Protecting California’s coastal waters helps heal the ocean — and its tribal caretakers

My path to advocating for ocean protection began when I was about 10, watching my dad and other Chumash community members build our traditional maritime tomols, or canoes, using redwood planks and yop, the tar and pine pitch. 

Our tomols link generations of our people, who have paddled and fished in our ancestral waters off California’s Central Coast for millennia. From San Luis Obispo to Malibu and the Northern Channel Islands, our people have fostered a reciprocal relationship that has sustained thriving marine ecosystems.

Colonization nearly severed our maritime traditions, beginning with the forced removal of our people from our islands and coasts. 

During the 1800s, our ancestors were enslaved to construct the California mission system. That led to the padres burning all our tomols, an act of ethnocide intended to break our spiritual and physical ties to the ocean.

It wasn’t until the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act, restoring Native people’s rights to practice their religion and culture, that we finally were able to rebuild our canoes and resume our maritime steward roles without fear of persecution.

We have long fought to reclaim what was taken. My current advocacy for our coastline and islands is a continuation of the stewardship my ancestors established. 

My father — who still fishes by kayak and harvests shellfish — taught me that it is our inherent responsibility to take care of the places that take care of us. He instilled in me an obligation to protect the ocean and has passed to me the honor of being the first woman to captain our tomol across the Santa Barbara Channel for our traditional journey to Limuw, now called Santa Cruz Island. 

Over the decades I have been lucky enough to spend in these waters, I’ve noticed a profound change in our ocean. 

It’s far less abundant than when I was young and nearly unrecognizable from the ocean my ancestors spoke of. But in recent years, as we paddle toward Limuw and through the marine protected area abutting our original village, an abundance of life has begun to return to the ocean below us. 

Marine protected areas are like underwater state parks. The government designates the waters where human activity is limited to protect wildlife, kelp forests and the underwater wilderness. 

Thanks to more than 20 years of this protection, the waters approaching the Channel Islands are teeming with life, including seals, dolphins and abalones. 

And it fills my heart to see healthy ecosystems and many members of our community eager to help restore the ocean. Chumash marine stewards offer leadership and deep expertise in revitalizing our ocean, to benefit all Californians. 

To build on and fully realize our longstanding work, we need the state to protect more areas and establish formal co-management structures that reconnect Chumash people to the ocean. 

Recently, California’s Ocean Protection Council recommended that the Game Commission approve a marine protected area proposal that would link Limuw and the mainland — which we call Mishopshno for the thriving Chumash village where my ancestors built tomols — now called Carpinteria.

The commission will vote on the recommendation in October. 

Designating Mishopshno is crucial. It would keep marine life safe from oil and gas drilling and other extractive activities and protect vulnerable kelp forests, harbor seals, abalone, lobsters and the juvenile white shark nursery — all species of cultural significance to the Chumash. 

At the same time, it would enhance recreational coastal activities Californians cherish: surfing, beach walking, swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and shore-based fishing.  

California has a chance to help the indigenous people of the Central Coast maintain the continuity of our relationship with our ocean and its healing through traditional practices of tribal stewardship. 

As a Chumash paddler, diver, wife and mother, I hope the Fish and Game Commission will invest in this opportunity for tribal marine stewardship and grant the Mishopshno area marine protected status.