(dramatic music)
Peter Hatch: This coast is such a place
of raw and tremendous power,
where the world's biggest ocean comes up against the land.
But, it's also a nurturing place,
the place that has sustained my ancestors,
and sustains all of us to this day.
We rely on the bounty that the upwelling of the Pacific
brings to our ecosystem.
It's easy to come to this beautiful place
and get the sense that,
because it's beautiful,
everything is as it should be.
But unfortunately, we inherit an ecosystem
that is out of balance.
In large part,
that's because of the absence of one particular animal.
The sea otter.
(emotional music)
- [Peter] Since time before human memory,
the people of this coast, my ancestors,
shared our waters with sea otters.
My name is Peter Hatch,
and I'm a Siletz tribal member
of Hanis Coos and Siuslaw descent.
Stories from our ancestors talk about a time
when the boundaries between
what we now think of as the human world
and the animal world,
were a lot more fluid than they are today.
- There's an old story about a young Coos woman
who married into the sea otter people,
and went to live out to sea,
and established a connection
between us, human people, and the animal people
that carries down through the generations.
That relationship benefits both of us.
Fundamentally, a lot of these beliefs
boiled down to trying to instill an appreciation
for the resources that sustain us.
By eating the sea urchins,
sea otters keep them in check,
and help our kelp forests thrive.
Modern ecology has been catching up
to those ancestral understandings.
Those interconnections
that people who've lived in this place,
have always known are there.
In the different languages and dialects
up and down the Oregon Coast,
there are, at least six different words for sea otter.
Near what we now call Depoe Bay,
is a place that has been known to local Tillamook folks
as us-HII-hi-gul SHUN-shis,
which means Otter Rock.
Today, is known in English as Otter Rock Marine Reserve.
Down South is a rocky point that Dene people
have always known as XUTL-tush sae,
which again, just means sea otter rock.
Today, it's still known in English as Otter Point.
These place names and these stories
are all we have left of Oregon's
original sea otter population.
- The last Oregon sea otter that we know of
was killed around 1910.
- The slaughter of Oregon sea otters
occurred in parallel with the catastrophes
that were affecting indigenous people
of this region in the 19th century.
Between the wars,
the disease,
the loss of land,
the loss of life,
the boarding schools,
termination policy,
and just the pure stigma around being Indian,
it's a very real possibility
that Oregon's tribes could have been wiped out completely.
Sometimes, we treat this very near history
as ancient,
but my great-grandmother Hattie,
was the only survivor among nine brothers and sisters.
My grandfather grew up around people
who had been there at the signing of the treaties
in the 1850's.
My dad's generation grew up as members of a tribe
that in the eyes of the government
no longer existed.
These historical forces shape who our families are
and how many of us there are
even to this day.
Despite it all, we survived
and Oregon's sea otters didn't.
That relationship was broken.
Back in the late 90's,
my dad, Dave Hatch,
was looking for a name for a small boat
that we'd built together.
In a Chinook dictionary,
happened across the term Elakha,
for sea otter.
As my dad started to dig deeper,
he have started to realize
how much all Oregonians stood to gain
by restoring sea otters to our ocean.
That led down a path of research, activism
and connecting people that formed the Elakha Alliance.
After his passing in 2016,
we got back together,
a group of us that had been touched by his work
to make something meaningful out of that.
It was time to try to bring them back.
- Today, we face tremendous uncertainties
about the future of the Oregon Coast.
There are many threats, and in so many ways,
we're always on defense,
but this project is the chance to do something proactive.
We have the power to heal this place
where we live.
- It's not about grasping for what little we have left.
It's about trying to restore something
that we've lost and thereby create a better future.
We have a tremendous effort ahead.
Many people that need to be at the table
as decisions are made,
but there's hope here.
There's potential here.
Many people who have heard about this project
have met us with tremendous good spirit
and have offered their help
as we move forward.
- Long after I'm gone.
I hope that my descendants
will still be able to go to these rivers on this coast
to gather mussels and to fish for salmon.
That when they're out there off shore,
they'll see Elakha.
- We're not just restoring a species.
We're bringing back a relative.