A section of Cape Foulweather, between Newport and Lincoln City, has been reacquired by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

On the Oregon Coast, a piece of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians’ ancestral territory has been restored. An announcement last month coincided with the 47th anniversary of the tribe regaining federal recognition.

The 27-acre section of Cape Foulweather, between Newport and Lincoln City, has been reacquired by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. The tribe purchased the land from the McKenzie River Trust in October, with a $2.01 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other partners include Lincoln County, the Nature Conservancy in Oregon and the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. A major focus for this collaborative effort is to conserve and tend to ecologically significant areas of the coastline.

“It really is an amazing opportunity for us to become stewards again,” Angela Sondenaa, director of the tribe’s natural resources department, told KLCC. She hopes to reintroduce cultural burning to the coastal prairie section, to rejuvenate its ecosystem.

“The Cape Foulweather area is an incredibly diverse and sensitive ecological area,” she said. “It’s been a cultural gathering site for millennia for our people.”

In a release issued by the tribe, Robert Kentta, a tribal council member, said, “Before settlement, this land was home to our families, who fished from the rocks and canoed in the ocean, and gathered mussels from the rocky shore. Now we will have the opportunity to reinvigorate our connections to traditional lifeways.”

In the same release, Gov. Tina Kotek said that the return of Cape Foulweather to the tribe “is of monumental historic significance. I want to express my gratitude to the local government partners and community-based organizations that came together to protect a beautiful place and support the efforts to return ancestral land to the tribe.”

Sondenaa added that it’s been a good year for the Siletz. Last December, President Joe Biden signed a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle, an Oregon Democrat, restoring gathering, fishing and hunting rights to the tribe on their ancestral lands.

“And it will provide direct opportunity for tribal members to gather and resume subsistence harvest in the rocky coastline there,” Sondenaa said.

The Siletz reservation was established in 1855 by Congress and President Franklin Pierce. It was further diminished through land cessions.

Then, in the 1950s, Congress began eliminating many tribes’ federal status through legislation. This included the Western Oregon Indian Termination Act of 1954, which authorized ending the government-to-government relationship with the Siletz, as well as the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde.

On Nov. 18, 1977, after years of land loss and economic disruption, the Siletz tribe regained its federal status. This event is marked by a Restoration Pow-Wow every year.