Timber, Fishing Money at Stake : Hoopa-Yurok Tribal Feud Rages On in N. California

Howard McConnell apologized for being a less than eloquent spokesman for his people, but in his words were the echoes of many Yurok Indians.

“This is my home. It ain’t much, but it’s mine. I’ll shed my blood for this land,” said McConnell, whose arms attest to the cord wood he has chopped, and whose scars bare witness to his determination.

For as long as he can recall, McConnell, 51, his fellow Yuroks and Indians who trace their ancestry to a dozen smaller tribes, have fought one tribe, the Hoopas, for a share of California’s largest reservation. The bountiful Hoopa Valley Reservation is centered on a 12-by-12-mile square in Northern California, sliced by the Trinity River and forested by some of the most valuable stands of virgin Douglas fir left in the West.

The 1,400 Hoopas who control the square and 3,500 non-Hoopa Indians who don’t are in their second generation of feuding. Not even an act of Congress has solved it. Congress tried this fall by passing the optimistically titled Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act. A month after President Reagan signed it into law, Yuroks talk of yet another generation of litigation.

What’s at stake is the millions of dollars to be earned from timber and other resources in the reservation.

“It is a bitter war,” said Ralph Miguelena, 36, a former member of the Hoopa Tribal Council. “It’s going to get worse.”

In this war, the Yuroks don’t have a corner on deeply held feelings. The sophisticated Hoopa tribe lobbied as if fighting for independence to win passage of the bill, authored by Rep. Douglas Bosco (D-Santa Rosa).

For a time this year, it seemed as if they had lost. In April, after 25 years of legal wrangling in the courts, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco stripped the Hoopas of sole control of the reservation and gave the rival Yuroks an equal hand in running it. The ruling was “the last straw” and prompted a legislative effort to solve the conflict, Bosco said.

“These people really don’t like each other. Years of fighting didn’t make them good candidates for one government,” Bosco said.

“I’m not saying I’ve seen a burning bush and done the perfect thing, but it is a start,” the congressman added.

The bill undid Henderson’s ruling by returning control of the Hoopa square to the Hoopas. The Yuroks will receive their own reservation on land that was their ancestral homeland, and part of the Hoopa reservation. On paper, the Hoopa Reservation Extension to be controlled by the Yuroks is a 56,000-acre finger of land on either side of the Klamath River leading from the square to the Pacific Ocean. The act promises the Yuroks $5 million to buy additional land, plus settlement money that could give the tribe an endowment of $20 million or more.

“We’re finally free,” said Hoopa Tribal Council member Lyle Marshall, 31. “Now we can get on with taking advantage of what we’ve got.”

Not All Pleased

Most Yuroks aren’t quite so pleased. The Hoopa’s 90,000-acre square is worth $300 million or more, largely because of its old-growth Douglas fir. The Yurok land has little timber. Despite the apparent size of the new Yurok reservation, less than 4,000 acres will fall into tribal hands. The remainder is in private ownership, including 25,000 acres owned by Simpson Timber Co.

Hoopas say the Yuroks can develop a commercial salmon fishery from the Klamath that can surpass the Hoopas’ wealth. With federal grants and loans, they could construct a cannery and buy a fleet of boats.

“They can use their resources for more litigation, or they can get on with their lives. They shouldn’t fight us. They should work with us. We can use our resources for both. We can help them or--,” Marshall paused, “whatever.”

If the past is an indication, the Yuroks have a lot of developing to do before they surpass the Hoopas. Although there have been no timber sales in the last two years, the Hoopa square has generated as much as $5 million annually. Salmon fetched $1.2 million in the last commercial fishing season. After individual fishermen took their share, only $185,000 went to tribal coffers.

“The Yurok extension was set up to fail. They’re going to sit out there asking for government programs,” predicted Michael Greenberg, a San Francisco lawyer who represents Yuroks in one of several suits spawned by the dispute.

Government officials and court-appointed mediators have tried several times to resolve the feud. Many have attributed the failure to the Yuroks’ lack of an organized tribal council.

To smooth the bureaucratic process, the legislation creates a Yurok tribal organization. Most Yuroks have opposed such moves in the past, arguing that they should be a part of the Hoopa tribe and accusing the Hoopa council of wrongly excluding them. Now, however, the Yuroks have little choice. If they fail to organize, they will lose their status as a federally recognized Indian tribe.

In the coming weeks, the Bureau of Indian Affairs will select a Yurok team to help create a Yurok nation. Representatives of Yurok factions are submitting applications to be part of the team. Bosco plans to have a hand in the process to guard against “detractors and other dilettantes trying to tear it down.”

Even as they organize, many Yuroks hope to sue to block the act. However, provisions in the act protect against legal attack. For example, any suit would have to be brought by individual tribal members, none of whom have the money to finance a court action.

With the drawn-out history of the Yurok-Hoopa litigation, no law firm has come forward with a pro bono offer to take up the Yurok cause.

The legal war began during the post-World War II building boom, when the Hoopa Valley Tribe organized, created a roll of membership that excluded most Yuroks and other North Coast Indians, and started selling timber. Non-Hoopas demanded a share of the revenue, contending that the government formed the reservation in 1891 for the benefit of all Indians. Lawsuits were filed that continue to this day.

Jessie Short Case

The most famous case is one named after a Yurok named Jessie Short. Filed in 1963, the Short litigation is the oldest in the U.S. Court of Claims and still going strong. Fifteen years after a judge ruled that non-Hoopas were entitled to share in timber revenue, the case remains tangled in court, with attorneys deciding Indian by Indian who qualifies as a non-Hoopa Indian. The damages are likely to reach into the tens of millions, but no money has been paid.

For the last decade, as the Short case dragged on in appeals and hearings, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been placing 70% of the Hoopa timber revenue into a trust. The BIA arrived at the 70% figure because non-Hoopas account for 70% of the Indians who live on or are affiliated with the reservation. The remainder went to the Hoopas. The trust has ballooned to $65 million.

One part of the Bosco bill that most vexes Yuroks and their lawyers is that which gives non-Hoopas only 60% of the $65-million trust that they believe is all theirs. The rest will go to the Hoopas.

Still, some Yuroks want the fight to end. Ironically, Jessie Short herself, now in her 80s, broke with her tribe and spoke in favor of Bosco’s bill. “Our people have suffered, and many have died with empty promises,” she said in testimony to Congress. More than 400 of the Short case plaintiffs have died.

For those who remain, the sorry situation pits family member against family member, sapping money and energy from all sides in one of the poorest corners of the state.

In another of the ironies of the battle, few North Coast Indians can claim to be full-blooded members of any tribe. Yuroks make the point that all Hoopa council members have Yurok blood, and many have ancestral ties to some of the other tribes from the area, including the Hupas. (The government misspelled the tribal name when it created the Hoopa reservation in 1864.)

“We’re never going to give up,” said Yurok Lillian Shermoen, 67, sitting in her daughter’s home above a bend in the Klamath River called Notchko Flat. Generations of her family live, have lived and are buried there. “I’ll never see anything. But maybe it’ll help my great-grandchildren.”

Polluted Water

With the river, evergreen forests and rugged canyons, the land is some of the most majestic in California, but the drinking water is polluted. There is no garbage collection on the extension, so people who live there dump their trash into canyons and into the Klamath River. The legislation had a provision to clean up the dumps, but Bosco said he dropped the section to avoid having the bill go to another committee, where it might have been “amended to death.” He said the dumps can be cleaned with existing funds.

By Yurok standards, the well-organized Hoopas seem wealthy. Years of timber revenue and federal grants have paid for a modern tribal headquarters, two-lane roads, an FM radio station, a shopping center, a clinic and a 22-room hotel under construction for outsiders who play the Hoopas’ high-stakes bingo game. But the Hoopas are not without problems.

Hoopa unemployment exceeds 50%. Many Hoopas live in government-financed homes, but others have ramshackle trailers and cabins. Tribal leaders say old-growth timber may run out within 25 years. Some of the trees are infected with fungus and need special milling, which reduces their value.

The Hoopas’ legal fees and lobbying bill may be as high as $10 million. Although the bill passed, Marshall said the tribe will keep its full-time lobbyist. And the tribe has set aside $200,000 for lawyers this year, in anticipation of more suits, this time over implementation of the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act.