Building an Alaska Native Kelp Economy with Native Conservancy
The Native-led kelp movement in Alaska is taking off and is integral to JumpScale's efforts in Alaska to support the wellbeing of Alaska Native entrepreneurs. Along with NDN Collective and Tamalpais Trust, we recently returned from Cordova, Alaska where we went on a deep dive into the work of Dune Lankard and the Native Conservancy team to restore Native sovereignty, repair the ecosystem, and build a Native-led regional-based and regenerative ocean farming economy.
While there is much potential in this new ocean industry, this could also amount to a taking of Indigenous communities’ ancestral ocean rights as mariculture farmers and kelp corporations move to lock up the ocean close to coastal villages. Our visit to Eyak lands made it abundantly clear that NOW is a critical window of time to support Native Conservancy's OCEANBACK program that includes permitting Indigenous Ocean Farmers and furthering their hands-on Immersion Training work to ensure Indigenous communities are front and center in growing kelp in their ancestral waters.
We visited Eyak just as the Copper River salmon season began! Below are a few highlights from our journey with Dune and the Native Conservancy team.
“The Native Conservancy was established in 2003 to empower Alaska Native peoples to permanently protect and preserve endangered habitats on their ancestral homelands. We strive to maintain and secure title to Native lands in conservation trusts with cultural easements in place, while strengthening our inherent rights of sovereignty, subsistence and spirituality.”
“The land-sea connections that flow from lakes and rivers into our oceans are the life breath of our subsistence-based coastal communities. When we care for the land, the air and the sea, then we are cared for, as we too are part of the intrinsic land-sea connections on our precious and only Blue Planet.”
