Pomo Land Back
The Movement to Heal Land and Restore Promises
by D. H. Shook
In 1850, Pomo Tribes, including the great-grandparents of Michael Hunter, the current Coyote Valley Tribal Chairman, lived on the land that is now known as Jackson Demonstration State Forest. This forest land—before it was called Jackson Demonstration State Forest, before Fort Bragg was named Fort Bragg, before Willits was known as Willits—was the home of Pomo and Coast Yuki Tribes. This is where they made baskets and gathered medicines and wild food.
Before white people colonized the area, this forest was a vast cathedral of redwoods that stretched across the mountain for 50,000 acres, all the way from the inland valley to the great Pacific Ocean. Some of the trees had diameters of more than 20 feet and were as much as 3,000 years old. Just for a moment, imagine what a forest like that sounded like, felt like, looked like! The Pomo and Coast Yuki hunted and fished and raised their families for thousands of years, and there are ancestral sites sacred to them in this forest.
In 1861, Jason Green Jackson claimed the land now known as Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF) and formed the Caspar Lumber Company. It is estimated that an average of 2 million board feet of redwood came out of the Caspar Lumber Company annually until 1947, when the land was purchased by the State of California from the Caspar Lumber Company. In 1949, it was designated a ‘demonstration’ forest, intended to provide examples of logging practices. The mandate for the management of JDSF was also set up in 1949, and CAL FIRE was placed in charge of forest management in 1973.
It’s important to note here that CAL FIRE is a complex agency with 10 separate programs. Our heroic firefighters are part of the CAL FIRE Fire Protection Program, which is distinct from the Resource Management and the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection that manage state forests.
Pomo Land Back is a movement that focuses on the Pomo and Coast Yuki tribes gaining a co-management position with CAL FIRE at JDSF. At the heart of the movement is the desire for recognition that the forest contains sites sacred to these tribes, starting with a moratorium on commercial logging there. The estimates of remaining old growth redwood trees at JDSF range between 3% and 6%. Along with the old growth decimated there, much of the second growth is also gone. Priscilla Hunter, Coyote Valley Pomo Elder and former Chairwoman of the Coyote Valley Pomo Tribe, explained, “We want to let the land and forest heal.”
Polly Girvin, attorney and advocate for the Coyote Valley Pomo Tribe, explained, “It is an indigenous obligation to protect the trees, the water, air, and wildlife. They look at the world through a lens where all things are related, interconnected. They do not objectify and dissect the parts, these are their relatives … In Pomo tradition and lore, it is believed that the souls of their people enter the trees after they die—they have an ancestral, a family connection to the trees.”
Many groups are working to protect the remaining trees in JDSF, including a coalition of Pomo Tribes, Coast Yuki Tribe, PomoLandBack.org, Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), the Trail Stewards, SaveJackson.org, Earth First, and Mendocino County Youth for Climate. For the Native American tribes, it is also important to preserve the cultural landscape within the forest. There are village sites and groups of trees that were tended and used for a purpose, of historical value not only for the Native tribes but for the full history of Mendocino County. Polly Girvin emphasized that “The Pomo Land Back is a social justice issue as well as a climate issue … There is a cultural landscape, rich in history, that is more than an arrowhead or grinding stone.”
On August 28, 2022, a gathering of people, organized by Mendocino County Youth for Climate, met at the edge of the JDSF outside of Caspar to support the Pomo Land Back movement. Colorful banners hung from the trees, tables were loaded with food, and people of all ages stood chatting in small groups. Under a sun tent, Bernadette Smith from the Manchester Point Arena Band of Pomo stepped up to a microphone and sang, in the Pomo language, songs of her people. Her strong, clear voice was so heartfelt that it was truly stunning. Next, another Pomo Land Back supporter announced, “We need a rainbow of people to make this happen!” A voice from the crowd responded, “No more broken promises!”—a prominent slogan on the PomoLandBack.org website.
Broken promises and worse have a long legacy in the state of California. Back in January 6, 1851, the first Governor of California, Peter Burnett, included in his State of the State address his feelings about the California Native American population:
“That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected … While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert … Our American experience has demonstrated the fact that the two races cannot live in the same vicinity in peace.“
Fast forward to June 18, 2019, when Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order B-10-11. The first part of Newsom’s Executive Order contains a formal apology to the California Native Americans for the extensive and protracted atrocities imposed on them by the state of California. Governor Newsom reaffirmed Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown’s Executive Order of September 25, 2011, N-15-19, “which requires the Governor’s Tribal Advisor and the Administration to engage in government-to-government consultation with California Native American tribes regarding policies that may affect tribal communities.”
Newsom’s Executive Order codified a mandate to negotiate with the local California Native Americans. To that end, Tribal Chairman Michael Hunter met with the Secretary of Natural Resources, Wade Crowfoot, and members of his staff in an effort to form a co-management plan for the Pomo and Coast Yuki ancestral land known as JDSF. The topics of sacred sites in relation to road placements and timber harvesting played a large part in these negotiations. As a result, suspension of five of the approved Timber Harvest Plans (THPs) in JDSF was announced in early 2022. It was not only the Native American tribes who celebrated this, but here in Mendocino County many people, from all walks of life, shared in the celebration.
Then on August 18, 2022, the California Natural Resources Agency and CAL FIRE declared a “Revitalizing of the Management of Jackson Demonstration State Forest.” This declaration announced the adoption of a “modern vision” in compliance with state law, with California values of ecology and social justice to be incorporated in the management plan of JDSF. This declaration indicated a dramatic shift in management practices.
But the fine words offered in the “modernized vision” did not translate into action. Seven days after the vision was announced, without consultation or notification to the Coyote Valley Tribe Chairman—or to any of the JDSF advocate groups—CAL FIRE announced that logging operations would resume. Despite the Forest Practice Act and Rules, on September 21, 2022, 36 hours after an unusually heavy rain of 2.5 to 3 inches, heavy equipment continued work in the mud, creating a destructive mess and upheaval that the Forest Practice Act and Rules was designed to prevent.
The KZYX Pomo Perspective radio show on September 19, 2022, featured an interview with Michael Hunter and Matthew Simmons, Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) staff attorney. They emphasized that it is important to understand that the CAL FIRE/JDSF-approved THPs allow for numerous piles of slash to be left along the roads that have been cut in to haul the timber out. The THPs allow for certain trees to be girdled, which kills them, and leaves them standing dead—a practice in direct violation of Mendocino County’s 2016 ordinance. Michael Hunter said, “Go to PomoLandBack.org and you can see the videos and images. In 2022, they are clear-cutting! … People don’t realize that forest fires start because lightning hits kindling from all the slash and dead trees they left out there … How many times do we need to make a clear-cut and look at the findings? In JDSF we see this logging demonstration ‘experiment’ repeated again and again.”
Practices like this that increase fire risk and exacerbate drought should be prohibited or at least discouraged by independent oversight, but unfortunately CAL FIRE has no such check on its power. CAL FIRE is ostensibly advised on forest management by the Jackson Advisory Group (JAG), formed in 2008 to recommend “how best to manage the forest in the public interest,” according to its website.* The site also asserts that the group consists of 13 members from various fields and interests, including “timber and logging industry, environmental and conservation organizations, scientific and research fields, and recreation representatives.” Yet 10 of the existing 13 members are invested in the forest’s commerical benefits over its ecological health and cultural significance, creating a biased imbalance in the group’s recommendations.
Simmons described JAG as “ … a body with no power.” Chairman Hunter explained, “I am at the table negotiating a co-management plan [with Secretary Wade Crowfoot and his staff] and I have zero decision-making authority. Zero!” Hunter continued, “While I am at the table negotiating a co-management plan, I am the only one who is not being paid by the State of California … You’ve got to look at where the big [political] donations are coming from. [State Senator] McGuire, [Assemblyman] Woods, [Congressman] Huffman—none of them were at the table, [even though] we had collected 4,000 wet signatures from our community.”
We already know that logging has a huge impact on waterways. Compounding the concerns about waterway erosion, wildlife habitat loss, fire hazard, loss of California natural resources (old and second growth redwoods), and degradation of historic sites, there is another very real problem. Ample evidence is available, globally, that excessive logging contributes to the trend towards drought. And given that only 3% - 6% of the old and 2nd growth redwood is left, it is clear that the logging has been excessive.
Simmons described the process that CAL FIRE goes through to harvest and sell timber from the state-owned forest:
For private logging projects in California, the forester isn’t required to complete an EIR [Environmental Impact Report]. Instead, they complete a less environmentally rigorous document called a Timber Harvest Plan (THP). After they complete that document, CAL FIRE as the lead agency reviews the plan and makes sure it follows the Forest Practice Act and Rules. THPs are available for public review on CAL FIRE’s website CALTREES.
For JDSF, CAL FIRE is both the land owner and the regulatory agency. So they write the THP and then determine whether it is adequate.
Simmons continued, “[CAL FIRE’s] currently approved plans on JDSF, which if completed would damage both Pomo sacred sites and mature second growth redwood groves, demonstrate that JDSF needs a comprehensive update to its management mandate in order for the forest to match the values of the people of California. Simply making small adjustments to these plans does not remedy the situation. We need a solution that will protect this forest in perpetuity.”
The issue with the preservation of JDSF is larger than Mendocino County. There are a number of advocacy groups working to protect the remaining old and second growth trees in JDSF. This is a situation where social justice is married to ecological responsibility, which moves the Pomo Land Back movement onto the world stage and provides an excellent forum to demonstrate values appropriate for the 21st century. The time for ecological accountability based on scientific evidence and social responsibility is past due. There needs to be an authentic oversight mechanism employed so we can get out of the fox-watching-the-hen-house syndrome.
The forest is more than trees that make lumber. The JDSF redwood trees are a huge carbon bank, far more valuable and more durable as an asset than the comparatively meager profit from a few timber sales. JDSF is the home to rare and important wildlife. And JDSF holds sacred ground for indigenous Californians, which is an issue that warrants serious consideration and study. It is a complex and vital ecosystem which has value beyond measure.
Jackson Demonstration State Forest has inspired a level of devotion from so many people that little old ladies are getting arrested in Sacramento in an effort to draw public attention to the issue. School-age kids are organizing gatherings. Folks are having fundraisers to raise money for legal expenses. Ladies are making quilts to raffle, musicians are showing up to entertain, ecology groups are doing what they can. The Pomo Land Back movement has significant support, and it presents an opportunity to include oversight of JDSF with the very people whose ancestors once called it home.
Learn more at PomoLandBack.com.
* jacksonforest.com/JAG/advisory_top.htm
All photos except Priscilla Hunter courtesy of Pomo Land Back.
Priscilla Hunter photo by D.H. Shook.
A long-time Mendonesian, Deborah Shook lives in a cottage on the edge of the forest. She takes pleasure in playing in her garden and tackling a culinary challenge.