The redneck culture dominated, and the people were crushed. Actually, not quite crushed. A powerful commitment to regain the culture is blossoming. Norma Knight, Co-Director of Round Valley Indians for Justice, notes that Indians like herself, who left the area for an extended time and then came home, brought back an interesting perspective with them. They had a chance to see the way the dominant culture treated other races - Asians, Blacks, Latinos. It was an awakening - ahhh, it's not us; it's not that Indians are all wrong.
This put the returning Indians on a collision course with some of the people who never left, and had been spending all this time trying to fit in, to get the power structure off their backs.
"Indians are the natural enemies of the government, and the police in particular," says Pat Lincoln, who advocates maintaining traditional native cultural practices. "We start talking about having our own schools, using our own resources, have our own mill to do selective logging, and take care of the earth, and do our own law enforcement, have our own judicial system, you know, they don't like that shit at all."
One porposal for the tribe to run its own store was shot down - some of the opponents were "non-traditional" Indians who work at the white-owned store in town.
"We're viewed as radical," says Pat. "They call our place the 'AIM Ranch'. We never said that we were charter memebers of AIM or any of that. We're Indian people that want better things for our tribe." Pat and Edwina Lincoln have been taunted by other Indians with the same sort of derisive war whoops an Indian child might expect to hear from Caucasian children.
"Franks and Brittons versus Lincolns and Peters" families is a gross oversimplification in the press - in a small community there are interlocking cousinships, people have membership in all "sides." The grief of Bobby Anderson was to attend the funeral of her nephew Gene Britton on one day, and the funeral of Acorn Peters the very next day. But SOME of the Franks and Brittons and SOME of the fundamentalist Christian Indians are virtually at war with their peers who want to maintain their Indian heritage - with pride. Some of the Christians don't even want to be reminded of the past - and they relate more to the white business interests.
Pat says, "Their stance was, we already have our own school (the public school), we don't need any economic development here because nobody can handle it. They didn't want to have their own judicial system or law enforcement. So basically, it was real easy for those families and the police to collaborate together to go against those ideas."
Edwina Lincoln notes that, "It goes back - when Pat was 15 years old, they beat up Pat and his mom and sister with chains and bats. One held Pat's mom down while another guy beat her."
"Yeah," says Pat. "It could have been economically or politically motivated, because at that time my uncle was tribal chair. He had a lot of really progressive ideas. As a matter of fact, he was instrumental in saving the tribe from getting terminated during that time. Termination came up for a vote. And the Frank family was really instrumental in getting that whole thing put up for a vote. They wanted to terminate - sell out and get the money."
"And you've seen what happened to all the reservations that did sell out. A lot of them are getting reinstated, but that would have been a huge fight. My uncle was only on the Tribal Council for a couple of years before they shitcanned him. One of the reasons they did was because he got the people rallied up to defeat that whole termination bill."
"His family had a couple of sons in high school at that time, and they had a hell of a time here. They had those guys on them all the time. You know, it was kind of like now, with my sons. I have to tell them to stay home, so they won't hang around and get hurt." (One of the Lincolns' sons has been picked up by police repeatedly since recently turning 18.) "I think the reasons behind all this are partly political and also economically based - to get us out of the picture. That way, things can just continue as they are."
Edwina Lincoln was on the Tribal Council at one time. "We had an investigation done on the school district here. There were 12 findings when the State Department of Education did an investigation. All the Tribal Council people agreed that, yeah, something needs to be done." They documented the discrimination. A committee was formed with a 3-year plan. "Where that 3-year plan went, I don't know, because the Council isn't active in that anymore." The school district gets a lot of federal dollars for Indian students, since they make up half of the school population.
Cyndi Pickett, widow of Acorn Peters, also sees economic underpinnings in the hatred. (It is interesting to note that Pickett was involved in 6 attempts to get the Sheriff to intervene between the time that Peters' son was beaten, and the day of the triple homicide last April.)
Pickett thinks the old idea of flooding the valley is still possible. "The Eel River is protected as a wild river now. But it's not impossible to lose protected status. Reagan stopped the lake project in the 70's, because there was stilll valuable logging going on. But that will be over in 5 years, tops. Then who's going to buy that looted property? Many business people in town are only too happy to be moved to a lakeside resort. They're going to pave the Mendocino Pass, connecting the valley to I-5. Indian people who relate to the power structure see this as an advantage. The opposition, once again, is from the people who've re-embraced their traditional Indian culture, and who will fight for their sacred land."
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited