Sunday, April 2, 2006
Kathy Wallace sat on her aunt’s porch on a reservation in Hoopa, near Eureka, one summer, grinding acorns for use in a meal or ceremony. The instrument, similar to a meat grinder, was difficult for her 6-year-old arms to turn, so she and her cousins took turns.
Her grandfather, a small but strong man who was energetic and lived until he was 97 years old, often visited Kathy, her sisters, brother and cousins at her home in Modesto or at family members’ houses on the reservation. He called them together to see what progress they had made on learning a song or dance he had taught them. He told Kathy to teach the younger cousins.
And she listened to her grandmother, a caring, sentimental woman who worked hard and always cared for one group of children or another, laughing and talking with relatives in a language Kathy didn’t understand.
Years later, her father taught her to fish using traditional nets.
The family picked wild berries and gardened.
When Kathy’s family gathered, they did what many families do: teach younger generations the ways they live their lives.
But when she learned a song or dance, or how to cook, it wasn’t just to preserve customs in her family. It carried a greater responsibility — to preserve a hidden, even endangered, culture.
Today, she is nearly 60 years old. She is an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley tribe of Native Americans, although by blood she is Karuk and Yurok.
Her ancestors lived in what today are Humboldt and Siskiyou counties, near the Klamath, Trinity and Salmon rivers.
The art of weaving
She has passed down to her two children — and they have to their children — traditions within her culture.
But Wallace’s own education continues. Today, she spends much of her time perfecting and teaching others a talent she discovered within herself about 30 years ago: basket weaving.
Everyone has a talent within the culture, Wallace said, and she had tried others, such as singing. A person has to find his or her gift.
Her sister sings well, she said, and is learning the language. Their grandfather did not pass down the language. After he was taken by the government and put in a boarding school, he was beaten as punishment for speaking his language, Wallace said. He did not want that to happen to his children.
Some people are good at hunting.
Wallace’s grandmother, who died when the girl was 12, was a basket weaver, although Wallace did not know that when she began weaving when she was about 30.
Also around that time, her father taught her to fish using traditional nets. Her father, who died a year ago, is David Risling. Today, he has a Davis street named after him.
When Wallace attempted other skills from the culture, among them was basket weaving. Relatives noticed her talent and insisted she was a natural artist. A student of the art still today, she continues to pick up techniques and information from other basket weavers.
She is on the board of the California Indian Basketweavers Association, a 15-year-old group that recently opened an office in Woodland. She makes baskets to sell or give as gifts and spends most of each year, between February and November, gathering the native plants such as willow that she uses for her creations.
That is a difficult task, and is complicated by development and farming on gathering sites, use of herbicides on native plants. It is exacerbated by government rules, such as needing permits to gather plants in government-managed forests or having to convince officials that the traditional plant burning Native Americans do is controlled, safe and good for the forests.
Language links
Wallace uses basket weaving to learn about and show others her culture.
There is perhaps a more effective way to share the history and uncover a hidden culture, though: language.
When people learn the literal meaning of a word, Wallace said, the word ties to a place, sometimes to an event, and they learn more about the culture.
“The language, I think, is a key element in making the culture reappear with some sense, with some direction,” said Marshall McKay, the new tribal chairman of the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, which offers classes in the language.
McKay was born in Colusa and spent some time on the Rumsey Rancheria. His family moved to other areas of Northern California, and he returned to Yolo County in the 1980s after attending school and beginning a family.
The Rumsey band — with “band” meaning small tribe — is one of several Wintun groups that lived along Cache Creek in the Capay Valley for thousands of years, according to its Web site, until they were removed by force.
The federal government bought the rancheria and held it in trust under the authority of the Acts of 1906 and 1908, and more land was added in 1934.
Since 1985, the tribe has run the growing and successful Cache Creek Indian Bingo and Casino in Brooks, and the funding has allowed the tribe to be economically independent — “no member of the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians receives government financial assistance,” the Web site states.
Today, in addition to 118 acres for the casino and other businesses, the Rumsey Rancheria has 24 tribal members and 34 children and trust holdings of about 257 acres for a preparatory school, houses, a community center, recreation fields and a pool, the Web site states.
McKay said one reason language is key in preserving culture is that some traditional prayers, songs and customs do not translate easily. Others just sound better in the native tongue.
“And I think it has more significance, too, to the people — that they’re bringing back something that really is on the verge of being lost. And that makes it more valuable to the people learning it.”
The elders and others who have preserved the language also have kept other details about the cultures, said Martha Macri, director of the Native American Language Center at UC Davis.
Learning a language — which often means finding an elder and becoming an apprentice — shows a commitment to learning about the culture, she said.
When a tribe’s language dies with its oldest members, names and other aspects of the culture disappear.
“So, it really goes hand in hand,” she said. “Language permeates culture.”
Living on the land
Until the Spanish entered the land, followed by the Gold Rush, Indians lived about five people per square mile in California, said Bob Bettinger, a UC Davis anthropology professor. With today’s high-rise condominiums, apartment buildings and subdivisions, that may not sound like dense living. But it was far more crowded than Nevada, which had one person per 15 miles, he said.
This area was home to Miwok, Patwin, Wintu, Pomo and other tribes. Large villages — about 1,000 people each — were in what today are Colusa and Knights Landing, he said.
Unlike those in other areas of what today is the Northwest United States, California tribes were largeley peaceful toward each other, Bettinger said. They were not friendly, he said — they did not speak each other’s languages, in spite of living on small territories and in close proximity — but they had no interest in taking over each other’s land, a practice of Northwest tribes.
“(It’s) not that they like each other,” Bettinger said, “just that they didn’t want their territory. They just want these guys (neighboring tribes) to stay away.”
Fights broke out only over individual events, such as someone from one tribe gathering plants from another tribe’s territory, he said. They preferred to avoid major conflicts because of the risk of death involved.
They were hunters and gatherers, fished for salmon and collected acorns. The climate was not quite right for growing corn, Bettinger said, and even if they had decided to try irrigation, the land was too densely populated for farming.
Before the Spanish arrived with devastating diseases and Gold Rush settlers inundated the land, eager to discover the wealth they were sure lay in the ground here, “there were great numbers of Native Americans living in the Capay Valley and in Northern California as well as Southern California, simply because of the vast wealth of good weather and abundant food and these wonderful things to survive on,” McKay said.
Today, some of them live on “small, postage stamp-size rancherias with low numbers of population in Northern California, with the exception of a few — Round Valley or Hoopa. Those tribes have managed to remain fairly large and flourish, probably because of their geographical location and their ability to camouflage and (hide) themselves from intruders” at the time, he said.
Indeed, Wallace said her ancestors were isolated more from those who entered California, and stayed active as a tribe longer than many. Seven or so of the 20 annual ceremonies her ancestors celebrated remain today, and Wallace’s sister revived another, a coming-of-age ceremony for women.
The country has 562 federally recognized tribal governments, according to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
During the U.S. Census count in 2000, around 333,000 Californians, out of a state population of about 34 million, identified themselves as American Indian or Alaska natives. By comparison, the state estimated Yolo County’s total population in 2005 at around 188,000.
Macri, who is an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation, said UCD sits on what once was Patwin land. She said development that disturbs Native American burial ground is bothersome, but she is not offended by having the campus there — although, she admitted that is just her view.
“It’s not a unique situation in the world or in the United States that places that are good places to live were good places to live (in the past). ... It also, to me, feels good that I feel the presence of those people in a way,” she said.
Some of the history surrounding Native Americans and mistreatment of them over the years is difficult, she said.
But, “I prefer to think of the beauty of these cultures and, sort of, the wholeness of these people’s lives and their connection to the natural environment, and be uplifted by that and be uplifted by their (focus on) community,” she said. “And not just to focus on these people as victims.”
Along with different languages, tribes had, and have today, differences in culture, traditions and history.
They are similar in broader contexts, though, such as coping with a history of struggle, near destruction, and efforts to revive their languages and defining characteristics.
“We all learned to live in our landscape,” Wallace said. “We all learned to make use of the plants and animals that lived in our terrain.”
Wallace meets regularly with basket weavers from other tribes. She says the group is another family for her. Different tribes use plants they have gathered from areas native to their ancestors. Some weave so the design is on the inside of the bowl as well as the outside; Wallace’s technique, and that of her ancestors, keeps the design on the outside only.
In spite of differences in method and materials, the weavers all value cultural preservation and they share the craft.
Cultural preservation
The Rumsey Band offers a variety of programs for children and adults to learn about their past.
The Yocha-De-He preparatory school on the rancheria hosts dance troupes, singers and drummers, storytellers and artists. The tribe offers classes in the language, southern Wintun.
“We’re really making an effort to bring back some of the cultural aspects that I feel are lost,” McKay said, “like the language, some ceremonies, songs and dances, those kinds of things, ceremonial aspects. The traditions that surround those ceremonies, I think those things are starting to come back also.
“There’s a great deal of interest with the 30-somethings in the tribe at this point to really make an effort to encompass a lot of the people who have this information before they go,” he said. “So, that’s really an inspiration for me to see that, because I was watching the culture disappear when my mother passed, and my uncles and grandparents. There was a great deal of knowledge and experience that went with those people and I didn’t see it coming back.”
McKay said he is pleased, too, with feedback he gets from outside the community, but believes more work is needed to make his culture visible to the general public.
“I think that there’s a great deal of unawareness at this point, of mystery at this point,” he said. “It’s going to take both sides of sharing information (and building trust), but I think that we’re on a pathway that way, that we’re on a quest to ... try to build trust up again in order to find an understanding between the two cultures that I think will be an exciting exchange of information.
“So we’re really looking forward to making these developments.”
Preserving or reviving a culture requires meshing old and new, traditional and modern. With Native American history, preservation means uncovering a story that took place on the same land, but was different in almost every way from what California is today.
Wallace uses plants and a natural chemical reaction to color a few of the native plants she weaves into baskets, but she carries some fragile materials in resealable plastic bags. She cooks acorns, a traditional food, but not always in a traditional basket with hot rocks, sometimes on the stove, using a blender or food processor. Her best soaking bowl is a plastic one with a lid that does not leak.
“We’re survivors,” Wallace said. “... Anything that’s going to make the job easier, we’re going to use. (We) still keep the essence of the culture, though. The materials are all traditional. The foods are all traditional.
For Native Americans, that has meant adapting over the years. They have moved and hidden, kept their heritage quiet for a while but become more open about it today.
For many, the face of Native Americans in California is visible through the casinos that have opened throughout the state. Indian casinos are controversial, but Macri and Wallace said they have enabled the tribes in positive ways.
Rumsey helped fund UCD’s Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, Macri said, and created an endowed chair position in the Native American Studies Department where she works. The tribe also has agreed to fund Yolo County’s purchase of Conaway Ranch, a large piece of rural land that recently became a legal battle between the county and a group of private landowners
Knowing home
Wallace lives in Fairfield. She grew up in Modesto and, when her father, a teacher, was off work for the summers, her family traveled to the reservation in Hoopa.
“That was home,” she said. “That was going home.”
Learning traditional songs and other cultural aspects was an everyday occurrence in her childhood, she said.
“I never really thought about it. I don’t know when it started or if it was always that way.”
Her aunt taught Wallace her first song. “We were driving somewhere,” Wallace said.
Today, she is proud of many things. She has passed along to her children the songs and lessons she learned from her parents and grandparents. In turn, they have taught their children. Native people are speaking about their culture and correcting errors that have been stated in the past.
She, too, remains connected with the past — although, as she gathers plants for basket weaving on lands once used by her ancestors and other Indians learn ancient languages, much of the culture is not only in the past.
“I’ve traveled and lived all over this state, but that is home. My traditional area is home.”
— Reach Beth Curda at bcurda@davisenterprise.net or 747-8045.
Source: http://www.davisenterprise.com/articles/2006/04/03/features/273fea0.txt