Opinion
These messages, brought forth by Clayton Duncan, founder of the Lucy Moore Foundation and many other supporters served as catalysts for new perceptions, compassion and forgiveness in regards to settler and native history of this beautiful northern California area.
Preceding this important historical mascot decision by the Kelseyville School Board, yet equally as deserving of recognition, was the State Department of Park Recreation’s placement of the Bonopoti Plaque May 15, 2005, in cooperation with the Lucy Moore Foundation.
Bonopoti (Old Island) was a place for native gatherings until May 15 1850. On that date a regiment of the 1st Dragoons of the U. S. Cavalry, commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon and Lt. J. W. Davidson massacred nearly the entire native population of the island. Most were women and children. The act was a reprisal for the killing of Andrew Kelsey and Charles Stone who had long enslaved, brutalized and starved indigenous people in the area. The island, now a hill, surrounded by reclaimed land, remains a sacred testament to the sacrifice of innocents, and is marked now as CA. Registered Historic Landmark 427.
In recognition of these compassionate and historic events, it is now timely that this statement be finally published:
Statement Made at Bloody Island Candlelight Vigil, May 17, 2003 Lake County, California at Bonapoti.
In honor of the 4th Bloody Island Candlelight Vigil, we, the undersigned, in regards to all the following indigenous tribes, and others in Mendocino and Lake Counties: Yokaia, Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, Guidiville, Pinoleville, Sherwood Band of Pomo Indians, Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, Elem, Robinson Creek, Wailaki, Yurok, and Redwood Valley Little River Band of Pomo Indians, would like to publicly state:
We acknowledge that we are the European, Nordic, Russian, Scandinavian, Caucasian, Middle Eastern, and Asian descendants of immigrants to this land of indigenous people. Some of us are also known as White/Anglo – the mainstream people. We are the descendants of immigrants and explorers who deliberately, as well as unconsciously, spread disease, introduced the use of poison alcohol, and cowardly killed men, women and children who were in the way of their way of life. Our ancestors’ actions created a tragedy on a scale so ghastly that it cannot be dismissed as merely the inevitable consequence of the clash of competing ways of life.
As the descendants of immigrants, we personally hold a legacy of racism and inhumanity that included murder, rape, massacre, forced relocation of tribes, and kidnapping, as an attempt to completely wipe out indigenous people; a government policy of ethnic cleansing that is so unthinkable that it tightens like a chain on the heart when remembered.
Even though the common phrase by white people is “Well, we personally did not do that, and I never would do that ... I can’t help who I am ... you’re blaming me for something I had nothing to do with,” or “The entire history of humankind is filled with one people after another, including Native Americans, killing others and taking land,” or “It’s not just the United States who engages in uncivilized activities, there are many others,” still, the descendants of people with white and pale and peach skin have inherited the benefits from the stolen land and stolen natural resources which have been squandered and sold many times over since then.
We also acknowledge that there were white and pale and peach skinned people with heart, courage and strategy who stood up AGAINST their own people, and we hold those souls who stood with native peoples as our role models. Even though those white peoples’ history was seldom recorded by mainstream culture or media, and we don’t know their names, we look to them for inspiration.
We also recognize that even though many of us live with native peoples as our partners, in the outside world we walk in a veil of privilege, where doors swing open for us. We commit to tell the true stories of these valleys to other white, pale and peach colored people. We will tell the story to one person at a time.
By accepting the knowledge of this legacy, we also accept the moral responsibility for daily practice of putting things right in the following ways:
to interrupt racism respectfully yet clearly so as not to create more hurt,
to tell the history of our area to other descendants of immigrants,
to write letters to the editor when there are articles published that are racist or ignorant,
to show up, when we are able, in the city council, board of supervisors and in court, when there is a need for public support to correct an action taken against the surviving indigenous people.
White, hidden, unspoken guilt keeps the mainstream culture numb, quiet and, many times, simply unaware, all the while the cycle of racism keeps chasing its tail.
Since it has been 511 years since 1492, we resolve to collect 511 signatures or more, one for every year of occupation, in support of this statement. Thank you for allowing us this time.
Written by Anne Near, Laurel Near, Phyllis Binder, Kate Magruder.
May 17, 2003
Since 2003, over 100 diverse people have signed the statement.
To add your name to the statement, e-mail your name, city and state to
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- Written by: Anne Near, Laurel Near, Phyllis Binder, Kate Magruder
March 16-22 is Sunshine Week, the time to discuss and explore the concept of open government. The following column, provided by Sunshineweek.org, in one of a series Lake County News will offer this week as part of the important discussion of keeping government information available to the public.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once remarked that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” As the storm clouds cleared from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, that sunlight illuminated many aspects of the failed federal government response to the storms and levee breaks.
A Freedom of Information Act request by CBS News uncovered the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s prior knowledge of toxic levels of formaldehyde in trailers provided to nearly 150,000 hurricane-affected families. An earlier FOIA request revealed how the Bush administration turned away a billion dollars of international assistance. Thousands of e-mails illustrating the federal bureaucracy’s incompetence in the days following the catastrophe only came to light after journalists engaged FOIA’s requirements.
But such FOIA requests are met far too infrequently. Flawed decision-making is too often shrouded by an apparent philosophy that “what the public doesn’t know can’t hurt us.”
On Oct. 5, 2005, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mark Schleifstein of the New Orleans Times-Picayune filed a FOIA request with FEMA regarding its disaster response operations and planning. After a year of no response, the agency contacted him to ask if he was still interested. He replied with an emphatic “YES.”
Another year went by. Then, like a character in a monster movie asking “is it gone yet?” FEMA asked again whether the paper was still interested, and again it still was. That was this January. It is now late March, and FEMA has yet to act.
Mark is not alone in facing these delays. FEMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development were due to give Congress a Disaster Housing Plan last July. Now they’ve promised April. The Army Corps of Engineers was to deliver a Category 5 hurricane protection plan in December. An interim document arrived this month, still without specific guidance on how the Corps intends to protect the coastal communities of Louisiana. The list of statutorily mandated reports either delayed or not delivered at all goes on and on.
In another journalism example, the Baton Rouge Advocate reported recently that it had filed a FOIA request in 2006 seeking documentation on FEMA’s contracting procedures and the decisions behind deploying travel trailers across the Gulf Coast. FEMA says it will release the information — for a fee. The going price for the truth is apparently $209,990, principally to defray copying costs. The agency said the documents are not available electronically and that the only hard copies are stored in its New Orleans field office. Meanwhile, on its Web site, FEMA itself advises that “if you plan ahead and copy what you have onto compact disks, you can be secure in knowing that they will not be lost in the future.”
As we this week mark national “Sunshine Week,” I am proud to report that Congress is making headway in attempts to assure greater government openness and transparency. On New Year’s Eve, the president signed into law the OPEN Government Act of 2007, which I co-sponsored with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The bill restores meaningful deadlines for agencies to respond to FOIA requests, and among other key reforms, sets up hotlines and an ombudsman’s office to aid requesters. In addition, we are working to pass legislation to shield journalists from undue prosecution for protecting whistleblowers, and I have introduced a bill to ensure local officials determine media credentialing in a disaster — not Washington bureaucrats.
Open government is a tenet of our democracy, and accountability is never more important than in times of crisis. Only by shining the light of public scrutiny on the government’s mistakes can we take steps to prevent them from repeating.
Today, after their hefty price tag was exposed on the Advocate’s front page, FEMA now appears to have opened the door a crack to cooperation. Let’s hope it swings wide — for the Advocate, Mark Schleifstein and others in pursuit of the truth. The catastrophic hurricanes and levee failures of 2005 left a lot of unanswered questions and lessons yet to be learned as we prepare for future disasters. These lessons are far too important to leave in the shadows.
Mary L. Landrieu represents Louisiana in the U.S. Senate.
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- Written by: Sen. Mary L. Landrieu
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