evidenced by increasing threats to land and resources of biological, spiritual, and cultural importance to the Native American community throughout the greater Mojave basin.

The 29 Palms Band has provided critical financial and technical assistance to the NALC which received its 501(C)(3) status in 1998 and which completed its first acquisition, the Old Woman Mountains Preserve, in December of 2002. The 2,560-acre Preserve is located in the Ward Valley, 40 miles west of the Colorado River at the northern extension of the Old Woman Mountains. The site was purchased in order to protect its traditional cultural properties, which include the flora and fauna which have a unique historical meaning and value to the Native American community.

Current Conservancy Membership

EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBERS

BOARD MEMBERS

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

STAFF