Rooted in the Land, Ready for the Future

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and the Science Journalism course at Duke Marine Lab.

On a cool March morning, the Coharie River Tour begins just off U.S. Highway 421. Eight minutes from downtown Clinton, a nearly hidden entry leads to a tree-lined portal, where sunlight filters through the branches of towering oak and maple trees to cast shimmering reflections on the slow-moving current. 

The sounds of the industrial world quickly fade, replaced by birdsong, rustling leaves, and the rhythmic sound of kayak paddles. 

Leading the way is Kullen Bell, 31, the watershed coordinator and a citizen of the Coharie Tribe. He explains that this river’s free flow today is the result of the Great Coharie River Initiative’s decade-long commitment to removing storm debris and beaver dams by hand and chainsaw, restoring their ancestral waterway, reconnecting with their heritage, and opening the river for all to explore. 

“This is the same water my ancestors paddled hundreds of years ago,” Bell said, his steady voice carrying over the gentle ripple of the creek. Except now, the wooden canoe of his ancestors has been replaced by a polyethylene kayak, its bow painted with a playful shark grin. 

After seven years away in Wilmington, Bell found his way back to the river. “I’ll never forget,” Bell said. “My cousins and my brother always told me that when I got closer to 30, home would call.” And it did. 

Joining him on the water is Jocelyn Painter, a Duke University Ph.D. student and a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Painter is combing through Bell’s field notes from the river, integrating them with gauge data to build a fuller picture of environmental change in tribal lands. As they paddle side by side, Bell occasionally points out hawks in the trees, listening with Painter for their sharp calls echoing above the oak and birch canopy. 

Their work is part of the Tribal Coastal Resilience Connections (TCRC) project, a collaboration launched in 2020 by state agencies including the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs. The project brings together tribal leaders, community members, researchers, policymakers, and regional partners to spotlight Indigenous-led environmental stewardship across the region. 

At first glance, the Coharie River, which is 80 miles inland, might seem a strange fit for a coastal resilience initiative. But the Coharie people trace their ancestry to the Neusiok Indians, who once lived along the southern banks of the Neuse River in what are now Craven and Carteret counties. Displaced over generations, they eventually resettled along the Coharie.

“[Present-day people] have ancestral ties to communities that have lived in these lands, and they still maintain a lot of those ties to those lands,” Painter explained. “Indigenous people, even those who live further inland, should be included in conversations about sea level rise.”

The collaboration underscores an often-overlooked reality: Native Americans in North Carolina have long shaped the coast and continue to do so today, not just by adapting to change but by redefining what it means to live in balance with the land and water. For Indigenous communities, survival is more than enduring disasters and displacement. It is about reclaiming history and deepening the ties between people, place, and future. 

As rising seas reshape the Atlantic coast, Indigenous communities are drawing on ancestral knowledge to build resilience by addressing climate change in ways that both challenge and integrate Western science and political systems. 

Connecting People to the Land–and to Each Other

The Coharie River expedition ends with what Bell calls his “least favorite sound of the day,” the low, rising rumble of trucks speeding across a bridge overhead. The spell of solitude lifts, but only briefly. 

Colonizers forced many tribes like the Coharie inland in the 1600s, separated from the coast that once sustained them. Legal barriers added to layers of displacement and exclusion. Today, only one North Carolina tribe–the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians–has full federal recognition; seven others have only state recognition, which limits their access to funding, resources, and legal protections. The Lumbee Tribe, however, may soon join the ranks of federally recognized tribes following a recent executive order issued by President Trump directing federal action toward their recognition. 

Under program director Beth Roach of the Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia and Dr. Ryan E. Emanuel, a Duke University hydrologist and member of the Lumbee, the TCRC team collaborates with tribes regardless of their status.

In its first stage of work, TCRC focused on raising awareness within tribal communities about climate change impacts, and among non-Indigenous communities and agencies about the work already underway in tribal communities. At the same time, the collective built trust and strengthened networks essential for information-sharing, decision-making, data sovereignty, and long-term adaptation strategies. 

“Developing and building those relationships–I can’t stress that enough,” said Stacey Feken, policy engagement manager at the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership. “That can be more important than the project and the deliverable.” She said Emanuel often says, and she agrees, that “sometimes relationships are the outcome.”

For many tribes, building institutional relationships is key to accessing the funding and legal resources for environmental action. The estuary partnership, founded through the Environmental Protection Agency and housed within the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, has played a supportive role by fostering government-to-government relationships and creating space for Indigenous-led decision-making.

Despite differences in recognition or resources, their connection to land–rooted in generations of knowledge and care–remains. “The Native and Indigenous people to this area are the first stewards of the land,” Feken said. “We should be including them just because of that reason.”

This ethos is embodied in Painter’s work. Although her tribe, the Winnebago, was forcibly displaced in the 19th century through a series of U.S. treaties (eventually settling on its current reservation in Nebraska), Painter grew up in Jacksonville, where her parents were stationed at Camp Lejeune. Painter now brings this dual lens to her work in climate resilience as a hydrology and watershed scientist.

“I would consider myself as a Western scientist,” she said. “Even though I’m an Indigenous person, I wasn’t trained as someone who holds traditional knowledge. … I went to public schools, and now even though I’m working with an Indigenous mentor, we are still doing Western science.” 

Painter studies how climate change and land use impact natural resources that are culturally significant to Indigenous communities. At TCRC, her work incorporates data collection, numerical modeling, and systematic literature reviews to bridge the gap between data and lived experiences. By documenting and validating Indigenous knowledge with scientific data, her research supports tribes in making informed decisions about land and water management, ensuring that Indigenous perspectives shape climate resilience planning.

Beyond research, Painter also plays a role in community outreach, helping translate climate science to local audiences. 

“For tribal communities in the Southeast, this could have impacts on summer outdoor gatherings such as powwows and other celebrations,” she said. 

Painter emphasized that conversations about climate change and issues like sea level rise must recognize histories, relationships, and rights that connect tribes to coastal lands. 

Mapping the Future

Now the project is working to map and document Indigenous relationships to land and coast. 

“One of the recommendations that came out of the Phase One report is that, in order to engage with tribes in this region and understand people’s connections to the land and the waterways, [we need to recognize that] the mapping for this area is not necessarily correct,” Feken said.

The effort draws inspiration from an adaptation framework developed by Dr. Kelsey Leonard, a Shinnecock Nation water scientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her Witness, Acknowledge, Mend, Protect, Unite, Move framework–or WAMPUM–challenges mainstream climate strategies that frame sea level rise only in terms of property loss and instead looks at culture, memory, and ways of life. 

Leading much of the mapping work is Giancarlo Richardson Villenas, a graduate student from Clark University in Massachusetts with Haliwa-Saponi ancestry. Drawing on historical and archeological research, Richardson defines “approximate tribal boundaries,” a current stage of his project that aims to document Indigenous presence while protecting sacred knowledge. 

“The emphasis is not on precision,” Richardson said, “because precision could lead to confidentiality issues. There’s a long history of people trying to search for native sites and try to dig stuff up. So we’re looking for approximate locations like where settlers or native people described a certain town.”

To create these maps, Richardson cross-references historical materials like written personal narratives and legal documents with publicly available archeological and ecological data. He layers these references and draws buffer zones around key sites. 

For Bell, resilience is returning to ancestral waters and restoring what was lost. For Painter, it’s about bringing Indigenous voices into Western science. For Richardson, it’s protecting sacred knowledge while making history visible. But all three agree that ensuring that the next generation not only remembers, but leads, is essential.

Lily Zhang is a second-year master of environmental management student at the Duke University Marine Lab. Her work centers on community-based marine conservation and explores human-ocean connections through science, storytelling, and field engagement.