523 Acres of California Redwood Forest Given Back to Native Tribes

A group of Native tribes are being given back ownership of hundreds of acres of California's redwood forest. 

Save the Redwoods League, a nonprofit, and InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council released a statement this week announcing the change in ownership.

The Save the Redwoods League said it donated the 523-acre forest to a group of ten Indigenous tribes that make up the Intertribal Sinkyone Council. It's the environmental advocacy group's second land donation to the council. 

The redwood forest — formerly called Andersonia West — will again be known as Tc'ih-Léh-Dûñ, which means "Fish Run Place." 

"Renaming the property Tc'ih-Léh-Dûñ lets people know that it's a sacred place; it's a place for our Native people," said Christa Ray, board member of the Sinkyone Council, said in a statement Tuesday. 

"It lets them know that there was a language and that there was a people who lived there long before now.”

According to CBS, the Sinkyone Council shares how Sinkyone people "were forcibly removed by European American settlers generations ago" from the forest's land.

Related Stories