The Pamunkey people have lived in Tsennacommacah, on and around the lands now known as the Pamunkey Indian Reservation in Virginia, for at least 15,000 years. The Pamunkey Indian Tribe, a federally recognized sovereign Tribal nation, has never ceded their 1600-acre peninsula on the Pamunkey River, making it the oldest extant Reservation in the country. Pamunkey people, including Wahunsenecawh (Chief Powhatan) and Pocahontas, were among the first to encounter Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and have remained on their Ancestral land ever since.

Pamunkey tribal lands are highly vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise and increasing storm frequency and severity, as well as land subsidence. The Reservation is surrounded by the Pamunkey River and marshlands on three sides and a sinking railroad embankment on the fourth. Sea level rise threatens numerous archeological sites and multiple historic buildings and homes of reservation residents, as well as traditional food and medicine plants, clay deposits that have been used by potters for centuries, and aquatic wildlife like shad and sturgeon that Pamunkey fishermen have been catching for generations.

The Tribe has created a Community Disaster Resilience Zone and has begun shoreline stabilization work such as plantings of native grasses and trees to slow erosion and reduce the impact of storms, but scientists still project that most Reservation land will be underwater and inaccessible within 75 years. Funding and support will be needed to expand resilience efforts, preserve historic buildings on the reservation, and conduct in-depth archaeological research. Recognizing that active habitation of Reservation lands may no longer be possible in the future, the Tribe believes it is important to document and record tribal history and traditions and think about how to carry heritage and memory forward in new ways.

Pamunkey Indian Reservation was named to the National Trust's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list for 2025.