Don't Underestimate the US Government Teacher, a Dedication to John Goettsche

 Today, the Supreme Court gave Justice two black eyes, gutting the Voting Rights Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act, separating a Native American father from his Native American daughter and giving her to adoptive parents who paid her anglo mother to adopt her the year before.  They judged that every state should be allowed to handle access to polls as they wished.  Soon after the Governor of TX began to take steps to make those changes which I would say follow the Jim Crow south. 

2013 should be a good year to teach high school US government and Poli-Sci 101 outside of the book, interactively, and in DC.

My Government teacher was John Goettsche and I credit him with preparing me, not only for the Sixties but for now. He rescued me from what I was taught by my US history teacher -- that Soviet Subs were spying on us from the Snake River, that Eisenhower was a communist sympathizer, that "Spartacus" was a communist inspired film ( I suppose because it was anti-slavery) kind of like the ridiculous fear provoking stuff the Tea Party/Republcan Party spreads today about women, and workers, and immigrants and the full diversity of this country. For homework she had us listen to Ronald Reagan and Cleon Skowsen on the radio program "Let Freedom Ring" -- pretty much the same climate as now, although it's worse now because it is post Reagan's presidency. The other US History Teacher was from Arkansas and taught that the Confederacy had won the war.   At least I knew that wasn't true, so I wanted to avoid him. I do not lie or exaggerate about any of this.

Don't underestimate the importance of a good US Government teacher. I run into old classmates who still say that John Goettsche gave them a special book to read which changed them and prepared them to survive the turbulent times of our youth, the influence continuing to the present. He didn't assign me a book.   He assigned me a research paper -- Civil Liberties After WWI. There wasn't any. He directed me to the stacks of our public library reading old Nations and learned about the dangers of the Red Scare, antisemitism, Jim Crow, anti-labor and anti-immigrant hatred, KKK, and I kept reading through WWII, and the Senate Un-American Committee Investigations, about the Rosenbergs. For each of us, he inspired an educated idealism about liberties, and the work it took to make them real.

 I remember his heartfelt talk to us during the Cuban Missile Crisis when we came noisily into his classroom, excited about the possibility of war as if it were a football game with Nampa High School. That was a sobering speech about the truth of war which prepared us in a way  WW2 heroism legends did not. Our generation, back in '67 suffered such high losses. Every American knew someone sacrificed -- whether they came home or died, many were broken and many died at their own hands after returning.  He could not have known what that war would be like, but he did not sugar coat war.  War is sobering.  It is serious. I remember his sharing about his German grandparents, and what happened to them during WW1, and it reverberated in me, my Nikkei family's experience during WW2, and in that moment, I realized that our WW2 experience was an American experience in a way which was healing to me. I wish for more teachers like John Goettsche during these hard times in our country when our political leaders at the national level are on the attack against our hard won rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.  It is, after all, these young student's future we are toying with.  John Goettsche put my own destiny regarding this country quite completely in my hands, and I've never let go of it.

My Ancestors Chose a Good Path filled with Ancestors for Me

My friend Marc Dadigan talked about a friend, recently on Facebook, who asked why he had so much on his page about Indians.  I am sure my Facebook friends might have a similar question.  For Asian people "Identity" is something important.  I know a friend who started the DisOrient Film Festival announcing the 5th year that Identity was no longer an issue and chose for Opening Night Justin Lin's Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift.  However, even now, another five years later, "Identity" is still a big thing with Asian people.  There are still new immigrants, and no matter how many generations  Asian families are here in the US,  we still grapples with a country which still does not see us as Descendants.  My grandchildren's generation, if I had grandchildren, still go through being asked "where are you from" or "what are you."  They still get surprised reactions that they speak English with no accent, and Asian women endure pickup lines about geishas, or are regaled with anecdotes about trips to Asia or how these guys know how to tell us apart -- Korean, Chinese or Japanese.  In fact my beautiful single Korean daughter just shared with me yet another bad experience at a night club.  In her words, another guy with "Yellow Fever" came on to her and she whirled on him with "Soooo, how's the 'you look like a geisha line' been working for you?"  then answering sarcastically for him, "NOT SO GOOD? then why don't you just think about dropping it."  That may have not been nice.  But sometimes a girl gets really tired.  So much weirdness out there about who we are, it is no mystery why identity will always be something we grapple with in a land who can't see us for who we are.  In this existential quandary I present this blog about my answer to the perennial question, "Who am I"  with  an experience somewhat unique in the American landscape for a Nikkei born in the USA.

When my Asian friends get on my Facebook, they may have questions.  Although plenty of my posts are about Asian community events, my own experience as an Asian, and plenty of my posts are about the diverse and beautiful reality of my life, since I am a tribal member of the Winnemem my Facebook makes it clear that my identity definitely is Winnemem rather than white American.     I ask myself sometimes, how do I explain this?  I know it seems like a logical effortless flow for me.  Therefore, I can say (since for Asians everything starts with the grandparents), it's a very logical effortless flow  full of the ancestor's blessings.

I recently began to think, if my Grandfather and Grandmother, new from the Mother Country were able to have chosen for me, their eldest grandchild, what would they have chosen.  Would they choose to send me to a school who would strip my Mother Tongue away because it was the enemy's language?  Would they send me to a teacher who put me in a coat closet every time I slipped into Nihongo until I messed my underpants, and sat in that all day, excruciatingly embarrassed playing a nursery rhyme game (The Farmer in the Dell)  and standing in my crusty underwear praying no one could smell it in the middle of a circle my classmates formed around me singing, "The cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone.  Hi ho the derry-o, the cheese stands alone."  Alone.

Or would they choose to send me to learn in a circle of children with elders and parents and a community all around them, vigilant without imposing, as I grew into what I would be within the clan.  Would they choose to send me to learn about nature as a human also part of nature, learning from the ancient trees, the water, the earth, the four legged, the insects, the fish, the plants, the medicines.  Would they choose to send me to learn where everyone and their families were part of the school community, everyone belonged?  Would they have chosen for me a school where the curriculum was to learn how to be a good human being and do do their part,  to "tend" in nature? Together.   

I know where they would send me.  I know what they would choose for me.  All Grandparents from all the waves and waves of immigration to the Americas would have done that for their grandchildren out of love for all of us . . .  if they could have.   No grandparent would say, "I choose the other because my grand kid's gotta' toughen up."  They would not have thrown their grandchildren into the giant vat of racism, violence, alienation, addiction, depression and just hoped they would survive and succeed.  They would, if they could,  found us a place we can grow and give and find happiness.     I know my Ojichan and Obachan are happy, as the words in an old Shaker Song Simple Gifts says,  that their granddaughter, was able to, in "turning, turning, come down right."

But my ancestors like all other waves of immigrants to this country bore violent discrimination and persevered.  My grandparents were finally given the ability to get citizenship after they had grey hair, after their sons came back from WW2, (for many Nikkei, in caskets) and was finally allowed the right to vote after their hair got more grey, 20 years later.  Yet they raised their grandchildren to love the Bill of Rights and serve this country.  I did as a public school teacher.  I taught love of the Bill of Rights and serve the community by making it safe and inclusive and respectful.    This brings us to 2013.  This millennium would have broken their hearts -- to see the ugly legacy of mining for gold and mining for uranium, digging for oil.  The new gold is food and water.  It would have broken my grandfather's heart that the target for making it rich quick is now as fundamental as food and water.  He believed food and water should be precious and abundant.  My grandfather and grandmother had a beautiful abundant garden all the years of their lives.  We ate from the garden.  We weren't wealthy.  We did not go to restaurants and our food did not come from the grocery stores when I was growing up.  We grew strong on simple nourishing food from our labor, and from gathering along the ditches.  Each harvest, my grandfather would carefully gather seeds.  He dried them, and wrapped them in newspaper, patterned with Japanese characters.  I still have a box of his last small packages of tomato, cantalope and squash.  My grandfather and grandmother always missed living right next to a river.  Our outings would invariably be to rivers.  He was a fisherman.  My grandfather was a fisherman and a gardener, and with grandma they were fieldworkers and farmers after the Alien Land Law was lifted.  His heart would have broken with agribusiness, with Monsanto, with dam-builders who dam up rivers and divert river systems for fracking.  My grandmother would have called it crazy.  They were not political people.  They saw too much violence.  It would have broken their hearts to see what their grandchildren and her children had to do to say No to the craziness.  It took enough for them to say No to their home country by leaving it. This millennium would have asked too much of them, because No was not in their vocabulary even though this is not the turn of events they would have chosen for America.

So following my Grandfather and Grandmother, from the Mountainous Region of Honshu, along the Gifu River to California, Montana/Wyoming short-line railroad construction, Idaho fields brought to life by the Snake River, I find myself along another river, the Winnemem, and another mountain, Bohem Pyuk, with people who are still defending the life of their tribe, their salmon, their sacred lands.  And here I find myself during what all cultures in the world refer to as the Changing Time.  For us Humans, it is an important time, when all the world and Nature comes to the point of no return.   My ancestors' blessings, if I were to see their hand on my life from the day I breathed my first breath of air, brought me to this important point, prepared to make a definite choice, prepared to make a stand, and be able to tell false from true leadership, prepared to be a strong follower rather than a straggler, and able to feel the goodness of this life rather than be filled with fear and doubt.  To be able to say Yes rather than live only a No to the destruction of the Changing Time is a gift.  Yes to Winnemem is a No to the death of this planet.  Yes to all indigenous sovereign people of the world is the one Yes we can say which is No to the death of this planet.  The option has always been there, to be tend-ers in Nature, to be part of nature, to give our hands to the work of nature rather than destroy it.  We only need to live with less rather than waste, and do more with our voices and hands to tend, to pray, to speak for Life, not live like addicts off of dead things -- as Winona LaDuke calls our addiction to unrenewable  resources.

Who am I?    I am a Nature-ized Naturalized Nikkei Tribal Member of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe.  There are Nikkei everywhere as I learned in Cuba among my Cuban Nikkei family there.   My experience is more like theirs than my experience with my own blood relatives who are Japanese American.  My Identity is integrated with the Winnemem Tribe as is the identity of Cuban Nikkei who were puzzled by the question, "do you identify Cuban or Japanese."  They could not answer that question.  After all, when they suffered under Batista during WW2 when the Cuban Dictator imprisoned all Japanese men 15 years old and over and left the Nikkei women and children to fend for themselves with their subsistence gardens.  American Nikkei are so moved that in Cuba, the Nikkei women's  Cuban neighbors plowed their own garden and then came over to help plow the Nikkei gardens.  Friendships and neighborly relationships persisted through the war.  The Nikkei were part of the revolution which formed their country.  Other Cubans  refer to them as Descendants, and the Nikkei history in Cuba is part of the whole.  That is not the Nikkei experience in the US when the WW2 concentration camp and curfew laws over Japanese immigrant families were so complete on the West Coast that even those of us who lived outside of the wartime boundary of relocation and removal and did not go into camps still felt the hatred of our neighbors and country toward us as Jap aliens and non-aliens.

My experience allows for an integrated identity in this country.  I don't live on a Winnemem Island in the United States.   In becoming a tribal member I have joined a very American struggle of an indigenous nation's struggle to continue, to assert the precious Bill of Rights, to regain their sovereign treaty rights with the US Government.  I also am part of building the US.  As a school teacher in the public school system, and as a person who persistently stood for the Bill of Rights for all peoples, who was inspired by the justice movements of my youth to struggle and speak up for the ideals of a democratic nation, I was not passive or silent about America.  Being a Winnemem Nikkei  at the point of US history makes all the difference in the world to me.   Today, this country's leaders would choose to support a few corporations rather than what is good for the American people or the Earth. And in allowing these few corporations to manipulate environmental protection laws, to hurdle over regulations which protect our health and safety, and to conspire with these corporations to pay very little for the public good and social services with taxes, threatening the American public school system,  and the social services  putting more and more American elders, veterans and families in harms way -- creating a new middle class, the working poor.   I stand "outside the belly" with the Winnemem, a California Tribe, one of 90 percent of the California tribes left off the Federal Recognition List.  Yes, the tribe suffers greatly from the policies of greed and hate.  At the same time, they have intact their old way of life which would include their traditional education, medicines, government structure, a complete way of life.    That is now my way of life, the medicines, the traditional education, my leaders, my way of life.   Which would my Nikkei ancestors have  chosen for me of they could?  They would have chosen the place where I would be safe and where I could contribute positively.  They would have chosen the place where I would not have had to deny them and could bring them with me.  They would have chosen for me the place where I would have walked further with many many more ancestors.  They would have chosen, I believe with all my heart, to be outside the belly of this beast, in 2013, and be on the side Life not destruction of  our precious  Food and Water.

So today, I am saying a prayer of thank you to my ancestors.  They are Shichiro Kawai and Misao Ota of Kami no Mura in Gifuken Nihon on the island of Honshu.  They lived along the Gifu River.  Our background is samurai, living a simple bushido way of life of service before Japan transformed itself into an Empire and bully in Asia during WW2.    My mother is Meriko Kawai Joo, her name signifying the new country of her birth.   I was raised by them and George Shobei Kawai (still living), William Jiro Kawai, Ruby Tamako Aoyama and Grace Hideko Yamamoto (still living).  I was also raised, walking side by side and often right behind while they lit my way by Wilma Crowe (Lakota, Hunkapapa band, still living), Dwight Souers and his beloved wife, still living, Twila Souers (Lakota, Brule band)  Helen Castillo (Dine, still living).   Anamethot (Kickapoo) Marvin Stevens, Kenny Moses (Snoqualme) Edison Chiloquin (Klamath), Harriet Amerman (Choctaw, still living), Robert Tom (Siletz, still living), Marie Brown (Umatilla),  Paul Whitehead (Kootnia), and mostly for the past 30 years, Puilolimit, Dawinkai and Kows (all, Winnemem Wintu).  Sawal maemus baeles bom.

Ceremony is not a Crime

This is a video produced and filmed by Will Doolittle, my husband.  It tells what happened to our 2012 Balas Chonos, Coming of Age Ceremony, which was attacked by the US Forest Service Law Enforcement when they were sent to protect our ceremony.  That was their job. But it became a military exercise against Indian People.  We hear they spent $20,000 overtime to these LEO's.  And we hear that the leader of the LEO's, Chad, has hung our River is Closed Banner on the wall behind his desk in his office -- right there in front of his boss -- and is allowed to, treating it as a trophy.  It shows the true heart of the USFS that they can boast about interfering and intimidating the tribe, their supporters to disrespect and attack our young women as they enter into womanhood.  If you want to help us supporting our 2013 Coming of Age for Alicia Schofield, let me know.

Negotiating Ceremony with the USFS, 2013

 You all know what happened during our young women's Coming of Age in 2012 when the USFS law enforcement decided to attack our ceremony rather than protect it as they were assigned when Randy Moore granted us a Mandatory Closure.  I guess after the mess, and after the the citations against Chief Caleen Sisk costing 10,000 dollars or a year in the federal prison were dropped in October, Randy Moore wants it to go well this year as does Tom Tidwell the Chief of the Forest Service in Washington DC.  Or so we have been told by the Region 5 Tribal Liaison.   Thanks to all the supporters who wrote, emailed and weighed in with their outrage that this attack by federal officials could be happening in a country which guarantees the inalienable right to ceremony and religion and recently became the last nation in the world to finally sign on to the UN DRIP.  Well, we're at it again for the Coming of Age Ceremony for Alicia Schofield who just turned 16 this year, a beautiful Winnemem Potowatami woman who is part of a family of dancers, Thundering Moccasins Dance Troupe.  Her Ceremony will be July 20 - 23.  The tribe wanted to work this out back in November so we could guarantee a better working relation ship for the next ceremony and for all those following.  However, Randy Moore has never talked with us.  In May, we finally met with the Tribal Liaison, a likeable Karuk man who seems to want to make this happen but admittedly does not have authority.  Here is how it is unfolding at this point.  He is still trying to get the US Forest Service to understand that the ceremony must have campground and river closed to outsiders and the tribe pay no fee.  I know the closure is obvious to those who are not indigenous, but why the tribe has a problem with paying a fee problem may not be so understandable in a society based on money.  So that is the subject of the blog.

 While the Chief is in Altai, in Russia, we received an email from the Forest Service Tribal Liaison raising the issue once again about fees, impending deadlines set by the concessionaire and Forest Service for turning in the Special Use Permit and Reserving Pine Point Campground.  Fees and deadlines seem to be such important values to the Forest Service, and always, they impose it at will.  They may dawdle months of time away responding to our request for a meeting, they may never make the time to meet with tribe, but they are very serious about their deadlines once they become involved and very much set on determining the issue of fees.  This year they have strict regulations they cannot talk business with the Concessionaire who has set the cost of services dealing with toilet and trash at $990 which they've done for $250 each year for McCloud Campground.  Also the Concessionaire is demanding we reserve Pine Point Campground, and the Forest Service timing of paying for anything is after the event, and they cannot promise they will pay the Concessionare for Pine Point.  The Forest Service, however, is pushing us to reserve a campground we are prevented by tradition to pay fees for usage.  Their rules and protocols are complicating the sanctity of the ceremony which have been clearly explained to them -- and yet they continue to push.  Reserve the campground.  Take a risk on paying the fee or suffering a penalty if you will not.  Criminalizing Ceremony.

I responded to that email:

I've communicated with our lawyer the things discussed with the Chief at the meeting with you and let her know you will be calling Thursday to work out the Special Use Permit.  I understand your concern regarding the timing of reserving Pine Point, and your concern that the  permit be submitted quickly despite the ambiguity around campground fee payment on the Forest Service side and the problems created by working of the old special permit rather than the special permit we finally negotiated with the Forest Service last summer.  We cannot move forward without the progress being noted in the document. 

Regarding the special use permit, Lauren is aware that the Chief shared with you already that she has concerns that we are staring once again with the language which still criminalizes the ceremony.  I've assured the lawyer that you  are looking for a copy of the negotiated permit and will be working from that.  Added to that, the permit designed for "timber sales" which Penny sent along to give to us as a way to address gathering materials is totally inappropriate for our needs and will definitely prove problematic, criminalizing our ceremony.    I've asked the lawyer to give special attention to the language and section which allowed the LEO's to give the Chief that second citation which doubled the citation.  All in all, the permit as it has been worked by you and Penny still criminalizes ceremony.

Regarding McCloud Campground cost for trash pick-up and toilets and the raise from $250 for those services to $990, it's all in the way you look at it.  It looks like, as you pointed out, the Concessionaire is trying to get a percentage of the campground usage fee covered rather than for services for removing trash and sanitation. We can't pay fees.   It's not about how much it costs.  It's a traditional "rule" -- that there is no exchange of money of any amount, no bartering of any kind as part of ceremony.  It is that way all over Indian Country.  For example, in Eugene, people try to have a fundraiser at the Longhouse, and the answer is no.  They try to bring in bingo.  Someone admires earrings and wants to buy it.  No, no. And it is the leader's or steward's responsibility to hold that.

Regarding Pine Point -- we cannot reserve online then be stuck with a campground usage fee there either.   It is a human rights issue.  As you know, the tribe's human right to ceremony should not be withheld, despite the "unrecognized tribe label"  slapped on 90 percent of the California tribes.  Federal government may and do withhold services and grants based on that label.  But can they withhold freedom of religion?  Only if they want the world to judge the federal recognition policy as a human rights violation and bring to question the whole concept.   The human right to ceremony and religion is an inalienable right.  Our ceremonial rights as a tribe, though we may not be recognized by the federal government,  are the same rights as all the rights won by indigenous people in the US Constitution and on the world stage (UN DRIP).  Particularly because  President Obama finally signed it, it behooves tribes of this country to "make it real," to actualize it even though the President's staff minimalize  his signing it as merely "aspirational."  President Obama claims he intends to show his sincerity as Commander in Chief "by action."  If that means he's only got the Winnemem Tribe in his corner, then we need to uphold the rights of indigenous people in that document.   Our Chief sitting on the Permanent Forum has told us first hand that there is no discrimination of federal recognition in the document.   

So that brings us to these camp fees -- the one for Pine Point and the percentage for the McCloud.  Every tribe knows that fees are regulatory impositions which compromise the sanctity or distorts the sanctity of ceremony,  Even though we are one tribe, what we do impacts all tribes, either  by reducing or by emphasizing the basic human right to ceremony.  So the Winnemem and our Chief take that very seriously, being a ceremonial tribe, and a tribe which may not have much materially but at least we have our ceremonies and relationships with the sacred places.   She's being very thoughtful of what we do, even with imposed deadlines.  So we're not pushing her.  Yes, the unknown factors may cause us to worry but we need to wait for Chief Sisk's direction because it is informed by her ancestors.

I take this time to address this to you -- who have already heard it -- as well as to our lawyer who is cc'd in with this email.  Last year, the Chief made some compromises which, in the end, compromised our right to ceremony and compromised her peace of mind and safety.  This year the tribe learned a lot and is absolutely clear that we need to follow the Chief.  She has proven over the years, including last year, that no one knows more than she how to navigate extermination policies.

Chief Sisk has been taught by her ancestors and former Chiefs that paying a fee changes things.  She has been taught through her whole life that ceremony IS the exchange, the "payment" in crass terms, in our relationship with the sacred.  Our obligations are more than the dance, the singing, the teaching, the praying, but it is also all we do to prepare for it.  Paying a fee is not something we should take lightly.     The lawyer and I  are not in the position to make that call.  What may seem sensible to descendants of immigrants and settlers, as we saw last year, may not be good for the history of indigenous human rights.  The laws treat us descendants differently than the laws treat Indian people.  As a follower of the Winnemem way for almost 30 years, I would absolutely not second guess spiritual guidance, tens of thousands years of tradition, an unbroken line of leadership and a tribe which has survived a gamut of extermination policies and still do.    Listening and learning takes a lot of patience, and over the years, I'm growing patience.  So I'm saying we just give our worry about  deadlines and such to the Creator.    The Chief is taking the time to really think about it, and will let us know what it is that we must do about this year's roadblocks.

Thank you,  Misa

THAT DAY, WITHIN A SHORT TIME THE CHIEF FIRES OF AN EMAIL TO US:
Hi, I am in Altai.  They don't have to pay the Russian Government to hold their Fire Ceremony on their lands. 

The good conditions that were achieved last year by permit and costs the FS paid, which were few, needs to continue now.  I don't understand how the Forest Service can say it can't, when last year,  they did.  This included the fees to the concessionaire.  We will not pay for use of our sacred grounds.  The Forest Service is the ultimate manager of our land without our consent.  It is our right to use our lands to promote our distinctive cultural way of life.   Chief Caleen Sisk

Well, I would say that the Chief did ot need much time at all to let the US Forest Service know what she said, and that she meant it and what path we are taking.  The supporters know it.  Our lawyer knows it.  Her communicators with the Forest Service know it.  This year it is one voice, one unified tribe.

I am learning that the issues which arise around  holding ceremony on sacred land occupied by the US Forest Service means struggle.  We must struggle for our rights despite documents which clearly outline that our ceremonies are not to be imposed upon by regulations and rules by the US Forest Service.  Yes, the fact that the federal government does not give 'federal recognition' to so many of the California Tribes who sit on water since Reagan's years-- you know, the President which made corporations entities much like a human being with human rights -- makes it even more difficult.  But it is more than that.  The challenge includes water districts acting like corporations who buy pieces of rivers around the world, also buying the piece on the McCloud which include our sacred lands for many ceremonies, and medicine places.  It includes a Forest Service which is organized in a manner that no one can tell the most poorly trained and the most racist of their law enforcement to abide by their assignment -- to protect our ceremony by enforcing a mandatory closure -- and when they "go rogue" they are still paid overtime for insubordination of their assignment interfering with ceremony and harassing the tribe with no disciplinary action.  In fact,  the leader of the military action against the ceremony can hang our river closure banner which he confiscated from us on the wall of his office -- something that definitely should be considered unprofessional.   Or, was Chad "going rogue."  Did Chad receive orders to attack our ceremony from someone in the Forest Service or in other places with personal interests to terminate  Winnemem presence on the McCloud River, whomever that might be.    

But with crisis and challenge is opportunity.  For us, it is meeting and standing shoulder to shoulder with the good people of the world who come to support us because they care about human rights, they care about sacred lands, they care about the salmon, and young women's coming of age ceremonies.

WHAT NEXT?  The question, "Will the US Forest Service impose upon our ceremonies a rule refsing to allow us to use our motorized boat to transport elder women to the other side to do ceremony?"

As we negotiate with these departments for the right to do our ceremony on occupied land, it always comes down to their deadline and their fees.  When it is an issue of human rights, we can't compromise.  We cannot do anything which leads to compromising our ceremony so much that it changes it -- or mincing away from doing what we need to do because conducting ceremony with sanctity criminalizes us.  So we have to be clear.  As I told our lawyer, it's like a contiuum from Federal Law to Spiritual Law.  We went along with Federal Law as far as we can go.  Now they have stonewalled, and hemmed and hawed, and now we have gone as far as we can with their law without compromising sanctity.  Now we are in the realm of Spiritual Law, and we have to abandon ourselves to the spiritual.  I believe because of H'up Chonos ceremony, the Sacred Fire, the prayers and song, that something good we can't guess is going to happen.  It's in Creator's hands.  We have the support of the old Chiefs and the Spirit of those Active Sacred Places, and we can now witness something which strengthens our faith.  Remember War Dance at the dam?  Because of that ceremony we found out salmon were alive and flourishing in New Zealand.  This is where you find out how it is to work with traditional tribes and the US government.   At some point, if law abandons us, we have no alternative except to do what the ancestors would do.   And I say O Hau to that!!

I foresee a time when things are so different that not only are their war dancers and prayers at a women's coming of age, but that there will be Indigenous Supporters from south, west and north in order for us to have our human right to ceremony -- the river keepers from the west; the American Indian Movement security from the south; and from the north the great canoes to ferry the elders across with their songs echoing down the river, their paddles cutting through the water, their great dugouts gliding across the river.  As the Chief said, "when those great canoes touch this river, something good is going to happen." 

Celilo Falls

 The childhood memory of seeing The Falls lies in my heart as I stand with the Winnemem Wintu on our river, the Winnemem River, pristine and beautiful above Shasta Lake Dam, flowing from streams from Mt. Shasta.  Westlands Water District which is like a global corporation mining and buying up portions of river, also stole from under us and Nature Conservatory a part of our river.  Now our ceremonies along the river at these sites, necessary to continue to keep the sites and are way of life intact,  are attacked by US Forest Service Law Enforcement and our sacred healing sites which help the people and the habitat for our Chinook Salmon are threatened by the same destruction suffered by the Wasco People of Celilo Falls.

The Precious Blessing Rock for young men and the Precious Puberty Rock for young women

How do we carry on without these?  Westlands wants to pay for a dam raise which will make them disappear and lie dormant forever.  They don't care about our people.  We must challenge that crazy plan for the strong Winnemem young men and young women following us:

Edison's Story "Return of the Raven"