Special Day for California Tribes : Indians Celebrate Heritage, Seek Recognition

California Indians celebrated their heritage Friday on California Indian Day, but also noted that the state’s tribes are bedeviled by economic, environmental and health problems.

In this central Sierra community, Mono Indians gathered to celebrate California Indian Day with a dinner and tribal dances--and a plea for recognition.

“We would like to be recognized as people, real Indian people, and not something that’s in the movies or television,” said Ivadella Mowery, an organizer of the North Fork event for the 400 remaining Monos. “People have the wrong impression of Indians. We have been lost in the shuffle.”

Karen Morris, a Chukchansi-Mono Indian from Ahwahnee, spoke in protest against a planned hydroelectric project on Lewis Fork Creek just south of Yosemite National Park.

Historic Value

Lewis Fork Creek is a historic campground for the Chukchansi, a place used for the gathering of basket reeds and medicinal plants. It has a natural hot spring traditionally used by Morris’ tribe for healing purposes and spiritual meditation.

Morris says geologists have warned that blasting for the hydroelectric project could dry up the hot spring flow.

“We’ll just lose one more place,” she said. “It will go down in history as one more thing taken away from us. Here it is the 1980s and we’re losing another battle. This should stop somewhere.”

Various Festivities

Other California Indian Day celebrations this weekend include the Ch’wse Indian Grinding Rock “Big Time” at Jackson in the Mother Lode Country. Wappo, Miwok and Yuki Indians will sponsor canoe races on the Russian River in Northern California.

In Sacramento, there is a weekend native arts and crafts fair, and ceremonies are scheduled at the Indian museum on the Ft. Sutter Compound. And in the Southern California desert, the Chemehuevi Indians will cross the Colorado River to join in National Indian Days in Parker, Ariz.

With no fanfare and little media attention, Gov. George Deukmejian on Sept. 18 signed a California Indian Day proclamation that praised Indians for their love of the land and noted that “the arrival of explorers from Europe greatly disrupted the centuries-old way of life enjoyed by the California Indians.”

More Than Disrupted

Jack Forbes, a University of California, Davis, professor, thinks the word disrupted in the proclamation should be replaced with the word destroyed.

Forbes, a Powhatan Indian and author of a history of California Indians, estimates that there are now about 50,000 natives in California--perhaps 10% of the original population--and another 175,000 Indians from tribes from other parts of America.

Life for 28,000 Indians on or near California’s 104 rancherias--the state’s term for reservations--is bleak, and there is little prospect for immediate and substantial improvement, Forbes said.

Unemployment rates range from 50% to 80%, two out of three overcrowded houses fail to meet basic building codes and three out of four rancheria families do not have their own home. Often, the soil is too poor for farming and most rancherias are in remote areas, far from jobs.

Too Much Drinking

Alcoholism rates on rancherias are four times the national average, and suicide rates are three to four times higher than off the reservations. Accidents, homicides and liver damage, often linked to alcohol or drug abuse, are the major killers of the 25- to 45-year-old population group. Older reservation Indians die of diabetes, cancer and heart disease brought on by lives of depression and poor nutrition.

“They just don’t see any chances of escaping” their situation, said Harold Clark, an official of the Indian Health Services branch of the U.S. Public Health Service. “If you live on a reservation you’re almost restricted to people who are facing the same problems.”

Urban Indians, he said, face many of the same problems.

Forbes says the dozens of distinct California tribes once made up one of the largest indigenous populations north of Mexico, estimated at 300,000 to 600,000. But diseases brought by the Spanish explorers and missionaries and the fur traders decimated their numbers and, except for a few isolated incidents, they did not engage in armed resistance when the Americans took over the state.

Less Well-Known

As a result, he says, they have never received the historical or public attention of more famous American tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee or Apache.

“California has always been sort of the backwater as far as the Bureau of Indian Affairs is concerned,” said David Rapport, an attorney for California Indian Legal Services. “California has been the stepchild.”

But Charles Toyebe, a Bureau of Indian Affairs housing official in Sacramento, contends that it was Congress that cut his agency’s request for more funds by 44% over the last two years. He said Congress plans more major cuts in the next budget.