Hateful

I just ran into a hateful blog -- hateful toward the Winnemem tribe, most specifically the Chief. It is written by anonymous folks who don't use their name. Begrudging. Slanderous. Granny always told me that the Winnemem life is a hard life but still the best life. The Winnemem who are following Granny's vision and way of life have a very tough life. But the accomplishments are many.

In a single generation, they have 100 percent sobriety in the next generation.

In a single generation, their young people are believers in the Winnemem way of life, strong people. Several are going to college. Several others are stepping up to their traditional roles.

I credit these accomplishments which goes against the trend to the Chief Caleen Sisk and her faithfulness to her Aunt, Florence Jone's vision. She brought people back to the Village, living together. The children are surrounded by strong Winnemem loving adults. Now that the young ones are in their 20's and 30's and some becoming parents who also bring up their children around the Village, participating in the ceremonial life, they will also bring strong children into the world.

Caleen has brought back the puberty ceremonies for men and women.

She is a Chief who sacrifices to take care of her people.

She is known in many countries, and respected by the many she meets.

I find the accusation that she runs a cult laughable. If ever, she welcomes input, opinion, another perspective to hers more than she needs. but that is her style.

The articles written against her are based on hate and envy from a comfortable place without the Winnemem wage (zero), the Winnemem daily struggle for human right to ceremony to carry on sacred responsibilities, and being more independant than a village can be. I'm sure sometimes Caleen must wonder how would it be to not be the successional leader for life. I'm sure Marisa has the same reluctance Caleen had while her Aunt was alive to step in front. Being Chief means thinking and caring for everyone and everything. How must it feel to be a leader through elections, have privileges, power, and a payroll to go with it?

Traditional way, the people should take care of the Chief because she takes care of them, but these are modern times, and very few get the concept.

Anyway, I am very proud of Caleen. Granny was kind enough to ask Caleen to continue to take care of me, and she has kept that promise. She didn't have to. She didn't know me that well. But like everything else, she did what Granny said. Brought back the family to the village. Brought back ceremony which lay dormant since before the dam was built. She may be a reluctant doctor, but she does it anyway, and has helped me as well as others who have come for help.

The young ones following her are proof that Caleen is a great leader, leaving the tribe stronger and in a better position. Now, she is fighting for the human right to exist, to simply be Winnemem and this struggle will make it easier for the next generation.

I know there is this ugliness between "family" as there are in many families. How sad that is the case. There is really nothing she can do. I had wished once that good could happen and prayed to see the truth. As if by magic, perhaps because we were on sacred ground, one of them called me over and without any rhyme or reason began to use the word hate, and hate dripped from everything she said, old grivances of when they were children and Caleen ate the best part of the watermelon.

Wow.

That is a grudge. Well, you should be glad to know that she makes sacrifices each day on behalf of the tribe, the salmon, the Winnemem way of life. She works, prays, and leads with all her heart. Really, it is time to let go of hate and evolve into goodness. Life would be happier for the hateful people. The world needs them. That is the hope, that they can let go of petty childhood grievances and as granny says, "right is right, and wrong is nobody" step up and give.

Addendum: I have vague memories of this newsletter, come to think about it. They wrote about me in a derogatory manner because of my ethnicity coupled with my belief system. But Granny is the one who brought me in. I call myself a nature-a-lized member of the Winnemem Wintu. And they accuse the Chief of being lesbian as if that is a bad thing. The Chief is not lesbian and being lesbian is not wrong, so the writer is also sadly homophobic as well as enthnocentric. As far as I remember I did nothing to this branch of the family whenever they came to visit Granny while I was there except be respectful and friendly. And as for my following the Winnemem way, I don't pretend to be born Winnemem, but I believe in the sacred lands, Granny's legacy, the Chief, the ceremonies, the Sacred Fire. I do not believe in the administrative model the federal government imposes on tribes and see the wisdom of the ancestors that there is successional leadership. I do not believe in casinos as a good way for the Winnemem. Granny says it rots the tribe from the inside out and I believe that. I believe that the Winnemem way is a hard way of life, but it is the best way of life for me. From my preference for the succesional traditional leadership, my pride in the accomplishments of Chief Sisk and my commitment to the sacred responsibilities to sacred land, to water, to the "Nur" which I keep by following her lead, as she follows Granny and the Chiefs before her, I am Winnemem. Those who express such hatred follow another way, and that is fine. They have their elections. They do not accept Caleen as Chief and do things their own way, following their own selves rather than Granny. They have not spent any time, energy or material on helping Caleen through this long arduous journey to justice we are still on but have put her down, sometimes cutting in front of her to spread malicious gossip in an attempt to derail her. Granny said "right is right . . ."

So I will continue to pray for them, that they will settle their hearts and minds and think only the good things, see only the good things, speak only the truth and gain the power and strength to ward off all evil, as well as for their grown children for whom I still have great fondness and hope they can grow without hate and resentment and jealousy. The world needs good strong brave people with the light of life within their hearts and are dedicated to goodness.

USFS Law Enforcement allows drunken rage on the River

This is a video shot by one of the River Keepers, defenders of Marisa Sisk's Coming of Age Ceremony on the McCloud River.  This year the USFS promised a mandatory closure, which turned out only to be motored boats.  The Forest Service Law Enforcement are present during this film.  They are the motor boat that the drunken angry recreationists who threatened to bring more people and guns is talking to respectfully.  The drunk is swearing and yelling at  the River Keepers, who seem to be doing the job of the FS Law Enforcement who sit passively by and allow him to leave without issuing a citation.  The Law Enforcement, however, do come in on July 4, the morning after to issue two citations to the Chief, however, because the elderly women were ferried across to witness Marissa make her first medicines and her first acorn soup the day before.  The two citations amounted to 10,000 dollars worth of fines or up to a year in jail.  She was given the second citation for having signed the agreement which did not include a boat, and then "breaking the agreement."  However, our Chief is familiar with paper treachery and signed each page, as well as her signature at the end of the document which does include the tribal boat for ferrying people and emergencies as well as the signature by the concessionaire's signature.  The signed permit which arrived with tribal motor boat missing was not the same draft that she signed, but her signature had been cut and paste onto it. 

It must be NYC! Good morning to you too!

Volume on Low

I didn't know the heart has a volume control and it can be turned on low. I learned that when our daughter said something that shocked me and slapped me in the face that any woman could say what she did and have been raised by us.

Any other time it would have been so painful that such words were said, but when the heart is on low volume, it doesn't go through all of "what that must mean" stuff and makes it much easier to roll with it. The heart doesn't branch out into the future ramifications and consequences and over analyze it. It becomes like, "uh-huh. Interesting. You think that?"

I replay what she said which is sick. Am I testing if the volume has been turned up? It kind of becomes that for a moment and I hope writing it down helps me not go back to that startling conversation anymore.

We're going up to visit Maki and her boyfriend Adam in Hillsboro tonight for a Father's Day dinner for Will. We never did Father's Day because as Japanese and as tribe, there are ceremonies during the spring instead with such significance and, well, fathers are important every day. But with the volume low, this desire for Maki who never learned about it and when she did, wasn't into her fathers, is kind of sweet. And her way of celebrating it, dinner, is pleasant conversation to catch up on her life. Tomorrow she is excited to show me the shopping spots. I will enjoy seeing anything in Portland so it's ok with me too. Then back HOME for all of us, two homes so very different.

In America, that's the way it's supposed to be.

So I say thank you Granny for taking that volume knob in my heart and switching it down as quickly as possible when the words slapped me across the face.

Maki was a little girl, living her reality with her wits, taken out of that reality without even a howdy doo and thrown into a family, not of her choosing, and in every way unfamiliar. How does anyone feel in control of self, or happy in such a circumstance. What if you were a kid with absolutely no knowledge of an adult model or what being taken care of looked or felt like, and you get Mom and Dad, impediments to moments of freedom and fun between a reality you left behind which was navigable and managed fear. Why am I surprised you could not let go of that feeling about reality - something which had to managed and navigated by your sense of fun and gifts as being safety.

Then she turned 15 and her body is like running the show, her survival tools propelled her away from family to danger == but what is the difference with danger like her formative years? She knew this game. She knew this terrain. She had the skills and she didn't learn it from being in a family or teachers.

She learned everything by the school of experience, not by listening to anyone but her own internal voice. And she had Grandma and the Winnemem Sacred Places when she is afraid and family to return to when in need. Life lived on her terms.

She is not afraid and in need right now. She is living that norm she craved. She has a boyfriend, a house, a car, a job, a life and friends, and a family a couple hours down the freeway. She has order. She has a family, the one she would have chosen if anyone had asked her for her opinion when she was five.

Bless her. Bless her. Bless her. And thank you Grandma for bringing her here safely without us. Thank you for those stretches of time once a month and a month in the summer which were oasis of safety and upbringing for our family until she left at 15. It was enough to bring her to where she is today.

Thank you Grandma for turning down the volume.

Thank you for her life and my life, and once in awhile a visit shopping together and having fun when life of fab and life of Winnemem meet in between.

Something Beautiful!

NOTICE HOW THE SECOND LINE OF MAORI MOVE UP WHEN THE LANCES ARE ONLY AN INCH AWAY

PLEASE WRITE THE BIA

donald.Laverdure@bia.gov

cc: ttidwell@fs.fed.us
rmoore@fs.fed.us

To the acting Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Donald "Del" Laverdure:

This email is to ask for your help. The US Forest Service tells us their hands are tied from helping with a mandatory river closure to insure a Coming of Age ceremony safe from racial harassment, drunken boaters for the young women of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe year after year because the Winnemem do not have federal recognition. In spite of the fact that the Winnemem are part of the California Judgment Roll, another form of federal recognition predating the Reagan Administration’s “federal recognition list” which left off 90 percent of the California Indians, the US Forest Service says that it cannot honor our request for a safe ceremony. All we are asking is for a mandatory closure by the US Forest Service of a 400 yard piece of a section of the McCloud River to bring Marisa Sisk who will someday be Chief of the Winnemem Wintu into womanhood this summer, June 30 - July 3. They will only guarantee a voluntary closure even in light of
* clear evidence of racial harassment, interference, and health and safety endangerment of drunken, speeding boaters who ignore the “voluntary closure” which the US Forest Service holds to
*the Farm Bill which gives them authority to close areas and rivers for ceremony
* the UN DRIP, resolutions in Articles 11, 12, 25, in particular which does not differentiate recognized and unrecognized in being accorded their human right to ceremony and access to the lands for these ceremonies
*California AJR 39 joint resolution which asserts the state of California
recognizes the Winnemem Wintu
*an informal poll by the local Redding newspaper which shows overwhelmingly that public opinion supports honoring the right to ceremony
*overwhelming internet support
*resolutions from indigenous leaders representing their country in the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People’s permanent forum.
*the terrible irony in light of the historical fact that the former Chief Florence Jones of the Winnemem Wintu is the first tribal leader to apply to bring her ceremonies “above ground” under the 1970 Native American Freedom of Religion Act and her application was granted by the Federal Government

After Moore’s snub, left with no other recourse except for prayer and ceremony Chief Caleen Sisk called for a War Dance, or H’up Chonos, which is brought out when there is nothing which can be done except prayer; 210 people came from as far north as Olympia, WA and as far south as LA to support the tribe with a respectful non-violent closure, communicating with boaters about the fact there was a ceremony and asking them to respect that. A hundred percent of the recreational boaters respectfully turned around.
The only interference to this non-violent ceremony was the US Forest Rangers who daily came through our in two vehicles, one being a canine unit buzzed us with their boats backed by the auxiliary Coast Guards and on the third day summarily shut down our closure efforts.
This unusual show of force by the US Forest Service to stop a peaceful ceremony on a small stretch motivates us to turn to the BIA. Whereas our petitions and pleas fall on deaf ears and blind eyes, our ceremony becomes targeted with police action. Something is very wrong.
Is federal recognition the only way traditional indigenous tribes have freedom and human rights in this country? In California alone, that affects 300,000 tribal people who without warning and overnight found themselves without federal recognition despite a long recorded historical relationship as tribes with the federal government. Is federal recognition, in spirit, an extermination policy? When basic rights taken for granted by everyone are withheld from one group, -- federally unrecognized -- that is called discriminatory. Furthermore, if this basic right to ceremony and religion, a central core for all tribes, is kept from them it negatively affects their mental and spiritual health and their very existence (see termination). If basic rights and religion are imposed upon by federal regulations due to a tribe’s status of federally recognized it turns them into lawbreakers. All of these are familiar pieces of what is called in our history books an EXTERMINATION policy. We must learn from history and we must not tie human rights to federal recognition. We must resist any attempt of government to do so. This is an issue that the BIA should take seriously. It has global significance.

Since we have come to a dead end with the US Forest Service who say the BIA makes the decisions regarding federal recognition, we are now directing our concerns to you. We are passing that message on, to the call for prayer as part of the National Sacred Land Prayer Day in Washington DC. as part of the invitation the Chief has sent to the International representatives of the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights Permanent Forum and delegates from several Latin American countries, Russia and the Maori of South Island, New Zealand who will come to witness the ceremony.
Please do not send us a form letter to apply for federal recognition over this. We cannot postpone this ceremony another day! The federal recognition process often means a tribe most forego teaching their young people their traditions and their way of life in order to focus on the federal recognition process which sometimes takes 20 years, a whole generation. And even then, tribes with their own language and traditions, are still denied. The Federal recognition process does not answer the problem of the human rights of tribal people. Please clarify for the Forest Service and other governmental entities that those of you who work for the federal government entrusted with whether or not tribal people have human rights and religious rights, that there is no discrimination implied by the policy. We are all human beings. And as human beings, we have the right to access all laws protecting our religious and ceremonial rights of tribal peoples, federal recognition or not.
Sincerely,
Misa Joo

Cc:
Chief Caleen Sisk, Winnemem Wintu caleenwintu@gmail.com
Senator Barbara Boxer webmaster@boxer.senate.gov
US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell ttidwell@fs.fed.us
Region 5 Forester, Randy Moore rmoore@fs.fed.us

Please Support our Right to Ceremony and email Forest Service Chief Tidwell

I emailed this to Tom Tidwell, Forest Service Chief. Posting with all the typos and awkward sentence structure of someone writing at midnight with apologies. If you can email ttidwell@fs.fed.us and cc

To the Forest Service Chief, Tom Tidwell ttidwell@fs.fed.us, and cc Randy Moore rmoore@fs.fed.us (who is under him), it would be so appreciated!

Dear Chief,
Something is not right in California. The state has little to do with it. On Forest Service Land, these past days, the US Forest Service Rangers interfered with the peace and dignity of a ceremony called H'up Chonos done by a tribe of traditional California Natives, the Winnemem Wintu. This ceremony is held when there is no other place to turn except to prayer to right a wrong. The wrong is that the women's coming of age ceremony is being disrupted by drunk boaters hurling racist remarks, insults and other boats playing loud music disruptions one could not even imagine at a communion or bat mitzvah. The tribe is asking for a mere 400 yards of a small segment of the river to be closed for only four days. The Forest Service has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to evidence of health and safety issues, harassment, and abuse of human rights.

During the ceremony, not only did the Forest Service vehicles come through backed by a canine unit, but they came through on their boat backed by coast guard and auxiliary coast guard daily, several times on Saturday. It was constant disturbance by the Forest Service vehicles. Then, on Sunday, when many of the people who came to stand with the tribe were gone, and a flotilla of recreational boats and speedboats came by harassing, yelling, making obscene gestures, and the engines very rattling and noisy, and going faster than the speed limit -- all with children in the water -- there was no Forest Service presence. Clearly they did not care about preserving peace on the river. Their attention was to cause intimidation and disturbance to ceremony.

This show of force did nothing but prove to the participants who came, many for the first time, to a Winnemem ceremony that the Federal Government has a grudge against a small traditional historical tribe, materially poor, but rich in culture and stubborn in their perseverance to exist despite the drowning of their homelands, the loss of their sacred lands, and the erasing of their tribal status under the Reagan administration along with 90 percent of the California Indians, 300,000 people. The story becomes more shocking the deeper one digs.

California recognizes the Winnemem as a tribe with the passage of joint resolution 39. The tribes of California recognize the Winnemem. New Zealand, and other leaders of nations recognize the Winnemem whose chief holds a chair at the UN Permanent Forum of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Certainly that is enough recognition for the Forest Service Region 5 Forester, the Shasta Trinity Forest ranger and her Supervisor to close 400 YARDS of a small branch of the McCloud River, a branch which is not navigable at the other end by the bridge. That should be enough recognition to support a ceremony which comes only when there is a young woman in the tribe comes of age to happen in peace and dignity. The Concessionaire has no problem with the tribe. The people of Redding if one were to look at the informal survey done by their local paper have no problem voting 70 percent for closing the river for the ceremony. One hundred percent of the boats, all who turned around when tribal members and their supporters asked them to respect the ceremony have no problem.

The only boats who disturbed the peace of the ceremony was a US FS boat with 6 armed rangers, with sunglasses, bullet proof vests motoring toward a group of people who were sunning on the slope watching at the boats being turned respectfully away, a banner flying "River Closed" as high over the river as the bridge was. As the USFS boat neared, the uniformed armed men standing, demanded the families of spectators to back up -- and as they scrambled up, little children, grannies, two or three lines of rangers, armed, a couple with dogs had crept up behind them. They turned ceremony into a para-military exercise.

Something is not right in California but the state has little to do with it.

It cannot be that the Federal Government has a prejudice against this small tribe of 125 people, so much so they would render them without the right to religious freedom under the Native American Religious Freedom Act, the right to carry on in their traditional way, the right to bring their young women into womanhood as Winnemem women resolved by any human rights document, including the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples which acknowledges the special need for the particular land for ceremony. What could motivate a government to ignore a people as they use all roads to petition, close doors on them when they come to plead their case and appear only to harass, bully and intimidate them from practicing their way of life.

I am shocked and upset. I am writing this because if I don't, if freedom ends here, if human rights ends here for this tribe, tyranny wins. It will eventually erode this country. Please, show that there is heart in the Federal Government for this California traditional tribe who just want to be who they are and follow their way of life, their humble, simple life of service to nature and who pray for humanity and all of Creation. I hope that someone clear over there in Washington DC can lead on a foundation of civility, humanity and commons sense. It's not happening here in California and the state has little to do with it.

Misa Joo
Eugene, Oregon
cc: Mayor Kitty Piercy, Eugene, Oregon, a Human Rights City
Chief Caleen Sisk, Winnemem Wintu
Randy Moore Region 5 Forester, USFS