Senior News July, 2004 Vol. 25. No. 7

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

New guide to natural swimming holes is now available

Ask HICAP

Remembering Spirit - Edilith Eckart

Sacred land restored to Wiyot tribe

Summer activities accessible to all

Community donations make our 30th year celebration a day to remember

Welcome, Bill

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Tuluwat Village
Sacred land restored to Wiyot tribe

In February 1860, a group of Eureka settlers armed with hatchets, clubs and knives paddled to Indian Island and killed sleeping Wiyot men, women and children who had come there in their annual World Renewal Ceremony. Indian Island is the center of the Wiyot world and a sacred place. The people had gathered each year at Tuluwat Village on the island, host to the ceremony for a thousand years. Only one infant survived. Other tribal members were rounded up by U.S. troops and taken to reservations on the Smith River and later Hoopa and Round Valley Reservations. Today, some of the remaining Wiyot people reside on 88 acres called Table Bluff Reservation south of Eureka.

In reaction, tribal members ceased to perform their ceremonies and speak their language, hoping to be spared the anger and weapons of the settlers. Their culture was almost completely forgotten until in recent years members have sought to rebuild their lost heritage.

The tragedy of 1860 was begun to be turned around by a unanimous decision of the Eureka City Council recently, and 44 acres of Indian Island were deeded back to the Wiyot Tribe in ceremonies June 25. Meeting at the Adorni Center, which is on the site of the village known to the tribe as Chichoriji (cdze-cdzo-ree-dzee), a full audience celebrated the return of the sacred land.

For the past 13 years, area residents and local Indian tribes have met for a candlelight vigil at the end of Woodley Island on the last Saturday of February to remember those who died. In the 1990s the Tuluwat Village Wiyot Sacred Site Fund was founded in order to recover some of the land for cultural and environmental restoration. The ground beneath the village is an enormous clamshell mound (midden) measuring more than six acres in size and estimated to be more than 1,000 years old. The group purchased a portion of the acreage several years ago and began cleanup in 1998. The 44 acres deeded to the Wiyot on June 25 secures all the acreage east of Samoa Bridge.

The Wiyot Tribe invites people to contribute to the Sacred Site Fund and help heal the past. "Join us in recreating a place for celebration, restoration and education for present and future generations," says the fund's brochure.

--Contributions may be made to Wiyot Sacred Sites Committee, 1000 Wiyot Drive, Loleta, 95551, and volunteers can call 707-733-5055 to join in the project.