Coming Home: The Washoe Tribe’s Journey Back to Ancestral Lands
For generations, the Washoe Tribe watched others manage the lands their ancestors had inhabited over thousands of years. Today, that relationship is changing. A series of milestone land acquisitions, conservation partnerships, and policy shifts is restoring both land and authority to the Washoe (Waší-šiw) people in what tribal leaders describe as an essential step toward healing historical trauma.
The Washoe Tribe once stewarded more than 3.5 million acres stretching from Honey Lake to Mono Lake, from Walker Lake west to the Sierra crest. At the heart of those homelands was Lake Tahoe — da ow a ga in Washoe, meaning “the lake” or “edge of the lake.” Each summer, Washoe families returned there to hunt, fish, gather, and renew their connection to the land. Westward expansion by emigrants and the Gold Rush in the mid 1800s, however, changed all that. Prospectors, loggers, and ranchers drove the Washoe off their lands, and state-sanctioned killing of Native Americans drastically reduced their numbers.
Over time, the Washoe tribal lands shrunk to almost nothing — three reservations in Nevada around Carson City and one in Alpine County, California — totaling around 3,200 acres. Their only foothold in Tahoe is three small pieces of land in Incline Village, Olympic Valley, and South Lake Tahoe, equaling 30 acres (including Babbitt Peak north of Stampede Reservoir).
Cut off from their lands, the people suffered.
“In Washoe culture, we don’t see our homelands as being separate from ourselves. Our language and part of our identity — there’s no way to really separate us from land,” said Helen Fillmore, Washoe Land Trust Board president. “We see our homelands as an extension of our own bodies. Being separated from it for so long and seeing the degradation of it, it feels like a degradation to ourselves, to our family, to our culture.”
The land also suffered. Without the Washoe and their cultural practice of burning and gathering, forests were impacted by massive wildfires, illegal dumping, and mining.
Now the Washoe have begun reclaiming some of their traditional lands — and through that their culture — via both acquisitions and management. This winter, the Washoe Tribe acquired thousands of acres north of Truckee, the third largest tribal land back (returning ancestral lands to Indigenous control) in California’s history.
A Shift at the State Level
In 1850, California not only passed a law that allowed for the forceable removal of Native Americans from their traditional lands, it also subsidized private and militia campaigns against Indigenous peoples. In his 1851 State of the State address, California’s first governor declared “that a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”
In 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a formal apology to Native Americans for the genocide that was inflicted on them by the state in the 19th and early 20th centuries — the first of its kind in the U.S., according to the New York Times. Washoe Tribe Chairman Serrell Smokey was in Sacramento, along with 100 other tribal leaders, for the governor’s apology.
“California has one of the worst histories of the treatment of tribes and I believe that’s why Gov. Newsom made his apology, because it was a history that wasn’t ancient history. It wasn’t just the Gold Rush or colonization,” Smokey said. “It was even during modern times when the Termination Era literally wiped tribes off the map just with the swipe of a pen. [The apology] was very meaningful … but what came out of it was the priorities, as well as funding sources and projects, of the State of California that were extremely helpful.”
One of those projects was Newsom’s 30×30 initiative. Launched in 2020, it aims to conserve 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030. A cornerstone of this policy is strengthening tribal partnerships and supporting Indigenous-led conservation and comanagement of ancestral lands, which the state recognizes as vital for biodiversity and climate. Then in 2024, voters passed Prop 4, a $10 billion climate bond measure that designates money for tribal-led environmental conservation, wildfire resilience, and ancestral land returns.
Acquiring the Wélmetli?Preserve
That policy shift at the state level helped to make the Washoe land back possible. But before state money came into play, the first step was identifying land for sale. This started with two nonprofits: the Northern Sierra Partnership, which works to conserve and restore the Northern Sierra Nevada from the Carson Pass to Lassen, and the Feather River Land Trust. Based in Quincy, the land trust’s mission is to conserve the Feather River watershed and wildlife habitat.
In 2021, the two organizations collaborated with the Washoe Tribe on an interpretive project at the Sierra Valley Preserve and Nature Center. The Washoe has a 10,000-year history in the valley, and the groups wanted to be sure that the tribe’s story was told in their own words.
Around the same time, NSP President Lucy Blake became aware of some large properties east of Loyalton that were possibly coming up for sale.
“I started thinking, “Why aren’t we working with the Washoe Tribe to get more land back in their hands? Would they be interested in owning more land?” Blake said.
In 2023, the Loyalton Ranch — a 10,200-acre property that stretches across the mountain range that separates Long Valley from Sierra Valley — came on the market. The property was owned by the City of Santa Clara, which purchased it in the 1970s for geothermal purposes, but that use never panned out. Instead, the land had been leased for cattle grazing for 50 years. After the 2020 Loyalton Fire, the city council decided to sell.
The property had a price tag of $6 million. The tribe needed to raise money.
The land trust, which had experience with land backs, played an instrumental role in helping the Washoe find grants. From 2019 to 2022, the FRLT assisted the Mountain Maidu in securing almost 4,000 acres in Plumas County owned by PG&E.
The bulk of the money to buy the Loyalton Ranch, a $5.5 million grant, came from the Wildlife Conservation Board, an 80-year-old state agency that provides funding for land and habitat protection statewide. In August 2025, the board made an explicit commitment to ancestral land return as part of its strategic plan, a direct response to Gov. Newsom’s initiatives.
“There has been a real push across state agencies to improve those [tribal] relationships and look for opportunities for ancestral land return whenever possible. And if not that, then comanagement agreements,” said Jennifer Norris, Wildlife Conservation Board executive director. “Anytime we’re getting land back to tribes, not only are we redressing a wrong, but we’re also giving it back to the original stewards who have a very reciprocal partnership perspective on how they work with nature.”
This was not the conservation board’s first time giving money for a land return. It has helped tribes reacquire 38,000 acres across seven projects since 2023, including a portion of the two biggest land backs in California history — 14,000 acres in Monterey County returned to the Esselen Nation in 2020 and 47,000 acres returned to the Yurok Tribe along the lower Klamath River in 2025.
“Our goal at the Wildlife Conservation Board is biological diversity, protecting fish, wildlife, and plants,” Norris said. “We recognize that the worldview that our tribal partners bring will mean that these landscapes are cared for and protected and that diversity will thrive. So, for us, it’s a win-win.”
The remainder of the money to buy the Loyalton Ranch, now renamed the Wélmetli? Preserve (Wélmetli? is the name for Northern Washoe), came from individual donations. The sale was finalized this February, making it the largest land purchase by the Washoe and tripling the amount of land the tribe owns.
“This one in particular, it means a lot,” Chairman Smokey said. “Everything that the Washoe people have was all hard fought to get. We had small land bases kind of all over the place, over several counties in Nevada and California. This is the largest one. It’s really huge in terms of us gaining back territory that our people now own. We physically own it in the modern sense. And our people, it’s their land so they can go on it. They can use it. They can feel free that they’re not trespassing or on BLM lands or any other kind of private property. It’s theirs.”
The Washoe Land Trust, formed in 2025 to buy ancestral land for the Washoe people, holds the property. It plans to use the land to reinstate traditional cultural practices and provide educational opportunities with a focus on connecting youth back to the land and their native language. It already held its first event on the property, a spring celebration for tribal members, in May.
“We want to develop a land management plan for the lands we did reacquire. Lands that are just left alone aren’t necessarily well stewarded or functioning,” Fillmore said. “With this recent purchase of the 10,000 acres, it has experienced quite a bit of degradation, overgrazing, wildfire impacts, historical mining, and dumping. So, there’s quite a bit of work that needs to be done in terms of revegetation to clean up to the property and restoring its ecological natural functions.”
The Washoe Land Trust is currently working to raise $1 million for management of the preserve and another $1 million to purchase a neighboring 4,000-acre property. On Aug. 1, the Washoe Warrior Society, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring Washoe land, culture, and the sacred relationship in the Tahoe Basin, is hosting The People Singing, a free Indigenous music festival, at the Truckee River Regional Park as a fundraiser for the Washoe Land Trust and a celebration of Washoe culture.
“In Washoe culture, we don’t see our homelands as being separate from ourselves. Our language and part of our identity — there’s no way to really separate us from land.”
~ Helen Fillmore, Washoe Land Trust Board president
Smokey said the purchase of the Wélmetli? Preserve helps to right past wrongs. According to the chairman, the preserve was the largest area that the Washoe once inhabited and were forcibly removed from.
“Any land back, it’s a part of healing. It’s a healing from trauma,” he said. “Historical trauma is real. It’s not just from what we’ve learned, but it’s instilled in our bodies and our nervous system. To be able to get land back from where our people were hunted out of [means a lot].”
The other two organizations involved in the land acquisition see the purchase as not only returning land to the original custodians who share the same goals of environmental preservation but also working with the tribe as an equal partner.
“It’s obviously important for us to help restore that connection [of the Washoe to their land], but we are a conservation organization and so our focus is really on having the best strategic partners to have the greatest impact for conserving landscapes that are important for everyone,” said Corey Pargee, Feather River Land Trust executive director. “It’s really that tribes are leaders in this effort, like seeing them as true partners in this work, not as just beneficiary of the work.”
Blake said the preserve was the NSP’s single biggest acquisition since the nonprofit began in 2007, and the most rewarding.
“This wonderful combination of conserving land for future generations and returning it to its original stewards with all of the elements of justice and equity, I consider it to be one of the most beautiful and interesting projects we’ve ever worked on,” she said.
The tribe’s reacquisition of traditional lands is not limited to California. The Douglas County Lands Bill, which is currently in the U.S. Senate, would transfer 2,600 acres of federal land in Nevada to the Washoe Tribe. A portion of that is outside of Gardnerville. Chairman Smokey said the tribe is looking at several other pieces of land in Nevada as well.
“We’ll never stop looking for more land,” Smokey said, “especially in all these areas that we were forced out of.”
A Return to Tahoe
The Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, which provides millions in federal funding for environmental projects, habitat restoration, forest management, and water quality improvements in the Tahoe Basin, was first passed by Congress in 2000. Its renewal in 2016 (and again in 2024) significantly increased the Washoe Tribe’s authority at the lake by recognizing the tribe as a key partner in environmental programs and providing funding directly to the tribe to lead critical projects on ancestral lands.
“Now we are more of an official governing entity along with the TRPA and the Forest Service. We’re more heavily involved than we ever have been,” Smokey said. “We have access to do projects using Lake Tahoe Restoration Act funds and with the help of all of our partnerships, we played a major part in writing the Santini-Burton Modernization Act; it actually includes the Washoe Tribe as a governing entity.”
The Santini-Burton Modernization Act, an update to the original 1980 law that is currently making its way through Congress, empowers the Washoe Tribe even more. It not only designates the tribe as an eligible entity to receive land transfers — an authority previously only afforded to state and local governments — but it also allows for the transfer of Forest Service funds to the tribe for land management activities.
One of the projects the Washoe are working on in Tahoe is the Máyala Wáta (Meeks Meadows) Restoration, located across the highway from Meeks Bay. The tribe is working with the Forest Service and California Tahoe Conservancy, a state agency, to remove several hundred acres of conifers, which encroached on the meadow after the secession of Washoe traditional burning practices. The conservancy provided a $1.4 million grant for the project, the majority of which went to the Washoe Tribe, as well as helped fund the position of the Washoe Liaison, which was created to represent the tribe within the Lake Tahoe Basin.
The Washoe Tribe is the lead agency on the Máyala Wáta project.
“It’s very rare that a tribe encounters this type of agreement,” said CTC Communications Director Chris Carney. “This is all forest service land, where the tribe is the lead implementing the project on Forest Service land. So that’s a very unusual relationship.”
The Meeks Bay Resort & Marina has been managed by the tribe through a special use permit with the Forest Service since 1997.
The tribe has also started its own work crew modeled after the California Conservation Corps, a workforce development program for young adults, called the Washoe Tribe Conservation Corps. In one of its roles, the WTCC serves as a contractor with the conservancy. The tribal conservation corps is helping to restore wetlands as part of the conservancy’s Upper Truckee Marsh South Project in South Lake Tahoe.
“There’s a responsibility to be in communication with the tribe on everything we’re doing,” said Scott Carroll, CTC senior environmental planner. “There are formal tribal consultation practices that the state of California and the California Natural Resources Agency [the conservancy’s parent agency] have. There’s a memorandum of understanding between the California Tahoe Conservancy and the Washoe Tribe. And our leadership often reminds us that this is actual government-to-government consultation … The chairman’s equivalent for us is the president or maybe the governor.”
From the tribe’s perspective, these agreements allow it to take care of its former lands with traditional practices. The Washoe are working with the Forest Service on controlled burns in the Basin, and with a new master stewardship agreement with the agency, the tribe will have a say over timber harvesting operations in several national forests from the Tahoe Basin down to Mono County.
“It does fuel reductions, which is way over-needed, and it also allows the tribe to be stewards of the lands the way our people always have,” Chairman Smokey said. “We can implement traditional Washoe ecological knowledge back onto the land.”
The Washoe Warrior Society, formed in 2009 to restore Washoe land, culture, and a sacred relationship to Tahoe, is working to secure land in the Basin to build a round house, a spiritual gathering space dedicated to ceremony, prayer, and Washoe cultural teachings. Lisa Grayshield, WWS executive director, said that the nonprofit is preparing to start discussions with the Forest Service about comanagement of land in Tahoe.
“All the little problems — alcoholism, drugs, unemployment, mental disorders, diabetes, high blood pressure — all of those things that we have at a very high level … is because we lost contact with who we are,” Grayshield said. “We were separated from the land, but now we are at a time in history where we need to come back to the land.”
Fillmore of the Washoe Land Trust agrees.
“The health of our people is inextricably linked to the health of our land and the health of our culture, our language, the health of future generations,” she said. “Our land has sustained us in a really challenging climate to live in. We have stories that date us back to at least 15,000 years ago in the Tahoe Basin. We see the health of our land as what’s needed to help sustain us for another millennium.”
For info about The People Singing event on Aug. 1 in Truckee, visit washoewarriorsociety.org. The conversation will continue at Mountain Lotus on Aug. 2, mountainlotusyoga.com/events.
