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Mark Trahant and Stewart Huntington
ICT

TAHOLAH, QUINAULT NATION — Fawn Sharp has served as president of the Quinault Nation and the National Congress of American Indians. She is currently vice president of Quinault. Now she is looking forward to the next chapter, one focused on global solutions to climate change.

“What that means for me at this point is I’m not going to be seeking reelection here at the Quinault Nation,” she told the ICT Newscast. “I’ve run six terms prior to becoming an elected official. I served over a decade as the reservation attorney in the Attorney General’s office here at Quinault. And now I get to take all of that knowledge, all of that experience and wisdom, and apply it in a way where I know we have to go. I know we have to be a global player politically, economically, and socially. And so that’s where I’m at right now.”

Sharp said she sees this as a moment of opportunity involving the response to climate change. “When you look at things like tribal gaming and the ability that tribes have been able to advance being leading employers in their county, in their states, an economic force, the scale of the growth that’s in front of us is like tribal gaming on steroids,” she said.

“There are a number of tribes that are actively working to capture carbon. They’re actively working on efforts to do the things that we know are necessary. There’s trillions of metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere. We have to capture and store some of that,” Sharp said. “And it’s an opportunity for us to have influence domestically here inside the United States, but also globally.”

Mark Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock, is editor-at-large for Indian Country Today. On Twitter: @TrahantReports. Trahant is based in Phoenix.

Stewart Huntington is a producer for the ICT Newscast based in Colorado.

This story was produced as part of a partnership between ICT and the PBS NewsHour to cover how climate change is affecting Indigenous communities, funded with a major grant from the National Science Foundation.