Makah Tribe – 2017 Project

NOTE: Project pages are being updated regularly to reflect changes, if any; however, some of the information may be dated.

Summary

The Makah Tribe aims to enhance its resiliency by incorporating tribal members’ concerns and knowledge into the Makah resilience, adaptation, and mitigation planning, completing this plan, conducting baseline assessments of the Tribe’s carbon footprint, and implementing steps to decrease that footprint.

The Makah Tribe and its people are inexorably connected to the ocean and its resources since time immemorial. The right to fish, whale, seal, and harvest were reserved in their 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay. Due to these reserved ocean rights, the Makah Tribe acknowledges that using more sustainable and renewable sources of energy is key in preserving marine resources.

The Makah Tribe has been committed to taking care of the natural environment and the ocean. The relationship between the people and the ocean is key to their tribal community and culture. Between 2001 and 2008, the Makah Tribe pursued a wave-energy project that would have led to the development of a clean, sustainable, and independent energy source for the Makah Tribe. Though this first renewable energy project was unsuccessful, the effort highlights the Makah Tribe’s commitment to securing sustainable sources of energy in their adaptation and mitigation efforts. The Makah Tribe has started moving other energy sources to be more sustainable, such as the Makah repower project. The impact of this U.S Department of Energy funding will allow Makah to translate the Tribe’s initial literature review of environmental impacts into a tangible adaptation and mitigation plan that will increase the Makah’s resilience, which will incorporate the Makah’s transition to more sustainable, clean sources of energy.

The ultimate goal of this project is to enhance Makah’s resiliency through two main objectives. The first objective is to create a cohesive and robust adaptation and mitigation plan. The second objective is to include a carbon footprint and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions assessment of all Makah tribal government buildings, and implement tangible steps to reduce the carbon footprint and GHG emissions of these buildings.

The Makah Tribe anticipates short-term and long-term benefits. From the first objective of creating a robust adaptation and mitigation plan, the Tribe aims to create a framework, such as a Tribal Marine Spatial Plan, that will aim to scope and address the feasibility of future renewable marine energy efforts in the Makah Usual and Accustomed Treaty Area. The second objective of assessing the carbon footprint and GHG emissions of Makah tribal government’s buildings will aim to reduce the Makah Tribe’s carbon footprint through implementing tangible steps. The second objective will also be included in the overall adaptation and mitigation plan.

The community-driven prioritization of environmental impacts will be used as the catalyst for the Tribe’s adaptation plan, which will establish a vision and set of adaptation goals for each tribal resource planning area. Once completed, the adaptation plan will provide a shared set of guiding principles necessary to increase coordination among Makah natural resource staff and increased institutional capacity for Makah to participate in external adaptation consultation. The adaptation plan will provide a complementary framework for the Tribe to also pursue its own mitigation measures to minimize its carbon footprint.

The Makah Tribe’s ancestral homeland and its current reservation is located at the northwest point of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The reservation is 30,067 acres and is located in the western end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Based on the 2010 census and its 2014 projections and tribal enrollment information, the population of the Makah Reservation is about 1,400 people including both tribal and non-tribal community members.

The project is complete. For additional details, see the final report.

The project was competitively selected under the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Indian Energy Fiscal Year 2016 funding opportunity announcement “First Steps Toward Developing Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency on Tribal Lands – 2016” (DE-FOA-0001621) and started in October 2017.

The November 2017 and December 2018 project status reports provide more information.