Image: Contributed photo Charlie Donahue during a training dive. Retrieved from islandsweekly.com
The Samish Indian Nation are one of many Coast Salish tribes that once made San Juan Islands home, and as climate change becomes a reality, they have been actively working to protect the area.
“We are trying to be proactive. Indigenous people have a connection to place, and they feel [the effects of climate change] the deepest,” Todd Woodard, Samish Nation’s Department of Natural Resources Director said. Woodard himself is not a member of the Samish Nation. He grew up on the East Coast, and but loved the Pacific Northwest and he and his wife jumped at the opportunity to relocate there.
“I’ve always been an outdoorsman. I saw a chance to save things I’m passionate about and turn it into a career. I get to do what I love. I find it tremendously rewarding” Woodard explained that the department is small and faces many challenges in the quest to preserve areas and creatures of cultural significance.
“It’s really a death by a thousand cuts,” Woodard explained, pollution, land use, rising temperatures and rising seas are just a few.
Orcas are the number one priority and a prime example of systemic wide issues the region faces.
“The Samish view {Southern Residents] as family, therefore, for them it is like trying to save a child or relative,” Woodard explained.