Kelp Seed Banks Save Biodiversity and Indigenous Traditions. In Washington State, a new preservation facility offers a back-up plan for an uncertain future. KELP IS COMMON ALONG TEMPERATE shorelines around the world. For millennia, this large brown algae, has been vital to coastal Indigenous peoples. In Washington State, and British Columbia, kelp is a traditional food source, a focus for commercial cultivation, and habitat for critically endangered and threatened species like rockfish and young salmon. For the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, says shellfish biologist Annie Raymond, “you can’t quantify how important this biodiversity is, culturally.” But over the past four decades, warming water and other factors have been killing kelps across the Salish Sea. So this summer, Raymond and her team will be hunting for kelp spores, called seeds—in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, part of an ongoing effort to build an emergency fund for kelps and ensure their future in the tribe’s traditional territory.
There’s an age-old debate involving what to call the first Americans. You may use the words “Native American”, “Indian” or “Indigenous” interchangeably, but what’s the “right” answer, if there is one? “There’s a lot of terms that have been bounced around, and you’ll never find any universal acceptance from that, from anybody because it’s just too complex,” said Kiowa Tribal Chairman Lawrence Spottedbird. “It’s not simple because of the complexities of the history and our relationship with Europeans and the English people coming to America.” Indigenous people have suffered throughout history. While there are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes across the country, there are 39 tribal nations in Oklahoma. “I kind of tend to use American Indian,” said Spottedbird. While others want to be identified in their own language.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center
