Collecting razor clams before dawn, a Quinault Indian with a lantern digging in wet sand for a staple of the traditional diet, clams.

It is not yet dawn, but Mike Winkler, a Quinault Indian, has already been digging in the wet sand along the edge of the ocean for hours. He is looking for razor clams, a protein staple that the Quinault Indian Nation have been harvesting from these coastal flats for over 10,000 years. Just last year the Tribal Council voted to permanently relocate the village of Taholah away from the coastline and the mouth of the Quinault River. The growing risk of inundation had become too great. Indigenous peoples in the Pacific North West have been fighting for years to preserve sustainable fisheries and indigenous knowledge, lifeways which have helped to keep the ecosystem vibrant and the climate stable for millennia.