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Native American Native Heritage Commission brief overview of Native history in California

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California Indian History
OF CALIFORNIA INDIAN HISTORY REGIONAL LIFEWAYS
One manner in which we can seek to understand aboriginal California Indian cultures is to look at the tribes inhabiting similar climatic and ecological zones. What emerges from this approach is a remarkable similarity in material aspects of the many different tribes inhabiting those territories. Generally speaking technologies and materials used to manufacture tools, homes and storage containers show great similarity. Hunting, trapping and fishing technologies also are shared across tribal lines terrain, available water plants and animals affected the density of populations, settlement patterns as each tribe adjusted to its environment.
NORTHWEST
This area would include the Tolowa, Shasta, Karok, Yurok Hupa Whilikut, Chilula, Chimarike and Wiyot tribes. The distinctive northern rainforest environment encouraged these tribes to establish their villages along the many rivers, lagoons and coastal bays that dotted their landscape. While this territory was crisscrossed with thousands of trails, the most efficient form of transportation was the dugout canoe used to travel up and down rivers and cross the wider and deeper ones such as the Klamath. These tribes used the great coast Redwood trees for the manufacture of their boats and houses. Redwoods were cleverly felled by burning at the base and then split with elkhorn wedges. Redwood and sometimes cedar planks were used to construct rectangular gabled homes. Baskets in a variety of designs were manufactured in with the twined technique only. Many of these arts survived into the twentieth century and traditional skills have enjoyed a great renaissance in the past twenty years.

The elaborate ritual life of these tribes featured a World Renewal ceremony held each Fall in the largest villages. Sponsored by the wealthiest men in the communities, the ceremony's purpose was to prevent future natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods or failure of acorn crop or a poor salmon run. Supplication to supernatural spirits. Because such disasters directly threaten the community, great attention to detail and the utmost solemnity accompanied such ceremonies. This and other traditional rituals continue to be practiced, despite the grinding poverty that plagues many of these groups.

These tribes were governed by the most wealthy and powerful lineage leaders. The great emphasis on wealth found in these cultures is reflected in the emphasis on private ownership of food resources such as oak groves and fishing areas.
NORTHEAST
This region included the Modoc, Achumawi, and Atsugewi tribes. The western portion of this territory was rich in acorn and Salmon. Further to the East, the climate changes from mountainous to a high desert type of topography. Here food resources were grass seeds, tuber berries along with rabbit and deer.

These Indians found tule to be a useful source of both food (the rootbulb is consumed) and a convenient material when laced together to form floor mats and structure covering. Volcanic mountains in the Western portion of their territory supplied the valuable trade commodity obsidian. The Social-political organization of these peoples was independent but connected to their neighbors by marriage ties. Following contact, the Achumawi and Atsuguewi suffered a tremendous population decline due to vigilante violence and respiratory diseases. The Modocs spectacular 1872 resistance to removal to the Oregon territory was the last heroic military defense of native sovereignty in 19th century California Indian History.

Some surviving Northeast tribesmen received public land allotments around the turn of the century. The XL Rancheria was established for some of these Indians in 1938. Tragically the surviving Modocs were exiled to either Oregon or Oklahoma.
CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
This vast territory includes: Bear River, Mattale, Lassick, Nogatl, Wintun, Yana, Yahi, Maidu, Wintun, Sinkyone, Wailaki, Kato, Yuki, Pomo, Lake Miwok, Wappo, Coast Miwok, Interior Miwok, Wappo, Coast Miwok, Interior Miwok, Monache, Yokuts, Costanoan, Esselen, Salinan and Tubatulabal tribes.

Vast differences exist between the coastal peoples, nearby mountain range territories, from those living in the vast central valleys and on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Nevertheless, all of these tribes enjoyed an abundance of acorn and salmon that could be readily obtained in the waterways north of Monterey Bay. Deer, elk, antelope and rabbit were available elsewhere in vast quantities.

In this region basketry reached the height of greatest variety. Perhaps the Pomo basket makers created the most elaborate versions of this art. Both coiled and twine type baskets were produced throughout the region. Fortunately, basket making survived the years of suppression of native arts and culture to once again become one of the most important culturally defining element for Indians in this region.

Common in this area was the semi-subterranean roundhouse where elaborate Kuksu dances were held in the past and continue to this day. These rituals assure the renewal of the world's natural foods both plant and animal. Despite differences, between tribes, these rituals share similar purposes.

Like everywhere else, in California, villages were fiercely independent and governed internally. The abundant food supply allowed for the establishment of villages of up to 1000 individuals, including craft specialists who produced specific objects and goods for a living. In smaller communities, each family produced all that was necessary for survival.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Southern California presents a varied and somewhat unique region of the state. Beginning in the north, tribes found in this area are the Chumash, Alliklik, Kitanemuk, Serrano, Gabrielino Luiseno Cahuilla, and the Kumeyaay. The landmass and climate varied considerably from the windswept offshore Channel Islands that were principally inhabited by Chumash speaking peoples. Communication with their mainland neighbors was by large and graceful planked canoes powered by double paddle ores. These vessels were called "Tomols" and manufactured by a secretive guild of craftsmen. They could carry hundreds of pounds of trade goods and up to a dozen passengers. Like their northern neighbors, the Tactic speaking peoples of San Nicholas and Santa Catalina Islands built planked canoes and actively traded rich marine resources with mainland villages and tribes. Shoreline communities enjoyed the rich animal and faunal life of ocean, bays and wetlands environments. Interior tribes like the Serrano, Luiseno, Cahuilla, and Kumeyaay shared an environment rich in Sonoran life zone featuring vast quantities of rabbit, deer and an abundance of acorn, seeds and native grasses. At the higher elevations Desert Bighorn sheep were hunted.

Villages varied in size from poor desert communities with villages of as little as 100 people to the teaming Chumash villages with over a thousand inhabitants. Conical homes of arroweed, tule or croton were common, while whale bone structures could be found on the coast and nearby Channel Islands. Interior groups manufactured clay storage vessels sometimes decorated with paint. Baskets were everywhere manufactured with unique designs. Catalina Island possessed a soapstone or steatite quarry. This unique stone was soft and could easily be carved with cutting tools and shaped into vessels, pipes and cooking slabs.

Each tribe and community had a chieftain, sometimes females, whose duty it was to organize community events and settle conflicts among their followers. This leader was usually assisted by a crier or assistant, Shaman or Indian doctors were known everywhere and greatly respected. The ritual use of the hallucinogen jimsonweed (Datura meteloides) was primarily in male puberty rituals. Like other California Indian communities, society was divided into three classes, the elite, a middle class and finally a less successful lower class. These robust peoples were among the first to encounter the strangers who would change their world forever.
HISTORY
The Spanish entrada into Alta California was the last great expansions of Spain's vastly over extended empire in North America. Massive Indian revolts among the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande in the late 17th century provided the Franciscan padres with an argument to establish missions relatively free from colonial settlers. Thus, California and its Spanish Colonization would be different from earlier efforts to simultaneously introduce missionaries and colonists in their world conquest schemes. Organized by the driven Franciscan administrator Junipero Serra and military authorities under Gaspar de Portola, they journeyed to San Diego in 1769 to establish the first of 21 coastal missions.

Despite romantic portraits of California missions, they were essentially coercive religious, labor camps organized primarily to benefit the colonizers. The overall plan was to first militarily intimidate the local Indians with armed Spanish soldiers who always accompanied the Franciscans in their missionary efforts. At the same time, the newcomers introduced domestic stock animals that gobbled up native foods and undermined the free or "gentile" tribe's efforts to remain economically independent. A well-established pattern of bribes, intimidation and the expected onslaught of European diseases insured experienced missionaries that eventually desperate parents of sick and dying children and many elders would prompt frightened Indian families to seek assistance from the newcomers who seemed to be immune to the horrible diseases that overwhelmed Indians. The missions were authorized by the crown to "convert" the Indians in a ten-year period. Thereafter they were supposed to surrender their control over the mission's livestock, fields, orchards and building to the Indians. But the padres never achieved this goal and the lands and wealth was stolen from the Indians.

Epidemic diseases proved to be the most significant factor in colonial efforts to overcome native resistance. Soon after the arrival of Spanish colonists, new diseases appeared among the tribes in close proximity Spanish missions. Scientific study of demographic trends during this period indicate the Indians of the America's did not possess any natural immunities to introduced European diseases. Maladies such as smallpox, syphilis, diphtheria and even children's' ailments such as chickenpox and measles caused untold suffering and death among Indians near the Spanish centers of population. Even before the outbreak of epidemics, a general population decline was recorded that can be attributed to the unhygienic environment of colonial population centers. A series of murderous epidemic diseases swept over the terrified mission Indian populations. Beginning in 1777 a voracious epidemic likely associated with a water born bacterial infection devastated Santa Clara Valley Costanoan children. Again, children were the primary victims of a second epidemic of pneumonia and diphtheria expended from Monterey to Los Angeles was recorded in 1802. By far the worst of these terrifying epidemics began in 1806 and killed thousands of Indian children and adults. It has been identified as measles and attacked Indian populations from San Francisco to the central coast settlement of Santa Barbara. Sadly, the missionary practice of forcibly separating Indian children from their parents and incarcerating children from the age of six in filthy and disease-ridden gender barracks most likely increased the suffering and death of above mentioned epidemics. Excessive manual labor demands of the missionaries and poor nutrition probably contributed to the Indians inability to resist such infections. Less easily measured damage to mission Indian tribes occurred as they vainly struggled to understand the biological tragedy that was overwhelming them. Faith in their traditional shaman suffered when native efforts were ineffective in stemming the tide of misery, suffering and death that life in the missions resulted in. With monotonous regularity, missionaries and other colonial officials reported upon the massive death and poor health of their Indian laborers. Pioneering demographer Sherburne F. Cook conducted exhaustive studies and concluded that perhaps as much as 60% of the population decline of mission Indians was due to introduced diseases.
NATIVE RESISTANCE
The unrelenting labor demands, forced separation of children from their parents and un-ending physical coercion that characterized the life of Indians under padre's authority resulted in several well documented forms of Indian resistance. Within the missions, the so-called "converts" continued to surreptitiously worship their old deities as well as conduct native dances and rituals in secret. By far the most frequent form of mission Indian resistance was fugativism. While thousands of the 81,586 baptized Indians temporarily fled their missions, more than one out of 24 successfully escaped the plantation like mission labor camps. Many Mission Indians viewed the padres as powerful witches who could only be neutralized by assassination. Consequently, several assassinations occurred. At Mission San Miguel in the year of 1801 three padres were poisoned, one of whom died as a result. Four years later another San Miguel Yokut male attempted to stone a padre to death. In 1804 a San Diego padre was poisoned by his personal cook. Costanoan Indians at Mission Santa Cruz, in 1812, killed a padre for introducing a new instrument of torture which he unwisely announced he planned to use on some luckless neophytes awaiting a beating. Few contemporaries Americans know of the widespread armed revolts precipitated by Mission Indians against colonial authorities. The Kumeyaay of San Diego launched two serious military assaults against the missionaries and their military escorts within five weeks of their arrival in 1769. Desperate to stop an ugly pattern of sexual assaults, the Kumeyaay utterly destroyed Mission San Diego and killed the local padre in 1775. Quechan and Mohave Indians along the Colorado River to the east destroyed two missions, killed four missionaries and numerous other colonists in a spectacular uprising in 1781. This last rebellion permanently denied the only overland route into Alta California from Northern New Spain (Mexico) to Spanish authorities. Military efforts to reopen the road and punish the Indians were met with utter failure. The last great mission Indian revolt occurred in 1824 when disenchanted Chumash Indians violently overthrew mission control at Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez and La Purisima. Santa Barbara was sacked and abandoned while Santa Ynez Chumash torched 3/4 of the buildings before fleeing. Defiant Chumash at La Purisima in fact seized that mission and fought a pitched battle with colonial troops while a significant number of other Chumash escaped deep into the interior of the Southern San Joaquin Valley. After 1810 a growing number of guerrilla bands evolved in the interior when fugitive mission Indians allied with interior tribes and villages. Mounted on horses and using modern weapons, they began raiding mission livestock and fighting colonial military forces.

The impact of the mission system on the many coastal tribes was devastating. Missionaries required tribes to abandon their aboriginal territories and live in filthy, disease ridden and crowded labor camps. Massive herds on introduced stock animals and new seed crops soon crowded out aboriginal game animals and native plants. Feral hogs ate tons of raw acorns, depriving even the non-missionized tribes in the interior of a significant amount of aboriginal protein. Murderous waves of epidemic diseases swept over the terrified Mission Indian tribes resulting in massive suffering and death for thousands of native men, women and children. The short life expectancy of mission Indians prompted missionaries to vigorously pursue runaways and coerce interior tribes into supplying more and more laborers for the padres. Missionary activities therefore thoroughly disrupted not only coastal tribes, but their demand for healthy laborers seriously impacted adjacent interior tribes. Finally, by 1836 the Mexican Republic forcibly stripped the padres of the power to coerce labor from the Indians and the mission rapidly collapsed. About 100,000 or nearly a third of the aboriginal population of California died as a direct consequence of the missions of California.

Despite the devastating population decline suffered by tribes in whose territories missions had been established, many managed to maintain tribal cohesion. After 1800, most mission populations were a hodgepodge of different tribes speaking a multiplicity of languages. Because many Indians refused to learn or feigned ignorance of the Spanish language, missionaries appointed labor overseers from each tribe to direct work crews. Such practical policies kept tribesmen from losing culturally distinct identity. Further evidence of cultural persistence was the practice of tribes maintaining separate housing in multi-tribal Indian villages built next to the missions. Finally, many former mission Indians continued to speak their native languages and provide researchers with detailed ethnographic and linguistic data well into the 20th century.
INDIANS AND THE MEXICAN REPUBLIC
In 1823 the Spanish Flag was replaced by that of the Mexican Republic. Little immediate change in personal or Indian policy occurred. However, the independence government was decidedly anti-clerical and the growing body of colonial leaders deeply resented the monopoly of Indian lands and the unpaid Indian labor enjoyed by the Franciscans. While no land grants to the colonists had occurred under Spanish rule, some 25 grazing permits or concessions had been issued to colonial citizens. This was the beginning of the dispossession of tribal lands by colonial authorities. The vast plantation like missions claimed about 1/6 of the present territory of the state. But legal title to these lands were assigned to the Spanish crown. The missions were only supposed to last 10 years, after which the developed estates were to be distributed to surviving mission Indians. It was assumed that the Indians would evolve into hardworking, tax paying citizens of Mexico. But the missionaries kept coming up with excuses why they should not surrender the rich pastoral and agrarian empire they had erected with the lands, resources and hard labor of mission Indians. The Mexican Republic's 1824 constitution declared Indians to be citizens with rights to both vote and hold public office. Despite this liberal declaration, Indians throughout the republic continued to be treated as slaves.
COLLAPSE OF THE MISSION SYSTEM
In actual practice, the new government gave 51 land grants to its colonial citizens between 1824 and 1834. These lands actually belonged to various tribes then incarcerated in nearby missions. These actions just increased the lust for more Indian lands by a growing body of colonial ranchers. There followed a growing chorus of demands that the missionaries surrender their monopoly on Indian labor and "free" the Indians. The sincerity those sentiments should be seriously doubted. The power of this class prevailed and between 1834-36 the government revoked the power of the Franciscans to extract labor from the Indians and inaugurated a plan to distribute mission lands. Venal public officials in charge of the distribution granted the most valuable lands to themselves and their relatives. The secularization processes, it was called, was so restrictive that few ex-mission Indians were eligible for the distributed lands. More significant still, the majority of surviving mission Indians were not native to the areas of coastal missions. Most neophytes at this time had been forced to relocate from their tribal domains and promptly returned to them following their liberation.

Many of these returned exiles were faced with difficult tasks of reconstructing their decimated communities in the wake of crippling population declines. Furthermore, their tribal lands had become transformed by the introduction of vast herds of horses, cattle, sheep, goats and hogs that destroyed the native flora, the primary source of native diet. Wild game animals were likewise driven off by these new animals. What developed from this new condition was the emergence of guerrilla Indian bands made-up of former fugitive mission Indians and interior tribesmen from villages devastated by official and unofficial Mexican paramilitary attacks and slave hunting raids. Eventually a significant number of these interior groups joined together to form new conglomerate tribes. These innovative and resilient tribes quickly converted the anti-mission activities of their members into systematic efforts to re-assert their sovereignty by widespread and highly organized campaigns against Mexican ranchers and government authority in general.

Vastly overestimating their power, Mexican authorities authorized an additional 762 land grants by 1847. In reality, the effectiveness of Indian stock raiders increased dramatically when American and Canadian fur trappers provided a lucrative market for purloined horses by the mid 1830's. Interior Mexican ranches were increasingly abandoned in the face of economic ruin by native stock raiding activities. Even Johann A. Sutter was reduced to begging the Mexican government to buy his fort following a mauling at the hands of Miwok Indians near the Calaveras in June of 1846.

Despite these successes, a series of murderous epidemics in the twilight years of the Mexican era severely reduced the interior population. For instance, in 1833 an American party of fur trappers introduced a murderous scourge of malaria into the Sacramento and San Joaquin River drainages. While traversing the epicenter of the plague, J. J. Warner reported,
"From the head of the Sacramento to the great bend and slough of the San Joaquin we did not see more than six or eight live Indians; while large numbers of their skulls and dead bodies were seen under almost every shade tree near the water, where the uninhabited and deserted villages had been converted into graveyards."
In this tragedy, more than 20,000 Central Valley Miwok, Yokuts, Wintun, and Maidu Indians perished. A new outbreak of small pox devastated Coast Miwok, Pomo, Wappo, and Wintun tribes. Approximately 2000 died in this 1837 epidemic originating from Fort Ross. By 1840 these and other murderous maladies had so thoroughly saturated the Indian population of Mexican California that diseases became endemic.

Mexican forced labor and violence at the hands of the militia and paramilitary slave hunting parties account for a significant amount of the population decline suffered by California Indians. On the eve of the American take-over the aboriginal population of approximately 310,000 had been reduced to about 150,000. This gut wrenching 50% decline had occurred in just 77 years. The implications for survivors is largely a mute tale of suffering and grieving over the loss of a stunning number of children, parents and elders. What came next was worse still.
THE AMERICAN INVASION
Alta California the poorly managed and badly neglected stepchild of Mexico was rapidly overwhelmed by a combination of aggressive Indian raids and the arrival of United States Army, Navy and Marine forces in the summer of 1846. Despite a seemingly irrational murderous attack on Sacramento River Maidu Indian villages by U.S. Army forces under the command of John C. Fremont, the majority of California Indians involved in that struggle aided the Americans as scouts, warrior-soldiers and wranglers.

When Mexican resistance collapsed in January of 1847, thereafter Indian Affairs was administered by a succession of military governors. Stock raiding Indians in the interior recommenced their depredations when they learned Indian slavers such as Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo and Johann A. Sutter had been appointed as Indian sub-agents. Military government's policy was to suppress stock raiding and furthermore imposed draconian restrictions on the free movement of Indians and required Indians to carry certificates of employment.
THE GOLD RUSH
The discovery of gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada at a sawmill construction site developed by Indian Agent Johann Sutter, ushered in one of the darkest episodes of dispossession widespread sexual assault and mass murder against the native people of California. Sutter immediately negotiated a treaty with the chief of the Coloma Nisenan Tribe which would have given a three-year lease to lands surrounding the gold discovery site. During those negotiations, the chief prophetically warned Sutter that the yellow metal he so eagerly sought was, "very bad medicine. It belonged to a demon who devoured all who searched for it". Eventually the military governor refused to endorse Sutter's self-serving actions.

Within a year a hoard of 100,000 adventurers from all over the world descended upon the native peoples of California with catastrophic results. The entire state was scoured by gold seekers. Thinly spread government officials were overwhelmed by this unprecedented deluge of immigrants and all effective authority collapsed. Military authorities could not prevent widespread desertion of soldiers and chaos reigned.

A virtual reign of terror enveloped tribesmen the mining districts. Wanton killings and violence against Indians resisting miners developed into a deadly pattern. An Oustemah Nisenan female named Betsy later recalled,
"A life of ease and peace was interrupted when I was a little girl by the arrival of the whitemen. Each day the population increased and the Indians feared the invaders and great consternation prevailed .... as gold excitement advanced, we were moved again and again, each time in haste. Indian children.... when taken into town would blacken their faces with dirt so the newcomers would not steal them...."
Numerous vigilante type paramilitary troops were established whose principal occupation seems to have been to kill Indians and kidnap their children. Groups such as the Humboldt Home Guard, the Eel River Minutemen and the Placer Blades among others terrorized local Indians and caused the premier 19th century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft to describe them as follows.
"The California valley cannot grace her annals with a single Indian war bordering on respectability. It can, however, boast a hundred or two of as brutal butchering, on the part of our honest miners and brave pioneers, as any area of equal extent in our republic......"
The handiwork of these well-armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in the first two years of the gold rush. A staggering loss of two thirds of the population. Nothing in American Indian history is even remotely comparable to this massive orgy of theft and mass murder. Stunned survivors now perhaps numbering fewer than 70,000 teetered near the brink of total annihilation.

The newcomers sometimes met organized Indian resistance. In 1850 a Cupeno chief named Antonio Garra Sr. organized local Southern California Indians to resist an illegal tax imposed upon San Diego Indians by the county sheriff. Sporadic attacks upon both Americans and some Mexicans by Garra's followers resulted in a massive crackdown on Indian communities. Soon a rival Cahuilla chief captured Garra and turned him over to the authorities who promptly hung him and several of his followers. In 1851 several mountain Miwok tribes offered armed resistance to the hoard of miners overrunning their territory. When one tribe destroyed a trading-post owned by an American who kept at least 12 Indian "wives" a paramilitary militia was formed and aggressively attacked Indians throughout the southern mines area. Eventually this group calling itself the "Mariposa Battalion" breached the unknown granite fortress of the valley of Yosemite. A ruthless campaign against the Yosemite Indians resulted in the capture of their Chief Teneya and a temporary exile to the San Joaquin River "Indian Farm".

In reality, these Indian campaigns were motivated by rapacious greed of the miners to gain Indian lands and provide political capital for ambitious office seekers. Sadly, both the state and federal government eventually reimbursed the vast majority of these paramilitary forays for expenses incurred. This is indeed a dreary story of subsidized murder on a scale unequaled in all of this country's Indian wars.
TREATY MAKING AND TREATY REJECTION
In 1849 Washington sent two special emissaries to California to report on the nature of Mexico's recognition of Indian land titles in California. Neither spoke to a single Indian and eventually produced an ambiguous and inaccurate report to the great disadvantage of the Indians. Upon this misinformation, and in an attempt to stem the unprecedented chaos and mass murder of the gold miner's confrontation with the California Indians, Congress authorized three federal officials to make treaties with the California Indians. Their purpose was to extinguish Indian land titles and provide the Indians with territories that would be protected from encroachment by non-Indians. They were given just $25,000 to accomplish this monumental task. Soon after their arrival in San Francisco in January of 1851, the enormous size of territory prompted the commissioners to split up and negotiate treaties on their own. The reports and correspondence of the treaty commissioners clearly demonstrate that the suspicious and reluctant Indians who could be persuaded to attend the treaty meetings were only vaguely aware of its purpose. This can be attributed to the frequent problems of translators who often had to translate several Indian dialects into Spanish and again into English. Few if any of the Indians could understand English. The random manner in which the commissioners organized the meetings resulted in the majority of tribes not participating. Despite these crippling drawbacks, the treaty process proceeded until January 5th of 1852. In all, eighteen treaties were negotiated. The treaties agreed to set aside certain tracts of land for the signatory tribes. They additionally promised the assistance of farmers, school teachers, blacksmiths, stock animals, seeds and agricultural equipment, cloth and much more. In return, the signatory tribes promised to forever quitclaim to the United States their lands. Just what specific lands being surrendered were not specified. Anthropologists in the 20th century could only identify 67 tribes, 45 village names and 14 alternative spellings of tribal names. Eighteen groups were unidentifiable. Despite the obvious fact that not all California Indian tribes had been consulted or contacted they too would be bound by the negotiations. Nevertheless, the federal government promised to reserve 7,466,000 acres of land to the dispossessed Indians,

An immediate outcry from an enraged public followed the completion of the commissioner's task. It was revealed that the commissioners had overspent their budget by a half a million dollars in the incredibly inflated economy of gold rush California. Local newspapers orchestrated an abusive campaign and local politicians echoed the fears of their compassionate electorate that the treaty reserves might contain something valuable, like gold. Most Americans simply wanted the Indians removed to some other territory or state. California's newly elected state senators provided the final blow. On July 8, 1852, the Senate in executive session refused to ratify the treaties. They were filed with an injunction of secrecy that was finally removed in 1905!

Meanwhile, Congress had created a commission to validate land tittles in California. The commission was required by law to both inform the Indians that it would be necessary to file claims for their lands and report upon the nature of these claims. Because no one bothered to inform the Indians of these requirements, no claims were submitted. Through this neat trick, the federal government "legally" avoided the normally lengthy and duplicitous negotiations over land sessions.

The practical result was the complete dispossession of the Indians in the eyes of the government. Despite this chicanery, several tribes would violently and later legally contest these frauds to defend their territory, homes and families.

From the native viewpoint, signatories of the treaties had agreed to move to specific locations promised in the treaties. Yet such attempts often met with violent attacks by miners and others opposed to the very existence of Indians. Non-treaty groups simply endured the madness and race hatred of those waging a merciless war against them. Most tribes did their best to withdraw from all contact with the mayhem overwhelming them.
A HARSH STATE GOVERNMENT
The formation of the state government proved to be an official instrument of the oppressive mentality of the miner's militia. In Governor McDougall first address to the legislature he promised, "a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct......." Despite guarantees in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Indians were denied state citizenship, voting rights and more important still, the right to testify in court. These acts effectively removed all legal redress for native peoples and left them to the mercy of anyone who chose to sexual assault, kidnap even murder them. Despite entering the union as a free state in 1850, the California legislature rapidly enacted a series of laws legalizing Indian slavery. One of the laws sanctioned an indenture system similar to Mexican peonage in widespread practice throughout California prior to 1850. All levels of state, county and local governments participated in this ugly practice that evolved into a heartless policy of killing Indian parents and kidnapping and indenturing the victim's children. Indian youth could be enslaved by the cruel act to the age of 30 for males and 25 for females. This barbarous law was finally repealed four years after President Lincoln's emancipation proclamation in 1863.

The federal government finally decided to establish an Indian policy in California in 1854 when Edward F. Beale was appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California. Beale quickly established a prototype Indian preserve within the boundaries of the Army's military reserve in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, called Fort Tejon. The site was chosen because of the continuing problem of local horse raiding by Southern California Indians. Yokut, Gabrielino and Kitanemuk tribesmen were gathered together on this barren 50,000-acre parcel call San Sebastian. Beale's instruction from Washington authorized him to establish four additional reserves with a $250,000 budget. Apparently, Beale squandered his entire allocation on less than 200 Indians at San Sebastian. This action becomes comprehensible only when it is known that within a decade, Beale wound up owning much of that short-lived reserve. His behavior in office set the standard for decades of widespread corruption and incompetence that distinguishes the Bureau of Indian Affairs in California and elsewhere. Following Beale's removal from office in 1856, Col. T.J. Henely established Indian Reserves on the Klamath River, Nome Lackee near Colusa, Nome Cult (Round Valley) and the Mendocino Reserve at the mouth of the Noyo River on the coast. The latter two were both located in Mendocino County.

These hastily organized communities provided little in the way of support or even minimal refuge for native peoples cajoled to move there. These unsurveyed reserves lacked game, suitable agricultural lands and water. They soon became overrun with white squatters who systematically corrupted the Indians and introduced an epidemic of venereal diseases. More unsatisfactory still, were Indian Farms located on lands rented from newcomers now holding legal title to said lands. The Fresno and Kings River Indian Farms were established in the south-eastern San Joaquin Valley along the rivers of the same name. Federal records clearly show these farms provided only a handful of Indians homes, the majority completely lacked cultivation, but they did provide paychecks for the superintendent's friends and political cronies. The majority of these early reserves and Indian Farms were abandoned in the 1860's due to the state's Indian slavery codes that allowed all able-bodied males, females and even children to be indentured to white citizens. A great many reservation residents could not participate in the agricultural and ranching programs because their labor "belonged" to private state citizens. Frequently, federal and Indian agents themselves indentured his wards for personal enrichment. Government records for this period show that fewer than 3000 of the less than 70,000 surviving California Indians received recognition let alone provisions for reservations. South of the Tehachapi Mountains California Indians remained totally ignored by Washington. So what were the vast majority of Indians doing during this period?
LATE 19TH CENTURY ADAPTATION AND RESISTANCE
The vast majority of California Indians struggled to survive without government aid or recognition. Many on the verge of actual starvation dispersed throughout their territories and sought to support themselves through agriculture and ranch labor for the new "owners" of California. This was a traditional pattern of behavior when drought and other natural catastrophes struck. Deprived of land and their life sustaining resources, they were left with no other options. With a few notable exceptions, the mass murder of the Gold Rush era diminished, as Indian victims became scarce and survivors learned to avoid Americans whenever possible. The great hardships of this adaptation were made bearable with the development of a messianic cult movement called the Ghost Dance of 1870. In part triggered by the introduction of Christian missionary activities, this new religious movement was pan-tribal in nature and obviously a response to the massive population decline. The movement promised the return of dead relatives and the disappearance of the oppressors. It was most desperately embraced by those tribes who had most recently suffered great population declines. Despite lasting only a few years, it was fundamental in revitalizing intra-tribal religious integration. In short, it provided hope for the nearly hopeless situation Indian found themselves confronted with.

The last organized violent reaction to dispossession and federal Indian policy erupted between 1860-1872. The first was a series of Indian wars in Northwestern California. Here Yurok, Karok, Hupa and other tribes fought the increasingly paranoid and aggressive Americans who routinely murdered them, stole their children and burned their villages. Jack Norton, a Hupa historian characterized the situation as a "deranged frontier". Attempts to disarm Indians and continued kidnapping for sexual slavery quickly led to violent resistance. In 1858, the militia established a fort in the Hupa Valley to make war on the Wilkut and Chilula tribes. Many members of those tribes had been captured and deported to the Mendocino Reservation. Frustrated by the stiff resistance of interior groups, the militia found it easier to murder nearby inoffensive peaceful and non-hostile Indians. The notorious Indian Island massacre in Humboldt Bay was the bitter fruit of that race hatred. Eventually some Hupa Indians agreed to assist the soldiers in hunting their hostile neighbors. Despite this defection, several bands of Hupa joined the hostiles and effectively resisted until 1864 when they surrendered. This led to the establishment of the Hupa Valley Reservation in August of 1864.

Because both state and federal authorities seriously underestimated the number of surviving California Indians, plans to remove all Indians to the handful of reservations already established, proved impractical. Several attempts to place multiple tribes on single reservations frequently resulted in violence, mass murder and war. The Modoc war of 1872 was caused by such a policy that insisted the Modocs be deported out of California to the Klamath Reservation in Oregon. Driven twice from that reserve, a third attempt to deport the Modocs back to Klamath resulted in a stunning war in 1872. The Indian service removed the Konkow Indians of Chico and the Atsugewi of Shasta County to the Round Valley Reservation in 1862. Squatters overrunning the Reservation descended upon these unfortunate tribesmen and murdered 45 of them. The mob justified its actions by claiming the Indians might steal food from the squatters. Survivors fled in terror back to Chico, only to be again removed to Round Valley sometime afterwards. The BIA showed little interest in assisting such tribes. Those lucky enough to have reservations established in the aboriginal territories were understandably reluctant to share the scant advantages they enjoyed with newly arrived emigre tribes. Also true was the fact that no tribes desired to be relocated outside of their aboriginal territories. After all, each tribe's creation story emphasized the sacred nature of its own particular landscape. Tradition emphasized territorially and to stray from it required one to steal food resources from neighboring tribes. Non-Indians could not fathom the intensity and depth of the Indians spiritual attachment to their territories.

A steady population decline accompanied by widespread reports of destitution and hunger haunted those tribes without reserved lands. Despite hardship encountered, survival demanded innovation and adaptation. Being driven to the edge of extinction, Indians demonstrated again and again a strong will to survive. That determination notwithstanding, the widespread kidnapping, slavery and violence took a frightful toll on tribesmen and their cultures. Leadership lineages became scattered and displaced. Many ceremonies could no longer be held because access to sacred places was now denied. Cultural mandates to feed ceremonial guests could no longer be achieved by those who otherwise were able to hold public rituals. Finally, Christian missionaries gained control at many reservations under President Grant's Peace Policy of 1869. These folks were determined to destroy Indian culture and aboriginal belief systems that undergirded it.

The California superintendency attracted a succession of special investigators caused by constant reports of corruption that reached Washington. Special reports conducted in 1858, 1867 and 1883 clearly and thoroughly document the corruption and inefficiency plaguing government programs for Indians. President Grant's Peace Policy of 1869 inaugurated an era of acculturation under duress. Policy makers in the government declared the only path of salvation for surviving Indians would be Christianization, along with the adaptation of private ownership of' property. Once these twin goals were realized, Indians would be rewarded with citizenship and take their place among the lower classes with other non-whites in American society. Reservation agents insisted their residents join churches and cease practicing the old ways. The General Allotment Act of 1887 forcibly divided reservation tribal lands, doling out small parcels to individual Indians and their families. If the allotee built a house, engaged in farming or ranching, sent his children to government Indian schools and renounced his tribal allegiance and otherwise pleased the agent, he would (after 25 years) receive title to his land and citizenship. Unlike tribal lands, these parcels would become taxable. The program was inaugurated in California in 1893. By 1930 approximately 2,300 allotments had been carved out of the tiny communal tribal reservation lands. Traditional Indians opposed the detribalizing goals of allotment. The uneven and unequal distribution of allotments was used by Indian agents to keep tribal populations divided and politically impotent. Nevertheless, considerable tribal resistance and pan-tribal organizing developed in opposition to allotment. The program ground to a halt in 1930 due to Indian opposition and failure of BIA to complete the necessary paperwork. The law was repealed in 1934. Thousands of acres of California Indian lands and millions of acres nationally were lost to this destructive and ill-conceived policy.
PAN-INDIAN GROUPS, LANDLESS INDIANS AND RANCHERIAS
Several hundred individual land allotments were distributed to California Indians from public lands found principally in northern California. Often times these were isolated havens from hostile neighbors. Many were assigned to clusters of individuals who were related by kinship and are likely core tribal members who otherwise hand no lands. The tribal communities often held traditional ceremonies and participated in those of their more fortunate reservation Indians.

Southern California Indians were finally provided with recognition when several parcels of their former tribal domains were set aside by executive order beginning in 1873 with the establishment of the Tule River Indian Reservation. Fourteen Southern California Indian Reservations were set aside by executive orders beginning in 1891 and amended in 1898. Unfortunately, Indians in both Orange and Los Angeles counties were excluded from land distributions due in part to the value of coastal real estate. Nevertheless, small tribes from this area participated in pan-Indian organizations.

Reduced to severe destitution the majority of Indians struggled to support their families as landless laborers. Only 6,536 Indians were recognized and living on reservations about the turn of the century. Every Indian who survived to see the dawn of the 20th century had witnessed great suffering and the irreplaceable loss of numerous grandparents, mothers, fathers and children. Some lineages disappeared altogether. The nadir had been reached. Demographer S.F, Cook determined the California Indian population declined to fewer than 16,000 individuals in 1900. This figure represents a gut wrenching descent from over 300,000 into a vortex of massive death in just 131 years of colonization! These staggering losses prompted non-Indians of good will to assist Indian tribes in efforts to secure lands for the still numerous landless Indians.

Several Indian reform groups blossomed before and after the turn of the century. One of their earliest successes was a long legal effort to prevent the Cupa Indians from being dispossessed of their ancestral village of Warner's Hot Springs. While losing the legal case Cupa Indians and their allies managed to secure lands on the nearby Pala Indian Reservation in San Diego County. More important for the majority of landless Indians were the efforts of the Northern California Indian Association that goaded the BIA into enumerating landless Indians in 1905. The result of the survey and political pressure from Indians and their friends resulted in federal actions creating 36 new reservations and Rancherias in 16 Northern California counties. Rancherias were very small parcels of land aimed at provided homesites only for small bands of landless Indians. They are all located in Northern California. Unfortunately, the BIA's investigator failed to visit 12 other counties, thus ignoring the luckless Indians in those areas. Between 1933 and 1941 Congress authorized the enlargement of several Southern California reservations by 6492 acres. No rancherias or homesites were made available for landless Southern California Indians.

Important developments occurred as a result of political activism on the part of both tribes and pan-Indian organizations from 1921 to the present. Beginning with the early efforts of the Indian Board of Cooperation, numerous California Indians self-help organizations and tribes pushed for a lawsuit over the failure of the United States to compensate the Indians of California for the loss of their aboriginal lands. Congress relented and passed the Jurisdictional Act of 1928. This legislation allowed the Indians to sue the federal government and use the state Attorney general's office to represent them. Lacking control of their legal representative a controversial settlement was finally achieved in 1944. $17,053,941.98 was offered for the failure of the government to deliver the 18 reservations promised in treaty negotiations of 1851-2. Incredibly, the government decided to deduct all of its "costs" of providing reservations, supplies and even the salaries of corrupt and do-nothing Indians agents native peoples had endured for nearly a century. After an-other long battle, little more than 5 million dollars were finally distributed on a per-capita basis to 36,095 California Indians in 1951. A paltry $150. was distributed to surviving Indians. This parsimonious and unfair settlement prompted California Indians to seek further legal redress.

The efforts of California Indians to sue the federal government under the Jurisdictional Act of 1928 resulted in the creation of the federal Indian Claims Commission in 1946. This federal body allowed Indian groups to press for compensation to tribes over the theft of their lands in the 19th century. By August of 1951, twenty-three separate petitions had been filed by attorneys on behalf of tribes in California. After 20 years of tortuous maneuvering all separate claims were consolidated into a single case. A compromise settlement of $29,100,000 was offered for 64,425,000 acres of acres of tribal territory. After deduction of attorney's fees ($12,609,000) and the addition of interest and about half a million left over from the first settlement the payment worked out to an offer of 47 cents per acre! The purchase of public domain lands in California in 1850 was never less than $1.50 per acre. This outrageous offer offended many Indians who had pinned their hopes on a settlement that would provide seed money for desperately needed economic development. Despite bitter opposition by many of the original claimants, the federal government prepared a census of eligible Indians in preparation for an anticipated judgment. The BIA organized a series of meetings to convince the litigants to accept the settlement. Eventually a majority of the groups agreed, except the Pit River tribe. They offered strong, vociferous and persistent opposition. However, through questionable balloting, the government declared they had accepted the offer in 1964. Nearly 65,000 California Indians were deemed eligible to share in the settlement. Payments of little more than $600 per person was distributed in 1968. What is of great significance here is the fact that the entire claims activities were conducted outside of normal court proceedings protected by the constitution. Thus, Indians are the only class of citizens in the United States who are denied constitutional protection of their lands by extra-constitutional means.
TERMINATION
During the divisive and controversial land claims battle the BIA began to submit plans to end all services to California Indians and transfer all authority over federal Indian reservations to the State. This new policy, called Termination, was put into motion in 1951. Special agents were sent to prepare for the end of federal jurisdiction over tribal lands. At first the state was enthusiastic over the prospect of increasing its tax base with the anticipation of the privatization of federal trust properties. Termination became law in California under authority of the Rancheria Act of 1958. This statute allowed tribes to vote on a plan to divide communal tribal property into parcels to be distributed to its members. Distributees would receive title to their lands and be free to sell it and be obliged to pay property tax from that time forward. The BIA targeted the smallest, least organized and most isolated tribes to persuade them to accept this plan for cultural and tribal suicide. Government personnel promised acceptance would result in freedom and economic independence. They further made elaborate promises to upgrade squalid housing, pave roads, build bridges, construct water projects and even provide college scholarships in return for a vote to terminate. Between 1958 and 1970 twenty-three rancherias and reservations were terminated. Chronically high unemployment rates, low educational achievement and sometimes emergency medical needs soon forced many to make loans on, or sell their lands. Worse still, many BIA services like health, education were abruptly ended for all Indians in the state. Like the earlier allotment policy, the implementation of termination set in motion a series of events that ultimately divested small tribes of 10,037 acres of land, disrupted tribal institutions and traditions and ultimately left these tribes more desperate, and impoverished than ever. Termination failed miserably to improve the socioeconomic or political power of the California Indians.

The occupation of Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay, by nearly 100 American Indian College students in the fall of 1969 ushered in a new era of Indian affairs. A new generation of young, energetic and highly educated California Indians emerged during this period. Highly skeptical of the government they were committed to protecting tribal sovereignty. More important still, they found great value in tribal traditions. They encouraged traditional ceremonies, language retention and sought to remove impediments to the exercise of tribal religious practices. These developments paralleled a new generation of tribal leaders who would dynamically defend tribal rights. These activities made three things apparent; many California Indians were still landless, terminated tribes had been swindled, and some tribes had never been recognized by the federal government. However, reservation, landless and unrecognized tribesmen all shared lives of desperate poverty and little hope for employment or economic development.

In recognition of the growing sophistication of California Indians, the state legislature created the, Native American Heritage Commission in 1978. This all Indian commission works as a liaison between state, federal and tribal governments. It has been successful in protecting Indian burials, sacred places and providing access to government lands to harvest native plants for ceremonial practices and basketmaking.

To date 17 rancherias and reservations have reversed the disastrous termination process. Other tribes are currently pursuing legal avenues to reverse their termination status. Unrecognized tribes have vigorously pursued acknowledgment processes whose requirements are so impossibly demanding that many large tribes in Arizona and New Mexico could not today meet such standards of cultural continuity. Nevertheless, the Acagchemem of San Juan Capistrano the Muwekma of the San Francisco Bay area, and the Coast Miwok of Marin County are close to federal recognition and acquiring a trust land base.

Government developed economic development plans have a history of nearly a century of total failure. Currently more than thirty reservations and rancherias have established gaming businesses on their lands. Some are highly successful while other are not. Some public opposition to these activities seems to center around the fear that Indians may be cheated by their business partners. Such fears smack of paternalism and ignore the reality that few if any valuable resources can be found on Indian lands. Few private investors have come forward to work with Indian tribes outside of the gaming industry. With few choices, wise reservation leadership view gaming as an interim step toward greater economic independence. The Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians are the best example of how that dream can be achieved.

The amazing adaptive capabilities of California Indians has demonstrated the resiliency and genius of these much misunderstood and hardworking tribes can achieve under the most unfavorable of circumstances. We know, and our friends and counter parts in local and national governmental agencies must understand that only through the exercise of our tribal sovereignty can we successfully take our rightful place in our prosperous and free nation. We enter the next century filled with optimism.

Professor Edward D. Castillo
Cahuilia-Luiseno

(Permission to reproduce without written consent of the author is forbidden)

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OF CALIFORNIA INDIAN HISTORY REGIONAL LIFEWAYS One manner in which we can seek to understand aboriginal California Indian cultures is to look at the tribes inhabiting similar climatic and ecological zones. What emerges from this approach is a remarkable similarity in material aspects of the many different tribes inhabiting those territories.

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This is a Native owned website which provides insight on the history of Owens Valley and the importance of the its environment to the community

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The Nüümü (Owens Valley Paiute) are peoples whose ways of being and knowing are intricately and intimately tied to water (paya). For millennia, we have lived and thrived in Payahuunadü, 'the land of flowing water' (the Owens Valley), spreading this crucial resource across the land in order to sustain the plants and animals that sustain us in return.

Irrigation, utilizing water from the streams that descend from the Sierra Nevada, was practiced in Payahuunadü for millennia prior to contact with white settlers. We stewarded the valley's resources and carefully harvested its seed concentrations in order to sustain the land while living upon it. This was a longstanding, ecologically sustainable means of agricultural production.

Payahuunadü was a garden of taboose and nahativa, carefully cared for and worked upon for thousands of years. It nurtured life for countless generations. There were no fences in the valley, no collective sense of 'ours' or 'yours.' These were, in some ways, unfamiliar concepts to the Nüümü.

The delicate balance that we maintained in our use of water and land was interrupted when settlers came into the valley in the 19 th century. Settlers did not recognize the form of agriculture practiced by our ancestors and only saw land available for the taking. In 1870, an article in the Inyo Independent noted the fertile nature of the soil in the valley (nourished by Paiute irrigation) and claimed that settlers would quickly transform it into "luxuriant gardens, orchards, and green fields."

Settlers were quick to harness the existing networks of irrigation for their canal infrastructure and, within 50 years of contact with settlers, the distribution of water across Payahuunadü had changed forever. Where the Nüümü required and had been utilizing the full extent of Payahuunadü in their traditional lifestyle, ranchers saw only under-utilization and opportunity, which lead over time to monocrop agriculture, seepage of water into otherwise un-irrigated plots, the draining of marshy areas, pollution of fresh water from stock runoff, the gradual recession of Owens Lake, and the eventual destruction of native seed supplies and the practice of our traditional way of life.

The City of Los Angeles would soon repeat the same pattern of displacement, overtaking existing water uses in order to provide for the City's growing population. This time, at the start of the 20 th century, it was the ranchers and settlers of the valley who were displaced as well as the Nüümü, who lost their employment on the ranches. The City's purchase of land and water rights throughout the valley allowed them to remove mass amounts of water from the landscape. By the end of the 1920s, they owned 95% of the private land and water rights in the valley. Soon, surface water alone was not enough to sustain the booming city of Los Angeles, and so the City also began groundwater pumping.

Next, they turned to the lands held in trust for the Paiute by the federal government. Between 1920 and 1930, as agricultural activities decreased due to land sales, many Nüümü who had turned to wage labor as a means of survival were left without work. Living conditions were quickly becoming intolerable. The City of Los Angeles issued multiple reports between 1930 and 1936 regarding the "Indian problem" in the Owens Valley, some recommending relocation outside the valley. Eventually, the City of Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power recommended relocation to three new homesites within the valley via a land exchange with the federal government.

A variety of factors influenced Los Angeles' interest in the land exchange of 1937, but one of the primary factors was the City's observation that all water expended upon agriculture limited water available for their export. It was thus in the City of Los Angeles' interest to consolidate the Owens Valley Paiute on three reservations (Bishop, Big Pine, and Lone Pine) and exchange its lands with those held by the federal government. This would help to further limit the amount of water that was conveyed in the valley and thus help to minimize loss from irrigation.

Not transferred in the land exchange were the Federal Reserved Indian Water Rights associated with the original 2,913.5 acres of land held in trust for the Owens Valley Paiute Indians, who after the land exchange occupied a total landbase of only 1,391.48 acres. The water the Tribes are currently receiving and using for irrigation is only a contractual water right guaranteeing delivery by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The Federal Reserved Indian Water Rights remain unresolved and are the basis for current negotiations.

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THE LAND OF FLOWING WATER The Nüümü (Owens Valley Paiute) are peoples whose ways of being and knowing are intricately and intimately tied to water (paya). For millennia, we have lived and thrived in Payahuunadü, 'the land of flowing water' (the Owens Valley), spreading this crucial

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Los Angeles Times article regarding a current nomination for for listing the dried owens lake in the California Register of Historical Resources and in the National Register of Historic Places.

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Spirits live here. That's what Paiute and Shoshone tribal members say about the Owens Lake playa, an arid, eerily flat expanse along the eastern Sierra Nevada range that is prone to choking dust storms.

It is best known as the focal point of a historic feud that began in the early 1900s, when Los Angeles city agents quietly bought up ranch lands and water rights for an aqueduct to quench the thirst of the growing metropolis 200 miles to the south.

L.A. diverted so much water via the aqueduct system that the 110-square-mile lake dried up and it was nearly impossible for local farmers and ranchers to make a living - a scandal dramatized in the classic 1974 film "Chinatown."

But a different history looms over this wasteland for Native Americans whose ancestors knew it as a kingdom of irrigated villages and plentiful game until the late 1800s - before U.S. troops were sent to protect local white settlers and the land and water they had effectively stolen.

Now, as part of an effort to present a fuller picture of the region's importance to the Indigenous people of Owens Valley, five local tribes have nominated 186 square miles of the lakebed for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources and in the National Register of Historic Places.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

The nomination brought a sense of hope to Danelle Bacoch-Gutierrez, of the Big Pine Paiute Tribe of Owens Valley. As she gazed out across the $2.5 billion worth of dust control projects L.A. has installed across the lakebed over the past three decades, Bacoch-Gutierrez said she has long prayed for guidance in preserving her people's heritage.

"I ask for wisdom," she said, "and for the right words to say to the LADWP."

The nomination is expected to go before the state Historical Resources Commission on April 29. If approved, it will be forwarded for consideration for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, a process expected to take about 90 days.

Oral histories of tribal members and military records offer insights into several horrific massacres of Native Americans that occurred here. They include the 1863 slaughter of 35 Paiute Indians who were chased into Owens Lake by soldiers and settlers and were either drowned or gunned down.

Other reminders are continually unearthed by flash floods and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews tending to dust mitigation projects implemented across the largest source of hazardous powder-fine dust in the United States. Artifacts include cavalry uniform buttons, musket balls, grinding stones, arrowheads and human remains.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

On a recent morning, Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation, gestured toward the outlines of a 14,000-year-old shoreline that roughly defines the legal boundary of the proposed historic district and said, "Most people drive by and wonder, 'What's that big patch of sand and rocks out there?'"

"With this designation," she said, "we want people to begin to see what we see - a sacred homeland of beauty and suffering."

"Of course, if it was up to us," she added with a laugh, "there'd be no need for this legal boundary at all, and the lake would be brimful of gleaming water as it was for countless generations of our ancestors."

The nomination was drafted, in part, by representatives of five Owens Valley tribes with traditional ties to the lake. In addition to Bancroft and Bacoch-Gutierrez, they include Barbara Durham of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe; Monty Bengochia of the Bishop Paiute Tribe, and Sean Scruggs of the Fort Independence Indian Community of Paiute Indians.

Support was provided by the Inyo County Board of Supervisors, the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, the California State Lands Commission, the U. S. Bureau of Land Management, and the LADWP.

At 119,303 acres, the proposed Patsiata Historic District would be the largest National Register site in California, National Park Service officials said. There are currently 14 national register sites nationwide that are over 100,000 acres.

It would join a growing number of national historic districts in California created to memorialize the traditions and history of Indigenous people, and their resilience and resistance in the face of genocidal policies.

"Overall, between 1846 and 1870 California's Indian population plummeted from about 150,000 people to about 30,000 - a staggering loss," said Benjamin Madley, a UCLA professor and author of the 2016 book "An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe."

"Forced dislocation, disease and starvation caused many of these deaths," Madley said. "But the near annihilation of California Indians was not the inevitable result of two civilizations coming into contact for the first time."

Rather, it was genocide carried out, in part, by vigilantes and what he described as a "state-sponsored killing machine that was sanctioned and largely funded by state and federal officials."

"We cannot bring back the dead, and memorials and historic districts are no panacea," he added. "But they are important steps toward addressing what city, state and federal authorities owe the California Indian people."

Although a National Register listing does not mandate preservation, it would require consideration of tribal and cultural resources associated with the lakebed and the surrounding rugged high-desert terrain in future planning, project implementation, and long-term stewardship activities.

The heavily litigated region needs all the help it can get. While about 98% of the land within the boundary is made up of public lands, there are roughly two dozen private landowners and a significant municipal stakeholder - the LADWP. The utility for years has claimed that extreme weather conditions are making it increasingly difficult to meet state and federal requirements and court settlements.

Earlier this month the LADWP asked a judge to invalidate fines totaling more than $587,000 imposed by the air district due to L.A.'s failure to install a vegetation enhancement project needed to quell dust on a 5-acre portion of the lakebed. The fines are accruing at a rate of about $5,600 per day, officials said.

The utility claims that building such a project in the "culturally sensitive area densely covered with sacred artifacts" requires formal approval by all five tribes indigenous to Owens Valley, according to documents filed in Sacramento Superior Court.

The fines are invalid, L.A. claims, because at least one of those tribes opposes the project.

District officials, however, argue that compliance with state and federal public health and environmental safety requirements are not "contingent upon final recommendations of a tribal council," court documents say.

The matter is expected to be taken up in court on May 20, when the fines lodged against L.A. will have risen close to $1 million.

The legal dispute underlines the kind of acrimony that has boiled over in Owens Valley since white settlers arrived more than a century ago with dreams of making a fortune from gold mining and cattle ranching, and erasing the history and culture of Indigenous people who were there first.

Now, between the aqueduct that helped give birth to L.A. and Owens Valley sage plains tugged at by wind, the collaborative conservation efforts of tribes once pegged for extermination and local, state and federal land managers are gaining traction. They are guided, in part, by a chorus of songs that tribal members have been listening to for centuries: the soft whispers of cottonwoods and pines, the rustling of leaves, the calming warmth of a new morning.

"We have a tribal story of bravery and survival against impossible odds to share with the world," Bacoch-Gutierrez said. "And we have an inherent right to protect the true story of our history and its connection to this sacred ground and its wildlife."

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Owens Valley tribes honor a legacy of 'beauty and suffering' with historic site nomination

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Indigenous tribes nominate section of Owens Lake for the California Register of Historical Resources and the National Register of Historic Places.

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Regarding the current climate change issues the tribe has to face, specifically drought and lack of water accesibility

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BIG PINE, California (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When the first white settlers arrived in California's remote eastern Owens Valley, the name given to its indigenous tribes was Paiute, or "land of flowing water" in the local language.

But for more than a century, the water in the valley has flowed in just one direction: toward Los Angeles, nearly 300 miles (480 km) away.

In the early 1900s, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) quietly bought up broad swathes of ranchland and its associated water rights in the once-lush valley, fringed by snow-capped peaks.

Today, Los Angeles owns more than a quarter million acres in Inyo County, at the valley's heart - more than half of all land that doesn't belong to the state or national government.

The snowmelt that once fed pear orchards and alfalfa fields gushes through an aqueduct into Los Angeles taps and swimming pools.

The aqueduct paved the way for the city's expansion from a middling city of just over 300,000 people in 1910 to a still-mushrooming metropolis of 4 million today, historians say.

But the Owens Valley, now studded with sagebrush, "has been transformed into a desert", said Alan Bacock, water program coordinator for the valley's Big Pine Paiute tribe, which is struggling to access enough water to keep its economy alive.

"We're a resource colony for Los Angeles," he said. "We are impacted by the decisions made in Los Angeles, and really have no ability to influence those decisions."

Meanwhile, as climate change brings harsher, more frequent droughts in California, it is bringing new threats to families on both ends of the controversial aqueduct.

The Sierra Nevada snowpack today provides 60% of California's fresh water, serving 23 million people, according to researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles.

But the snowpack is expected to shrink more than 60% by the turn of the century if global warming continues at its current pace, they said in a 2018 report.

Already California has seen less snowmelt than average for six of the past 10 years - with unusually heavy snows in the other years, said Rich Harasick, the LADWP's senior assistant general manager.

"It's a real phenomenon that's happening here, in the near term," he said.

As the state braces for drier times, that suggests it - like much of the U.S. West - may need a rethink both of how scarce water is managed, and of the historic water rights system that gives those holding "senior" rights as much water as they like.

The American West needs rules "reflective of modern needs and desires, rather than the rules we've had for 150 years and have had to stick by", said Bob Anderson, director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington.

"That's the wave of the future," he added.

WATER WEALTH

More than 150 years after losing their land to ranchers, who in turn lost it to Los Angeles, several thousand Paiute tribal members still live on a handful of reservations strung along Highway 395, the main artery through the Owens Valley.

Most - like the Big Pine tribe - effectively ceded their water rights in a 1930s land swap that gave Los Angeles the access it wanted to upstream creeks and forced the tribes to rely on an annual water allocation from the LADWP.

Just one tribe in Fort Independence refused and retained a clear water right of its own - a 14% share of Oak Creek.

Today that creek water gushes into old irrigation canals that feed the tribe's blooming peach and pomegranate orchard.

But in a parched valley where water is effectively wealth, the flow also has kept economic development efforts afloat.

Near Oak Creek, the tribe operates a roadside travel plaza with gas pumps, a shop, casino and restaurant, and a campground.

Nearby, a small backhoe and white work trucks sit parked near the concrete foundation for a new venture - a planned drive-through cannabis shop, as well as a larger travel plaza.

Just 20 minutes up Highway 395, at the Big Pine reservation, water is much scarcer. There the tribe is getting by, economically, on little more than membership fees from a gym it runs and rent from a few billboards it owns along the highway.

"We don't really have any serious economic development for this tribe right now, and none that would keep us sustainable as a tribe," said Jesse Archer, the Big Pine tribal secretary and former chair of its economic development corporation.

With more water, the tribe would think about opening its own water bottling plant, like the Crystal Geyser factory that sits on private land with water rights near now-dry Owens Lake.

The tribe also has ideas to draw in tourists, from climbers looking to test their skills on California's highest peak Mt. Whitney to movie buffs visiting the Alabama Hills, where films including "Captain Marvel" and "Django Unchained" were made.

But as the tribe's water rights "are not established, we are not able to lean on those water rights as an asset", Archer said.

That means tribal members in Big Pine get checks from tribal business profits only about a fifth the size of those in Ft. Independence, said Cheyenne Stone of Big Pine, who works as environmental director for the Ft. Independence tribe.

Big Pine also struggles to raise matching funds for federal development grants.

While Ft. Independence secured federal backing to build a new water-retention reservoir, using more than $100,000 in matching funds, "our tribe doesn't even have enough money to fix a leaky roof", Stone said.

LEGAL BATTLES

Since it began shipping mountain runoff south more than a century ago - and particularly since it began tapping groundwater as well - Los Angeles has faced growing resistance as the Owens Valley and adjoining valleys have dried.

A landmark lawsuit in the 1980s forced the LADWP to restore water flows to fast-disappearing Mono Lake, a major stopover for migrating birds, in the interest of upholding the "public trust" in keeping natural water flowing.

Los Angeles also has been forced to sprinkle a share of what once went down its aqueduct on the dry basin of Owens Lake, to cut dust storms whirling from the lakebed, which was once fed by the Owens River and covered more than 100 square miles.

"The right (to water) didn't change, but the ability to actually exercise that has changed," said the LADWP's Harasick.

Other pressures may be coming too.

In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a decision to grant California's Agua Caliente tribe rights to the groundwater below their reservation - water being heavily pumped by others to supply resorts, farms and homes in nearby Palm Springs.

The ruling, which is likely to spur new court challenges, could set a precedent for tribal groundwater claims across the United States, legal experts say.

It also opens the door for tribes to prosper from their water, including potentially by charging existing users or harnessing it to restore ecosystems - a priority for many tribes who see natural flows as sacred.

"The courts are beginning to restore Native American water rights. They're beginning to restore ecosystem water rights," said Peter Gleick, a leading water and climate change scientist with the Pacific Institute, based in Oakland.

"That's putting more and more pressure on the water rights held by agriculture or farmers or cities in California and in the West - and it's contributing to the effort to think about how to do things differently," he said.

SAVING WATER

Los Angeles is already rethinking its water future, in response to pressures ranging from predictions of a declining Sierra Nevada snowpack to growing competition for Colorado River water, another major city source.

By 2040, the still-growing city aims to get nearly a quarter of the water it needs by channeling stormwater runoff into huge storage basins to recharge its groundwater supplies.

The basins will also give the city the ability to catch and store more water during heavy rains as rainfall becomes more unpredictable.

The city aims as well to recycle far more wastewater and it is pushing water conservation efforts.

Those started with more efficient appliances and toilets, and now include paying families $3 per square foot to shrink their lawns, said Harasick, of the LADWP.

"As we looked at the future and where we were going to get water reliably, sustainably, we were really looking within," said Harasick at LADWP's high-rise headquarters, where pebble gardens filled with succulents border a reflective pool.

Gleick said Los Angeles, like a growing number of water-pressed cities, including Singapore, "is beginning to think they can get closer to (being) independent about water resources".

But by LADWP's estimates, 42 percent of its water in 2040 will still come from the Owens Valley aqueduct.

CULTURAL COST

How tightly the valley's water belongs to Los Angeles is evident off Highway 395 where the Owens River takes a hard right from its old riverbed and heads in a concrete culvert towards the city.

Since 1991, the LADWP has been required to allow a share of the Owens River to run in its natural bed, to keep the river ecosystem alive - though the flow was restored only in 2007 and is pumped back into the city's aqueduct further downstream.

Near the sandy soil where the river and aqueduct channels separate, the roiling gray-green water rushing to Los Angeles faces no barrier - but the channel to the Owens River is set with metal gates that can be closed with cog-wheel cranks.

For LADWP, "any (water) mitigation project they do, they want to make sure that it's not going to impact their operations at all," said Bacock, the Big Pine water program coordinator, walking near the diversion.

"Their focus is to make sure water goes to Los Angeles and it's high-quality water. It's not about longevity here, but about longevity for Los Angeles."

Sally Manning, a botanist and environmental director for the Big Pine tribe, said the impact of water extraction on the valley is painfully clear.

Its endemic star-tulip is now endangered, for instance, and some oak trees and pinion pines the tribes once turned to for food are dead or dying, she said.

"It's terrible. It's obvious. You take water away from plants and they die," she said.

After nearly two decades of legal wrangling, the LADWP and Inyo County in 1991 put in place a long-term water agreement designed to protect the valley's natural environment and set limits on groundwater pumping.

Since then, the habitat "really has remained the same", said Harasick of the LADWP. But residents believe that after 20 years of pumping, the damage had already been done by the time that deal was signed.

Stone, of the Big Pine tribe, said many of the areas where she gathered willow shoots with her mother to make baskets are now gone, making it harder to pass the skill to her daughters.

Water extraction "is coming at the cost of our culture, of our traditional lifestyle", she said.

Gerald Lewis, a Paiute tribal elder, worries that as the valley threatens to dry further, with climate change bringing harsher weather, his community - living on a reserve owned by the federal government - has nowhere else to go.

"Whenever it dries up here, I imagine white people will move away at one point. But you know, us guys, we don't have anywhere else to go," he said, perched on a chunk of volcanic rock near now-dry Fish Springs, his face shaded by a cowboy hat.

'A BROKEN SYSTEM'

Bacock said efforts to restore tribal water rights are encouraging, but ignore the bigger problem: that the West's first-takes-all water rights system makes no sense in an era of ever-greater shortages and fiercer competition for water.

"(Winning more) water rights is not a concept that actually helps us to be able to move forward in a positive manner," he said. "In the long run, it's still based off a broken system and so I think we need to fix the system."

That probably involves preserving a share of water to support nature, figuring out smarter ways to use the limited water available, and trying to ensure residents of both Los Angeles and the Owens Valley have what they need to thrive.

"I love the people of L.A. just as I love the people that I am part of here in my own community," said Bacock, who grew up in Los Angeles.

"It's really trying to help maneuver things so that all of us can have a future."

Reporting by Laurie Goering @lauriegoering; editing by Megan Rowling and Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit <a href="http://news.trust.org/climate">news.trust.org/climate</a>

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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In Los Angeles 'water colony', tribes fear a parched future

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When the first white settlers arrived in California's remote eastern Owens Valley, the name given to its indigenous tribes was Paiute, or "land of flowing water" in the local language.

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Provides a rich and in-depth history of the Payahuunadü from a grassroots perspective.

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Payahuunadü - Land of the Flowing Water, is the place we call home. Nüümü - the People (Owens Valley Paiute), have lived here in our homelands since time immemorial. We were placed here to care for the land and the water. Payahuunadü is located in what is called the Owens Valley which is nestled in a deep valley 75 miles long in California's Eastern Sierra between the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the west and the White and Inyo Mountains on the east. Every day the people wake up to majestic mountain peaks that in some places are greater than 14,000 feet in elevation including Mount Whitney and White Mountain Peak. In normal years, these mountains that surround the valley are blanketed in snow in the winter and come spring burst forth raging rivers and tributaries that provide clean crisp water for all life.

The Nüümü lived in harmony for millennia stewarding the fertile land and natural resources. We irrigated vast swaths of land using ditches and canals dug by hand to grow taboose and nahativa, these plants were main food staples. We built dams that were used to capture fish that we subsisted on. There was a delicate balance of moving water to grow our plants while caring for the land and ensuring that all life including plants, animals, birds, and insects were taken care of.

Around 1859, the Nüümü way of life changed. Miners moved into and through our valley, then came the ranchers and farmers whose cattle overtook the fields of taboose we subsisted on. Places where we once irrigated were now fenced off and we no longer had access to these lands. The ditches and canals we painstakingly built using sticks and rocks were now controlled by cattlemen. This led to major conflict that ultimately resulted in the United States Calvary forcibly marching over 900 men, women, and children out of our homeland in 1863 to Fort Tejon, a place foreign to us over 250 miles away.

Many of our ancestors fled into the mountains or escaped and made their way back home. Because of our strong ties to our homelands that the Creator instilled in us, there was a yearning to get back home to Payahuunadü. Upon returning to Payahuunadü, many Nüümü families and individuals found that their irrigated farming lands were stolen by ranchers and farmers that used Paiute irrigation ditches to plant corn, wheat, alfalfa, and other commercial crops. Despite this, Nüümü families recreated their communities within these places, kept close to the accustomed areas of their ancestors, and became day laborers on the settler farms and ranches, becoming an indispensable labor source for the valley's budding economies.

Los Angeles entered Payahuunadü in the early 1900s and begins buying up land. In 1905, Los Angeles voters approved plans for the Los Angeles Aqueduct. After construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, agricultural operations declined because of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's purchase of farms and ranches and their refusal to guarantee a water supply to land leases.

By 1933, the City of Los Angeles had purchased 85 percent of the valley's residential and commercial property and 95 percent of the valley's farm and ranch land. The decline in farming and ranching operations in the valley resulted in loss of employment for many of the Paiute. Los Angeles then turned to the lands held in trust for the Nüümü by the federal government. Los Angeles was successful in having Executive Orders revoked that had set aside nearly 70,000 acres of land for the Nüümü.

Los Angeles issued a series of reports called "Owens River Valley, California, Indian Problem". The Indian Problem reports said that the Indians were "homeless", "scattered", "squatting", using immense quantities of water from streams for irrigation", "wastage of water". Los Angeles' solution was to remove or relocate the Indians. Los Angeles reported that the benefits of grouping the Indians would mean "better control" and "the question of land acquirement and title definition fixed unquestionably". It was also during this time that Los Angeles and the United States coerced Nüümü that were fortunate to have land allotments into selling these lands (many along creeks and streams with water rights) for a fraction of what Los Angeles was paying white landowners. In many cases, Los Angeles purchased Indian Allotments for one-quarter of the price they paid others.

Eventually, Los Angeles and the United States government agreed to move the Nüümü onto three separate reservations in a land exchange whereby the United States traded 2,913 acres of land for 1,391 acres of Los Angeles owned land. The Land Exchange was authorized by an Act of Congress in 1937. In the Congressional record it is reported that, "there are a number of Indians here from California who desire to be heard on the bill, and they desire to have this go over until such a hearing can be had". The Speaker replied, "it is too late now, of course". Senator Burdick then replies, "It occurs to me that the Indians themselves have no voice in this matter. [...] We are going mighty fast to bring up the passage on the 10 th of March a bill introduced on the 3 rd of March. This is the speediest action I have seen on legislation in this House". The bill was put up for vote without a hearing and passed. The Indians were not allowed to speak.

Not only did the United States, on behalf of the Nüümü whom they had a trust responsibility to, give up more than half of the amount of land than what was received from Los Angeles, but they also failed to ensure Nüümü received the water our people were entitled to. In a 1936 Report, Los Angeles wrote they would exchange 4 acre-feet of water per acre and that the United States would trade over 10,000 acre-feet of appropriated water rights along with unspecified riparian water rights on five separate creeks as well as underground rights. However, as the land exchange was commencing Los Angeles reported that the Los Angeles City Charter prohibits the sale or exchange of any water rights owned by the City, without the consent of two-thirds of the voters when submitted at an election. In order to move the Land Exchange forward, Los Angeles and the United States agreed to change the place of use of the appropriated water rights with a substantial reduction that amounts to 5,565 acre-feet of water per year for the Tribes collectively (this amounts to 4 acre-feet per acre which is what Los Angeles originally intended to trade and is less than what many ranch leases in the valley receive). The parties agreed to address the water rights later even though the 1937 Act of Congress authorizing the Land Exchange specified that the water rights were to be traded. The Federal Reserved Indian Water Rights were not traded in the Land Exchange and these tribal rights remain unresolved among other rights.

For over a century, Los Angeles has exported water from Payahuunadü. The valley including indigenous communities suffer severely depleted groundwater, and native plant communities and ecosystems have been destroyed never to be replaced. Tribal resources continue to be exploited as the health of the valley declines due to Los Angeles' groundwater pumping and poor surface water management practices. The Tribes' current landbase is woefully inadequate to meet the existing and future needs of the growing Nüümü population.

The Owens Valley Indian Water Commission (Commission) has been working on behalf of the Tribes since 1991 to improve access to water, secure water rights the Tribes should have received when their landbases were created, expand food security for current and future generations, utilize sustainable indigenous practices to transform natural resource management, and provide environmental protection services. As a tribal entity dedicated to defending water resources, the Commission strives to bring together community members and allies to find common ground around the concept that water is life. We take pride in being an organization built through the hard work and resilience of our community. This past year, we had many successes in spreading awareness about the importance of defending our water resources, building new alliances, and expanding participation in decision-making about land and water. We are optimistic that these efforts will result in healthy homelands and more land and water for the Nüümü.

After the first of the year, the Commission is scheduled to provide in-person water education events to schools, museums, and library systems in Southern California that will teach about the connections between local water sourcing and water conservation in Los Angeles with the potential for environmental restoration and justice in Payahuunadü. The Commission will also increase outreach to lawmakers, decision-makers, and allies both regionally and nationally with the goal being Tribal landbase expansion with enough water to meet the needs of the Nüümü, and better water management in Payahuunadü.

Last year, the Commission received a grant from the Native American Agriculture Fund that has enabled us to issue grants to individual farmers and ranchers for agriculture related projects as well as provide funding assistance to youth for 4-H and FFA market animal purchases. The Commission anticipates providing an additional $60,000 in agriculture grants in the coming year. Providing Indigenous farmers and ranchers and youth with agriculture support helps us reconnect with the land and move towards increased food security. We've also provided business plan development and agriculture economics training and look forward to providing permaculture and other trainings in the coming year. The Commission is working with the Big Pine Paiute Tribe to provide funding assistance for improving their irrigation system.

For those interested in learning more about our water story, a documentary Paya: Water Story of the Paiute is available for purchase on the Commission's website.
Teri Red Owl is the Executive Director of the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission. The Owens Valley Indian Water Commission (OVIWC) is one of a growing number of organizations around the world working to protect water resources and expand food security for current and future generations. Indigenous communities are at the forefront of these efforts, continuing our history of stewardship that dates back since time immemorial. Communities like ours all around the globe are struggling to maintain access to water amidst increasing scarcity due to climate change, resource extraction and export, privatization, and ever-growing corporate influence.

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Payahuunadü - Land of the Flowing Water by Teri Red Owl Payahuunadü - Land of the Flowing Water, is the place we call home. Nüümü - the People (Owens Valley Paiute), have lived here in our homelands since time immemorial. We were placed here to care for the land and the water.

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This sources goes into depth on the conflict between settlers and the Native Americans in regards to land and water rights

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Paiutes had hunted and farmed in the mostly peaceful California valley for centuries before white settlers crowded in with their voracious cattle.

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National Park Service website includes a small blurb about the Owens Valley Paiute past

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Paiute woman weaving a basket
Eastern California Museum

The Owens Valley Paiute relied on abundant water from snow-fed Sierra streams and a diversity of plants and animals for their subsistence. Living in settlements along the waterways, the Paiute created unique irrigation systems to enhance the growth of native plant foods. For more than three thousand years they hunted game, gathered pinon nuts, made baskets and pottery, and traded with other native groups beyond the mountains. The Paiute's rich cultural heritage is evident in the landscape of Manzanar.

In the 1860s, discovery of gold and silver in the Sierra Nevada and Inyo Mountains attracted a flood of prospectors. Ranchers and farmers followed, often utilizing Paiute irrigation systems and grasslands. A harsh winter and scarce food in 1861-1862 forced the Paiute and settlers into open conflict. The military intervened and, in 1863, forcibly removed 1,000 Paiute to Fort Tejon in the mountains south of Bakersfield.

Many Paiute eventually left Fort Tejon and returned to the Owens Valley where they lived in camps near towns and farms. They integrated farm and domestic labor with traditional food gathering, and by 1866 were indispensable to the Owens Valley's agricultural economy. As Captain A.B. MacGowen, commander of Fort Independence, observed, "The people in the valley could not get along without them as they do most of the labor required."

By 1900, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had established Indian schools at Fort Independence as well as Big Pine and Bishop.

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Owens Valley Paiute - Manzanar National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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The Owens Valley Paiute relied on abundant water from snow-fed Sierra streams and a diversity of plants and animals for their subsistence. Living in settlements along the waterways, the Paiute created unique irrigation systems to enhance the growth of native plant foods.

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PDF of EXECUTIVE ORDER N-15-19 by the Executive Department State of California

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The link to Los Angeles 2022 Land Acknowledgement

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Land Acknowledgment - COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES

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The County of Los Angeles recognizes that we occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples. We honor and pay respect to their elders and descendants - past, present, and emerging - as they continue their stewardship of these lands and waters.

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PBS documentary trailer of the Owens Valley past

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At the foot of the majestic snow-capped Sierras, Manzanar, the WWII concentration camp, becomes the confluence for memories of Payahuunadü, the now-parched "land of flowing water." Intergenerational women from Native American, Japanese American and rancher communities form an unexpected alliance to defend their land and water from Los Angeles. A co-production of the Center for Asian American Media and Vision Maker Media. A co-presentation with the Center for Asian American Media.

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Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust - POV

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Native Americans, Japanese Americans and environmentalists defend their water from LA. A co-production of the Center for Asian American Media and Vision Maker Media. A co-presentation with the Center for Asian American Media.

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Documentary clip regarding the injustice towards non-white communities around Manzanar. Focuses on the water rights of the Owens valley Paiute people

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POV | Lesson Plan Clip 2 | Manzanar, Diverted | Season 35 | Episode 2 | PBS

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Interview with the film maker about the documentary above

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University of California Television (UCTV)

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Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust

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The link to Swarthmore's 2022 Land Acknowledgement

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As a community of learners at Swarthmore College, we acknowledge that our campus is situated in Lenapehoking - also known as the Land of the Lenape - past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Indigenous people who stewarded it throughout the generations and who were driven from it by European and American colonizers.

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CA government report on the Impacts of Climate Change on the Bishop Paiute Tribe

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Impacts of Climate Change on the Bishop Paiute Tribe

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Rising temperatures and drought compounded by over pumping of groundwater are impacting the physical, cultural, and spiritual health of the Tribe, its habitats, and ecosystems. The Bishop Paiute Tribe is a federally recognized tribe living in Inyo County at the foot of the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, in the Owens Valley, just west of the city of Bishop.

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Official Bishop Paiute Tribe website. Includes up to date information on the tribe today

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The tribe provides members with various programs and services and operates a variety of tribally owned entities and enterprises. The tribe is engaged in progressive development and highly values self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and maintains committed to being a strong self-governing sovereign nation. The culture of the Paiute people is deeply embedded with the surrounding environment. The natural resources provided by land, water, and air, have been safeguarded by the tribe for numerous years. The traditions of the Paiutes are alive and active today, and can be witnessed in one of the tribes many traditional functions and festivities.

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The tribe provides members with various programs and services and operates a variety of tribally owned entities and enterprises. The tribe is engaged in progressive development and highly values self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and maintains committed to being a strong self-governing sovereign nation. The culture of the Paiute people is deeply embedded with the surrounding environment.

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A book that I read in my Environmental Justice class this semester and found applicable to my argument in this paper. It discusses the effects of pollution on our earth and its effects on different communities, touching upon Native American communities as well.

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Max Liboiron (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Buy Pollution Is Colonialism: Read Books Reviews - Amazon.com

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In-depth history of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation that was the first tribe to inhabit the Yosemite valley area

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The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation people were one of the original tribes of Yosemite National Park and surrounding areas of what is now the state of California. Archeological evidence shows Native Americans living in Yosemite Valley for 5,500 years, sustained by the natural resources provided by this unique environment. This secluded land also served as sanctuary, long protecting Native Americans from the advances of Spanish, Mexican, and American colonists. The California Gold Rush changed that forever. During and following the Gold Rush, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation suffered from violent dispossession, relocation, and economic disadvantage in their ancestral homeland.

While their plight has been difficult, many Southern Sierra Miwuk still reside in Yosemite Mariposa County, and this extraordinary landscape continues to be the heart of their tradition, spirit and culture. Elements of Native American life from generations ago are still present today. Here are ways visitors can engage with Miwuk culture and history in current-day Yosemite National Park and Mariposa County. Mich ə ks ə s əə (welcome) to Miwuk culture!

Miwuk History Outdoors

Place-names like "Tutokanula" for El Capitan live on today across Yosemite National Park. Hetch Hetchy is derived from the Miwuk word "hatchhatchie", which means "edible grasses". One theory is that the name Wawona comes from a Miwuk word that represented the hoot of an owl, considered to be the guardian spirit of the giant sequoia trees. "Pohono" is the traditional Miwuk name for Bridalveil Fall, meaning "puffing wind". And "Yosemite" is the Miwuk word for "those who are killers", referring to the Ahwahneechee, a mixed tribe including Miwuk and Mono Paiute that lived in Yosemite Valley.

As you explore Yosemite Mariposa, look for pounding rocks, the granite mortar holes that the Miwuk used for preparing different kinds of foods including acorns.

Miwuk heritage and culture is celebrated at the Mariposa Museum and History Center located in downtown Mariposa. Founded in 1957, the museum houses an array of exhibits interpreting Native American life in Yosemite Mariposa, which includes the Mono, Paiute and Miwuk tribes. The native plant garden includes an umacha, the traditional teepee-shaped house covered with cedar bark. The museum's compelling collection includes a large Indigenous basket collection, artifacts, and images. Take a look at the video below on the Mariposa Museum and History Center's Native basket collection, which is just a portion of the museum's collection.

Yosemite National Park's signature archive, the Yosemite Museum is located on the north side of Yosemite Valley in the shadow of North America's tallest waterfall, Yosemite Falls. It offers interpretive displays on the cultural history of Yosemite's native Miwok and Paiute people from 1850 to the present. Demonstrations of basket weaving, beadwork, and traditional games are presented.

Located behind the Yosemite Museum, the Indian Village of the Ahwahnee is a cluster of demonstration buildings that show traditional native structures including a ceremonial roundhouse, sweat lodge and Chief's House.

The original reconstruction of the village dates back to the 1920's. The sweathouse itself was constructed in the 1930's. In the 1970's the village was reconstructed in the spot that we know it in today. The roundhouse, which is the center of the Indian Village of the Ahwahnee, was built during the reconstruction in the 70's and became the hub for celebrations of rich Native American history in Yosemite Valley. Take a walk with us through this hidden Yosemite Valley gem in the video below.

Wahhoga is the Miwuk word for village. The Yosemite Valley Wahhoga was the last indigenous village in Yosemite, occupied until 1969 when the park service removed the last of these homes. Located west of Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley near the Yosemite Lodge, Wahhoga will be reborn, as the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation will become one of two tribes permitted to use National Park Service land for traditional and cultural purposes. Umachas, a traditional roundhouse and a modern Indian cultural center are being traditionally re-built - many without any manufactured materials. For example, oak pins will be used in place of metal nails in the roundhouse, a method that has proven strong and reliable for millennia.

Miwuk is a compelling 2019 documentary on the Southern Sierra Miwuk Tribe, told through the eyes of people whose ancestors lived here in Mariposa County for thousands of years. The film, produced by veteran television editor Bill Lowe, tells the stories and traditions of seven Miwuk members growing up in Yosemite Mariposa, with inspiring accounts of strong traditions as well as heartbreaking adversities their people have endured. One of the story threads is the Miwuk campaign for federal recognition (see below).

Ceremonial Events and Looking Forward

Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation events include bear dances, spiritual walks and cultural camps in Yosemite Mariposa, along with powwows and fundraisers. Most are open to the public and wonderful ways to learn more and show respect for the Miwuk culture as they bring people together. Check the official Yosemite National Park calendar for future events.
(Please note: Due to state and local restrictions relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, please contact destinations mentioned in this story for current hours of operation.)
Published on December 23, 2020

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Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation | Yosemite Mariposa's First People

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The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation were one of the original tribes and first people of the region now known as Yosemite National Park and surrounding areas, including Mariposa County. Read on to learn more about the Miwuk Nation and related exhibits at the Mariposa Museum and History Center.

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Los Angeles Times Article regarding how cultural burning could've prevented the Yosemite wildfires and how this is affecting the native nations today

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The land near Yosemite National Park had been tended by Irene Vasquez's family for decades. They took care of their seven acres by setting small fires to thin vegetation and help some plants to grow.

But the steep, chaparral-studded slopes surrounding the property hadn't seen fire since Vasquez and fellow members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation were barred from practicing cultural burning on a wider scale some 100 years before.

When a wildfire swept through in July, the dense vegetation stoked flames that destroyed Vasquez's home and transformed the land into a scarred moonscape. With that, she became one of many Indigenous residents to watch her ancestral territory burn in recent years, despite knowing the outcome could have been different.

"If we were able to impart that wisdom and knowledge to European settlers, to the agencies, to not stop our burning, we would be in a way different place," Vasquez said.

Cultural burning - the practice of using controlled fires to tend the landscape - was once widespread among many Indigenous groups, but ended with the arrival of European settlers.

Now, many experts say the lack of regular, low-intensity fire in some California ecosystems has contributed to an overgrowth of vegetation that has made wildfires grow larger and more severe. And, in a cruel irony, Native Americans are among those most affected, they say.

Indigenous residents are over three times more concentrated in California census tracts that see fires most frequently and where the most acreage burns, according to a study by UC Irvine researchers published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Members of the Karuk Tribe lost homes when the Slater fire burned hundreds of properties in Siskiyou County in 2020. The Mountain Maidu saw their Greenville Rancheria office and health facilities destroyed and the landscape severely damaged when the Dixie fire tore through the heart of their homelands the following year.

In July, multiple members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation were displaced by the Oak fire, which destroyed more than 100 homes in Mariposa County. The following month, the fast-moving McKinney fire - which killed four people - destroyed a building that housed Karuk tribal archives and resulted in a massive die-off of fish in the Klamath River, a hub of ceremonial activities.

For Vasquez and other Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation members, recovery has been complicated by a 40-year legal battle for federal recognition. As an unrecognized tribe, the group is ineligible for many types of government aid. Its operations are supported by volunteer work, donations and grants received through its associated nonprofit, the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, which raised more than $100,000 through an Oak fire relief fund.

"We have a lot of people left with nothing," said Clay River, who at the time of the fire was director of the Miwumati Healing Center, which serves as the hub for tribal health and social services. "Some people weren't even able to make it home to try to get stuff so they have the car they were driving and the clothes on their back - that's it."

The fire damaged cultural sites, including prehistoric roundhouses and bedrock mortars where acorn grinding took place, said Waylon Coats, vice chair and cultural resource manager of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, who worked as an archaeologist on the fire. Flames severely scarred the land and destroyed resources that were once available for gathering.

The practice is central to tribal culture, said Coats, who recalled how when he was a child, basket makers would gather basket making materials, hunters would gather hunting tools and medicine people would gather medicine. Burning was performed to help all of those tradespeople collect the best supplies possible, he said.

"We didn't call it cultural burning," he said. "We just called it taking care of the land."

Community members would burn around deer grass to allow for new growth and help other native plants thrive. They would burn litter off the ground of oak groves so young trees could sprout up. They would set fires to keep areas around living quarters clear of debris and to improve hunting conditions.

These burns once occurred in and around hundreds of Southern Sierra Miwuk villages that dotted the Yosemite Valley and other areas of Mariposa County.

But in 1850, as the Gold Rush transformed the area into a mining free-for-all, the Legislature passed a law that essentially codified the slavery of Indigenous people, facilitated their removal from their lands and prohibited the use of cultural fire. At around the same time, state-sponsored militias undertook efforts to exterminate them.

Once Yosemite National Park was formed in 1890, those Southern Sierra Miwuk who had survived were no longer allowed to gather there or help manage the landscape.

"They were treated as if they had no historical knowledge by the people that were coming in to quote unquote preserve the land," River said.

The last Southern Sierra Miwuk were not fully removed from Yosemite Valley until 1969, when park staff burned all but one of a small number of their cabins under the guise of fire training. Those who were displaced included Coats' father and grandmother, who is one of the tribe's oldest living elders and can still recall the trauma.

By then, the landscape surrounding the park had been transformed. What was once an interconnected mosaic of burns painstakingly conducted during different seasons for different purposes had been subdivided into neighborhoods, private ranches and industrial timber holdings whose owners had varying approaches to maintaining the land.

Now, many of the largest, most fire- and drought-resistant trees have been logged, and denser stands of younger trees have grown up in their place. No longer subjected to regular culling, invasive plants have helped form fuel ladders capable of carrying flames into the canopy. Pockets of forest haven't seen any fire, intentionally or naturally sparked, in nearly a century. Hotter, drier conditions resulting from climate change have helped ensure this dense vegetation is primed to burn.

Fire officials cited these conditions as factors in the growth of the 19,000-acre Oak fire, which they described as primarily driven by heavy fuels, including conifers killed by drought.

Without federal recognition, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation has no land on which to practice burning. It is ineligible for funding that's available to other tribes for land stewardship, education, job placement and training, cultural preservation work and community and economic development. Unlike members of other tribes who worked as cultural monitors on the Oak fire, Coats was ineligible to be paid for his work.

The tribe petitioned for recognition in 1982, four years after the federal government created the process. During the protracted proceedings that followed, they have provided thousands of pages of evidence proving their descent from the Miwuk people who signed at least two treaties with the United States in 1851 and 1852, said attorney Stephen V. Quesenberry, who has been involved in the tribe's legal representation since 1984.

Most recently in 2018, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs issued a proposed finding that recognition be denied, saying the Southern Sierra Miwuk had failed to prove they currently exist as a distinct Indigenous community. The tribe currently has until May 10 to respond.

"In my opinion, this is an absurd finding," Quesenberry said. "It's deeply flawed."

The proposed finding perplexed even some who had been involved in drafting or reviewing it, including three former employees of the Office of Federal Acknowledgment who submitted letters publicly criticizing it shortly after it was published. Two of the letters stated that the office had drafted several findings in favor of the tribe but that the decision appeared to have been changed after it was submitted to the Office of the Solicitor for review.

"At some point during OFA's lengthy review process (8 years?), enough evidence to reach a positive determination became not enough evidence and a negative determination," wrote Mark A. Nicholas, a historian who served on a three-person team that evaluated the petition. "What happened?"

The proposed denial also disregards the Southern Sierra Miwuk's long relationship with the National Park Service, which recognizes them as one of the original tribes of Yosemite, Quesenberry said.

More generally, he said, the federal acknowledgment process is fact-intensive and expensive. Its regulatory framework seems designed to defeat petitions, especially those from small California tribes that lack the funds to retain the attorneys and experts necessary to navigate the complex regulations, he said. Just one California tribe, the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone, has won acknowledgment through the process in the 44 years since it was created, and that was in 1983.

"The underlying problem is the federal government has never really acknowledged its role in the destruction and dispossession of the California Indigenous people," he said. "And so when you have a process in which you have to go back to the same government that historically was instrumental in the destruction of your culture and dispossession of your lands, which I believe is a clear conflict of interest, it's a problem. The process is not a fair process."

The Southern Sierra Miwuk community's recovery from the Oak fire has been buoyed by donations from other tribes around the state that have more resources available to them, said Vasquez's husband Kevin Spach, 38, who is working as a tribal fire case manager.

"They understand the situation of a community without federal recognition," he said. "In this instance, the money they gave made up for that in a big way."

Still, it will be difficult for people to resettle nearby because there simply isn't enough housing in Mariposa County, let alone affordable housing, River said. The market surged as remote workers flooded the area during the pandemic. Due to its proximity to the popular national park, a proliferation of vacation rentals has reduced availability and driven costs higher.

"Everything is geared toward Yosemite and tourism so there's no cap on short-term rentals," River said. "And this community is extremely low income so folks have even been moving out of their own homes and living in their garages so they can turn their house into an Airbnb so they can continue to live here."

Some who lost property were uninsured because they lived traditionally in prefabricated sheds, yurts, or unregistered multigenerational homes, or because their carriers had dropped them or raised rates to unaffordable levels.

"So in a sense they will be once again displaced, gentrified out," River said. "And this is going to impact us for many years to come."

When the fire approached, Vasquez's husband was able to round up their animals - two cats and two dogs, one of which he had to pull out from underneath their yurt - and escape under a glowing red sky.

Flames soon destroyed their home and solar panels and badly burned their well pump and electrical connections. They later returned to find their 1,500-plant pollinator garden incinerated and the massive, ancient manzanitas atop the mountain gone.

Vasquez's dad had driven a truck for more than a decade to pay off the land. He installed a mobile home and planted fruit trees that bore mulberries, figs, apples, pears and pomegranates.

Paul Vasquez, who called himself Yosemitebear on social media, became an early Internet celebrity and folk hero after a 2010 YouTube video of his joyous reaction to a double rainbow over the property gained more than 50 million views. Irene and her husband moved onto the property after Paul passed away from a pulmonary embolism two years ago.

Although they want to remain close to the community and honor the emotional connection Irene still feels with her late father, she also fears the land won't recover. It was further damaged by a series of powerful atmospheric river storms that sent silt flowing down the mountain because there was little surviving vegetation to hold the soil in place.

"It's forever changed, altered, because it burned so hot," she said.

And while the state has provided some assistance, she is not eligible for loans to build or buy a house that would otherwise be available to her if the Miwuk were federally recognized, she said.

"It just feels like justice doesn't happen for us, isn't happening for us," she said. "And it doesn't feel like it's getting any easier."

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This tribe was barred from cultural burning for decades - then a fire hit their community

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Members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation became the latest Indigenous tribe to watch homes burn despite knowing it could have been avoided.

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Another article regarding the indigenous perspective on the Yosemite wildfires and its effects on their communities

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The Oak Fire, which burned roughly 20,000 acres west of Yosemite National Park last summer, was devastating to the area's Indigenous tribes - including the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. The tribe is headquartered in Mariposa, California, a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills close to the national park.

"It really hit our community hard," said Tara Fouch-Moore, a member of the Southern Sierra Miwuk's tribal council. "We lost 127 households."

The Oak Fire destroyed much more than property.

"These super fires, they burn so hot," said Jazzmyn Gegere Brochini, the tribe's cultural resource preservation manager. "The Oak Fire disintegrated absolutely everything in its path."

Climate change brought on by the burning of fossil fuels has exacerbated, in part, the frequency and the intensity of wildfires. Such catastrophic fires have decimated culturally significant sites and treasures, raising questions about how to best protect them for the future.

It's something the Southern Sierra Miwuk have had to grapple with.

Gegere Brochini and Fouch-Moore said traditional plants like elderberry, deergrass and sedge used in native cooking, medicine and basket-making were destroyed by the Oak Fire - along with more permanent physical structures, such as the many milling stations carved into the bedrock by ancestors.

The Miwuk people have used these indentations in the rocks to grind traditional medicines and foods like acorns for thousands of years.

"And to think that something that has withstood the test of time for millennia can be destroyed by one fire sweeping through, is a sign that something is changing, and something devastating is happening," said Fouch-Moore.

Cultural heritage and climate change closely intertwined

Indigenous communities have long understood cultural heritage encompasses more than historic buildings and museum artifacts.

"It's also the knowledge of how to find food and how to survive or make art," said Fouch-Moore.

"It's how we coexist with the land and manage it," said Aanthony Lerma, the Southern Sierra Miwuk's stewardship coordinator. "It's the native way of life."

The tribe's firsthand experience of the impact of climate change on cultural traditions has been compounded by displacement.

The Yosemite Valley used to be populated by Indigenous peoples, including the Southern Sierra Miwuk. "In the middle of the 1800s, as Yosemite started to be 'discovered' by settlers, they began to push the Indigenous tribes out," said Cicely Muldoon, the superintendent of Yosemite National Park.

The federal government designated the area as a national park in 1890 to protect its natural treasures. But the cultural ones didn't fare so well: Muldoon said the few remaining Indigenous homes were razed in 1969.

"That was the last permanent occupation by the first people of Yosemite still living in their ancestral homelands," she said.

Loss of place, loss of culture

With the loss of their homelands came the loss of their cultural heritage, such as the long tradition of managing forest fires.

"One of the first things the government outlawed was cultural burning," said the Southern Sierra Miwuk's Lerma.

State officials made this tribal practice of igniting small fires illegal in 1850. The years of fire suppression that followed have made wildfires worse.

"'Smokey the Bear' all over the place," said Fouch-Moore. "And now our forests are overgrown and in bad health. And they're like, 'Oh wait, maybe we should let the Indians do their thing.'"

In recent years, the National Park Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) have started to collaborate with Indigenous communities to return traditional burning to the land.

Members of local tribes have helped to set prescribed burns in Yosemite National Park, among other wooded areas. The process involves rubbing pieces of wood together to generate sparks instead of using modern drip torches.

"Tribal representatives help us identify and protect important cultural sites during a wildfire," said Gregg Bratcher, deputy chief of CAL FIRE'S prescribed fire program. The agency worked with the Southern Sierra Miwuk and other tribes on the cleanup effort after last year's Oak Fire. "We work with them to ensure these sites are not damaged by fire-fighting or other equipment," he said.

Bratcher said his agency is trying to build trust with tribal communities. Gegere Brochini with the Miwuk Nation said she is glad the state's fire department and other agencies are now actively engaging Indigenous people to clean up after wildfires burn through. She was involved in the cleanup effort after the Oak Fire. "I did a cultural resource spot check to make sure the remains of ancient village sites were protected from the dozers," said Gegere Brochini. "Otherwise they doze everything."

But Tara Fouch-Moore said the removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands makes it hard for traditions like cultural burning to thrive, because out of context, these practices lose their meaning.

"Yes, we can share our songs despite climate change, and yes, we can learn how to process acorn," she said. "But it needs to be whole and within the landscape to really, truly understand."

That's why the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation has been working for years with the National Park Service to rebuild Wahhoga, a village tribal ancestors once occupied in the Yosemite Valley. "We're building our umachas, which are the bark houses. We are building our roundhouse and we're going to have that area to do our ceremonies and our cultural events," said Fouch-Moore. She expects the project to be completed within the next few years.

Fouch-Moore said Wahhoga will enable her people to tell their own stories.

"That's how you preserve cultural heritage," she said. "By making sure people are still living it."

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A Northern California tribe works to protect traditions in a warming world

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The Oak Fire last year threatened the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation's way of life. Now the tribe is restoring ancient heritage sites and cultural practices in collaboration with local agencies.

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History including photos and explanation of the displacement over the course of many years of the Miwuk Nation

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Allie Patterson, Brigham Young University

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Indian Removal from Yosemite National Park | Intermountain Histories

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The Southern Sierra Band of Miwok Indians, also known as the Ahwahnechee, lived in Yosemite Valley beginning in the 14th century. The Sierra Miwoks interacted with other Miwok bands and nearby Paiutes, some of whom also settled in the valley. Miners came to Yosemite in the 1850s following the California Gold Rush. Tourism to the valley increased in the late 1800s as John Muir advocated for the area’s preservation. The Yosemite Indians had been largely ignored by government officials in the…

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Provides some insight on the intention behind creating national parks

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Our Mission

The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. The National Park Service cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.
Explore general legislation and other laws relating to the National Park Service.
Our Employees

Approximately 20,000 strong, the uncommon men and women of the National Park Service share a common trait: a passion for caring for the nation's special places and sharing their stories.

How We Are Organized

The National Park Service is a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Interior and is led by a Director nominated by the US President and confirmed by the US Senate. The Director is supported by senior executives who manage national programs, policy, and budget in the Washington, DC, headquarters and seven regional directors responsible for national park management and program implementation.

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Official Website of the Southern Sierra miwuk nation

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Alliance for California Traditional Arts

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Safeguarding and passing on knowledge

About the Organization

The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, also known as the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, are people indigenous to Mariposa and Yosemite, California. Today they live within Mariposa and the surrounding communities and have spread throughout the state and country. Ceremonies and events throughout the year allow for family and extended families to come together to give thanks and pray for all our relations. The objectives and purpose of the American Indian Council include education concerning cultural traditions, protection of sacred spaces, development and health services, and the administration of scholarship programs. The American Indian Council has also coordinated and sponsored "Traditional Indian Days" in Yosemite National Park for the past 29 years and the five-day Tran-Sierra Spiritual Walk.

Living Cultures Grant

2020

Regalia Instruction and Educational Classes

In 2020, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation received a Living Cultures Grant from ACTA to organize a women's regalia making workshop for tribal members. The class will take place at the Miwu Mati Family Healing Center beginning in April. Southern Sierra Miwuk traditional regalia is ceremonially created from natural collection and processing of plant and animal materials. Regalia pieces-made from naturally processed rabbit fur, wild-collected feathers, pine nuts, and dogbane cordage- will be used to create feather top headdresses, crowns, and necklaces. Extended classes teaching natural processed buckskin and traditional sewing techniques of bone awl and leather thong will also be offered to create traditional skirts and tops. Through the making of regalia, it is hoped women can help share stories and knowledge about traditions, and in the process strengthen community through the revitalization of women's ceremonies.

Contact

Irene Vasquez, Secretary ssmiwuknation@gmail.com | (209) 966-3245

Invest in California's cultural wealth.

Every gift is a commitment to a culture bearer, and the people of California.

DONATE

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Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation - Alliance for California Traditional Arts

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About the Organization The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, also known as the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, are people indigenous to Mariposa and Yosemite, California. Today they live within Mariposa and the surrounding communities and have spread throughout the state and country. Ceremonies and events throughout the year allow for family and extended families [...]

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Recent Miwuk trailer with perspectives of members of the native community

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Article regarding the fight for Miwuk federal recognition

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MARIPOSA COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) -- Beautiful scenery draws millions of tourists to Yosemite National Park every year.

But back in the 1800s, this land was home to thousands of Native Americans including the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation.

"We go back hundreds of years and we can prove it. I always call us the recognized unrecognized tribe," says tribe member Gary Harlow.

The tribe is not technically recognized by the government.

Its members have been working to be federally recognized since 1982 and say they are not giving up.

Gary mentions, "Everybody thinks it is all about casinos and stuff like that, but it is so much more than that. It is about bettering our community as a whole."

Leaders say being federally recognized will allow the tribe to have access to better healthcare and education - while helping preserve their culture.

"Our language is very important and if we are federally recognized, we will be able to apply for certain grants that we couldn't do right now," says Acacia Coats, Director at large of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation American Indian Council.

Among the 600 plus tribe members around today is Sandra Chapman.

"I will be 75 in April, so I have been doing this for 40-something years," she says.

Sandra says her ancestors were taken from Yosemite to Fresno. Today, many tribe members are in Mariposa County, where they hope to acquire some land.

"We don't wanna take over Yosemite -- I think that is the big hurdle, is them thinking we want to take Yosemite back. But no, we don't want to do that. We want to be federally recognized so we can have all these benefits," says Sandra.

We reached out to the U.S. Department of the Interior and were told a petitioner must meet several criteria to become a federally recognized Indian tribe.

A 2018 document shows the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation did not demonstrate "a predominant portion of the petitioning group comprises a distinct community and has existed as a community from historical times until the present."

However, the group has been granted a number of extensions since then. The new deadline to submit public comment is May 16. After that, the Department of Indian Affairs has 60 days to review.

Saturday, March 5th, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation will be hosting a march in Mariposa. They will meet at the Courthouse at 10 AM. For details, click here.

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southern sierra miwuk nation mariposa county

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mariposa county southern sierra miwuk nation

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Tribe based in Mariposa County fighting for federal recognition

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The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation is not technically recognized by the government. Its members have been working to be federally recognized since 1982 and say they are not giving up.