‘Nothing has changed.’ How state agencies ignored tribal pleas to protect Oceano Dunes
Over the past 39 years, the Northern Chumash have watched their homeland at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area get continuously degraded by off-road vehicles.
And despite desperate pleas from the Native Americans to stop such activity, nothing has changed.
Instead, some Chumash people say it seems the agencies charged with managing the Oceano Dunes have cupped their hands over their ears — hearing but not listening to tribal concerns over the destructive activities that have taken place there for nearly four decades.
California State Parks and the California Coastal Commission only recently asked for Indigenous peoples’ input on the development and future of their homelands because state laws mandate those conversations, said Violet Sage Walker, the vice chair of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.
“We talk, they listen, then they do what they wanted to do,” Walker said of the Tribal Council’s interactions with State Parks regarding the recreation at Oceano Dunes.
History of Oceano Dunes
The Northern Chumash lived on the dunes and throughout San Luis Obispo County for more than 10,000 years before Spanish settlers stole the land from them in the late 1700s and moved many to Franciscan missions.
The Oceano Dunes, like all of the Earth, is sacred to the Chumash — and its preservation is paramount to protecting Chumash culture, said Walker and Mona Olivas Tucker, the tribal chair of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini tribe.
The yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini is a Northern Chumash tribe.
The Northern Chumash Tribal Council is a nonprofit corporation that is “involved in consultation with county and local governments to improve the respect for our cultural resources and to improve the quality of archaeology performed” during land-use projects, according to its website.
In 1982, State Parks — which by that time owned thousands of acres consisting of Pismo State Beach and the Oceano Dunes — formed an agreement with the Coastal Commission and San Luis Obispo County to allow off-highway vehicle (OHV) riding on the dunes temporarily.
State Parks saw the growing popularity of off-road riding and the economic benefits it brought to the agency, and wanted to find a way to continue allowing OHVs on the dunes.
But the agreement was temporary. The original coastal development permit issued by the Coastal Commission was issued on the stipulation that State Parks would mitigate operational and environmental concerns caused by the OHV riding on the dunes within a couple of years.
Nearly four decades later, State Parks is still operating Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area on that temporary permit. The environmental concerns that existed in the 1980s — including air pollution and the destruction of habitats for threatened and endangered animals — have only become exacerbated, according to reports by environmental advocacy groups and local government agencies.
The Coastal Commission will meet Thursday to discuss and possibly revise the permit after State Parks released a 900-page Public Works Plan and Environmental Impact Review that detailed the future of Oceano Dunes for the next 20 to 30 years.
Coastal Commission staff suggest that commissioners reject that plan — which cost State Parks more than $2 million to draft — and has recommended that OHV use at the Dunes be phased out over the next five years, among other recommendations
Local and state agencies did not adequately consult with the Northern Chumash people while drawing up their original plans for Oceano Dunes in 1982, nor did they hold any meaningful consultations regarding State Parks’ management of the park over the three decades that followed the issuance of the permit, according to documents from Oceano Dunes permit reviews since 1998 and Tribune interviews with Chumash people.
In the past 14 years, however, there have been some shifts in tribal consultation with the Coastal Commission and State Parks, according to Walker and Tucker.
“Consultation among most state agencies has gone from almost nonexistent to having specific guidelines that we can tap into,” Tucker said.
But Walker says those consultations come only because the law and agency policies require it, and State Parks and the Coastal Commission have continued to ignore her people’s pleas for the discontinuation of OHV use at Oceano Dunes.
State agencies required by law, policies to consult tribes
State Parks released a Native American consultation policy in 2007 to “establish a process of consultation between Native California Indian tribes and California State Parks by clearly defining the circumstances under which consultation should occur.”
Those circumstances included ensuring State Parks “will actively consult” with tribes before implementing any projects or policies that may have impacts on tribal cultural or sacred sites.
Under an executive order from then-Gov. Jerry Brown, the California Natural Resources Agency — which oversees both State Parks and the Coastal Commission — adopted a tribal consultation policy in 2012.
“The goal of the policy is to engage in the timely and active process of respectfully seeking, discussing and considering the views of the California Indian Tribes, Tribal communities and the Tribal Consortia in an effort to resolve concerns of as many parties as possible,” the policy reads.
The policy required agency departments to designate tribal liaisons that would hold “meaningful consultation” with Native American tribes during planning processes for any actions that may impact the tribes.
In 2014, the California State Legislature passed AB 52, which set forth similar tribal consultation requirements for state agencies that prepare environmental documents per the state’s environmental laws.
Four years later, the Coastal Commission established its own tribal consultation policy, which Coastal Commission Central Coast District Supervisor Kevin Kahn said formalized the process of tribal consultation.
“If there’s significant tribal issues that are involved in a particular project throughout our district, then I work with the planners and help to identify tribes that we would need to consult with,” Kahn told The Tribune.
Those policies and law may in place, but the Chumash people say they have not felt heard by the state agencies dictating the activities on their former homelands.
“We’ve been fighting against the use of OHVs on the dunes for decades and nothing has changed,” Walker told The Tribune. “The Coastal Commission knows it’s wrong, State Parks knows it wrong. But look at what’s happening to the dunes today.”
Chumash concerned about damage to environment, sacred sites
Walker and Tucker both said the environmental degradation to the Oceano Dunes is obvious — describing off-road vehicle engines screaming throughout the night, and tires tearing through threatened birds’ nests and streams that flow into the ocean.
The Chumash have watched the sacred dune landscape become unrecognizable from the stories their ancestors once told, Walker and Tucker said.
And then there’s the human toll of OHV use at the dunes.
“People are killed on our land, on our sites,” Walker said.
According to a Tribune analysis in 2019, at least 44 people have died as the result of OHV accidents since 1992.
2019 marked the park’s deadliest year ever. That year, a mass shooting during a concert at the Oceano Dunes sent six people to the hospital, and six people died in OHV crashes.
“The dunes don’t make it easy. They have their own formation and for people to travel on them, they take a chance. If they go too fast or they make a mistake, families are shattered,” Tucker said. “People are killed under the guise of recreation.”
In recognition of the sensitivity and sacredness of the Oceano Dunes, State Parks has, at the request of the Chumash, fenced off certain cultural and spiritual sites that dot the landscape.
Those fences, however, don’t ensure the safety of the sites.
Walker and Tucker said they’ve seen fences get plowed over by reckless OHV riders who don’t understand the significance of what was behind the barriers.
“I think that visitors don’t stop to think that ‘This is harmful what I’m doing here,’ ” Tucker said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s a small minority of visitors who create havoc and damage, which then falls on all the visitors.”
In a January letter to the Coastal Commission, Northern Chumash Tribal Council Chair Fred Collins wrote that State Parks’ recently released Public Works Plan concludes that future development of the Dunes will have no impact on Chumash culture.
This is “completely lacking in the truth,” Collins wrote.
While State Parks was drafting its Public Works Plan, Collins and Walker said that no effort was made by the agency to follow its mandate and carry out meaningful tribal consultation on the possible impacts the plan would have on the Chumash.
Walker said State Parks held informational meetings with the Tribal Council and listened to the tribe’s concerns, but then released a plan that seemingly ignored them.
According to State Parks public information officer Jorge Moreno, the Native American Heritage Commission — which maintains a confidential list of sacred lands — confirmed that there are “no listed tribal cultural resource or sacred sites identified” at Oceano Dunes.
“This is not unusual as the department often receives input during consultation on areas that tribes see as culturally significant regardless of their documentation as such with the NAHC,” Moreno wrote in an email to The Tribune.
Despite this, Moreno wrote that State Parks archaeologists continuously survey “areas of increased cultural sensitivity” for “revealing of any previously unidentified cultural resources” due to shifting sands.
Additionally, implementing the overall tribal requests to discontinue OHV use is inconsistent with State Parks’ priorities, Moreno wrote.
“Ensuring accessible recreation is another top park priority, which at Oceano Dunes primarily takes the form of off-highway vehicle activity,” he wrote. “On the surface these preservation and recreation objectives might seem at odds, yet the day-to-day proactive management and protection behind the scenes indicates success.”
Tribe sees shift in awareness about Native Americans’ concerns
In an interview with The Tribune, Kahn, who is the Coastal Commission’s tribal liaison for the Central Coast region, said the concerns from the Chumash regarding OHV use at the dunes is part of why the staff recommends the commission phase out the activity.
“It’s not that the commission disregarded environmental justice or tribal issues in the past. I would say far from it,” Kahn said. “But now it’s more like a recommitment to understand, to learn, to really hit these issues head on. In the past, our agency has committed itself to public access and biological protection, but now we’re also elevating these issues of environmental justice and tribal issues front and center.”
Tucker said that she’s seen a recent shift in the political will of the people who care about the Oceano Dunes.
In the past, those who loved OHV riding on the dunes dominated the conversation, she said, but now those who want to preserve the sensitive ecosystem and Chumash cultural and spiritual sites there are stepping up.
What will happen next? It’s up to the Coastal Commission in its meeting on Thursday.
Commissioners may choose to revise State Parks’ permit for the Oceano Dunes and require that the agency discontinue OHV use on the lands, or suggest something else entirely.
Visitors to Oceano Dunes got a taste of what the Oceano Dunes could be like without OHV access in the summer of 2020, when the park closed to vehicles due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lack of vehicle activity gave the dunes a chance to heal, Tucker said.
“I hope it’s not too late,” Tucker said. “I think that the dunes can recover. They had already started the process.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 11:10 AM.
