Tribal Wetlands Program

Coahoma County, MS | Rivers & Coasts Dept.
2040

Below, Angelina describes her experiences with the Tribal Wetlands program, made possible under the Rivers and Coasts Department of the Delta Regional Authority. In her role as an organizer, Angelina's work is buoyed by recent expansions in EPA funding along with a "Land Bank" policy that granted her tribe control of enough land to lead a wetland expansion program. These concessions represent a step forward for Angelina's tribe in their relationship with the US government while enabling them to use their land to serve as a model for restorative agriculture across the country. 

Angelina is a Native American woman from the larger Choctaw nation that exists in Oklahoma as of 2020. She works at the River and Coasts Department of the Delta Regional Authority. Sovereignty over areas of the Choctaw ancestral homeland was finally fully restored to her affiliated Tribal Council. Angelina works to increase biodiversity and health in migrating wetlands. She talks about how they lease some of the land to US government under strict conditions and have managed the pushback to the land back movement. The interview concludes with Angelina talking about her friend Maria Vera at the completely reformed Army Corps of Engineers, now fully civilian and called the National Water Cooperative Service.

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