How the Lummi Nation Revealed the Limits of Species and Habitats as Conservation Values in the Endangered Species Act: Healing as Indigenous Conservation

In their recent efforts to protect the Southern Resident killer whale population in the Salish Sea and bring ‘Lolita’ home, the Lummi Nation exposed significant limitations to species and habitats as values in Western conservation models. Where Indigenous conservation falls outside this scope, it is often invisible to or actively suppressed by the settler state. The conservation practices of NOAA, in accordance with the federal policy of the ESA, have amounted to extractive colonial enterprises, treating the whales as educational, economic, and environmental possessions while degrading the relationship of the Lummi to the whales as relatives and attacking Lummi sovereignty.