Tuesday, September 04, 2007
New Friends
In the middle of the largest trees on earth, the redwoods of the Del Norte Coast, lives California's largest Indian tribe, the Yurok. Situated at the remote mouth of the Klamath River, Yurok wealth is measured in salmon.
Up river in Southern Oregon, the Klamath tribes were once the wealthiest Indians in the United States, running their own sawmill providing lumber for railroads and housing from their magnificent stands of ponderosa pine. In 1954, the Klamaths were terminated as a federally-recognized tribe and their valuable lands confiscated by Congress.
Over the last half century, the massacre of the primeval forests of Sequoia sempervirens and the slaughter of Tyee trying to navigate a de-watered river, have challenged the 11,000-year inhabitants of this watershed in ways they couldn't have imagined a mere century before the invention of TV. Now armed with access to the Internet, we are glad to see they are making new friends.
Up river in Southern Oregon, the Klamath tribes were once the wealthiest Indians in the United States, running their own sawmill providing lumber for railroads and housing from their magnificent stands of ponderosa pine. In 1954, the Klamaths were terminated as a federally-recognized tribe and their valuable lands confiscated by Congress.
Over the last half century, the massacre of the primeval forests of Sequoia sempervirens and the slaughter of Tyee trying to navigate a de-watered river, have challenged the 11,000-year inhabitants of this watershed in ways they couldn't have imagined a mere century before the invention of TV. Now armed with access to the Internet, we are glad to see they are making new friends.
