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DEDICATED TO FREE THOUGHT AND FREE SPEECH IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD |
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NADY VS ELEM
By Philip Murphy
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DEDICATED TO FREE THOUGHT AND FREE SPEECH IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD |
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NADY VS ELEM
By Philip Murphy
After reading the AVA‚s front page story regarding the proposed home site development on Rattlesnake island in Clearlake, I thought I'd pass along some additional data not included in the piece. The basic problem is that the currently uninhabited 34 acre island was recently purchased by wealthy out-of-county businessman John Nady, who wants to build a modest 1,000 square foot vacation cabin on what many local Native Americans consider to be their sacred ancestral ground. Unfortunately, the same people currently fighting the hardest to preserve the island (the Elem tribe in Clearlake Oaks), have in the not-to-distant past lived in small numbers on the island themselves, which seriously undermines their contention that the entire island is too sacred to be inhabited full-time by humans of any sort. Ironically enough, the relatively brief reoccupation of the island back in the Œseventies that was an attempt to regain some sort of claim to the island (which only fell into private hands in the Œthirties through a bureaucratic snafu in Sacramento) makes their legal position weak at best, and also makes many wonder if a degree of reverse racism is in play.
The issue of regard for sacred Native American sites in the county is an ongoing one which has caused many conflicts between developers and local tribes, in part because even the county has no access to the list of state recognized historical sites, and also in part because of the flexible ethics of the tribes themselves. Three years ago, when a large water line was being laid between the newly expanded Konocti Vista casino and it's water treatment facility, a Native American skeleton was unearthed, which after a brief examination was simply tossed back in the trench and buried along with the pipe. Many outside the Native American community felt that if the skeletal remains had been found on non-tribal lands by non-Native Americans, the project would have been delayed for weeks if not months, and may have had to have been reconfigured to satisfy the respective tribe. Other rancheria projects like the enormous percolation pond that is also a part of the casino expansion are likely to have unearthed Native American remains, yet again no delays were made in the progress of the work that many see as a kind of eco-disaster that could only take place on the mostly unregulated tribal lands. Non-Indian construction projects such as the multi-million dollar connection of the Kelseyville-Finley water systems have been rerouted at great additional expense in order to reduce the possibility of unearthing Native American remains and artifacts on non-tribal lands, which would certainly bring the project to an immediate and costly halt.
Oddly enough, no formal attempt to contact the people most likely to be able to solve the problem ( to the tribes satisfaction, anyway) has been made by the Elem tribal leaders, namely, the chronically elusive and disinterested Wes Chesbro and/or Patty Berg. The Elem Colony wants nothing less than full ownership of Rattlesnake island, and already has plans to reconstruct a tribal roundhouse for ceremonial use there once they regain ownership of the site. Ideally, the state would pony-up the 2-plus million dollars to buy the island back from Nady, and thereby remedy the problem that they created 75 years ago. But for now the Elem tribe plans to sue Nady and/or the county, which through another snafu accidentally issued Nady a permit to excavate for a septic system, a permit that will certainly be revoked by the planning commission later this month. Of course by then Nady will have probably already dug his ditches, assuming he can find an a contractor and the required archeological observer to do the work, since locals working in those fields are likely to be deterred by the sometimes violent tendencies of the Elem tribe in particular. Inter tribal disputes over casino revenues led to the destruction by arson of the Elem‚s casino in the early ‚nineties, which resulted in a fracturing and scattering of the tribal members, and the still-visible charred remains of the Elem casino symbolize the ongoing level of dysfunction within the tribe. Elem Colony-spawned gunfire is so commonplace that emergency responders won't venture onto the reservation without a police escort, and while Elem tribal leaders stress that their protests will be of the nonviolent variety, it's hard to say if the whole local Native American community will be on board with that plan. It wouldn't be too surprising if Nady‚s cabin gets torched in short order (assuming that it ever gets built), though with no friends or supporters in local government and much Nady-directed outright hostility among all Lake County residents, Nady faces a very difficult fight in just getting a building permit, or even a grading permit. Probably the worst outcome for the Elem tribe would be to get drug into a lengthy and expensive legal battle with their multi-millionaire opponent, which would be a terrible waste of time and money for a tribe that already faces a staggering scale of challenges fighting heartbreaking levels of poverty, unemployment and drug abuse. Maybe the thought of hearing bullets whizzing by and the realization that he's a stone's throw away from the EPA super fund site (the long-abandoned Sulfur Bank mercury mine) in addition to the public outcry will deter the seemingly unstoppable Nady, but so far he's shown no sign of backing down or fear of going to court.
Philip Murphy
# 00998 hits since July 19 2006