we look at the mother earth as our mother and what would you do to harm your mother the earth is in crisis right now and people need the knowledge that we have that is thousands of years old and that's a part of the restoration of the value and the knowledge of tribal people [Music] the land back movement means restoration of tribes and the things that they have lost the things that were taken and the things that built the wealth of this nation as it is the wealthiest nation on the planet [Music] the only thing that's
going to save the native peoples now is fighting for land back and fighting for ocean back what a lot of people don't realize is that the key to restoration of any kind is you have to preserve what you still have and if you do that then you'll have a baseline to restore what's been destroyed it's being called the worst oil spill ever in alaska we had the good friday exxon valley's oil spill on march 24th 1989. the 2 billion cleanup by exxon was just a dog and pony show to make it look like they were
actually trying to clean up the beaches because they couldn't once the oil spill any oil spill hits the water the war is over you've lost there's no way you can clean it up [Music] we began by working with some of the conservation agencies here and really advocating because we realized that our goals for the land were similarly aligned with theirs the work that we did to restore the cliffs there's still a thousand acres there's work behind the scenes and it's to secure this land from the tribe and not for the tribe and then you have
other partners that are working to get the land for the tribe and so it is a battle and i'm sure this is not the only place that it happens when i started the native conservancy i wanted to basically figure out how to get as much land back to the native peoples as possible in their co-management or ownership and then figure out how we're going to protect our subsistence way of life and then figure out how we're going to grow things from the land and sea to deal with food insecurity we have this amazing opportunity to
turn kelp into a magic ocean plant and turn it into things that'll actually help the land in the air and the water all at once kelp is the hemp of the sea you can make pharmaceuticals nutraceuticals cosmetics bioplastics biofuels there's a lot of money in science in in trying to figure out you know how can you sequester carbon how can you do carbon sinks you know what kind of products that can you take the kelp and turn it into that could do permanent carbon sequestration [Music] i see it really as a new era in the
history of the world she's crying out for these people to return to the land who are indigenous who have the knowledge and the skills to take care of her and i see that justice happening in the earth i see it happening in law and policy and it's very exciting to me get out of the way and let native people leave you know let us step up and be the guardians and the stewards that we have always been you know the reason that we even have anything to fight over right now is because of indigenous peoples
and their stewardship over the lands over all of these years [Applause] hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the abc news app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching
