From Fort Clatsop to Climate Action: Pacific Northwest Tribes Working Together

A soggy winter at Fort Clatsop

When the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific, its members built Fort Clatsop on the Netul River, south of the Columbia, and spent the winter of 1805–1806 there. They complained about the nearly constant rain, wind and fog. As they had all along the journey, they relied on local Indigenous peoples, trading for food, woven mats and useful waterproof hats.

Their trading partners drove a hard bargain: they had already been trading with Europeans along the coast for a decade. Goods arriving on European ships moved inland through Indigenous trading networks across the Pacific Northwest.

Networks today

Tribal nations in the region now use similar networks and connections to tackle climate change together.

Members share knowledge and coordinate their responses to the same changes seen at many sites along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail:

• warmer air and water;
• drought and lower streamflows;
• changing wetlands;
• more wildfires;
• rising seas and stronger storms.

For Indigenous communities, the effects are specific: fewer fish and shellfish, lost harvesting areas, shifting bird and game migration routes, and less productive plants.

Adapting and building resilience

Many tribes have acted to adapt and strengthen their ecosystems, through:

• river restoration and floodplain protection;
• wetland improvements;
• forest management and carbon storage;
• energy efficiency.

Each nation is unique, but all have long-standing and living relationships with Pacific Northwest ecosystems — and are working to protect them for the future.

More: the National Park Service's page on climate change along the Lewis and Clark Trail.

Sources

Based on "Fort Clatsop—Pacific Northwest Tribes and Climate Change," Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article draws on James P. Ronda's "Lewis & Clark Among the Indians" and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission's 2016 report Climate Change and Our Natural Resources.