Chesapeake Bay Officials Poised To Study Inclusion Of Native American Tribes

By Christine Condon, Virginia Mercury

December 2, 2025

When Chesapeake Bay governors and other leaders gather at the National Aquarium on Tuesday to consider the next bay cleanup agreement, they’ll be joined by leaders from several federally recognized Native American tribes in Virginia.

The tribal leaders will present a symbolic gift of wild rice to represent growing a partnership between the tribes and state and federal leaders, who are about to spend seven months determining whether the tribes can have a seat at the table as decisions are made about the bay.

It’s taken almost a year for tribes to even get to this point.

“We’ve come such a long way from where we started — which was another absence, which was no conversation,” said Melissa Ann Ehrenreich, executive director of the Indigenous Conservation Council. The council was formed in 2022 to represent the seven Virginia tribes that gained federal recognition between 2015 and 2018.

The tribes formally asked to be included as signatories to the next Bay Agreement, only to run up against the layers of bureaucracy at the Bay Program that Ehrenreich concedes have proven stifling.

“It has been frustrating to participate at multiple different levels and feel like: ‘Wow, why couldn’t we have done this over the last year?’” Ehrenreich asked. “The bay can’t wait.”

A dancer performs at a 2018 celebration of federal recognition for several Virginia tribes, held at Werowocomoco, which included in a formal ceremony with the United States government. (Photo Courtesy of Chesapeake Conservancy)

The yearlong delay is partially about timing: The Bay Program is led by the executive council, which includes Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) and other governors in the watershed, who only convene once a year. At its last meeting, in Annapolis last December, the council only directed staff to revise the bay agreement — not to add signatories.

That was the reason cited in a June letter in response to the tribes.

A document going before the governors on Tuesday will give Bay Program officials the go-ahead to study tribal inclusion, and “develop recommendations by July 1, 2026, on how best to include tribes across the watershed in the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) partnership.”

That could include adding the tribes, or the ICC, to the Bay agreement as a signatory, on equal footing with Maryland and the other states, according to the document.

The document also states that officials “may prepare a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the federally recognized tribes within the watershed outlining CBP partner expectations and commitments, recognizing budgetary and resource needs and constraints,” the document continues.

The tribes are approaching the Bay Program at a difficult juncture for the agreement.

The states in the watershed failed to reach pollution-cutting goals outlined in the previous agreement by 2025, forcing them back to the drawing board to revise their pact. After months of deliberation, the states and federal officials agreed to a 2040 deadline for those same pollution reductions.

The proposed new plan also updates a host of other goals, including for underwater grass acreage, wetland restoration and forest conservation. But some environmentalists have raised alarm that some of the goals were revised downward compared to the earlier version, making them easier for the bay states to achieve.

Even with a series of bay agreements dating back to the 1980s, improving conditions in the bay has proven a challenge. In the late ‘80s, water quality testing determined that 26.5% of the bay’s tidal waters met standards. Today, that number is 29.4%. Bay Program officials view it as a victory, since they’re up against climate change and increasing development and population in the watershed.

Not everyone agrees.

“The effort is expensive, and it’s failing. They’re not making any progress at all, hardly,” said Chief Frank Adams of the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe, an ICC member, in an interview last month. “Why keep doing the same thing over and over? Let’s try something else. Let’s include the Native cultural knowledge and Native people.”

Part of the problem is that East Coast states are unaccustomed to considering tribal governments, with federally recognized tribes a rarity, Adams said.

“This is the first time the state of Virginia has ever had a federally recognized tribe, and they didn’t know how to deal with us,” Adams said. “Up and down the East Coast and the states that are feeding into the Chesapeake Bay: Pennsylvania, Maryland, all the other states, have no federally recognized tribes, so it was not even a thought that they should include the sovereign nations of Virginia into the discussion.”

Adams argues that tribes have lots to contribute. After the Upper Mattaponi won federal recognition, for instance, an environmental department was the first to be established, using grant funding. Adams said the department now has five staff members and focuses on issues including battling invasive fish. Other Virginia tribes have taken a similar approach.

Tribal leaders said they were not expecting the Bay Program to have such a lengthy procedure for considering their inclusion.

“I just saw it as more walls of colonialism — that [they] had not had Indigenous people involved,” said Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe, an ICC member, in a November interview.

“And they felt there was no need to have Indigenous people involved at that level, although all of our watersheds are feeding off of the bay, and we’ve stewarded the bay and these rivers for thousands of years — and did a good job, without the millions and billions of dollars that the government seems to be pouring into it now,” she said.

In fact, the very name of the Chesapeake Bay is derived from an Algonquian word, Chesapiooc.

“We just want a seat at the table, so that we have decision-making authority, just like everybody else that sits at the table,” Richardson said. “You would think in 2025 that wouldn’t be an issue, but obviously it is.”

Leaders at the Bay Program say they aren’t throwing hurdles in front of the tribes.

“It’s not a ‘no.’ And it’s not like if you miss this boat, we move on,” said Anna Killius, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, during an interview earlier this year. The commission is a signatory on the bay agreement which represents lawmakers from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

In more recent comments, Bay Program officials said they’re optimistic about future discussions with the tribes.

“Indigenous communities in this region have thousands of years of insight into land and water management that the Chesapeake Bay Program can greatly benefit from as we continue our work to improve Chesapeake Bay water quality and wildlife,” said Leila Duman, bays restoration officer for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

“Maryland is supportive of the efforts to include representatives from these communities more formally as part of the Chesapeake Bay Program,” Duman said. “We look forward to participating in the next steps.”

Virginia officials declined to comment through the Bay Program, but added that their sentiment is similar to Maryland’s.

Dan Coogan, a 20-year EPA veteran who was named Bay Program director in October, said the “EPA and the Bay Partners are working with those federally recognized tribal nations to develop recommendations on how best to include tribes across the watershed. EPA looks forward to this discussion at the upcoming Executive Council meeting.”

Gov. Wes Moore leads Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and other state and federal officials to the annual public meeting of the Chesapeake Executive Council in Annapolis on Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program)

If the Virginia tribes were to win signatory status on the Bay agreement, and representation on the executive council, it would be a relatively rare occurrence in the United States, said Lauren Wiederkehr, a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, who studied the issue as a summer law clerk this year for the Chesapeake Legal Alliance.

The closest analogy might be the Puget Sound Partnership in Washington, which currently includes two Indigenous representatives on its leadership council.

One of them is Russell Hepfer, 69, a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, who has been serving on the Puget Sound leadership council since 2014. Hepfer said that fishing rights treaties between tribes and state governments make inclusion more commonplace at groups like the Puget Sound Partnership.

He said it has also helped that he could follow in the footsteps of other tribal leaders, including Billy Frank Jr., a Nisqually tribal member and well-known activist for tribal fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest who served on the leadership council as well.

But just getting a seat on the leadership council wasn’t enough: It’s a constant battle to educate others in leadership about tribes and their roles, Hepfer said.

“When people leave, retire, or whatever happens, you have to re-educate the next person,” he said.

Hepfer, who has served on the tribal council of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe for 24 years, said he views that education as a personal mission.

“We’re still a second-class group, but we have to keep telling our story,” he said.

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury. For more stories from the Virginia Mercury, visit VirginiaMercury.com.