September 12, 2025Since time immemorial, Native peoples have been the stewards of California’s rivers, forests, and floodplains. Their cultural practices—like burning, weaving, fishing, tending, and gathering—shaped some of the most biodiverse landscapes on Earth. Yet genocide and the dispossession of California Native peoples severed communities from their ancestral lands, leaving deep cultural and ecological scars that are still felt today.
“All restoration work is also cultural restoration, because our languages, our culture, everything is tied to the landscape.”
– Austin Stevenot, Northern Sierra Mewuk (Central Valley Mewuk Tribe) and River Partners Director of Tribal Engagement
River Partners is working to change that story. With the largest footprint of restoration in the West, we’re partnering with Tribes and Native-led groups to repair ecosystems, return access to land and water, and elevate Indigenous leadership in climate resilience. The heart behind it all is Austin Stevenot, Northern Sierra Mewuk and River Partners’ first Director of Tribal Engagement.
Q: Austin, can you start by introducing yourself and your role at River Partners?
Austin: I’m River Partners’ first Director of Tribal Engagement, working to ensure Native voices are not just consulted in our ongoing landscape-level river restoration throughout the state, but actively shaping and leading this work.
Too often people assume California Indians are gone. But we’re still here, still practicing our culture. All restoration work is also cultural restoration, because our languages, our culture, everything is tied to the landscape. Tribes have a huge role to play in conservation and land guardianship that’s absolutely required for a climate-resilient future.
Q: What Makes Tribal engagement unique in California?
Austin: In the national landscape, California is the place where tribes were most recently dispossessed of their land. The loss of 95% of our riparian forests in the Central Valley over the past 200 years mirrors the genocide of Native California people. That’s within my great-grandparents’ and grandparents’ lifetimes. In 2019, Governor Newsom officially apologized to California Peoples for state-sanctioned genocide. The apology was a step, and now it’s time we take action to put meaning behind the words.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The Central Valley, especially the San Joaquin Valley, is ground zero for the climate and biodiversity crisis. Rivers are depleted of water, salmon and other native wildlife are clinging to the cliff-edge of extinction, and the Central Valley’s farmland that feeds the nation is at risk from both mega-floods and mega-droughts. Without bold restoration now, we risk losing clean water, wildlife, and the ability of these lands to sustain us.
The state has set bold conservation targets: restore 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030, invest up to $30 billion in floodplain reconnection, and retire up to a million acres of farmland in the Central Valley to meet groundwater sustainability goals, to name a few. River Partners alone is aiming to restore 100,000 acres of reconnected corridors in the Central Valley to weather climate extremes, revitalize our communities and cultures, sustain our food systems, and bring back wildlife found nowhere else on Earth.
There are massive opportunities, but who is going to take care of that land long term? River Partners can play a role in building the trust and partnerships with Tribes and Native peoples necessary to meet those targets and drive on-the-ground impact—and ensure the restoration is done in partnership with Native people and the land is cared for by Indigenous guardians long after projects are complete.
Q: How did River Partners come to work with Native Californian communities?
Austin: A few years ago, River Partners invited my family to visit what is now Dos Rios State Park. That gathering shifted the organization’s understanding of the significance of all the habitat they’d planted over the previous 20 years. It’s not just habitat for endangered wildlife, or for carbon sequestration, or groundwater recharge, or flood safety—but missing links for endangered Native cultures like mine. I think that was an ah-ha moment for the organization. And I can’t tell you how happy we were to see all the sedges and willows and mugwort growing so close to where we live—I had no idea restoration at that scale was happening in what’s basically my backyard.
I came on board soon after that meeting, bringing my background in Central Valley agriculture to the operations side of River Partners, managing the implementation of thousands of acres of floodplain restoration across the San Joaquin Valley. River Partners essentially farms native habitat, so it was a natural fit for me.
From there, engagement grew quickly—from creating the first-of-its-kind Native Use Garden at Dos Rios to building partnerships across the state. The official title as River Partners first Director of Tribal Engagement came last year. We’ve been so successful that lately I’m getting calls from state agencies and NGOs looking to us to help facilitate partnerships because they’ve heard we’re doing something right. It’s time, and it’s needed.
Q: What are some highlights from recent Indigenous partnerships?
Austin: We’re doing everything from contracting with Tribes to restore salmon habitat, to giving land back to Tribes for long-term ownership and stewardship, to listening and striving to understand the challenges, to implementing acres of restored riverways together:
- Partnering with Tribal enterprises like the Yurok Construction Corporation to restore salmon habitat through Sacramento River side-channel work.
- Supporting land return and wetland restoration with the San Luis Rey Mission Indian Foundation at the Payómkawichum Coastal Preserve in Oceanside.
- Collaborating with Tribes on restoration across California—from the Mechoopda Indian Tribe on restoring a historic fishing side-channel near Chico, to co-developing multi-benefit floodplain restoration with the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians at Dos Rios Norte 45-miles north of Sacramento, to working with the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians on weed control and restoration planning, and with the Pala Band of Mission Indians on San Luis Rey River floodplain reconnection.
- We’re building new alliances with Native-led nonprofits like Redbud Resource Group on their Feather River Advocacy Project and Restoring Right Relations program, as well as with Indigenous Futures Society, to advance coalition-building work that supports ecological and cultural renewal.
- We invited Native and Tribal leaders to join us at River Partners’ native seed farm, Heritage Growers, to learn about native seed cultivation for landscape-scale restoration.
Q: What’s a major challenge Indigenous partners face?
Austin: Land access. A lot of people struggle to gather materials for cultural practices like basketweaving. Land set aside for conservation historically meant “look, don’t touch.” But these ecosystems evolved with people tending them, right? They evolved with interaction because we lived in place. I don’t mean like a spot, but I mean we had our place in the ecology and our place was to manage it and keep it healthy.
I’ll often harvest some willow and weave a quick basket on a tour for folks. Then I’ll ask them: When was the last time a Native person stood here and did this?
Restoration is about bringing that connection back.
Q: At National Climate Week, you’re speaking on a panel about climate finance and Indigenous peoples. What’s the connection between Indigenous stewardship and financing durable climate solutions?
Austin: We have been taking care of these lands forever. We know how to burn to keep our forests healthy and oak trees producing lots of acorns, how to tend sedges and willows that not only give us materials we need but strengthen riverbanks and provide habitat for birds and salmon. But this work has been outlawed, underfunded, or treated like it’s not real science until very recently.
That’s why Native participation isn’t just important—it’s required if California wants real climate solutions. You can’t scale restoration without us.
What we need to fund are two things: First, bring in Tribes and cultural practitioners as true partners designing and leading restoration, not just as an afterthought or for cultural monitoring. Second, pay Tribal crews for their skilled labor and create pathways for young Tribal members to build careers in restoration. Stewardship and tending are skilled labor and California Peoples are experts.
On the other side of that, I see very few Tribal people stepping up and taking these roles. I see very few of them pursuing it as a career. So, pick a career path, and get involved. You don’t have to have a degree—just passion and a will to do the work.
When we take care of the plants, and restore our riverways to their natural function, there’s reciprocity. They provide clean air, water, flood protection, healthy parks and open space, and store carbon on our behalf. These are the foundations of California’s economic future, and also the way we ensure all of our survival. So we need all hands on deck – public agencies, private philanthropists, impact investors – to carry forward these solutions with us.
Q: How has River Partners built trust with Indigenous partners? What lessons can be learned from that?
Austin: The first lesson is that trust takes time. For too long, Tribal consultation and partnerships have been a box to check—something entities do to move a project forward. Tribes are skeptical, understandably. They don’t think us approaching them to partner on a project is real, or that we want them to be part of it. They think that we’re up to something or they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially when we talk about giving them land back. I get calls saying, “Is this real? Are you guys pulling our leg?” The skepticism is there because of the history.
We build trust by inviting Tribes to every stage of our projects—not just for approval, but for partnerships from the outset. And we make sure they are compensated for their contributions.
