LOS ANGELES — California unveiled a plan Tuesday to bring at least 7.5 million acres of land and coastal waters under the care of Indigenous tribes.

That number represents roughly 7% of the state’s land and waters. It also corresponds with the amount of land the federal government promised it would hold as reservations for Indigenous tribes after California joined the union in 1850. Congress ultimately rejected these treaties in a secret meeting — after pressure from the state — and failed to notify tribes, many of whom upheld their end of the agreement to relocate.

The new policy, set by the California Natural Resources Agency, aims to start healing the harm caused by the state’s actions to bar tribes from their homelands and criminalize their cultural and land management practices. These actions not only harmed Native communities, whose cultures and ways of life are intimately tied to the plants, animals and landscape of their homelands, but also caused well-documented harm to ecosystems through the loss of biodiversity, takeover of invasive species, degradation of water quality and increase in wildfire risk.

“Tribal stewardship is so critical for all of us ... the natural resources and everything that we rely on to live healthy, happy lives,” said Geneva E.B. Thompson, deputy secretary for tribal affairs at the Natural Resources Agency. “Getting Native people out into nature is going to bring that tribal stewardship with it. The basket weaver, she can’t help herself; she’s going to care for those basket weaving materials.”

Indigenous advocates applauded the policy announcement, but noted much more work needs to be done.

“The California Natural Resources Agency is taking important steps forward” to acknowledge and address the unratified treaties, Morning Star Gali, executive director and founder of Indigenous Justice and a member of the Ajumawi band of the Pit River Tribe, said in a statement. At the same time, “until there is a true and sustained commitment to land return, co-management, and meaningful investment for all California tribes, repairing these historic injustices will remain a long-standing effort that will take decades to fully address.”

The policy outlines three types of land-use agreements: access agreements that allow tribal members onto the land to reincorporate it into their communities and cultures, collaborative agreements in which land owners work with tribes to care for the land, and land return agreements in which land owners transfer ownership of the land to tribes.

The Natural Resources Agency estimates over 1.7 million acres are already under the stewardship of tribes, including over 100,000 through state land return programs, over 700,000 held as reservations and trust lands for federally recognized tribes, and over 900,000 acres through partnerships with California State Parks.

The agency did not set a date in which it hopes to reach its 7.5-million-acre goal. Some estimates also place the acreage in the unratified treaties closer to 8.5 million.

“It’s really exciting to see what has been lifelong work for so many California Indigenous folks that have been my mentors ... come to fruition,” said Angela Mooney D’Arcy, executive director and founder of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples. “As a California Indigenous advocate for land return for the past 30 years, what occurred to me in reading this document was how useful it could have been in so many different instances over the past 30 years.”

Access and collaborative agreements — and sometimes even land return agreements — come with requirements specifying what tribes can and cannot do with the land. Many require navigating sometimes tricky relationships with land managers who may have different priorities. It’s a ways off from tribes outright holding their homelands as sovereign nations, with the freedom to take care of the land as they see fit; however, these agreements can also help support tribes that do not yet have the capacity to single-handedly manage hundreds or thousands of acres.

Mooney D’Arcy, who is Acjachemen, hopes that when the rubber meets the road, the Natural Resources Agency will step in and champion these kinds of stewardship agreements when local organizations and agencies are resistant.

“We can have these great goals, but if the state is serious about these goals and vision, then it should also make sure to be present and ... be prepared to advocate for tribes,” she said.

California’s Indigenous history following European contact is dark and violent.

Many tribal leaders were coerced into signing the original treaties, with limited to no translation support to help them understand what they were signing. The state’s first governor proclaimed that California must expect that confrontations between white settlers and Indigenous communities would give settlers the resolve for a “war of extermination” lasting until “the Indian race becomes extinct.” The state’s first legislative session outlawed the Indigenous practice of setting careful intentional fires to manage the land.

“We’ve seen really devastating effects. We’re seeing these algae blooms that are now overtaking our lakes and affecting our streams and our rivers,” Gali said. Meanwhile, some state parks are “just this huge tinderbox because it’s not being properly managed under tribal stewardship.”

Recent examples of tribes returning to care for their homelands, sometimes for the first time in well over a century, gives Thompson — the Natural Resources Agency’s first deputy secretary for tribal affairs — hope for the future.

She recalled the first land return she witnessed in the role: 46 acres of coastal wetlands to the Wiyot Tribe. During tours of the newly returned land, tribal culture experts kept breaking off to take care of the various native plants that they noticed needed some love.

More recently, she attended an intertribal boat race with Wilton Rancheria, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, and United Auburn Indian Community, thanks to an access agreement with California State Parks. Tribal youth worked with elders to harvest tule — a stalky plant native to California’s wetlands — and use it to build traditional boats. (State Parks provided the life jackets, lifeguards and food.)

The Natural Resources Agency’s new policy is an attempt to capture these moments not as one-off stories of healing, but as the state’s official practice moving forward, Thompson said.

“I’m so proud of this policy, but I’m so excited to see what the ripple effect is going to be,” she said. “It’s so much more beautiful seeing it in practice than it is writing it out of paper.”

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