A Brief Historical Context
On September 7, members of the CORE Hub joined key community and philanthropic partners for a three day tour of the Redwood Region to share context about the ecology, history, climate, and resilience of the area.
The HAF+WRCF Service Region is located on unceded territory and is the traditional ancestral homeland of 27 Indigenous nations and their descendants. Over the past 150 years, our ecosystem has grappled with extraction and exploitation eras of natural resource industries. Commercial development of this special place has come at the cost of many sacred lands for the Native Tribes.
An intact ecosystem of rivers, mountains, and oceans formed the cultural backbone of the peoples who have occupied this region for millennia. After European-descendent settlers came to the area, economies based on natural resource extraction began to take hold. Timber and fishing dominated the area but have significantly shrunk as policies changed, species dwindled from irreparable damage, and our natural resources can no longer sustain economic exploitation. With the prospects of offshore wind, broadband, and other major developments in our area, this tour focused on acknowledging the history and challenges faced by those in the region as well as the innovative efforts of community leaders growing the region’s capacity for climate resilience.
We discussed a wide range of issues on the tour, highlighting the important work of putting power back into our communities, and noting the ways that our communities can receive investments through philanthropy and state and federal funding opportunities, and address injustice through promoting racial equity, healthy environments and ecosystems, just economies, and thriving youth and families.