3 days ago
Friday, March 04, 2005
Celebrating the Arts of the North Coast
I hope you enjoy the following portfolio of photographs of North Coast arts together with some favorite quotations. BK
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Welcome/Site Map
Welcome to North Coast Texts, a companion site (with longer posts) to This North Coast Place, about the North Coast of California.
SITE CONTENTS
Celebrating the Arts of the North Coast
Two Men and a Hydrogen Atom
Native North Coast
SITE CONTENTS
Celebrating the Arts of the North Coast
Two Men and a Hydrogen Atom
Native North Coast
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Two Men and A Hydrogen Atom:
How Louis Schatz and Peter Lehman Made Energy History
This article originally appeared in the 2004 Humboldt Stater magazine.
The Schatz Trust's bequest this year of an estimated $7.4 million is the largest single gift ever given to Humboldt State University. It brings the total contributed by Louis W. Schatz and his estate to approximately $15 million. Schatz died in 2001.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1912, Louis Schatz first studied forestry, and developed a selective logging technique during the Great Depression that piqued the interest of Franklin Roosevelt's Interior department. After earning a doctorate in chemical engineering, Schatz applied plastic techniques to develop coatings and preservatives for wood products, and founded the successful General Plastics Manufacturing Company.
In 1987, his first gift to HSU was land for the 385 acre Schatz Demonstration Tree Farm in Maple Creek, adjacent to the homestead of his son, Gordon. Part of the recent bequest will also be devoted to the tree farm, and to support the L.W. Schatz lecture series in forestry at HSU. But the bulk of the bequest will become an endowment for the Schatz Energy Research Center, which with his support since 1989, produced the first street-ready car in the U.S. to run on hydrogen fuel cells.
Fuel cells divide hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons to drive electric motors, emitting no pollutants. They store and convert energy but don't generate it, so when fueled by a renewable energy power source, hydrogen fuel cells can make a major contribution to a sustainable energy future.
How this technology came to be pioneered at HSU can been seen as the story of two men---Louis Schatz and Dr. Peter Lehman, director of the Schatz Energy Research Center and HSU professor of Environmental Resources Engineering. Together with co-director Dr. Charles Chamberlin, Dr. Lehman led the fuel cell team that proved the practicality of hydrogen energy.
Schatz and Lehman both had the same rare, revolutionary idea. One had the means but not the expertise; the other had the knowledge but not the resources. When they met, more than hydrogen got energized. One morning this summer, Peter Lehman recalled how it all happened.
For Schatz, as Lehman later learned, it began with a science project he helped one of his sons perform, which involved producing hydrogen and oxygen from water: separating the H2 from the O by means of an electrochemical cell. Years later, Schatz tried it again, this time using a solar panel for power. He collected the hydrogen in a balloon, and lit a match under it. "When that balloon went BOOM," he told Lehman, "I knew I was on to something."
"He came up with the idea himself to utilize hydrogen as an energy storage medium, as a way to move us towards a clean energy society," Lehman said. "He went looking around the world for a research center that would promulgate his ideas, but he didn't find one." Because Schatz already had a relationship with HSU through the tree farm, he called up an HSU vice president, who called Lehman, because he was teaching energy engineering. "He asked me if we had a hydrogen energy program." Even though HSU didn't, he'd asked the right person.
"I'd been telling my students that as we progress towards renewable energy, we'll need a storage medium, and I think it will be hydrogen," Lehman recalled. So he wrote Schatz a proposal to start a research program at HSU. "As soon as I sat down that night, I knew exactly what to write. I'd been thinking about it so long, I had the whole thing worked out in six hours."
"Two days later, the phone rang---it was Mr. Schatz. He didn't say hello, how are you, he just started peppering me with questions about the proposal. I liked him right off the bat---he was straightforward, no-nonsense."
But that he seemed genuinely interested in funding such a high-risk project started to seem unreal. "So I said, 'I hope you don't mind me asking, but why are you doing this?' Mr. Schatz said, 'Well, I made some money in my life, my children are all taken care of, and I want to do some good in the world.' "
"That's a good answer," Lehman replied. "Can I revise my proposal?" Lehman sent his new proposal the next day, and a few days later a check for $75,000 arrived in his mailbox. It was the beginning of the Schatz Solar Hydrogen Project.
"It was also the beginning of a relationship," Lehman points out, for Schatz remained involved in the ongoing work. At one point, Lehman was frustrated because there were few companies capable of making fuel cells, and the one working on his team's design kept making mistakes. "When they screwed up the plastic molding, that was it for Mr. Schatz. He knew plastics. 'Get rid of those guys!' he told me. 'Build your own!'"
That led to another proposal, for a fuel cell lab. This time the check (for $300,000) came with a note: "Get to work." So in 1992, Lehman's team began refurbishing a sprawling, nearly derelict wooden building that had once been a small hospital, and the Schatz Energy Research Center was born. Two years later, they had their first hydrogen fuel cell, which today sits on a corner of Lehman's desk.
"We had an interesting and fruitful relationship," Lehman says. "I communicated with him probably once a week, on the phone or by letter---I've got 60 or 70 letters from him. I visited him." So naturally when the Center had its first public triumph---a fuel cell powered golf cart for the Palm Desert Parade in southern California---Louis Schatz got to drive.
Schatz also had the Mayor of Palm Desert in the cart. A nervous team from the Center accompanied them on foot, in case anything went wrong. But the golf cart performed well. "When we got to the end of the parade at City Park, we were just overjoyed. Everybody was hugging one another and congratulating each other, and all of a sudden I looked around and I said, 'Where's the vehicle? Where's the cart?' Mr. Schatz had taken off in it, with the Mayor. They'd become great friends during the parade. They were joy-riding in the park. Mr. Schatz was driving it as fast as it would go. When he finally came back he said, 'I wanted to see what she would do.'" (Top speed was about 18 mph.)
Their working relationship continued until Louis Schatz death in 2001. At the Schatz memorial service, Lehman said he had been like a second father to him. Lehman stays in touch with Louis Schatz's sons, Henry (who runs the Schatz business in Tacoma, and has a house in Trinidad) and Gordon ( "a Humboldt County kind of guy" who still lives in Maple Creek).
As Lehman ponders the future, with hopes for a new building when the Center's current home is abandoned at the expiration of its current lease, he expresses the same idealism that motivated Louis Schatz. " I'm proud to be here," he says, "to be part of an organization that cares about the world."
This article originally appeared in the 2004 Humboldt Stater magazine.
The Schatz Trust's bequest this year of an estimated $7.4 million is the largest single gift ever given to Humboldt State University. It brings the total contributed by Louis W. Schatz and his estate to approximately $15 million. Schatz died in 2001.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1912, Louis Schatz first studied forestry, and developed a selective logging technique during the Great Depression that piqued the interest of Franklin Roosevelt's Interior department. After earning a doctorate in chemical engineering, Schatz applied plastic techniques to develop coatings and preservatives for wood products, and founded the successful General Plastics Manufacturing Company.
In 1987, his first gift to HSU was land for the 385 acre Schatz Demonstration Tree Farm in Maple Creek, adjacent to the homestead of his son, Gordon. Part of the recent bequest will also be devoted to the tree farm, and to support the L.W. Schatz lecture series in forestry at HSU. But the bulk of the bequest will become an endowment for the Schatz Energy Research Center, which with his support since 1989, produced the first street-ready car in the U.S. to run on hydrogen fuel cells.
Fuel cells divide hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons to drive electric motors, emitting no pollutants. They store and convert energy but don't generate it, so when fueled by a renewable energy power source, hydrogen fuel cells can make a major contribution to a sustainable energy future.
How this technology came to be pioneered at HSU can been seen as the story of two men---Louis Schatz and Dr. Peter Lehman, director of the Schatz Energy Research Center and HSU professor of Environmental Resources Engineering. Together with co-director Dr. Charles Chamberlin, Dr. Lehman led the fuel cell team that proved the practicality of hydrogen energy.
Schatz and Lehman both had the same rare, revolutionary idea. One had the means but not the expertise; the other had the knowledge but not the resources. When they met, more than hydrogen got energized. One morning this summer, Peter Lehman recalled how it all happened.
For Schatz, as Lehman later learned, it began with a science project he helped one of his sons perform, which involved producing hydrogen and oxygen from water: separating the H2 from the O by means of an electrochemical cell. Years later, Schatz tried it again, this time using a solar panel for power. He collected the hydrogen in a balloon, and lit a match under it. "When that balloon went BOOM," he told Lehman, "I knew I was on to something."
"He came up with the idea himself to utilize hydrogen as an energy storage medium, as a way to move us towards a clean energy society," Lehman said. "He went looking around the world for a research center that would promulgate his ideas, but he didn't find one." Because Schatz already had a relationship with HSU through the tree farm, he called up an HSU vice president, who called Lehman, because he was teaching energy engineering. "He asked me if we had a hydrogen energy program." Even though HSU didn't, he'd asked the right person.
"I'd been telling my students that as we progress towards renewable energy, we'll need a storage medium, and I think it will be hydrogen," Lehman recalled. So he wrote Schatz a proposal to start a research program at HSU. "As soon as I sat down that night, I knew exactly what to write. I'd been thinking about it so long, I had the whole thing worked out in six hours."
"Two days later, the phone rang---it was Mr. Schatz. He didn't say hello, how are you, he just started peppering me with questions about the proposal. I liked him right off the bat---he was straightforward, no-nonsense."
But that he seemed genuinely interested in funding such a high-risk project started to seem unreal. "So I said, 'I hope you don't mind me asking, but why are you doing this?' Mr. Schatz said, 'Well, I made some money in my life, my children are all taken care of, and I want to do some good in the world.' "
"That's a good answer," Lehman replied. "Can I revise my proposal?" Lehman sent his new proposal the next day, and a few days later a check for $75,000 arrived in his mailbox. It was the beginning of the Schatz Solar Hydrogen Project.
"It was also the beginning of a relationship," Lehman points out, for Schatz remained involved in the ongoing work. At one point, Lehman was frustrated because there were few companies capable of making fuel cells, and the one working on his team's design kept making mistakes. "When they screwed up the plastic molding, that was it for Mr. Schatz. He knew plastics. 'Get rid of those guys!' he told me. 'Build your own!'"
That led to another proposal, for a fuel cell lab. This time the check (for $300,000) came with a note: "Get to work." So in 1992, Lehman's team began refurbishing a sprawling, nearly derelict wooden building that had once been a small hospital, and the Schatz Energy Research Center was born. Two years later, they had their first hydrogen fuel cell, which today sits on a corner of Lehman's desk.
"We had an interesting and fruitful relationship," Lehman says. "I communicated with him probably once a week, on the phone or by letter---I've got 60 or 70 letters from him. I visited him." So naturally when the Center had its first public triumph---a fuel cell powered golf cart for the Palm Desert Parade in southern California---Louis Schatz got to drive.
Schatz also had the Mayor of Palm Desert in the cart. A nervous team from the Center accompanied them on foot, in case anything went wrong. But the golf cart performed well. "When we got to the end of the parade at City Park, we were just overjoyed. Everybody was hugging one another and congratulating each other, and all of a sudden I looked around and I said, 'Where's the vehicle? Where's the cart?' Mr. Schatz had taken off in it, with the Mayor. They'd become great friends during the parade. They were joy-riding in the park. Mr. Schatz was driving it as fast as it would go. When he finally came back he said, 'I wanted to see what she would do.'" (Top speed was about 18 mph.)
Their working relationship continued until Louis Schatz death in 2001. At the Schatz memorial service, Lehman said he had been like a second father to him. Lehman stays in touch with Louis Schatz's sons, Henry (who runs the Schatz business in Tacoma, and has a house in Trinidad) and Gordon ( "a Humboldt County kind of guy" who still lives in Maple Creek).
As Lehman ponders the future, with hopes for a new building when the Center's current home is abandoned at the expiration of its current lease, he expresses the same idealism that motivated Louis Schatz. " I'm proud to be here," he says, "to be part of an organization that cares about the world."
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Welcome
This site is a companion to another web log, This North Coast Place, concerning the North Coast of California. It consists of longer texts, photos and links to supplement discussions on This North Coast Place.
Anyone can leave comments and join the dialogue. Simply click on "comments" at the bottom of each post, and select to post a comment. You can register but it's not required. Click on the "Anonymous" line and a comment screen should come up. Enter your comment and add at the bottom of it any identifying information you wish, like your name and town.
The first group of posts relate to Native North Coast cultures, particularly the recent and still active efforts of the Wiyot to have their ancestral sacred land of Indian Island returned to them. Two stories and a set of photographs relate the historical background, the fundraising efforts that enabled the Wiyot to buy a small portion of their ceremonial site, and then in 2004, the return of 40 acres to the Wiyot by the City of Eureka. To learn how to contribute to the ongoing Wiyot effort, go to the Wiyot tribal site here.
This cluster of posts ends with some personal reflections on the journey of a non-Native to learning more about Native cultures and their vital importance. I hope you enjoy the site, and join in the discussion.
Anyone can leave comments and join the dialogue. Simply click on "comments" at the bottom of each post, and select to post a comment. You can register but it's not required. Click on the "Anonymous" line and a comment screen should come up. Enter your comment and add at the bottom of it any identifying information you wish, like your name and town.
The first group of posts relate to Native North Coast cultures, particularly the recent and still active efforts of the Wiyot to have their ancestral sacred land of Indian Island returned to them. Two stories and a set of photographs relate the historical background, the fundraising efforts that enabled the Wiyot to buy a small portion of their ceremonial site, and then in 2004, the return of 40 acres to the Wiyot by the City of Eureka. To learn how to contribute to the ongoing Wiyot effort, go to the Wiyot tribal site here.
This cluster of posts ends with some personal reflections on the journey of a non-Native to learning more about Native cultures and their vital importance. I hope you enjoy the site, and join in the discussion.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
A North Coast Native Primer
Before the European and Euro-American invasion (known politely as "contact") the Native peoples of California were the most numerous in what would be called the United States, and in all of California, the largest Native populations were in the north.
Today California has more Native people than any other state, but many are no longer living where their cultures developed. In this North Coast region, several of the many more indigenous cultures that thrived here still survive. They each have a land base, a tribal government, and in recent decades have revived at least some of their ceremonies and traditions.
The Karuk, possibly the oldest culture in the area, lived in villages along sixty miles of the Klamath River, in territory now called the Siskiyou and Salmon Mountains, and on land now part of the Six Rivers and Klamath National Forests. The Karuk govern trust land that is separated into settlements on a few traditional village sites. The Karuk are the Upriver people.
Here are a few links:
Karuk Tribe
Institute of Native Knowledge
Magic River
language scholar
photos
The Yurok, the Downriver people, lived just below and to the southwest of the Karuk. Yurok territory once included some forty miles of the Klamath and some sixty miles of seacoast. Today the Yurok have the largest single tract of reservation land in California.
Yurok tribe
history
photo
language
Yurok Nation
The Hupa lived in an inland valley along the Trinity River south of the Karuk. Today the Hupa inhabit a self-contained reservation area in their valley.
Hoopa Valley
photo
language
The ancient hunting grounds of the Tolowa were to the northwest, above the watersheds of Bluff Creek. The Tolowa lived in as many as 18 villages along the Pacific coast and the Smith River.
Tolowa tribe
history and links
Wiyot lands once spanned a radius of forty square miles, centered at Humboldt Bay. They had many villages from the present McKinleyville (and perhaps farther north), south to Scotia and inland to Blue Lake.
Wiyot tribe at Table Bluff
Blue Lake and basketry
history
Several other tribes and bands lived on the North Coast but were essentially exterminated as cultures since contact. Partly as a result of the historically notorious slaughter of the majority of surviving Wiyot on one night in 1860, the Wiyot were in most imminent danger of dying out as a culture and a people. But today the Wiyot tribe is revitalized. (For much more on the Wiyot in history and today, please see the posts that follow.)
These tribes were always small, and developed separately according to exactly where in the landscape they were. Their languages not only differed one from another, but are classified in different linguistic groups. The Yurok and Wiyot speak an Algonquinian language, the Karuk speak a Hokan, and the Hupa an Athabascan language. "Here, within a circle whose radius is approximately six miles," writes Native scholar Jack Norton, "three of the six major linguistic groups recognized in North America came into contact."
And they did come into contact. They were remote, but not isolated. They traded with each other, and with other Native peoples. They shared ceremonies and stories. They are also related to other indigenous cultures in California, southern Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, and according to current standards of linguistic group classification, their languages link them to indigenous peoples of the northeastern United States, the Great Plains, Canada and the Yucatan.
Other links:
The Seventh Generation Fund
Original Voices
Today California has more Native people than any other state, but many are no longer living where their cultures developed. In this North Coast region, several of the many more indigenous cultures that thrived here still survive. They each have a land base, a tribal government, and in recent decades have revived at least some of their ceremonies and traditions.
The Karuk, possibly the oldest culture in the area, lived in villages along sixty miles of the Klamath River, in territory now called the Siskiyou and Salmon Mountains, and on land now part of the Six Rivers and Klamath National Forests. The Karuk govern trust land that is separated into settlements on a few traditional village sites. The Karuk are the Upriver people.
Here are a few links:
Karuk Tribe
Institute of Native Knowledge
Magic River
language scholar
photos
The Yurok, the Downriver people, lived just below and to the southwest of the Karuk. Yurok territory once included some forty miles of the Klamath and some sixty miles of seacoast. Today the Yurok have the largest single tract of reservation land in California.
Yurok tribe
history
photo
language
Yurok Nation
The Hupa lived in an inland valley along the Trinity River south of the Karuk. Today the Hupa inhabit a self-contained reservation area in their valley.
Hoopa Valley
photo
language
The ancient hunting grounds of the Tolowa were to the northwest, above the watersheds of Bluff Creek. The Tolowa lived in as many as 18 villages along the Pacific coast and the Smith River.
Tolowa tribe
history and links
Wiyot lands once spanned a radius of forty square miles, centered at Humboldt Bay. They had many villages from the present McKinleyville (and perhaps farther north), south to Scotia and inland to Blue Lake.
Wiyot tribe at Table Bluff
Blue Lake and basketry
history
Several other tribes and bands lived on the North Coast but were essentially exterminated as cultures since contact. Partly as a result of the historically notorious slaughter of the majority of surviving Wiyot on one night in 1860, the Wiyot were in most imminent danger of dying out as a culture and a people. But today the Wiyot tribe is revitalized. (For much more on the Wiyot in history and today, please see the posts that follow.)
These tribes were always small, and developed separately according to exactly where in the landscape they were. Their languages not only differed one from another, but are classified in different linguistic groups. The Yurok and Wiyot speak an Algonquinian language, the Karuk speak a Hokan, and the Hupa an Athabascan language. "Here, within a circle whose radius is approximately six miles," writes Native scholar Jack Norton, "three of the six major linguistic groups recognized in North America came into contact."
And they did come into contact. They were remote, but not isolated. They traded with each other, and with other Native peoples. They shared ceremonies and stories. They are also related to other indigenous cultures in California, southern Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, and according to current standards of linguistic group classification, their languages link them to indigenous peoples of the northeastern United States, the Great Plains, Canada and the Yucatan.
Other links:
The Seventh Generation Fund
Original Voices
Monday, January 10, 2005
Coming Home: The Resolution
by Bill Kowinski
most of this account of the transfer of 40 acres of Indian Island from the City of Eureka to the Wiyot on June 25, 2004, first appeared in News from Native California Fall 2004. Photos by BK.
Cheryl Seidner was driving in Connecticut when she began praying for good weather in Eureka the next day. She was leaving the National Congress of American Indians, on her way to the airport and across the country. In less than 24 hours, she would be riding across Humboldt Bay in a redwood canoe to sign papers as tribal chair of the Wiyot at Table Bluff. Those papers would officially transfer back to the tribe 40 more acres of Indian Island, the traditional center of the Wiyot world and its most sacred site. She prayed for calm waters.
For at least a thousand years before non-Natives came into far northern California, the Wiyot gathered at Tulawat village on what came to be known as Indian Island, often with guests from other tribes, to perform their world renewal ceremonies. In February 1860, a few settlers crossed Humboldt Bay from Eureka and brutally massacred Wiyot women and children, while the men were away gathering supplies to continue the dance. It was one of three coordinated attacks that day that almost wiped out the Wiyot, whose traditional lands spread across some 40 square miles surrounding Humboldt Bay, including the present cities of Eureka and Arcata. The Wiyot have not danced on the island since.
Denied federal recognition as a tribe in the 1950s, the Wiyot reorganized at the Table Bluff reservation and regained it in 1990. A few years later, Cheryl Seidner---a direct descendant of the only known survivor of the Indian Island massacre---began an annual candlelight vigil commemorating her ancestors, together with Maryle Rhode, president of the Humboldt County Historical Society, and Peggy Betsels, then pastor of Eureka's United Church of Christ. The February vigils are open to everyone, and soon grew from some 75 people to several hundred, including members of other tribes and non-Natives. So began two journeys: the Wiyot's revival, and efforts at reconciliation between the Wiyot and the non-Native community.
In the year 2000, after several years of fundraising, the Wiyot purchased 1.5 acres of Indian Island, the location of Tulawat Village itself. There was some confusion about the legal borders of this purchase, and it was in the process of clarifying them with Eureka city officials that the longstanding discussions leading to the larger land transfer began in earnest. "That was about a year and a half ago,"Cheryl recalls. "But the real hard core stuff, with attorneys and things like that, started around Thanksgiving[2003]."
The city of Eureka owns most of Indian Island, except for a few private residences. The 40 acres deeded back include the Wiyot burial grounds and shell midden. The negotiations, Cheryl said, "were all done in good faith. Everybody was working to make sure it was going to come out right." The land is to be developed as a sacred site, and not for commercial or residential purposes. The resulting agreement was presented to the Eureka City Council in May.
Maria Tripp (Yurok), chairperson of United Indian Health Services, told the Council, "Every tribe has a center of the world, and Indian Island is the center of the Wiyot world...The healing has begun. The return of this land to the Wiyot people will be an important step in that healing."
UIHS director Jerry Simone pointed out that their facility in Arcata was called Potawat Village, a Wiyot word for the nearby Mad River. "I strongly believe that this site on Indian Island has as much if not more to do with the healing of the Wiyot than all the health services UHIS can provide."
Those speaking in support of the resolution included representatives of Mike Thompson, Member of U.S. Congress for the district, and Wesley Chesbro, state Senator for the district; John Wooley, Humboldt County Board of Supervisors; a representative of Roland Richmond, President of Humboldt State University and the vice-president for academic affairs from College of the Redwoods; the Humboldt County superintendent of schools, and Peter Pennecamp, executive director of the Humboldt Area Foundation.
Several private citizens also spoke in favor, including Jan Kraepelien, who worked behind the scenes to encourage the transfer. He complimented Eureka City Manager David Tyson. "This simply would not have been possible without his courage, understanding, and patience," Jan said. "He is the very model of a dedicated public servant acting in the best interests of the community."
Each member of the City Council present spoke in favor, most with visible emotion. The resolution passed unanimously, and June 25 was set as the date for the official signing. The voluntary transfer of land, especially a sacred site, from a municipality back to its indigenous people, may never have happened in California before. It's safe to say that even in all of North America, it is a rare event.
most of this account of the transfer of 40 acres of Indian Island from the City of Eureka to the Wiyot on June 25, 2004, first appeared in News from Native California Fall 2004. Photos by BK.
Cheryl Seidner was driving in Connecticut when she began praying for good weather in Eureka the next day. She was leaving the National Congress of American Indians, on her way to the airport and across the country. In less than 24 hours, she would be riding across Humboldt Bay in a redwood canoe to sign papers as tribal chair of the Wiyot at Table Bluff. Those papers would officially transfer back to the tribe 40 more acres of Indian Island, the traditional center of the Wiyot world and its most sacred site. She prayed for calm waters.
For at least a thousand years before non-Natives came into far northern California, the Wiyot gathered at Tulawat village on what came to be known as Indian Island, often with guests from other tribes, to perform their world renewal ceremonies. In February 1860, a few settlers crossed Humboldt Bay from Eureka and brutally massacred Wiyot women and children, while the men were away gathering supplies to continue the dance. It was one of three coordinated attacks that day that almost wiped out the Wiyot, whose traditional lands spread across some 40 square miles surrounding Humboldt Bay, including the present cities of Eureka and Arcata. The Wiyot have not danced on the island since.
Denied federal recognition as a tribe in the 1950s, the Wiyot reorganized at the Table Bluff reservation and regained it in 1990. A few years later, Cheryl Seidner---a direct descendant of the only known survivor of the Indian Island massacre---began an annual candlelight vigil commemorating her ancestors, together with Maryle Rhode, president of the Humboldt County Historical Society, and Peggy Betsels, then pastor of Eureka's United Church of Christ. The February vigils are open to everyone, and soon grew from some 75 people to several hundred, including members of other tribes and non-Natives. So began two journeys: the Wiyot's revival, and efforts at reconciliation between the Wiyot and the non-Native community.
In the year 2000, after several years of fundraising, the Wiyot purchased 1.5 acres of Indian Island, the location of Tulawat Village itself. There was some confusion about the legal borders of this purchase, and it was in the process of clarifying them with Eureka city officials that the longstanding discussions leading to the larger land transfer began in earnest. "That was about a year and a half ago,"Cheryl recalls. "But the real hard core stuff, with attorneys and things like that, started around Thanksgiving[2003]."
The city of Eureka owns most of Indian Island, except for a few private residences. The 40 acres deeded back include the Wiyot burial grounds and shell midden. The negotiations, Cheryl said, "were all done in good faith. Everybody was working to make sure it was going to come out right." The land is to be developed as a sacred site, and not for commercial or residential purposes. The resulting agreement was presented to the Eureka City Council in May.
Maria Tripp (Yurok), chairperson of United Indian Health Services, told the Council, "Every tribe has a center of the world, and Indian Island is the center of the Wiyot world...The healing has begun. The return of this land to the Wiyot people will be an important step in that healing."
UIHS director Jerry Simone pointed out that their facility in Arcata was called Potawat Village, a Wiyot word for the nearby Mad River. "I strongly believe that this site on Indian Island has as much if not more to do with the healing of the Wiyot than all the health services UHIS can provide."
Those speaking in support of the resolution included representatives of Mike Thompson, Member of U.S. Congress for the district, and Wesley Chesbro, state Senator for the district; John Wooley, Humboldt County Board of Supervisors; a representative of Roland Richmond, President of Humboldt State University and the vice-president for academic affairs from College of the Redwoods; the Humboldt County superintendent of schools, and Peter Pennecamp, executive director of the Humboldt Area Foundation.
Several private citizens also spoke in favor, including Jan Kraepelien, who worked behind the scenes to encourage the transfer. He complimented Eureka City Manager David Tyson. "This simply would not have been possible without his courage, understanding, and patience," Jan said. "He is the very model of a dedicated public servant acting in the best interests of the community."
Each member of the City Council present spoke in favor, most with visible emotion. The resolution passed unanimously, and June 25 was set as the date for the official signing. The voluntary transfer of land, especially a sacred site, from a municipality back to its indigenous people, may never have happened in California before. It's safe to say that even in all of North America, it is a rare event.
Coming Home: Starting Out
So on the morning of June 25, Cheryl Seidner got ready. She brought a ceremonial basket cap and buckskin shawl to wear, both of them designed and made for her by her sister, Leona Wilkinson. She wore two necklaces. One was made from abalone beads belonging to her grandmother, Hazel James. The other had been made for her several years earlier by Eureka school children. Later she would wear one more-a large dentilium necklace with cobalt blue beads given to the Wiyot tribe that day by the Elk Valley reservation.
Julian Lang (Karuk, whose great great grandmother was Wiyot) took on the challenge of developing a meaningful Native component for the transfer event, to be held at the Adorni Center on the Eureka waterfront.
He began with the idea of something based on a traditional boat dance. "Not really a boat dance," he said, "but as a model from within our Native cultures that we could use for this event." The crossing of the waters is a journey to the afterlife, and so it links the present and people today with the past and the ancestors on Indian Island. It could also suggest a journey to unity among Native peoples, and reconciliation of all peoples. "It's symbolic, based on our cultural knowledge."
Julian began by approaching Walt Lara (Yurok) with the idea. " He said, 'count me in. It's really important, and an Indian presence is incredibly important in this case, especially because we are the dancemaker families, the dancemaker people within our Indian community, and it's our job.' He made it a possibility."
Walt Lara would bring the redwood canoe made in the late 1990s, with a grant from the Seventh Generation Fund. Julian hoped for a total of five canoes, including the oldest to still be in use, but most of them were damaged, being repaired or couldn't be properly prepared in time. Richard Myers (Yurok) volunteered a smaller dugout canoe, and the Yurok tribe provided their water marshal boat as an escort. "But ten boats or two boats, it doesn't matter," Julian said. "It's the same thing. It's the way our ceremonies work."
Julian consulted others about various elements of the event. "We reached out to include many ceremonial folks from all the tribes, because we are related not by blood but by ceremony. They were inspiring at every stage. Everybody recognized the significance of the event---not as a civic or government to government event, but as a Native American event, bringing together the past and the present in healing. As it got closer, I realized these people were really important people who made it an incredibly big event, full of meaning. It just blossomed. It said, this is who we are today."
Cheryl agreed. "It needed to have something to do with who we are, where we are coming from, and what we plan to be doing with our lives from that point forward."
Most who became involved were present on Indian Island that morning. After the television crew and reporter from the Associated Press were gone, they gathered for prayer. Then for the first time in 144 years, two redwood canoes left Indian Island. In the larger boat with Cheryl was Walt Lara and his grandson, Walt Lara III, Chris Peters (Pohlik-lah/Karuk), Jessie Sherman (Hupa, Wiyot) and Thomas Wilkinson (Wiyot.) In the smaller boat were Frank Myers, Julian Lang, Skip Lowry(Yurok, Pitt River) and Frank Tuttle (Yuki/Wailaki/Konkow Maidu, who supplied much of the regalia).
Julian Lang (Karuk, whose great great grandmother was Wiyot) took on the challenge of developing a meaningful Native component for the transfer event, to be held at the Adorni Center on the Eureka waterfront.
He began with the idea of something based on a traditional boat dance. "Not really a boat dance," he said, "but as a model from within our Native cultures that we could use for this event." The crossing of the waters is a journey to the afterlife, and so it links the present and people today with the past and the ancestors on Indian Island. It could also suggest a journey to unity among Native peoples, and reconciliation of all peoples. "It's symbolic, based on our cultural knowledge."
Julian began by approaching Walt Lara (Yurok) with the idea. " He said, 'count me in. It's really important, and an Indian presence is incredibly important in this case, especially because we are the dancemaker families, the dancemaker people within our Indian community, and it's our job.' He made it a possibility."
Walt Lara would bring the redwood canoe made in the late 1990s, with a grant from the Seventh Generation Fund. Julian hoped for a total of five canoes, including the oldest to still be in use, but most of them were damaged, being repaired or couldn't be properly prepared in time. Richard Myers (Yurok) volunteered a smaller dugout canoe, and the Yurok tribe provided their water marshal boat as an escort. "But ten boats or two boats, it doesn't matter," Julian said. "It's the same thing. It's the way our ceremonies work."
Julian consulted others about various elements of the event. "We reached out to include many ceremonial folks from all the tribes, because we are related not by blood but by ceremony. They were inspiring at every stage. Everybody recognized the significance of the event---not as a civic or government to government event, but as a Native American event, bringing together the past and the present in healing. As it got closer, I realized these people were really important people who made it an incredibly big event, full of meaning. It just blossomed. It said, this is who we are today."
Cheryl agreed. "It needed to have something to do with who we are, where we are coming from, and what we plan to be doing with our lives from that point forward."
Most who became involved were present on Indian Island that morning. After the television crew and reporter from the Associated Press were gone, they gathered for prayer. Then for the first time in 144 years, two redwood canoes left Indian Island. In the larger boat with Cheryl was Walt Lara and his grandson, Walt Lara III, Chris Peters (Pohlik-lah/Karuk), Jessie Sherman (Hupa, Wiyot) and Thomas Wilkinson (Wiyot.) In the smaller boat were Frank Myers, Julian Lang, Skip Lowry(Yurok, Pitt River) and Frank Tuttle (Yuki/Wailaki/Konkow Maidu, who supplied much of the regalia).
Coming Home: Welcome
By the time they paddled across Humboldt Bay it was afternoon. The thin veils of mist hovering near the surface of the water had dissipated. In the deep blue sky only low wisps of white clouds floated in the distance across the forested mountains. It was the first sunny day after weeks of gray summer clouds. The waters were calm.
In fact, the boats made surprising progress. "We didn't know how easy it was going to be," Julian Lang said. "We thought it was going to be really hard, but those canoes just took to the water. So we were half an hour early."
They also put in at a different dock than many on shore expected. When the canoes glided past the place where the crowd had gathered, many ran along the shore to the right dock, getting doused by the Adorni Center sprinklers.
Cheryl was then escorted to the building by a group of young women from the various tribes, in traditional regalia. They sang a welcoming song. Peter La Vallee, the Mayor of Eureka also welcomed Cheryl, and Julian Lang spoke briefly. "People have come here today from the Hupa tribe, the Yurok tribe, the Karuk tribe, the Tolowa tribe as well as the Wiyot tribe---all these different tribes are represented because we are one kind of people: we are 'fix the earth' people. That's our job as human beings." (As Julian noted later, these were also the tribes most likely to have sent participants to the Wiyot "world renewal" ceremony on Indian Island, even when it was last held the night before the massacre.)
There were Indian representatives from other places as well. Cheryl said later that she had been particularly impressed by the delegation from the Redding Rancheria. "I found that very heartening that they came from a couple of counties away," she said.
Before everyone went into the building, Julian had the crowd repeat the Wiyot name for Eureka: CuruCiCi.
In fact, the boats made surprising progress. "We didn't know how easy it was going to be," Julian Lang said. "We thought it was going to be really hard, but those canoes just took to the water. So we were half an hour early."
They also put in at a different dock than many on shore expected. When the canoes glided past the place where the crowd had gathered, many ran along the shore to the right dock, getting doused by the Adorni Center sprinklers.
Cheryl was then escorted to the building by a group of young women from the various tribes, in traditional regalia. They sang a welcoming song. Peter La Vallee, the Mayor of Eureka also welcomed Cheryl, and Julian Lang spoke briefly. "People have come here today from the Hupa tribe, the Yurok tribe, the Karuk tribe, the Tolowa tribe as well as the Wiyot tribe---all these different tribes are represented because we are one kind of people: we are 'fix the earth' people. That's our job as human beings." (As Julian noted later, these were also the tribes most likely to have sent participants to the Wiyot "world renewal" ceremony on Indian Island, even when it was last held the night before the massacre.)
There were Indian representatives from other places as well. Cheryl said later that she had been particularly impressed by the delegation from the Redding Rancheria. "I found that very heartening that they came from a couple of counties away," she said.
Before everyone went into the building, Julian had the crowd repeat the Wiyot name for Eureka: CuruCiCi.
Coming Home: Everyone in this room
Once inside the auditorium that doubles as a basketball court, it became apparent that quite a few people had come to witness the signing: judging from the overflow, probably 500, and maybe more.
The Mayor of Eureka, Peter La Vallee, spoke first. "I am honored and humbled," he said. He acknowledged the wrongs done by Eureka citizens in the past. "There is a time and a place to do the decent thing, the right thing," he said, "and that time and place is right now, right here."
Cheryl began by welcoming everyone from the four directions. "I want to welcome you to Wiyot country," she said. "We are coming home to our island. In 1860 people did not see fit for us to live. But this City Council, they beg to differ. They said, come, let us be together. And the Wiyot said, this is what we want..." She spoke of the Wiyots' desire to have all 175 acres of the island back eventually. "Today we get part of our island back... Each generation said we want it back. Each generation learned something new about the island, and each generation got closer..."
She said that it took many generations, all the tribes and many people of Eureka to make it happen. "It took everyone in this room, and more. We are grateful." After saying a prayer in the Wiyot language she repeated it in English. "We thank you for our differences and our different ways. We thank you for the Wiyot people who are coming back, who are coming back to life, CuruCiCi. It's been a long day coming."
The agenda for the rest of the event was short, with a few Eureka officials and government representatives, including state representative Patty Berg, scheduled to speak. But a spontaneous decision to bring forward some of those who worked with Julian to assemble the events outside led to a continued Indian presence in the proceedings.
The Mayor of Eureka, Peter La Vallee, spoke first. "I am honored and humbled," he said. He acknowledged the wrongs done by Eureka citizens in the past. "There is a time and a place to do the decent thing, the right thing," he said, "and that time and place is right now, right here."
Cheryl began by welcoming everyone from the four directions. "I want to welcome you to Wiyot country," she said. "We are coming home to our island. In 1860 people did not see fit for us to live. But this City Council, they beg to differ. They said, come, let us be together. And the Wiyot said, this is what we want..." She spoke of the Wiyots' desire to have all 175 acres of the island back eventually. "Today we get part of our island back... Each generation said we want it back. Each generation learned something new about the island, and each generation got closer..."
She said that it took many generations, all the tribes and many people of Eureka to make it happen. "It took everyone in this room, and more. We are grateful." After saying a prayer in the Wiyot language she repeated it in English. "We thank you for our differences and our different ways. We thank you for the Wiyot people who are coming back, who are coming back to life, CuruCiCi. It's been a long day coming."
The agenda for the rest of the event was short, with a few Eureka officials and government representatives, including state representative Patty Berg, scheduled to speak. But a spontaneous decision to bring forward some of those who worked with Julian to assemble the events outside led to a continued Indian presence in the proceedings.
Coming Home: A great day
Walt Lara was the first to speak, joking that he wasn't used to talking about good things happening for Indian people, "like getting their land back. I'm kind of a militant-I like to fight to get the land back." He spoke of the effects of genocide in the past, "up the coast and down the coast. It's sad, and people are still trying to shake it off." He praised the efforts of the Wiyot people. "They're back, and they're moving forward."
Next was Philip Vigil [Hupa], who his wife, Gloria, was essential to "grounding" and "inspiring" this event in tribal tradition (as Julian said). "This is a great day," he told the crowd. "It will go down in history for the Wiyot people and all the Indian people." He said that the Hupa "have sort of been the stewards of ceremonies for all the Indians of this area for years," assisting all the tribes in reviving their ceremonies, and they were ready to do the same for the Wiyot. "This is one of the things we look forward to---to re-establish the ceremonies here as they once were."
Next was Philip Vigil [Hupa], who his wife, Gloria, was essential to "grounding" and "inspiring" this event in tribal tradition (as Julian said). "This is a great day," he told the crowd. "It will go down in history for the Wiyot people and all the Indian people." He said that the Hupa "have sort of been the stewards of ceremonies for all the Indians of this area for years," assisting all the tribes in reviving their ceremonies, and they were ready to do the same for the Wiyot. "This is one of the things we look forward to---to re-establish the ceremonies here as they once were."
Coming Home: Medicine returns
Julian Lang, who was introducing the speakers, then commented that he recently heard of a Yurok elder who remembered the Wiyot jump dance as being very much like the Yurok's, with a small difference that she demonstrated. "So I wanted to share that with the Wiyot people," Julian said, "to let you know that there are people who know how those dances went. There are people who can help in that way."
Next was Melody George, Hupa prayer-maker, who sang a beautiful song and offered a prayer in Hupa and then in English. "May the Wiyot begin to remember that which they need to remember, and do that which they need to do. May the acorn eaters in this room be able to help them learn again to do that which they need to do, and to teach their young that which they need to teach them. They are home, and medicine returns to the island."
Alme Allen spoke on behalf of the Karuk, congratulating the Wiyot on a special and historic day, and "a very proud day for Indian people." Then state assembly representative Patty Berg spoke, a group of Tolowa children from Crescent City danced in honor of the day, and then the official moment came as Cheryl and Mayor La Vallee signed the documents, with members of Eureka City Council and the Wiyot Tribal Council assembled around them. The crowd stood and cheered in a hail of flashbulbs. There were a lot of cameras of all kinds.
Then gifts were exchanged: the Mayor presented Cheryl with a clay pot of earth from Indian Island, while Cheryl gave him and each member of City Council several small gifts, including canned salmon (the salmon supplied by the Yurok and canned by Leona Wilkinson), and a medicine pouch containing periwinkle, which the Wiyot used as money ("'penny-winkle' we called it when we were kids," Cheryl recalled), an acorn ("so you never go hungry"), sacred tobacco and "Wiyot medicine to keep you strong."
Next was Melody George, Hupa prayer-maker, who sang a beautiful song and offered a prayer in Hupa and then in English. "May the Wiyot begin to remember that which they need to remember, and do that which they need to do. May the acorn eaters in this room be able to help them learn again to do that which they need to do, and to teach their young that which they need to teach them. They are home, and medicine returns to the island."
Alme Allen spoke on behalf of the Karuk, congratulating the Wiyot on a special and historic day, and "a very proud day for Indian people." Then state assembly representative Patty Berg spoke, a group of Tolowa children from Crescent City danced in honor of the day, and then the official moment came as Cheryl and Mayor La Vallee signed the documents, with members of Eureka City Council and the Wiyot Tribal Council assembled around them. The crowd stood and cheered in a hail of flashbulbs. There were a lot of cameras of all kinds.
Then gifts were exchanged: the Mayor presented Cheryl with a clay pot of earth from Indian Island, while Cheryl gave him and each member of City Council several small gifts, including canned salmon (the salmon supplied by the Yurok and canned by Leona Wilkinson), and a medicine pouch containing periwinkle, which the Wiyot used as money ("'penny-winkle' we called it when we were kids," Cheryl recalled), an acorn ("so you never go hungry"), sacred tobacco and "Wiyot medicine to keep you strong."
Coming Home: Coming Home Song
Cheryl dedicated the day to her grandparents and to her parents, Bill and Loreta Seidner. She then led the entire audience in singing her “coming home” song.
Everyone in the audience received a keychain commemorating the event as they left. Many stayed to talk and eat cold cuts and cake. It was a happy day, and there were many tears in the audience.
"I was so surprised to see so many people," Cheryl said later. "I did not realize what it meant to a lot of people. I knew what it meant to me." She remarked on the emotion she saw there, for example from her co-workers at Humboldt State University, where she is an administrator for the Economic Opportunity Program. "I still haven't absorbed what a big thing it was. I took it as a matter of fact. The island was always ours. We just needed a piece a paper to say it." But she acknowledged that she also got emotional towards the end, when she mentioned her parents. "That's when I almost lost it. Because most of what I do, I always think of my parents. How would they do this? They were such good people, and I miss them greatly. Even though they've been gone almost all of my adult life, I still depend on their opinion."
But as important and truly historic as this event was, "it isn't the end," Cheryl said. "It's only the beginning." Her goal now is to "get the island to a point where we can put a dance on it." The first will probably be demonstration dance, a celebration, she thought. The winter dances require a dance house, and though one is planned, it's a little farther in the future. "We have to raise money for that."
For now, there is the continuing work of cleaning up the land damaged by various uses over the years, including a boat-building facility. "We've removed 33 tons of scrap metal from the island already," she said, "and we still have to clean up some of the hot spots. But it's not as bad as we thought it might be."
Just as importantly, the Wiyot have to prepare themselves to dance again. Dance families from the Hupa, Yurok and Karuk have come forward to help, Cheryl said. But "none of our former dance families have the dresses" or other regalia. "We pray there will be young men and women who will come forward and say, 'teach me, let me learn.' This is the beginning of the rediscovery of who we are. "
As executive director of the Seventh Generation Fund headquartered in Arcata, Chris Peters hoped that returning even this much of Indian Island to the Wiyot will influence the future of Humboldt Bay. "Indian Island is geographically and historically significant," he said," a place that has been considered sacred and used for spiritual purposes for thousands of years before non-Native people came to this area, and before any churches or synagogues or other buildings used for worship by any denomination were constructed. With the transfer back to Native ownership, we're hoping that this place will be given its due respect, and the development around it on Humboldt Bay will be done in such a way that shows respect for this significant place of prayer."
"Likewise, throughout California, similar land transfers need to happen," he added, "and sacred lands need to be managed as sacred places: sacred for everything and for all people."
As for his participation and the ride across Humboldt Bay in the redwood dugout, Chris said, " It was a fantastic event and I was really honored to be part of it."
Everyone in the audience received a keychain commemorating the event as they left. Many stayed to talk and eat cold cuts and cake. It was a happy day, and there were many tears in the audience.
"I was so surprised to see so many people," Cheryl said later. "I did not realize what it meant to a lot of people. I knew what it meant to me." She remarked on the emotion she saw there, for example from her co-workers at Humboldt State University, where she is an administrator for the Economic Opportunity Program. "I still haven't absorbed what a big thing it was. I took it as a matter of fact. The island was always ours. We just needed a piece a paper to say it." But she acknowledged that she also got emotional towards the end, when she mentioned her parents. "That's when I almost lost it. Because most of what I do, I always think of my parents. How would they do this? They were such good people, and I miss them greatly. Even though they've been gone almost all of my adult life, I still depend on their opinion."
But as important and truly historic as this event was, "it isn't the end," Cheryl said. "It's only the beginning." Her goal now is to "get the island to a point where we can put a dance on it." The first will probably be demonstration dance, a celebration, she thought. The winter dances require a dance house, and though one is planned, it's a little farther in the future. "We have to raise money for that."
For now, there is the continuing work of cleaning up the land damaged by various uses over the years, including a boat-building facility. "We've removed 33 tons of scrap metal from the island already," she said, "and we still have to clean up some of the hot spots. But it's not as bad as we thought it might be."
Just as importantly, the Wiyot have to prepare themselves to dance again. Dance families from the Hupa, Yurok and Karuk have come forward to help, Cheryl said. But "none of our former dance families have the dresses" or other regalia. "We pray there will be young men and women who will come forward and say, 'teach me, let me learn.' This is the beginning of the rediscovery of who we are. "
As executive director of the Seventh Generation Fund headquartered in Arcata, Chris Peters hoped that returning even this much of Indian Island to the Wiyot will influence the future of Humboldt Bay. "Indian Island is geographically and historically significant," he said," a place that has been considered sacred and used for spiritual purposes for thousands of years before non-Native people came to this area, and before any churches or synagogues or other buildings used for worship by any denomination were constructed. With the transfer back to Native ownership, we're hoping that this place will be given its due respect, and the development around it on Humboldt Bay will be done in such a way that shows respect for this significant place of prayer."
"Likewise, throughout California, similar land transfers need to happen," he added, "and sacred lands need to be managed as sacred places: sacred for everything and for all people."
As for his participation and the ride across Humboldt Bay in the redwood dugout, Chris said, " It was a fantastic event and I was really honored to be part of it."
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Return to Tuluwat
This site is a companion to: This North Coast Place.
The following article appeared on the front of the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook section on Saturday February 28, 2004, the day of the annual vigil marking the massacre of the Wiyot in 1860. I tried for years to get some publication interested in this story. It finally happened in early 2004. Though I didn't know it at the time, negotiations were already underway for the return of some 40 acres to the Wiyot, owned by the City of Eureka. I was later told that the appearance of this story was one factor that helped move these talks to fruition. This article gives more of the history than the above account of the signing celebration, both of the 1860 massacre and the more recent responses.
The Wiyot were not the only Native peoples subjected to violence by non-Natives in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some tribes suffered but survived with more population and land base; some tribes did not survive at all as ongoing cultures. Similarly, the Native peoples were not the only victims of violence and discrimination as a people, or an ethnic group. Humboldt County's treatment of the Chinese is nearly as notorious, and even some European groups, such as Italians, were at some time in some way not treated as full citizens. So we may want to think about these relationships, and the impact of this history on community today.
I've kept the structure of the Chronicle article's edited version, with a few clarifications and additions. The 2004 vigil, which I think was the fourth I'd attended, seemed larger than the year before. I'd guess there were 400 people there, including Paul Gallegos, Humboldt County's District Attorney. It was a dry but not entirely clear night. The event is held whether it’s raining (as it often does) or not, though in 2000 it was so stormy the event had to be moved indoors. That 2000 event is notable for several reasons: it was filmed for the Living Biographies project so a professionally shot tape exists as an archive; Cheryl Seidner announced that the first 1.5 acres of Indian Island had been purchased by the Table Bluff Wiyot Tribe, the culmination of a grassroots fundraising effort that captured the imagination of the community and beyond. And during the course of the vigil, Cheryl sang her "Coming Home Song" for the first time in public. That song has become a cherished part of these and related events ever since. More people heard that song on PBS than likely ever heard a Wiyot song, and probably more North Coast people, Native and Non-Native, have sung it together than any other Native song.
Like 2003, several dark necklaces of honking geese flew over during the course of the evening in 2004. Brian Tripp, a Karuk artist and writer, recited his powerful poem about the massacre, which I heard Julian Lang recite the year before last. The vigil ended with Cheryl Seidner singing her "coming home" song, with a "backup group" of Wiyot children joining in, and then everyone. It was dark by then, and I looked up to see a ring around the moon.
RETURN TO TULUWAT
By William S. Kowinski
Special to the Chronicle
Just before dusk on the last Saturday in February, several hundred people gather each year at the edge of Humboldt Bay in Eureka, across from a small, tear-shaped island half a mile away.
Standing under a deepening blue sky flared with reds at the horizon (as they did last year) or under umbrellas in a North Coast late winter rain (as they did the year before), they will hold candles and share songs and prayers.
The forested land they can see across the bay, still called Indian Island, was the scene of one of the most notorious massacres in California history. At least 60 and perhaps more than 200 women, children and elders of the Wiyot tribe were slaughtered with axes and knives by six white men, known to be landowners and businessmen. This was one of three simultaneous attacks at different locations that sent this small tribe spiraling towards extinction, some 144 years ago.
For a long time, it seemed they were extinct. . As late as 1996, correspondent Fergus Bordewich wrote, "Little is known about the Wiyots." But the Wiyot tribe, denied federal recognition in 1953, regained it in 1990, and moved to a new reservation at Table Bluff, south of Eureka's city center, where some 450 tribal members now live.
"We are still here," said Cheryl Seidner, the elected Wiyot tribal chair since 1996, and a direct descendant of an infant survivor of the Indian Island massacre. "We are still a people. We still cast a shadow, we are not gone."
History Is
By a quirk of the California coastline, Eureka is the westernmost city in the 48 contiguous United States. Through the fate of history, it was one of the last places in America where Indians and Euro-Americans confronted each other. In a sense, it recapitulated and condensed several hundred years of American history in a few decades.
In 1860, California had been a state for only a decade, and the city of Eureka, growing from its docks to push against the redwood forests around it, had been the seat of the newly formed Humboldt County for just four years. The Humboldt Bay communities of Eureka and Arcata began by supplying the gold miners prowling the northeastern mountains, but by 1860 had opened nine timber mills, and were busily engaged in agriculture and ship-building. In 1853 alone, 143 ships left the bay loaded with timber, bound for San Francisco and other ports.
But far northern California had many small tribal groups of Indians living in its forests and mountains, and along its rivers and coast, some for 10,000 years.
The village of Tuluwat on Indian Island was the physical and spiritual center of the Wiyot world, which was comprised of some 20 villages spread over forty square miles, with a population of perhaps 3,000. There is evidence of Wiyot presence on the island for at least 1,000 years. But for many white settlers, Indians were a not-quite-human barrier to progress. Local newspapers supported a policy of extermination.
On the last Saturday in February 1860, the Wiyot completed their week-long world renewal ceremony at Tuluwat, to bring the world back into balance and mark the equivalent of their new year. The small boat arrived late that night, while the Wiyot men were away gathering supplies.
The massacre on Indian Island was not the first in the region, nor would it be the last. It was part of an accelerated pattern of destruction, beginning with random killings and rapes by miners and ranchers, and including kidnapping and legal slavery of mostly women and children under California's 1850 Indian indenture law. Later, Indians were forced into forts and small reservations under concentration camp conditions, and finally, those still living on their lands were subject to organized warfare by local militia while federal troops fought the Civil War. Together with the ravages of disease, this history reduced an estimated 15 local tribes to five.
But Indian Island became the most infamous massacre in northern California probably because of the presence of Bret Harte, who before achieving literary fame, reported for a newspaper in Arcata. His account of the massacre and editorial condemning its cruelty made him a local outcast, but anonymous letters to a San Francisco newspaper rumored to be his work were largely responsible for the national knowledge of this event. Editorial writers in San Francisco and in New York began referring to Eureka as Murderville.
Though the names of those responsible for the Indian Island massacre were apparently widely known, no legal action was ever taken against them. As Eureka became a prosperous commercial center, and Humboldt Bay became the busiest port between Seattle and San Francisco, this part of the past seemed better left forgotten.
But unlike much of California, the Indian populations indigenous to the Humboldt County area remained significant. Besides residents on Yurok, Hupa, Karuk and Wiyot lands and several Rancherias of mixed tribal groups, many enrolled members of indigenous tribes live and work in Humboldt's cities and towns. Though less than 6% of Humboldt's population, Native Americans are its largest minority group. In this large but mostly rural county(some 80% of it forested or devoted to federal and state parks), a bare majority of its population lives in communities surrounding Humboldt Bay, on land that once belonged to the Wiyot.
"The past is not dead," as William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past."
The Wounds of Murderville
Seidner and her sister, Leona Wilkinson, began the vigils in 1992, together with two non-Indians, Peggy Betsels. former pastor of Eureka's United Church of Christ, and Marylee Rohde, former president of the Humboldt County Historical Society.
I've known about the story of the massacre since I was a little girl," Rohde said, "so I hadn't realized how deeply it was buried in Eureka's psyche. Peggy didn't hear of it until her daughter was in school, from the Native American parent of another student. But in talking with Cheryl and Leona, we realized that the story needs to be told. There needs to be healing, but the wound tends to fester if it's been suppressed."
"It's a healing of two communities," said Seidner. "It's not just us or them. We need to come together as a community of learning, to understand each other. That rip in our society needs to be mending, and hopefully we've been trying to do that for the last 13 years."
Community awareness of the Wiyot story increased dramatically in the late 1990s when Seidner began to raise funds for the purchase of the 1.5 acres of Indian Island where the ceremonies had traditionally taken place. At the vigil in 2000, Seidner announced that as a result of many small contributions from the local community, together with donations from Indian organizations and individuals nationally, the tribe had reacquired this land. The Wiyot would return to Tuluwat.
More funds are needed to clear the site of debris left behind by an abandoned shipyard, to erect the new ceremonial building, and perhaps acquire more of Indian Island. The Wiyot Sacred Sites Fund continues to raise money, partly through events such as the third annual benefit concert earlier this month. One source of continuing support has come from the local churches that recognize a special responsibility.
An anonymous letter about the massacre thought to be from Bret Harte was sent in 1860 to the San Francisco Bulletin asserting: "The pulpit is silent, and the preachers say not a word." "They did nothing, they said nothing," said Clay Ford, current pastor of the Arcata First Baptist Church. "We realized that we needed to take responsibility before God and before the Wiyots, for what Christian people did not do, even if we weren't there." After making a formal proclamation of repentence, Ford handed Seidner the first of annual checks, on behalf of the Humboldt Evangelical Alliance.
Another group, the Humboldt Interfaith Council (affiliated with the United Religious Initiative based in the Bay Area) is dedicating its community fund-raising efforts this year to the Wiyot Sacred Sites fund, including the proceeds from its Interreligious Peace Festival, being held on the Humboldt State University campus today.
"We're very passionate about what the Wiyots are trying to do," said Ross Connors-Keith, director of the group. The theme is the sacred arts---"especially dance and music, said Ross Connors-Keith, the group's director, "in keeping with the Wiyots' world renewal ceremony, which involved dance and singing. We thought this would be a wonderful way of bringing the community together."
At the Interreligious Peace Festival on the last Saturday of February this year, the Council will also present the Wiyot with a quilt made of individually purchased and decorated blocks (with proceeds going to the Wiyot fund), assembled by two county quilting guilds. "We selected a fish motif," Connors-Keith said, "because the massacre destroyed the Wiyot culture, and this is a theme that relates to their traditional way of life."
There have been other signs of reconciliation in recent years, as when Cheryl Seidner, about to speak to the Arcata Planning Commission in a public hearing concerning a proposed new center for the United Indian Health Service, spontaneously decided to welcome everyone to Wiyot country. It is an American Indian tradition for the host tribe to give permission to others coming onto their land. "I don't know if anyone has ever welcomed you before, and I want to be the one to do that" she said, and now recalls, "the roar that went up in the building was monumental---I couldn't believe what I had heard...The whole community that was there, it just exploded."
But in other ways, progress has been slow. "It's been a disappointment to me that I haven't seen more of the white population of Eureka interested in the vigil," Marylee Rohde says. "I think the wound is finally being acknowledged, but...Peggy Betsel's theory, and she did her dissertation about this at the theological seminary in Berkeley, is that this community had so much difficulty pulling together partly because this wound wasn't acknowledged. That burying it continued to poison what tries to happen."
"But we have seen participation in the vigil increase over the years from the Wiyots and other Native Americans," Rohde adds. "When I look back at the Civil Rights movement, I think maybe the healing has to happen with the victims first, before the perpetrators can acknowledge their own wounds."
But Marylee Rohde believes there's still progress to be made. "It's been a disappointment to me that I haven't seen more of the white population of Eureka interested in the vigil," she says. "But we have seen participation in the vigil increase over the years from the Wiyots and other Native Americans. When I look back at the Civil Rights movement, I think maybe the healing has to happen with the victims first, before the perpetrators can acknowledge their own wounds."
Return to the Center of the World
"The Wiyot are a people who are beginning to learn about themselves again," Cheryl Seidner says. "Culture gives us our identity. We are not just a name. We have to learn to live our culture, and try to incorporate it in our daily life."
"Cheryl stepped in at a transition point," observed Julian Lang, a language scholar and cultural activist whose ancestry includes Karuk and Wiyot. "Before Cheryl, the effort was to regain the Wiyot identity at the political level, to gain recognition and stabilize. Cheryl was able to begin charting a path of development at the cultural level, to begin the cultural rejuvenation. She's looking forward, representing the idea that there is a traditional ceremonial life ahead for the Wiyot."
Cheryl Seidner has worked full time at Humboldt State University since 1979. She is currently an administrator for the Economic Opportunity Program(though Governor Schwarzenegger has recommended it be abandoned.) Her older sister, Leona Wilkinson, recently retired from the Upward Bound program at HSU. But some fifteen years ago, Cheryl persuaded Leona to begin traditional basket-weaving again, which she had learned as a girl from their grandmother. The beautifully designed and water-tight woven baskets, caps and other items have both practical and sacred purposes essential to Wiyot life. Now she teaches her niece and grand-niece, beginning with the proper gathering of materials.
Basketry was easy compared to reviving the Wiyot language. There are no fluent Wiyot speakers left- only some tapes made in the 1950s. Marnie Atkins, Wiyot Cultural Director, is hoping to attend the "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley for the second time this June, where she will be paired with a linguist to investigate the archives.
Meanwhile, she will be working with these tapes to create usable lessons that can be disseminated on CDs and over the Internet. Her goal is to get the language "into our ears, and into our children's ears."
Julian Lang has also studied these tapes, and combined what he learned with some singing derived from the Karuk culture for some classes he held for interested Wiyot a few years ago. "There was instant acceptance of that, and an incredible aptitude," he says. "People learned very fast. Lynn [Reisling, his partner in the Institute for Native Knowledge] and I were amazed. Within a month it was like all the cultural knowledge had always been there. It was close to the surface of everybody's soul."
Because February 1860 on Indian Island was the last time the Wiyot performed their world renewal ceremony, Seidner acknowledges that they will look to other local tribes for help in reconstructing it. Several have similar ceremonies, and they have traditionally participated in each other's dances. The rest, she says, "will come from our dreams. It's in our DNA."
With what Wiyot words she learned, she created her "coming home" song, which she sang at the end of a PBS airing of a documentary on American Indian sacred sites produced by the San Francisco based Sacred Land Film Project.
Sharing among tribes has already begun at the vigils. At last year's event, as participants gathered around the bonfire in the cold, clear night, Julian Lang looked up and remarked, "in Wiyot the word for 'stars' means 'God's eyes.'" Then he sang a song from the Karuk's world renewal ceremony, the Jump Dance. Joseph Orozco, a member of the Hupa tribe who is the station manager of KIDE-FM, the first tribally owned and operated public radio station in California, sang a mourning song based on the White Deer Dance.
All of this is also preparation for the future, when the vigil will be over and there will be ceremony at the end of February again.
"Cheryl recognizes that land is at the heart of the ceremony," Lang says. "Ceremony needs a place, and there's no more significant place than Tuluwat on Indian Island."
Seidner talks with enthusiasm about members of other tribes "who say, we can't wait to be back on the Island with you...It's getting to the point that they can feel it coming. It's been a real blessing. We realize we are not standing by ourselves.''
The following article appeared on the front of the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook section on Saturday February 28, 2004, the day of the annual vigil marking the massacre of the Wiyot in 1860. I tried for years to get some publication interested in this story. It finally happened in early 2004. Though I didn't know it at the time, negotiations were already underway for the return of some 40 acres to the Wiyot, owned by the City of Eureka. I was later told that the appearance of this story was one factor that helped move these talks to fruition. This article gives more of the history than the above account of the signing celebration, both of the 1860 massacre and the more recent responses.
The Wiyot were not the only Native peoples subjected to violence by non-Natives in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some tribes suffered but survived with more population and land base; some tribes did not survive at all as ongoing cultures. Similarly, the Native peoples were not the only victims of violence and discrimination as a people, or an ethnic group. Humboldt County's treatment of the Chinese is nearly as notorious, and even some European groups, such as Italians, were at some time in some way not treated as full citizens. So we may want to think about these relationships, and the impact of this history on community today.
I've kept the structure of the Chronicle article's edited version, with a few clarifications and additions. The 2004 vigil, which I think was the fourth I'd attended, seemed larger than the year before. I'd guess there were 400 people there, including Paul Gallegos, Humboldt County's District Attorney. It was a dry but not entirely clear night. The event is held whether it’s raining (as it often does) or not, though in 2000 it was so stormy the event had to be moved indoors. That 2000 event is notable for several reasons: it was filmed for the Living Biographies project so a professionally shot tape exists as an archive; Cheryl Seidner announced that the first 1.5 acres of Indian Island had been purchased by the Table Bluff Wiyot Tribe, the culmination of a grassroots fundraising effort that captured the imagination of the community and beyond. And during the course of the vigil, Cheryl sang her "Coming Home Song" for the first time in public. That song has become a cherished part of these and related events ever since. More people heard that song on PBS than likely ever heard a Wiyot song, and probably more North Coast people, Native and Non-Native, have sung it together than any other Native song.
Like 2003, several dark necklaces of honking geese flew over during the course of the evening in 2004. Brian Tripp, a Karuk artist and writer, recited his powerful poem about the massacre, which I heard Julian Lang recite the year before last. The vigil ended with Cheryl Seidner singing her "coming home" song, with a "backup group" of Wiyot children joining in, and then everyone. It was dark by then, and I looked up to see a ring around the moon.
RETURN TO TULUWAT
By William S. Kowinski
Special to the Chronicle
Just before dusk on the last Saturday in February, several hundred people gather each year at the edge of Humboldt Bay in Eureka, across from a small, tear-shaped island half a mile away.
Standing under a deepening blue sky flared with reds at the horizon (as they did last year) or under umbrellas in a North Coast late winter rain (as they did the year before), they will hold candles and share songs and prayers.
The forested land they can see across the bay, still called Indian Island, was the scene of one of the most notorious massacres in California history. At least 60 and perhaps more than 200 women, children and elders of the Wiyot tribe were slaughtered with axes and knives by six white men, known to be landowners and businessmen. This was one of three simultaneous attacks at different locations that sent this small tribe spiraling towards extinction, some 144 years ago.
For a long time, it seemed they were extinct. . As late as 1996, correspondent Fergus Bordewich wrote, "Little is known about the Wiyots." But the Wiyot tribe, denied federal recognition in 1953, regained it in 1990, and moved to a new reservation at Table Bluff, south of Eureka's city center, where some 450 tribal members now live.
"We are still here," said Cheryl Seidner, the elected Wiyot tribal chair since 1996, and a direct descendant of an infant survivor of the Indian Island massacre. "We are still a people. We still cast a shadow, we are not gone."
History Is
By a quirk of the California coastline, Eureka is the westernmost city in the 48 contiguous United States. Through the fate of history, it was one of the last places in America where Indians and Euro-Americans confronted each other. In a sense, it recapitulated and condensed several hundred years of American history in a few decades.
In 1860, California had been a state for only a decade, and the city of Eureka, growing from its docks to push against the redwood forests around it, had been the seat of the newly formed Humboldt County for just four years. The Humboldt Bay communities of Eureka and Arcata began by supplying the gold miners prowling the northeastern mountains, but by 1860 had opened nine timber mills, and were busily engaged in agriculture and ship-building. In 1853 alone, 143 ships left the bay loaded with timber, bound for San Francisco and other ports.
But far northern California had many small tribal groups of Indians living in its forests and mountains, and along its rivers and coast, some for 10,000 years.
The village of Tuluwat on Indian Island was the physical and spiritual center of the Wiyot world, which was comprised of some 20 villages spread over forty square miles, with a population of perhaps 3,000. There is evidence of Wiyot presence on the island for at least 1,000 years. But for many white settlers, Indians were a not-quite-human barrier to progress. Local newspapers supported a policy of extermination.
On the last Saturday in February 1860, the Wiyot completed their week-long world renewal ceremony at Tuluwat, to bring the world back into balance and mark the equivalent of their new year. The small boat arrived late that night, while the Wiyot men were away gathering supplies.
The massacre on Indian Island was not the first in the region, nor would it be the last. It was part of an accelerated pattern of destruction, beginning with random killings and rapes by miners and ranchers, and including kidnapping and legal slavery of mostly women and children under California's 1850 Indian indenture law. Later, Indians were forced into forts and small reservations under concentration camp conditions, and finally, those still living on their lands were subject to organized warfare by local militia while federal troops fought the Civil War. Together with the ravages of disease, this history reduced an estimated 15 local tribes to five.
But Indian Island became the most infamous massacre in northern California probably because of the presence of Bret Harte, who before achieving literary fame, reported for a newspaper in Arcata. His account of the massacre and editorial condemning its cruelty made him a local outcast, but anonymous letters to a San Francisco newspaper rumored to be his work were largely responsible for the national knowledge of this event. Editorial writers in San Francisco and in New York began referring to Eureka as Murderville.
Though the names of those responsible for the Indian Island massacre were apparently widely known, no legal action was ever taken against them. As Eureka became a prosperous commercial center, and Humboldt Bay became the busiest port between Seattle and San Francisco, this part of the past seemed better left forgotten.
But unlike much of California, the Indian populations indigenous to the Humboldt County area remained significant. Besides residents on Yurok, Hupa, Karuk and Wiyot lands and several Rancherias of mixed tribal groups, many enrolled members of indigenous tribes live and work in Humboldt's cities and towns. Though less than 6% of Humboldt's population, Native Americans are its largest minority group. In this large but mostly rural county(some 80% of it forested or devoted to federal and state parks), a bare majority of its population lives in communities surrounding Humboldt Bay, on land that once belonged to the Wiyot.
"The past is not dead," as William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past."
The Wounds of Murderville
Seidner and her sister, Leona Wilkinson, began the vigils in 1992, together with two non-Indians, Peggy Betsels. former pastor of Eureka's United Church of Christ, and Marylee Rohde, former president of the Humboldt County Historical Society.
I've known about the story of the massacre since I was a little girl," Rohde said, "so I hadn't realized how deeply it was buried in Eureka's psyche. Peggy didn't hear of it until her daughter was in school, from the Native American parent of another student. But in talking with Cheryl and Leona, we realized that the story needs to be told. There needs to be healing, but the wound tends to fester if it's been suppressed."
"It's a healing of two communities," said Seidner. "It's not just us or them. We need to come together as a community of learning, to understand each other. That rip in our society needs to be mending, and hopefully we've been trying to do that for the last 13 years."
Community awareness of the Wiyot story increased dramatically in the late 1990s when Seidner began to raise funds for the purchase of the 1.5 acres of Indian Island where the ceremonies had traditionally taken place. At the vigil in 2000, Seidner announced that as a result of many small contributions from the local community, together with donations from Indian organizations and individuals nationally, the tribe had reacquired this land. The Wiyot would return to Tuluwat.
More funds are needed to clear the site of debris left behind by an abandoned shipyard, to erect the new ceremonial building, and perhaps acquire more of Indian Island. The Wiyot Sacred Sites Fund continues to raise money, partly through events such as the third annual benefit concert earlier this month. One source of continuing support has come from the local churches that recognize a special responsibility.
An anonymous letter about the massacre thought to be from Bret Harte was sent in 1860 to the San Francisco Bulletin asserting: "The pulpit is silent, and the preachers say not a word." "They did nothing, they said nothing," said Clay Ford, current pastor of the Arcata First Baptist Church. "We realized that we needed to take responsibility before God and before the Wiyots, for what Christian people did not do, even if we weren't there." After making a formal proclamation of repentence, Ford handed Seidner the first of annual checks, on behalf of the Humboldt Evangelical Alliance.
Another group, the Humboldt Interfaith Council (affiliated with the United Religious Initiative based in the Bay Area) is dedicating its community fund-raising efforts this year to the Wiyot Sacred Sites fund, including the proceeds from its Interreligious Peace Festival, being held on the Humboldt State University campus today.
"We're very passionate about what the Wiyots are trying to do," said Ross Connors-Keith, director of the group. The theme is the sacred arts---"especially dance and music, said Ross Connors-Keith, the group's director, "in keeping with the Wiyots' world renewal ceremony, which involved dance and singing. We thought this would be a wonderful way of bringing the community together."
At the Interreligious Peace Festival on the last Saturday of February this year, the Council will also present the Wiyot with a quilt made of individually purchased and decorated blocks (with proceeds going to the Wiyot fund), assembled by two county quilting guilds. "We selected a fish motif," Connors-Keith said, "because the massacre destroyed the Wiyot culture, and this is a theme that relates to their traditional way of life."
There have been other signs of reconciliation in recent years, as when Cheryl Seidner, about to speak to the Arcata Planning Commission in a public hearing concerning a proposed new center for the United Indian Health Service, spontaneously decided to welcome everyone to Wiyot country. It is an American Indian tradition for the host tribe to give permission to others coming onto their land. "I don't know if anyone has ever welcomed you before, and I want to be the one to do that" she said, and now recalls, "the roar that went up in the building was monumental---I couldn't believe what I had heard...The whole community that was there, it just exploded."
But in other ways, progress has been slow. "It's been a disappointment to me that I haven't seen more of the white population of Eureka interested in the vigil," Marylee Rohde says. "I think the wound is finally being acknowledged, but...Peggy Betsel's theory, and she did her dissertation about this at the theological seminary in Berkeley, is that this community had so much difficulty pulling together partly because this wound wasn't acknowledged. That burying it continued to poison what tries to happen."
"But we have seen participation in the vigil increase over the years from the Wiyots and other Native Americans," Rohde adds. "When I look back at the Civil Rights movement, I think maybe the healing has to happen with the victims first, before the perpetrators can acknowledge their own wounds."
But Marylee Rohde believes there's still progress to be made. "It's been a disappointment to me that I haven't seen more of the white population of Eureka interested in the vigil," she says. "But we have seen participation in the vigil increase over the years from the Wiyots and other Native Americans. When I look back at the Civil Rights movement, I think maybe the healing has to happen with the victims first, before the perpetrators can acknowledge their own wounds."
Return to the Center of the World
"The Wiyot are a people who are beginning to learn about themselves again," Cheryl Seidner says. "Culture gives us our identity. We are not just a name. We have to learn to live our culture, and try to incorporate it in our daily life."
"Cheryl stepped in at a transition point," observed Julian Lang, a language scholar and cultural activist whose ancestry includes Karuk and Wiyot. "Before Cheryl, the effort was to regain the Wiyot identity at the political level, to gain recognition and stabilize. Cheryl was able to begin charting a path of development at the cultural level, to begin the cultural rejuvenation. She's looking forward, representing the idea that there is a traditional ceremonial life ahead for the Wiyot."
Cheryl Seidner has worked full time at Humboldt State University since 1979. She is currently an administrator for the Economic Opportunity Program(though Governor Schwarzenegger has recommended it be abandoned.) Her older sister, Leona Wilkinson, recently retired from the Upward Bound program at HSU. But some fifteen years ago, Cheryl persuaded Leona to begin traditional basket-weaving again, which she had learned as a girl from their grandmother. The beautifully designed and water-tight woven baskets, caps and other items have both practical and sacred purposes essential to Wiyot life. Now she teaches her niece and grand-niece, beginning with the proper gathering of materials.
Basketry was easy compared to reviving the Wiyot language. There are no fluent Wiyot speakers left- only some tapes made in the 1950s. Marnie Atkins, Wiyot Cultural Director, is hoping to attend the "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley for the second time this June, where she will be paired with a linguist to investigate the archives.
Meanwhile, she will be working with these tapes to create usable lessons that can be disseminated on CDs and over the Internet. Her goal is to get the language "into our ears, and into our children's ears."
Julian Lang has also studied these tapes, and combined what he learned with some singing derived from the Karuk culture for some classes he held for interested Wiyot a few years ago. "There was instant acceptance of that, and an incredible aptitude," he says. "People learned very fast. Lynn [Reisling, his partner in the Institute for Native Knowledge] and I were amazed. Within a month it was like all the cultural knowledge had always been there. It was close to the surface of everybody's soul."
Because February 1860 on Indian Island was the last time the Wiyot performed their world renewal ceremony, Seidner acknowledges that they will look to other local tribes for help in reconstructing it. Several have similar ceremonies, and they have traditionally participated in each other's dances. The rest, she says, "will come from our dreams. It's in our DNA."
With what Wiyot words she learned, she created her "coming home" song, which she sang at the end of a PBS airing of a documentary on American Indian sacred sites produced by the San Francisco based Sacred Land Film Project.
Sharing among tribes has already begun at the vigils. At last year's event, as participants gathered around the bonfire in the cold, clear night, Julian Lang looked up and remarked, "in Wiyot the word for 'stars' means 'God's eyes.'" Then he sang a song from the Karuk's world renewal ceremony, the Jump Dance. Joseph Orozco, a member of the Hupa tribe who is the station manager of KIDE-FM, the first tribally owned and operated public radio station in California, sang a mourning song based on the White Deer Dance.
All of this is also preparation for the future, when the vigil will be over and there will be ceremony at the end of February again.
"Cheryl recognizes that land is at the heart of the ceremony," Lang says. "Ceremony needs a place, and there's no more significant place than Tuluwat on Indian Island."
Seidner talks with enthusiasm about members of other tribes "who say, we can't wait to be back on the Island with you...It's getting to the point that they can feel it coming. It's been a real blessing. We realize we are not standing by ourselves.''
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