Pomo Response to Assistant Secretary of Tribal Affairs, CA Natural Resources Agency

Polly Girvin is a federal Indian law attorney and environmental and social justice activist. She is currently a tribally appointed representative for government to government consultations between the state of California and the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians in the Tribe's efforts to save the trees and protect Native American ancestral cultural and biologic resources in Jackson Demonstration State Forest.

On June 29, 2021 the Assistant Secretary for Tribal Affairs of the CA Natural Resources Agency, Geneva Thompson, reached out to the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians to offer to intervene and assist in dealing with the Tribe’s concerns regarding the protection of the redwoods and ancestral cultural sites and biological resources at Jackson Demonstration State Forest.  This is the Tribe’s response:

Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Tribal Chairman and the 200-year-old Mama Tree in the Caspar 500 THP

Yes we would appreciate your help.  Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) managers have for years systematically damaged Northern Pomo and Coast Yuki ancestral cultural sites.  In their many many page last Management Plan only three pages were dedicated to tribal cultural resource management. In the 1990's the state compelled  JDSF to  inventory the prehistoric sites on their land pursuant to an Executive Order of Governor Wilson  The 1999 Betts Report commissioned by the Forest managers in response to this Executive Order concluded that  systematic and continuous destruction of Northern Pomo and Coat Yuki ancestral cultural sites had been the pattern and practice at JDSF  for many years,  but that there were still a lot of sites from which important archeological knowledge could be extracted.  They called for a resurveying of the then 22 archaeological sites they located and concluded that JDSF should be considered for designation as an archeological district under the National Historic Preservation Act.  Since then many more Native American cultural sites have been discovered and damaged.   

Timber harvest and associated road building are incredibly destructive to tribal heritage sites and cultural resources

The Betts report concluded that all of the then known sites should be resurveyed and that since much of the site damage they encountered was attributable to road building activities that all road building as well as logging operations should stop near the known ancestral archaeological sites until a Road Maintenance Plan was developed for their protection and their boundaries were further surveyed. . None of the recommendations in this state commissioned report were to our knowledge ever implemented and ancestral Native American cultural sites have continued to be destructively impacted.

Given this past track record of worse than negligent management by JDSF of ancestral cultural site protection it is hard for us to conclude that the state and its agencies such as JDSF will be treating us in a good faith manner. Moreover Cal Fire staff are paid through timber operations at JDSF so a real conflict of interest is involved here.  

We very much want a Tribal meeting with the Governor over the state failure to adequately protect our cultural heritage in its management of JDSF Moreover, at this time when the Governor has created a Truth and Healing Commission let him prove that he means it and assist us in our efforts to protect our ancestral cultural sites and biological resources in JDSF   Also when the Governor is calling for a 30X30 agenda to address climate change on state lands we would like him to take the Tribe's climate change concerns seriously and stop the cutting of the 90 year old large trees that have grown since the clear cuts at JDSF in the past.  These redwoods are in their virtual infancy and their growth is very important to carbon sequestration.

2017 wildfire in Redwood Valley, close to the Coyote Valley Rancheria

Our tribe has been an evacuation center in two recent very large fires in our area.  When Chairman Hunter visited the forest  and saw the many piles of slash left by prior cuts with just a few scraggly trees left in their midst he concluded that in no way could the management of this state forest be truly concerned with fire prevention as these large slash piles are truly tinder for future fires. 

Slash pile left over two years after the 2018 Porter THP. After this pile was publicized by the Mendocino Trail Stewards, Cal Fire came and cleaned up the spot, but there are hundreds of spots like it remaining throughout JDSF.

He would like to bring a delegation of state elected officials to visit JDSF and see with their own eyes what he concluded was very poor fire prevention management  at JDSF. A flyover of JDSF would reveal these slash piles are all throughout the forest.

People are currently risking their lives to protect these large redwoods at JDSF from further cutting. They are entering the land and literally placing their bodies in front of live chainsaws to protect the redwoods.  This is an emergency.  Do you really want people to die in order to continue to cut the large redwoods for profit to pay the salaries of Cal Fire?

We truly need all the help we can get at this critical juncture. We have gone to three site visits to date on which logging operations are planned and are very concerned that no road buffers are planned next to a very significant ancestral site nor have the site boundaries in our estimation been adequately demarked, We were told the lithic scatter went up a hill and were not told or shown that they had marked the boundaries up that way..  We were also very alarmed to find that though trees within this cultural site boundaries were to be protected at present that there were no guarantees they will  be protected in the future.  Could you explain to us how this is justified?

Trees killed by herbicides in Sonoma County

Also we noted that many oak trees throughout the JDSF lands we visited have been killed by the application of toxic sprays, imazapyr and glyphosate.  We have a really hard time gathering acorns and other important foods, basket weaving materials and medicines these days because they are located on private lands. We were hoping to establish some tribal gathering access at JDSF. If they keep killing the oaks with poisons to favor the replanting of redwoods from which they can extract a profit there very well may be no safe acorns to gather and eat at JDSF.

With hopes for honorable and meaningful government to government consultation which does not end up with  a response from JDSF to the effect yes we sat down and talked to the Tribe and now we are going to do anything we want to,  we remain a sovereign Indian nation committed to protecting our ancestral sites and biological cultural resources in this state forest and we are in a committed alliance with the environmental activists and community members  in Mendocino County in a united effort to protect the redwoods at JDSF.

Thank you for your attention to these matters of grave concern to the Tribe. 

Sincerely,

Polly Girvin

Tribally appointed representative for government to government consultation

Federally endangered Red-Legged Frog—photo by Jon Klein