Support Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians

Please donate to support The Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians' current efforts to protect the redwoods, oaks and sacred sites located in their ancestral territory now comprising the Jackson State Demonstration Forest. The Tribe is currently at the table in Government to Government consultation with the state of California in order to ensure protection of the ancestral cultural sites and culturally significant biological resources located within JDSF, and funds collected will be used for expenses incurred by Tribal Elder Priscilla Hunter and Attorney Polly Girvin in these consultations. 

Since time immemorial, the forest that is now known as the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) has been the ancestral territory of the Northern Pomo and Coast Yuki Peoples. Prior to European contact, the Tribe’s ancestors gathered acorns throughout the coastal range, fished for salmon in the rivers and gathered food, basket weaving materials and medicinal plants from the coastal forest. They also regularly ventured to the coast in order gather shellfish, surf fish, seaweed, and various other foods. Pomo ridge runners ran the Mendocino coastal ridges with great speed and spiritual power.

When white settlers arrived on the coast of what is today Mendocino County in the mid-19th century, they engaged in a coordinated genocidal campaign against the Indigenous Peoples they encountered. Numerous massacres occurred throughout Mendocino County. Indians fled into hiding in the mountains and hills. [An ancestral “refuge village” is located in JDSF]. Simultaneously with the slaughter, rape and enslavement of the local Indians, the settlers began their clear cuts of the ancient old growth coast redwood forests. The forests, including JDSF, like the Tribes, were left a shadow of their former selves.

And now today when only 3% of the ancient redwoods remain in Northern California JDSF is prepared to cut the redwood trees that have grown back from prior clear cuts in rotational cycles of 30 t0 40 years. They call this “sustainable forestry” the Tribe disagrees with this definition. The 90 year old redwood trees they currently propose to cut in JDSF are redwood trees in their mere infancy. These redwoods need to grow and provide carbon sequestration in this time of dire climate change, not to be cut to provide the salaries for CalFire employees which is currently the case.

The mandate of Cal Fire is forest fire prevention, in the Tribe’s opinion the forest managers at JDSF have drastically failed in this regard. Having been an evacuation center through two recent fires that ravaged the Redwood Valley area and having very recently narrowly escaped a fire that threatened their reservation land the Tribe is concerned that fire prevention management activities have been seriously unaddressed by JDSF forest management to date, which is quite ironic given that CalFire’s mandate is fire prevention. It is the practice of JDSF forest managers subsequent to logging operations to leave large slash piles of debris strewn throughout the forest which are kindling piles for future fires.

Not only are redwood trees threatened by JDSF forest management practices, the oak trees are as well being killed off by the many hundreds upon hundreds throughout JDSF lands by the application of imazapyr and glyphosate, a practice known as “hack and squirt”. Acorns are an essential food source for the Pomo and Coast Yuki peoples. Today it is very difficult to gather adequate supplies of acorns to feed tribal families since so much of their ancestral territory is now in private ownership. Therefore the Tribe seeks in its current negotiations with the State to gain gathering access to their traditional foods and medicines located in JDSF and are calling for a halt to the application of pesticides to eliminate oak trees.

However, most alarming to the Tribe is JDSF forest managers' history of systematic failure to adequately survey and protect the archaeological sites and ancient ancestral trails in JDSF that illustrate thousands of years of their cultural history. The Tribe seeks to finally protect these sites by having JDSF declared a “cultural landscape” under CEQA and an “archaeological district” under the National Historic Preservation Act and if necessary make amendments to both the CA Forest Practice Act and the JDSF Forest Management Plan to ensure that its cultural resources are more adequately protected. When these laws and regulations were crafted the local Tribes were not at the table for they were fighting against their illegal terminations which left them landless and had to expend all of their efforts regaining their rights as federally recognized Tribes and restoring the basic infrastructures of their tribal communities.

Now the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians is fully on board in Government to Government consultations with the State of California in insisting that the state listen to tribal forest protection and cultural resource protection demands in the management of JDSF and joins other citizens and organizations in calling for JDSF to be made into a Forest Preserve.

To learn more about the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, visit their website: https://www.coyotevalleytribe.org/

To read Tribal Elder Priscilla Hunter’s Statement regarding the campaign to save Jackson: https://www.mendocinotrailstewards.org/stewards-readings-blog/priscilla-hunter-speaks

Please sign the petition of the Coalition to Save Jackson here: https://savejackson.org/