Post by Okwes on Jan 19, 2008 17:05:11 GMT -5
Life Begins in the Sea
North Coast tribes face risk of losing rights to the seashore as
California ponders part two of the Marine Life Protection Act
TIDAL HARVEST: Two small North Coast tribes are protesting the state of
California's proposed marine harvest ban as an affront to their native
culture.
We've heard the story before. As old as history itself, this one tells
of three societies on the fringe, their cultures fading, their
populations dispersing, and the sound of their spoken languages growing
quieter and quieter.
And though the Graton Rancheria tribe of Marin and Sonoma, the Kashaya
near Fort Ross and the Manchester-Point Arena band of Pomo Indians still
maintain some loyalty to their respective traditional ways and their
historical geographical territories, tribal leaders fear that a new
power—the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), passed in
1999—could soon bar the three coastal groups from their historical
fishing and foraging grounds, severing one of their last ties to an
ancient way of life.
"We believe that we are one with the natural world," says Nick Tipon of
the Graton Rancheria, a virtually landless group consisting of Coast
Miwok and Southern Pomo. Tipon has been a prominent voice in the ongoing
discussions between state lawmakers and stakeholder groups concerned
about the MLPA proceedings, which concluded in December with the
establishment of the first phase of the new protected areas, focusing on
the Central Coast. "The deer, water, the birds, the fish—they are
all one, and nothing is more important than another. So any time someone
makes a law that says we can't take something, it troubles us, because
that thing is a part of us."
Between 1999 and April 2007, the California Department of Fish and Game
(DFG) and the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) districted 29
marine protected areas between Point Conception and Pigeon Point, zones
in which varying degrees of sea harvest are prohibited. In some areas,
commercial take is restricted, while in others, the extraction of any
object, alive or otherwise, is illegal. Now, as the state looks at the
second phase, the North Central Coast region, stretching from Pigeon
Point north to Point Arena, these three coastal tribes are protesting
what they consider infringements on their unassailable rights to utilize
the natural world.
Eric Wilder, tribal services coordinator for the Kashaya, disdains the
California government's strong-armed approach toward enforcing the MLPA,
which consists of four proposals to adjust the current marine life
harvest restrictions in, among other areas to the north and south, Salt
Point State Park, Gerstle Cove and Bodega Bay. Several of the proposals
would tighten regulations or ban altogether the harvest of various
finfish, shellfish and other intertidal life in defined locations.
"From our viewpoint, the way the government has approached us with this
issue is like a doctor coming along and saying that he's going to cut
pieces of your body away and asking you which are the most important
parts that you'd like to keep. We'd like to keep all of it."
Wilder says that the culture of his tribe already faces the very real
threat of dissolution as outside enticements and pressures lure youths
away from traditional life on the reservation, located several miles
from sea near Fort Ross. Relatively few Kashaya people know the tribe's
history, says Wilder, but seafood and kelp still contribute heavily to
the diets of many Kashaya individuals, while also playing important
parts in ceremonial events and annual community gatherings, like the
acorn festival in October.
"Fishing and gathering is not just a recreational thing for us," Wilder
stresses. "It ties us to our past and our ancestors, and if they close
the coast to us, they might as well sentence us to death, because that
will end us."
Wilder, like scores of his Kashaya friends and relatives who gather
abalone, sea urchins and other edibles along the shore, already adheres
to state recreational fishing regulations, and he feels that such
commitment to the laws is sufficient.
"That's what those laws are there for, to protect the ocean. Why are
they now not good enough? Since the Russians came, our people have had
to live in a world of different rules and regulations, and we've
followed them, but with all the overfishing and depletion of resources,
it seems like it would have been a good idea if they had just followed
our rules instead."
Melissa Miller-Henson, of the Department of Fish and Game's MLPA Blue
Ribbon Task Force, says that the DFG and FGC will almost certainly
respect tribal rights and needs as they implement the laws. "I would be
shocked if the tribes were to lose their fishing rights. I think we live
in a day and age when that wouldn't be acceptable," she says.
But many members of the public and even some lawmakers do not know of
each tribe's quiet existence and their reliance on the sea. This
obliviousness impedes efforts to preserve the culture, says Tipon. The
1,100 members of the Graton Rancheria tribe live throughout the state,
and though they lay claim to a one-acre plot near Occidental, their
societal cohesiveness is a rather nebulous concept, with virtually no
sense of place to anchor the tribe to its past and few living members
who speak the tribe's dialect.
Two seasonal ceremonies still bring the people together for communal
seafood feasts and offerings of gratitude toward the abundance of the
sea and the land. The loss of fishing rights could effectively end such
gatherings and mark still one more step toward complete immersion into
Western ways.
"At this point in the game, we feel that anything at all that our people
could once do and are now denied is not healthy," Tipon says.
The Kashaya have fared just a little bit better. Twenty-five families
still live on the tribe's 42-acre reservation several miles inland from
Fort Ross, and 52 individuals still speak the language. One such person
is Kashaya elder Violet Chappell, 77, who was born in Mendocino County
and has lived virtually all her life on or around the Kashaya
reservation. Chappell has maintained a strong and loyal connection to
the ways of life with which she grew up, but she has watched her culture
slowly wane over the decades.
"There are not enough people of us anymore who know the history, the
genealogy and the religion of the Kashaya," she says. "Morals and ethics
have always been strong in our teachings, but the children today aren't
learning. We Indians have to learn how to live in two worlds. Our world
and our culture is a great way to live, but too many of us are
forgetting about it all and leaving for the cities."
Before the Russians landed at Fort Ross in 1812, the Kashaya, whose
population is estimated to have been some 1,500 people, had never
encountered Caucasians, as the Spanish missionaries never reached the
mountainous stronghold of the small tribe. The Kashaya dwelt primarily
between Duncans Point and the Gualala River, living on the coast during
the spring and summer and retreating into the hills as far as 30 miles
inland during the winter.
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to some expert area real estate agents.
The Russians founded Fort Ross as a base camp for their otter hunting
trade, and for three decades pursued the thick-furred mammals, collected
the pelts and kept the Kashaya employed as laborers. Upon the Russians'
departure in 1841, life was permanently changed for the Kashaya.
Encroaching white settlers established private property, built fences
and barred the tribal members from their favored foraging and hunting
grounds. In 1914, the federal government secured a quiet plot of 42
acres in the hills several miles from the sea. With little water and
poor soil, the reservation hardly made up for the loss of their
traditional hunting lands, and many would leave the reservation in the
decades following to take up modern life in modern towns.
Today, nearly every household on the Kashaya land, says Chappell, is
affected by diabetes, an upward trend driven by a declining quality of
diet. She recalls the foods of her own upbringing—abalone, seaweed,
shellfish, sea urchins, herbs and wild greens—and notes that few
Kashaya bother with such items anymore.
Marine Life Protection Act public workshops and meetings will be held
Feb. 4, 5 and 6 in Gualala, Bodega Bay and Half Moon Bay, respectively,
and will allow members of the public to voice concerns as the state
government edits and rewrites its various draft proposals. The estuaries
and bays of Point Reyes and Salt Point are just two areas being
considered for moderate to full protection under the MLPA, though
proceedings are only in the beginning stages and final decisions will
not be made for another nine to 12 months.
North Coast tribes face risk of losing rights to the seashore as
California ponders part two of the Marine Life Protection Act
TIDAL HARVEST: Two small North Coast tribes are protesting the state of
California's proposed marine harvest ban as an affront to their native
culture.
We've heard the story before. As old as history itself, this one tells
of three societies on the fringe, their cultures fading, their
populations dispersing, and the sound of their spoken languages growing
quieter and quieter.
And though the Graton Rancheria tribe of Marin and Sonoma, the Kashaya
near Fort Ross and the Manchester-Point Arena band of Pomo Indians still
maintain some loyalty to their respective traditional ways and their
historical geographical territories, tribal leaders fear that a new
power—the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), passed in
1999—could soon bar the three coastal groups from their historical
fishing and foraging grounds, severing one of their last ties to an
ancient way of life.
"We believe that we are one with the natural world," says Nick Tipon of
the Graton Rancheria, a virtually landless group consisting of Coast
Miwok and Southern Pomo. Tipon has been a prominent voice in the ongoing
discussions between state lawmakers and stakeholder groups concerned
about the MLPA proceedings, which concluded in December with the
establishment of the first phase of the new protected areas, focusing on
the Central Coast. "The deer, water, the birds, the fish—they are
all one, and nothing is more important than another. So any time someone
makes a law that says we can't take something, it troubles us, because
that thing is a part of us."
Between 1999 and April 2007, the California Department of Fish and Game
(DFG) and the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) districted 29
marine protected areas between Point Conception and Pigeon Point, zones
in which varying degrees of sea harvest are prohibited. In some areas,
commercial take is restricted, while in others, the extraction of any
object, alive or otherwise, is illegal. Now, as the state looks at the
second phase, the North Central Coast region, stretching from Pigeon
Point north to Point Arena, these three coastal tribes are protesting
what they consider infringements on their unassailable rights to utilize
the natural world.
Eric Wilder, tribal services coordinator for the Kashaya, disdains the
California government's strong-armed approach toward enforcing the MLPA,
which consists of four proposals to adjust the current marine life
harvest restrictions in, among other areas to the north and south, Salt
Point State Park, Gerstle Cove and Bodega Bay. Several of the proposals
would tighten regulations or ban altogether the harvest of various
finfish, shellfish and other intertidal life in defined locations.
"From our viewpoint, the way the government has approached us with this
issue is like a doctor coming along and saying that he's going to cut
pieces of your body away and asking you which are the most important
parts that you'd like to keep. We'd like to keep all of it."
Wilder says that the culture of his tribe already faces the very real
threat of dissolution as outside enticements and pressures lure youths
away from traditional life on the reservation, located several miles
from sea near Fort Ross. Relatively few Kashaya people know the tribe's
history, says Wilder, but seafood and kelp still contribute heavily to
the diets of many Kashaya individuals, while also playing important
parts in ceremonial events and annual community gatherings, like the
acorn festival in October.
"Fishing and gathering is not just a recreational thing for us," Wilder
stresses. "It ties us to our past and our ancestors, and if they close
the coast to us, they might as well sentence us to death, because that
will end us."
Wilder, like scores of his Kashaya friends and relatives who gather
abalone, sea urchins and other edibles along the shore, already adheres
to state recreational fishing regulations, and he feels that such
commitment to the laws is sufficient.
"That's what those laws are there for, to protect the ocean. Why are
they now not good enough? Since the Russians came, our people have had
to live in a world of different rules and regulations, and we've
followed them, but with all the overfishing and depletion of resources,
it seems like it would have been a good idea if they had just followed
our rules instead."
Melissa Miller-Henson, of the Department of Fish and Game's MLPA Blue
Ribbon Task Force, says that the DFG and FGC will almost certainly
respect tribal rights and needs as they implement the laws. "I would be
shocked if the tribes were to lose their fishing rights. I think we live
in a day and age when that wouldn't be acceptable," she says.
But many members of the public and even some lawmakers do not know of
each tribe's quiet existence and their reliance on the sea. This
obliviousness impedes efforts to preserve the culture, says Tipon. The
1,100 members of the Graton Rancheria tribe live throughout the state,
and though they lay claim to a one-acre plot near Occidental, their
societal cohesiveness is a rather nebulous concept, with virtually no
sense of place to anchor the tribe to its past and few living members
who speak the tribe's dialect.
Two seasonal ceremonies still bring the people together for communal
seafood feasts and offerings of gratitude toward the abundance of the
sea and the land. The loss of fishing rights could effectively end such
gatherings and mark still one more step toward complete immersion into
Western ways.
"At this point in the game, we feel that anything at all that our people
could once do and are now denied is not healthy," Tipon says.
The Kashaya have fared just a little bit better. Twenty-five families
still live on the tribe's 42-acre reservation several miles inland from
Fort Ross, and 52 individuals still speak the language. One such person
is Kashaya elder Violet Chappell, 77, who was born in Mendocino County
and has lived virtually all her life on or around the Kashaya
reservation. Chappell has maintained a strong and loyal connection to
the ways of life with which she grew up, but she has watched her culture
slowly wane over the decades.
"There are not enough people of us anymore who know the history, the
genealogy and the religion of the Kashaya," she says. "Morals and ethics
have always been strong in our teachings, but the children today aren't
learning. We Indians have to learn how to live in two worlds. Our world
and our culture is a great way to live, but too many of us are
forgetting about it all and leaving for the cities."
Before the Russians landed at Fort Ross in 1812, the Kashaya, whose
population is estimated to have been some 1,500 people, had never
encountered Caucasians, as the Spanish missionaries never reached the
mountainous stronghold of the small tribe. The Kashaya dwelt primarily
between Duncans Point and the Gualala River, living on the coast during
the spring and summer and retreating into the hills as far as 30 miles
inland during the winter.
<http://metro.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=fffffffcfffffffcfffffff\
c/acc_random=48288847/site=METRO/area=BOX/pageid=16211007>
<http://venture.boulevards.com/adclick/site=METRO/area=BOX/pageid=1>
Advertiser Links
Foreclosures - Real Estate Investing
<http://www.foreclosureuniversity.com/>
Your Online Real Estate Investing Resource.
San Jose.com Real Estate <http://www.sanjose.com/realestate/>
Relocating to San Jose or Silicon Valley? Let San Jose.com introduce you
to some expert area real estate agents.
The Russians founded Fort Ross as a base camp for their otter hunting
trade, and for three decades pursued the thick-furred mammals, collected
the pelts and kept the Kashaya employed as laborers. Upon the Russians'
departure in 1841, life was permanently changed for the Kashaya.
Encroaching white settlers established private property, built fences
and barred the tribal members from their favored foraging and hunting
grounds. In 1914, the federal government secured a quiet plot of 42
acres in the hills several miles from the sea. With little water and
poor soil, the reservation hardly made up for the loss of their
traditional hunting lands, and many would leave the reservation in the
decades following to take up modern life in modern towns.
Today, nearly every household on the Kashaya land, says Chappell, is
affected by diabetes, an upward trend driven by a declining quality of
diet. She recalls the foods of her own upbringing—abalone, seaweed,
shellfish, sea urchins, herbs and wild greens—and notes that few
Kashaya bother with such items anymore.
Marine Life Protection Act public workshops and meetings will be held
Feb. 4, 5 and 6 in Gualala, Bodega Bay and Half Moon Bay, respectively,
and will allow members of the public to voice concerns as the state
government edits and rewrites its various draft proposals. The estuaries
and bays of Point Reyes and Salt Point are just two areas being
considered for moderate to full protection under the MLPA, though
proceedings are only in the beginning stages and final decisions will
not be made for another nine to 12 months.