BIA must not threaten our tribal sovereignty by refusing to uphold their own rules
Greg Sarris
Tribal Chairman
Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria
I rejoiced when President Joe Biden nominated then-Congresswoman Deb Haaland to serve as Secretary of the Interior. From day one, in her opening statement at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Secretary Haaland acknowledged the deep cultural ties she holds to her Pueblo’s traditional lands and waters. She expressed what we all still feel, the pull to heal the lands we lost to settlers, and the mourning of the loss of our cultural heritage and our sacred sites that were summarily developed for colonizers’ needs. I knew that she understood the need — and the opportunity — that she had to protect our historic tribal lands.
That connection to the land resonates with tribal citizens across our country. Indian Country believed the first Native person to run the Department of the Interior would help indigenous nations restore sovereignty over the lands we lost.
California Indian history is unique, and in many ways, different from tribes West of the Rockies. We were forced into local missions by Spanish missionaries. We were then enslaved on Mexican ranchos during the Mexican period and enslaved again when California passed its first piece of legislation, the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which was not repealed until 1868, three years after the Civil War. And if that wasn’t enough, like other Indian people, we were then forced into boarding schools.
My tribe, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria is comprised of Coast Miwok from Marin County and Southern Pomo from Sonoma County. At the time of first contact, we numbered over 20,000. Today, our 1,537 enrolled members all trace our ancestry back to one of 14 survivors, all of whom were women, all of whom were wives or concubines of settlers.
In the early 1900s Congress passed a series of California Rancheria Acts, giving California tribes small rancherias (the term in California for reservations) within our ancestral territories. The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria received 15.5 acres in Graton, in the heart of Southern Pomo territory, as our original rancheria for our sovereign nation. In 1958, Congress passed the California Rancheria Termination Act which gave California tribal nations the choice to forfeit their governmental sovereignty over these lands for private individualized ownership. The law stipulated that the decision by the respective tribes had to be done by consensus. However, in 1966, federal agents came in and illegally terminated our rancheria. This action was illegal because the termination was not done by consensus of the tribe. This was the basis for our restoration bill that President Clinton signed into law on December 27, 2000.
Today, there are other Southern Pomo Nations in the area: the Cloverdale Rancheria of Pomo Indians, the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, and the Lytton Band Rancheria. Some kept their original rancheria, others were illegally terminated and restored. Through the restoration process, the federal government reassumed its duty to protect our sovereignty, our lands in our historic territories and our cultural rights associated therewith.
Now the federal government is failing us again.
The Koi Nation, financed by the Chickasaw Nation, has applied to establish trust land in the heart of Southern Pomo territory. The Koi Nation, now landless, had federal trust lands in Lake County, over 50 miles east on the southeastern shores of Clear Lake in their aboriginal home. As a matter of fact, the Koi Nation still claims the southeastern Clear Lake territory as their aboriginal homelands and is in a lawsuit against the City of Clearlake to protect their cultural resources located there.
Yet, they are attempting to persuade and fool the Department of Interior by claiming that they have historic rights in Southern Pomo territory. For example, they are claiming a trail going through our territory was a trading route they historically used and therefore gives them rights to the surrounding land. However, all tribes in the region used established trading routes and traded with one another, yet we always respected each other’s aboriginal territories. An analogy for Koi’s claim would be saying that an interstate highway allows one state to have jurisdiction and development opportunities in another state. This justification does not make sense and, in fact, tramples on our sovereign rights. The Koi Nation simply does not have a significant historical connection to the lands they now claim in Sonoma County.
I want Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland to understand the unique history in California and to not conflate it with histories of removed tribes, for example those in Oklahoma. Providing the Koi Nation trust lands in Southern Pomo territory would abrogate the federal government’s duty and obligation to protect tribal sovereignty – in our case, sovereignty hard fought for. I hope that Secretary Haaland, who was a student of mine at the University of California in Los Angeles when I was a professor, would understand this. Her words on that first day of her confirmation still ring in my ears and give me hope.
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