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For
Struggling Tribe, Dark Side to a Windfall
Jim
Wilson/The New York Times - Fishermen at the mouth of the
By
Jesse McKinley
KLAMATH, Calif. — You
do not have to drive far into the town of Klamath to see the poverty and
the potential of the Yurok Indians, the largest tribe in California
and one of the poorest.
Multimedia
Fishing
With the Yurok
Tom
Willson, a member of the Yurok tribe, is against individual payments. (mp3)
Iksa
George, another member of the tribe, supports individual payments. (mp3)
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| The
tribe’s land is about 325 miles north of |
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|
Jim
Wilson/The New York Times - Yurok tribe members preparing to
cast nets on the |
Just off Highway 101,
past an understocked grocery and an overstocked bar, sits a row of
ragged mobile homes behind a chain link fence topped with barbed wire.
Beat-up cars sit along the gravel drives, as does the occasional bored
teenager.
There are also signs of
change. A handsome tribal headquarters and a crisp new gas station
anchor the reservation. And slot machines are on their way, 99 of them
approved by the state, expected to be housed in a new building near
tribal headquarters.
But in many ways, the
Yurok people have already hit the jackpot. This spring, the Department
of the Interior
paid the tribe $92.6 million in logging proceeds, a figure roughly six
times the tribe’s annual budget.
Yet even the silver
cloud, it seems, has a dark lining. The money, which had been held in
trust by the government for nearly two decades, has sharply divided the
Yurok people, pushing them into two passionate camps: those who prefer
long-term community projects and social programs and those who want the
money handed up now.
It is a dispute that has
echoed through meetings and conversations for months, and one that has
upset elders who watched the tribe battle all manner of enemies —
settlers and neighbors, white men and fellow Indians — only to find
themselves fighting one another.
“We’re a culture
people, we’re a fishing people and a ceremony people,” said Raymond
Mattz, 64, a member of the tribal council. “But it’s a rough time
for us because everybody is so poor, and the money is making everybody a
little goofy.”
On one side of the issue
are leaders like Maria Tripp, the tribal chairwoman, who favors programs
to address the myriad problems the tribe has struggled with over the
years, including high unemployment, flagging fishing, drugs and alcohol,
and the dwindling of lands, traditions and hope.
“We’re not going to
get another $92 million dropped in our lap,” Ms. Tripp said. “This
is an opportunity for us.”
On the other, some here
feel that the money could — and should — be used to alleviate the
day-to-day problems for hundreds of the tribe’s 5,000 members.
“We’ve got tribal
members right now who have been waiting all their life,” said Willard
Carlson Jr., 57, a tribe member. “And the thing about it is, it’s
not the tribal government’s money. It’s the people’s money.”
The settlement was a
result of a 1988 act of Congress that established the Yurok reservation.
The law provided payment for the pre-1988 sale of logs on their land,
some 63,000 acres about 325 miles north of
The issue of how to spend
the money is up for a vote this fall, and the tribal council is required
to put forth a plan. But at a tribal meeting in early August, several
speakers were already expressing impatience about the pace of progress.
At the annual salmon festival on Aug. 19, the tribe’s biggest event of
the year, one parade float included a large sign reading: “Lump sum
for all tribal members — 100 percent of settlement, 100 percent of
interest!”
Various per capita
proposals being floated include adults-only allotments, as well as
payments for all members, plans that could result in payments of roughly
$15,000 to $20,000.
That sort of opinion
infuriates tribe members like Tom Willson, who works at the town fishery
and said the settlement should be “seed money, to buy some of our
lands back, to run programs, to ensure that the Yurok people go on
forever.”
“If we squander that
money, we’ll be in bad shape in a couple of years,” Mr. Willson
said. “We’ll be nowhere.”
It was not always this
way. Tribal lore holds that the Yurok were once one of the most
prosperous tribes in the West. Their lands were — and still are —
spectacular: lush green mountains reflected in the placid waters of the
Klamath, which flows into the Pacific through a narrow sand channel.
Legend has it that the passage is guarded by Oregos, an outcropping of
rock resembling a mother with a child on her back, and that the Klamath
beyond her was once so full of salmon a person could walk across the
river on the backs of the fish.
And sure enough, for many
generations, the fish and the redwoods provided jobs and prosperity,
members say.
But while Yurok fisherman
still use traditional nets to catch salmon — which can bring more than
$3 a pound at market — commercial fishing has largely faded, they say.
The main culprit, in their opinion, is four upstream dams, structures
the tribe wants removed, especially after a 2002 fish kill in which tens
of thousands of adult salmon and steelhead trout died after low water
levels caused disease to spread. Some members of the tribe have sued the
dams’ owners.
Logging has also suffered
over the years, even as the tribe has been victim to other sorts of bad
luck and policy. A 1964 flood devastated Klamath, as did a period of
relocations after World War II. The tribe was not officially organized
until 1992; it split from the neighboring Hoopa tribe as part of the
1988 act.
“Day to day, there are
no jobs here,” Ms. Tripp said. “Fishing is bad. We have a lot of
methamphetamine on the reservation. There are a lot of elders who wait
year after year for help with housing, for help with a lot of programs.
So there’s that feeling that they’ve waited long enough.”
Of the tribe’s 5,000 or
so members, only about 1,500 live on the reservation, Ms. Tripp said,
including those in remote upstream villages. About one-third of the
tribe on the reservation lives off the electric grid, using gasoline
generators, kerosene lamps and candles to fight the night.
Cultural differences
between those on and those off the reservation have also been aggravated
by the $92 million, as have tensions between older, more traditional
members and more independent-minded youth.
Iska George, 20, a
student who goes to college in
Others want a compromise,
with some money for programs and a per-capita payment. “I think I’d
give out nine pieces of pie,” said Paul Van Menchelen, 47, a former
drinker who pulled his life together and now sells salmon jerky by the
side of Highway 101. He would divide the money, he said, into “$10
million each for elders, alcoholics, business owners. And I’d save
some for that rainy day.”
Ms. Tripp said she would
support a little money for both sides.
Right now, however, the
Yurok heart seems conflicted. In July, the tribe held a brush dance,
traditionally used to help heal a child, in this case a young member
with asthma. Mr. Mattz, the councilman who was the plaintiff in a 1973 Supreme
Court case
that won for the tribe the right to fish in the Klamath, said attendance
was larger than he had seen at a ceremony for a long time.
“It seemed like people
needed that dance so bad, and I haven’t felt that in years,” he
said. “I think it’s because of this money and people fighting. I
think they needed the ceremony to get their thoughts on the river and
the culture. It was a good feeling.”
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those
who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for
non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go
to:http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/us/02yurok.