You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey everyone, Regina Barber here, and today with NPR's Lauren Summer, we're visiting a

place that could make history.

It might become the next National Marine Sanctuary in the US.

Yes, the proposed sanctuary is off the coast of Central California and it's known for beaches,

rocky cliffs, kelp floors, whales, sea otters, all that California stuff.

Oh yeah.

It's definitely a place that people like to visit.

But I'm at someone who sees something very different there.

Almost all of the places that people like to go to are our sacred sites and we've been

going there and praying and doing ceremony there for, you know, 20,000 years.

That's Violet Sage Walker.

She's the Chairwoman of the Northern Tumash Tribal Council.

They're one of the bands of Tumash that has lived there for thousands of years and they're

the ones pushing for this place to be protected as a marine sanctuary.

So what does that mean to become a sanctuary?

What kind of protections would that provide?

Yeah, so a marine sanctuary is largely protected from development.

So no oil rigs, no wind farms, usually fishing is still allowed though.

And it would be monitored for threats to the ocean and gets oversight from NOAA, which

is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But Violet and other Tumash tribal members are looking for more than just protection.

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