We on the North Coast are lucky to have intact several American Indian tribes that for millennia have called this area their home.
In much of the country, what remains of the local tribes is often dispersed beyond recognition, or are in fact transplants from other regions of the country. The Trail of Tears is the most famous example of what was a relatively common phenomenon, where the United States government saw fit to pick tribes up and move them to the most inhospitable land it could find, land that the government could be reasonably sure no white settlers would want.
While those abuses did occur on the North Coast, to some extent local American Indian tribes were able to stay relatively close to their ancestral homeland.
The Hoopa Valley Tribe, for instance, still today resides on its homeland. Other local tribes are within shouting distance of their ancestral homeland, and continue efforts to this day to become reunited with those sacred areas.
Every such reunion is a cause for celebration, as what was torn apart over the past 300 years slowly begins to heal. The scars may remain, but function -- and the sense of home -- can ultimately return.
Two times recently has this occurred locally: when the Wiyot Tribe, through the Table Bluff Rancheria, was able to reclaim portions of Indian Island, for thousands of years the center of their physical and spiritual universe; and most recently when the Yurok Tribe began to work out a deal with the Green Diamond Resource Co. to buy up 47,000 acres in Klamath country, possibly expanding its reservation lands in the future.
We applaud this move and hope it represents a trend for the future where healing can begin in earnest from what has been generations of abuse.