Karuk Tribe

A nation today

Old-growth coast redwoods in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, with mist among the trunks along the loop trail.
Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons / Flickr · CC BY-SA 2.0

Background

The Karuk Tribe's Office of Tribal Lands Management gives its mission as expanding Karuk Indian Country and managing tribally owned property for the benefit of members, and answers every page on its site with the greeting In káruk, “Táxuriih veethívthaaneen káruk.” That office counts 117 recognized villages along the middle portion of the Klamath River inside an aboriginal territory of about 1.04 million acres, which President Theodore Roosevelt set aside as public land as the Klamath Forest Reserve on May 6, 1905 under the 1891 Forest Reserve Act, leaving the Tribe without recognized title to its own land. Roughly 63 members were allotted an average of 11 acres through the 1887 General Allotment Act. Elders raised the money to buy the Tribe's first two properties, in Orleans and in Happy Camp, during the 1970s, and the Tribe has since acquired 1,661 acres of aboriginal land, 900 of them placed in trust, most of it used for tribal housing and resource management.

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Visit and learn

Karuk Tribe's own site

Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.

Parks on its homelands

Old-growth coast redwoods in the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, with mist among the trunks along the loop trail.Redwood National and State Parks

The Karuk Tribe counts 117 recognized villages along the middle Klamath River inside an aboriginal territory of about 1.04 million acres, which became the Klamath Forest Reserve on May 6, 1905. The Tribe has bought back 1,661 acres since its first two purchases in the 1970s, and the United States has placed 900 of those acres in trust. Source

Programs

  • Office of Tribal Lands Management

    The department whose stated mission is to expand Karuk Indian Country and manage tribally owned property for the benefit of members. Its published timeline runs from the unratified 1851 treaties through the 1905 creation of the Klamath Forest Reserve and the 1887 General Allotment Act to today, when the Tribe has acquired 1,661 acres of aboriginal land with 900 acres in trust. The Tribe explains the mission as protecting and restoring ancestral lands while balancing community needs with cultural and environmental stewardship.

    https://www.karuk.us/departments/public-works/land-management·land

  • Language Program

    A Karuk Tribe department whose stated commitment is revitalizing and preserving the language and culture, listed on the Tribe's departments page alongside the Karuk Department of Natural Resources, a housing authority, a judicial system and a self-governance office.

    https://www.karuk.us/departments/language-program·language

Sources

Checked September 2026.

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