IRES visits Fort Yuma Quechan Tribal community
The Indigenous Resilience Center (IRes) Team visited the Ft. Yuma Quechan Tribal community this Spring where they met with the Tribal Council, Parks & Recreation, President & Vice President, and Tribal water technicians.
The team also met with community-led advocacy group, Protect Kw’tsán, to gain a greater understanding of the environmental landscape of the nation. Council member Zion White led the presentation on the history and purpose of the movement, highlighting the enormous responsibility the nation’s people happily take on to protect their cultural lifeways starting with their homelands. At the crux of the presentation is the greater call for their nation to demonstrate rightful return in land stewardship to the hands of the original caretakers of Xá Áxwétta (Colorado River). To underscore the importance of this land stewardship, Protect Kw’tsan engages Quechan youth to care for the land with their community and tribal leaders. Enabling the youth to engage with their elders, their nonhuman kin, and the land herself is not only producing long-term outcomes in the BLM co-stewardship agreement, but it is also building environments and community networks for the heirs of the Kwt’san people to blossom. Community programming set forth by tribal agencies in partnership with Protect Kw’san demonstrates Indigenous expertise in land stewardship that combat the effects of colonial-imposed destabilization.
Whilst learning from the community, the IRes team participated in a guided tour of riparian areas and water treatment facilities led by Water Management technicians Frank Venegas and Monte Montague. The tour revealed the impacts and challenges of irrigation complexities and caretaking the floodplain areas heavily impacted by the effects of the climate crisis. As we drove along the water bordering the reservation, we were visited by an Osprey, a bird of prey that hunts primarily around bodies of water. The tour showcased, or mirrored the Osprey, what commitment to protecting their homelands looks like. Ultimately, adapting and thriving in the desert landscape to protect their ways of life, establishing and maintaining an ongoing imprint of their ancestral care.
When discussing generations excelling beyond the present, it always goes back to the youth and the standards of self-belief, self-resilience, and self-care we set and demonstrate. The Kw’tsan people’s struggle for protections of their homelands spans 40+ years across generations of original land stewards. The legacy left by those efforts inform the efforts of Native youth today, which demonstrate ultimate self love by protecting all that balances our minds and our lives.
Seeing youth lead and watching tribal leaders uplift their efforts, engaging in conversations about being a land steward, and encountering people who enable themselves and others to fight for the joy that answers the prayers of our ancestors is an extraordinary thing to witness, and an even better reminder that Land Back will always be the way.
- “Kwatsan Nation (Ft Yuma Quechan) Demonstrates Resilience and Adaptation Through the Climate Crisis: Community Perspective and Collaborative Action”
- https://tentribespartnership.org/tribes/fort-yuma-quechan-indian-tribe/
- https://www.protectkwtsan.org/learn-more
