November 15, 2006
Until not very long ago, the focus of life for human inhabitants of Northwestern California was daily sustenance taken from the diversity and abundance of the land, which provided the countless foods, medicines, and materials necessary for a good life. Every aspect of Indian people's life was informed by their close relationship with the Earth. Indian people understood and lived in accordance with the land's natural laws, which dictate that in order to sustain life one should take only what is needed. Their belief in natural law is reflected in the structure of their societies and religions, which set specific limitations on the times and quantities appropriate for harvesting plants and animals. These limitations were established in order to prevent depletion and to ensure that the future generations of humans and other species would have enough.
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Until the arrival of the foreigners, Indian people's culture and the land's ecology were so closely interrelated as to be indistinguishable from one another. For Indian people, everything in the natural world had significance or at least some relevance to their lives. Today many Indian people refer to "cultural-natural resources" to convey an all-encompassing concept because in reality there is no indigenous distinction between the cultural and the natural. Many elements of the natural world were especially important because of people's direct involvement in their stewardship. Practices like managed burning, selective thinning, breaching of berms at river mouths, transplanting, and countless other activities were conducted hand in hand with prayers and ceremonies for aeons throughout this land. The people's understanding and respect for nature, as well as their wise use and active stewardship of the North Coast's countless life forms, are important reasons why this was one of the richest and most beautiful places on Earth.
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When the European immigrants claimed Indian land for themselves and committed genocide against the original people, they brought to this region another way of looking at the world. This way was based on fear of the "untamed" land and people, which many settlers believed were here only to be conquered and exploited. Not until the arrival of the first immigrants did the Indian people and the forests, prairies, and rivers of the North Coast come under deliberate attack from a culture bent on extracting as much as possible without concern for how this would affect the future generations.
Despite the effects of Manifest Destiny and colonialism, which have left deep scars on the land and in our communities, Indian people have survived. Their lands and populations have been severely reduced during the last one hundred and fifty years. This timespan is just the blink of an eye in the indigenous perspective of time and space. The original people continue to live on fragments of their aboriginal lands throughout the North Coast and deal daily with the demands of both the dominant society and their own indigenous value systems. Indian people throughout the North Coast continue to conduct traditional land stewardship activities and ceremonies on their ancestral lands, as their ancestors before them did since time immemorial; as future generations of Indian people will do for as long as life continues.
Northwestern California is globally significant in many ways, among which is the fact that it contains the southernmost tip of the North American temperate rainforest. Under indigenous people's stewardship, this forest provided biological diversity and sanctuary for numerous species, many of which are now extinct from their original locales due to decades of over-harvesting by industrial timber companies. Indian people's sacred sites and cultural gathering places continue to be threatened within many harvest areas. Unsustainable harvesting continues in this forest and other nearby forests at an alarming rate. The results include contaminated waters, polluted atmosphere, and global warming.
The Klamath River is, from an ecological standpoint, one of the most important watersheds in North America. It continues to be threatened by over-extraction of its waters by the agricultural industry. In addition, hydroelectric dams on the river have destroyed many miles of salmonid habitat, degraded water quality, increased water temperatures, and caused vast kills of native salmon populations. To Indian people, this constitutes the gravest form of ecocide, since tribes in the Klamath region still subsist largely upon salmon, as they have for thousands of years. Removal of the dams is a top priority of the Klamath watershed tribes and the environmental community. As a part of the Klamath dam re-licensing proceedings, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is now discussing and considering the removal of these dams.
Another increasing threat is the wave of development that is moving northward. The results of this expansion will mean loss of critical habitat, diminished water, and less open space. Land trusts and other conservation organizations are examining ways that might be used to prevent this trend from affecting lands with high conservation potential.
Thanks to the heroic efforts of many environmental activists and conservation organizations, much has been done to slow these and other trends. Some of these conservation groups are now collaborating with North Coast tribes to preserve and restore important natural areas within the temperate rainforest and other critical ecosystems. International conservation organizations often ignore the rights and concerns of indigenous people, who suffer from displacement when large areas of land are acquired for conservation. On the North Coast smaller, community-based organizations appear to be willing to engage in a meaningful dialog with tribes who are stakeholders in planned conservation areas.
Tribes including the Karuk, Yurok, Wiyot, Hoopa, and others are actively engaged in land conservation and stewardship projects within their currently held lands. And the concept of expanding indigenous people's conservation to areas outside the reservation boundaries is catching hold. New partnerships addressing strategic land conservation planning are forming between tribes, land trusts, environmental organizations, and state and federal agencies.
It is crucial that we form more partnerships between tribes and conservation groups so that we can find creative ways of addressing the loss of even more land and culture. We can still save large tracts of culturally and ecologically significant North Coast lands if we work together. In doing so, we will find ourselves following in the sacred footsteps of this land's first people, who lived here with profound respect for all life, including the life of future generations of humans and all our animal and plant relations. The potential for collaboration between indigenous communities and other concerned stakeholders presents an unparalleled opportunity for the recovery of cultural-ecological values within this globally significant area of Northwestern California. Let us make certain that this opportunity does not escape us. Our commitment to this effort will be for the sake of both the ancestors and the future generations.
The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council is a nonprofit tribal conservation consortium comprised of ten federally recognized North Coast Indian tribes that retain cultural and historic ties to the aboriginal Sinkyone territory of northern Mendocino and southern Humboldt counties.
For more information please call the Council at (707) 463-6745.
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InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council
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TOC for Forest & River News, Fall 2006