Facing climate change, the Quinault Nation envisions a new home that is ‘resilient as possible’

TAHOLAH, QUINAULT INDIAN NATION – A little more than a century ago the village of Taholah was built where the ocean meets the Quinault River. Today when there’s too much rain, or a storm surge, water will rush past Quinault Street, down 2nd, 3rd all the way across town, filling yards and homes with salt water.
Ryan Hendricks points to the sea wall and remembers one such flood. “It’s almost like a geyser shooting through the rocks,” said Hendricks, a member of the Quinault Indian Nation’s Tribal Council. “The water was coming in from the river and just coming directly into the village. And then over here … the water wasn’t coming really over the wall. It was just coming through the rocks like a geyser. So it was just pushing almost with the speed of like a natural river current.”
The Quinault Nation faces dangerous long-term currents. Taholah barely inches above the ocean and the sea-level is rising. On top of that there are a growing number of storm surges, where flood waters are propelled by high winds.
What makes the Quinault story so powerful is that it’s a window into our future: It’s the idea that a changing climate will determine where and how we will live, what we will eat, and how much it’s going to cost.
READ MORE: How Indigenous values center a tribal community’s move to higher ground
The Quinault Nation has been deliberate in its response, debating for the past couple of decades about how to protect its lands, its fish, people and property. After many community meetings the conclusion was reached in a 2017 tribal master plan, a move to higher ground.
That plan included a new village, about a half-mile uphill, that will protect residents from storm surges or even a potential catastrophic tsunami. Relocation will “incorporate smart growth techniques including low-impact development and green infrastructure to better prepare the community for the future climate.”
Quinault Indian Nation Tribal Council Member Ryan Hendricks gestures during a tour of the site of a new village his Nation is constructing to replace the Village of Taholah that faces repeated flooding due to rising sea levels. The tribe has made progress, Hendricks says, but significant financial hurdles remain. “We have penciled out what a house would cost. And right now we are sitting at somewhere between $350,000 and $400,000 per house,” Hendricks says — a number unaffordable for most tribal members. Photo by Stewart Huntington/ICT.
The easy part of relocation is already done. The nation has constructed what’s needed for a new community. The streets are paved. The sewers are in. And only a couple of things are missing: houses and residents.
The new village “must be designed to be as resilient as possible,” the master plan said. “Even small events, such as windstorms, close roads and down power lines, isolating the village. Thus, planning for safe havens in case of disaster and alternative energy sources is a must when determining facility siting, sizing, orientation and programming.”
In a reflection of Indigenous values, the first building opened by the nation was the Generations House, a 30,000 square-foot building serving elders, Head Start, day care, and adult education.
“This was our most modern effort to relocate our most vital citizens with all of our next generations,” Hendricks says. “This is a shared building with all of our most valuable resources, our children. And then, all of our most valuable information holders are our elders on the other side (of the building).”
The Generations House is also the gathering point should there be an emergency.
There are a lot of questions that still must be answered before any houses are built.
“We have penciled out what a house would cost. And right now we are sitting at somewhere between $350 and $400,000 per house,” Hendricks says. That is a number unaffordable for most tribal members.
The Village of Taholah sits at the mouth of the Quinault River on Washington State’s Pacific Coast. The Quinault Indian Nation village is prone to flooding due to sea level rise and is being relocated to higher ground. “Many of our ancestors have told us of that day of reckoning when it’s going to be red nations rising and our people leading the rest of the world,” said Fawn Sharp, former Quinault Indian Nation president. “We’re going to lead the rest of the world through this crisis.” Photo courtesy of the Department of the Interior via ICT.
And what about the people now living in Taholah who have paid off their mortgages – especially elders?
“Why would they come up with a new mortgage? Well, they already have a house for themselves. And then there’s someone who said, ‘well, we don’t have the means to pay for a new home. Is the tribe going to buy my home?’” asks Hendricks.
That means the nation still must work through these scenarios and come up with individual solutions.
And that starts with a community-based plan.
“I had the chance to visit Quinault a year ago, and they are doing just amazing work on climate relocation and climate resilience,” said Bryan Newland, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs. “It’s one of three communities that are going to serve as kind of pilot projects, if you will, on community driven relocation. And they’re just doing amazing work. I was really impressed by their foresight in their planning and how they are really thinking through a lot of issues that aren’t intuitive and working to address them. And so I’ve been really impressed. And, you know, we shouldn’t be surprised that when tribes have resources, they’re able to do very impressive things. And so I look forward to seeing where they’re going to take that.”
For now the bottom line is that the Quinault Nation is not sure where more than $450 million will come from to pay for this relocation.
The Quinault Nation is further along in this sort of planning than nearly every community on the planet. When we drove up the coast to get here, we passed through low-elevation towns and even cities that reflect the scale of the problem. And it’s clear that neither the region nor the country are penciling out what has to be done and what it will cost.

. ICT’s Mark Trahant reports from the Quinault Nation, looking at where and how the community will live, with the ever-changing climate.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs has awarded $25 million for three communities working on their move to higher ground. In addition to Taholah, on the Quinault Indian Nation, there are two villages in Alaska, Newtok Village and the Native Village of Napakiak, on the agency’s list.
The BIA will spend another $12.7 million next year on managed relocation for tribes in Maine, Louisiana, as well as others in Alaska and Washington state. All told the administration’s budget for next year is $119.5 million for tribes and community-based projects.
The numbers are staggering when you add them all together. And that’s just in Indigenous communities. Consider this: One recent report says that the cost to home owners globally is around 9 percent of the value of housing, or roughly $25 trillion.
“It is a huge bill hanging over people’s lives and the global financial system,” says The Economist. “And it looks destined to trigger an almighty fight over who should pay up.”
Indeed the first wave of climate impacts are already here. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council – the NRDC – Losing Ground: Severe Repetitive Flooding in the United States looked at the risk of flooding and concluded that more communities are in danger. “The federal government’s efforts to reduce repeated flooding are not keeping pace with current risk—let alone the increasing risk posed by sea level rise, increased severe weather, and other climate change impacts,” the NRDC study concluded.
“The scale of what we all need to be planning for and thinking about is massive. It is a bigger and more communal problem than many of us have ever thought about before in our lifetimes or for generations,” said Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst with the NRDC. “So even in communities that have put so much thought and effort and planning into relocation, you can still see how hard it is.”

ICT’s Mark Trahant reports on who will pay for the Quinault Nation’s climate relocation.
The NRDC looked at data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency using federally-backed flood insurance. It’s important to note that most tribal communities are not included in this data set, so it understates the problem, and yet it still shows how significant the risk of flooding is now and in the future.
“The actual risk is changing because of climate change, development patterns, erosion, all of these different reasons. The physical risk is changing. A place that didn’t flood a generation ago might be flooding regularly now. It might be flooding every time there’s a high tide,” Weber said. “Our understanding of that risk is just out of date in a lot of places around the country.”
A toem pole reflects sunlight filtered through a mist on the Quinault Indian Nation on Washington State’s Pacific Coast. The Quinault Nation is taking steps to protect residents of the Village of Taholah that faces repeated flooding due to rising sea levels. The Nation is building a new village on higher ground. Photo by Larry Workman/Quinault Indian Nation.
That means governments, including tribal nations, will have to revise zoning and other regulations to account for the new threats.
Weber said zoning codes and building standards have changed little since the 1970s.
“This is something that FEMA is currently working on. They’re due to propose new regulations to bring these codes and standards up to our modern understanding of flood risk and engineering. But it’s a really long time coming,” she said. And even if they were brought up to date today, they would still only be looking backwards because the data is historical, and it does not even consider the impact of climate change.
“The bottom line is that the flooding risks to communities are increasing faster than officials are dealing with them,” Weber said.
The impact from flooding in Indian Country goes far beyond the dangers on the coasts. A study last month by the American Meteorological Society predicted that Native Americans in Oklahoma will face a 64 to 68 percent higher risk of heavy rainfall, two-year flooding, and flash flooding because of climate change. The authors of that study said: “Indigenous communities are grappling with an imminent climate crisis compounded by systemic injustices.”

“It’s not just relocation, which is expensive enough, but it’s also that resilience piece of it.”

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Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland told ICT that tribes are facing multiple climate challenges that will require a lot of money to make tribes more resilient. “Whether it’s drought or wildfire or changing ecosystems that change the foods that they eat or just more severe weather. It’s not just relocation, which is expensive enough, but it’s also that resilience piece of it,” he said. “And we’re really ramping up our investments there as well. As you know, we just rolled out a $120 million investment in more than 100 locations across the country to help tribes with that resilience piece.”
Tribes are ahead of the curve when it comes to adaptation strategies.
“I was really impressed that they are thinking at Quinault very strategically about how to address these questions. And a lot of the people that I spoke with in the community are being very thoughtful about that, along with community members in places like Newtok,” Newland said. “They’re thinking about their kids and their grandkids and the community that they’re going to live in and future generations. And, you know, these questions, when you really start doing this work, become very complex very quickly.”
Newland said tribes are not just leaders in the United States but “they are really serving as leaders in this effort for the world. There aren’t a lot of places that are really engaged in this sort of activity right now.”
This piece first appeared on ICT as part of a partnership with PBS News, focused on how climate change is affecting Indigenous communities. See the original pieces here.