For too long, the conservation community has been complicit in our nation’s failure to acknowledge and address the forced removal of Indigenous people from the land, one of the greatest stains in our nation’s history.  Over the past decade, we have started working more closely with Tribal partners in the Northern Sierra – specifically the Mountain Maidu and Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California – to identify and pursue opportunities to return land to their ownership.  

The Washoe Land Back Project is a multi-year collaboration between the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, the Northern Sierra Partnership and Feather River Land Trust to restore over 20,000 acres in the homelands of the wélmeltiɁ (Northern Washoe People) to the ownership of the Washoe Tribe. This historic project includes three large acquisitions we hope to make to return an entire landscape to the Washoe People who inhabited this area for thousands of years before they were forcibly displaced.

In its first phase, the project centers on acquiring ecologically and culturally significant landscapes at the convergence of the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin. These lands encompass forests, sagebrush, meadows, springs, and creeks, supporting a remarkable diversity of wildlife—from pronghorn and mule deer to beaver, sandhill cranes, and gray wolves that are just starting to return to the Northern Sierra.

To ensure lasting stewardship, the project is also establishing the Wášiw-šiw Land Trust, a new Tribal-led nonprofit that will hold and manage the returned properties. Guided by a vision shaped by Tribal Elders and members, this work will restore the abundance of culturally important plants and wildlife, protect sacred sites, re-establish gathering places and ceremonies, cultivate and diffuse Washoe Ecological Knowledge, and nurture the well-being of Tribal youth through language, cultural, and lifeways programs.

Together, these steps mark a profound reclamation—restoring land to its original stewards, healing both people and place, and laying a foundation for conservation and cultural resilience for generations to come.

As Chairman Smokey recently explained, “The reclamation of these Washoe homelands is of great importance. Being forced out of our traditional lands plays a huge part in the trauma our people go through. Getting the Washoe people back onto the lands is healing for the people and the land. Recent events of destruction, man-made and natural, are a signal that the lands are calling the people back. Allowing the original stewards to apply traditional practices of land management will bring robust conservation efforts to fruition.”

To learn more or to donate to this project, please contact Lucy Blake at info@northernsierrapartnership.org