June 17, 2011 - Members of the Yurok Tribe and other tribes will gather on the North Coast beaches Saturday, June 18 in protest of new coastal closures in "marine protected areas" proposed under the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.
"Armed with only tribal identification cards, Native Americans from Tolowa Country to the Wiyot Nation will be assembling on culturally critical beaches Saturday to harvest marine resources," according to a press release from the Yurok Tribe, California's largest Indian Tribe.
There will be tribal members at Patrick's Point State Park at 5:30 a.m., Clam Beach at 7:30 a.m. and Wilson Creek Beach near Klamath at 8:30 a.m. Tribal members are being encouraged to gather at their favorite spot.
Representatives of the Yurok Tribe and other tribes have met with John Laird, Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency, regarding tribal gathering under the MLPA Initiative, but the state has to date failed to address tribal fishing and gathering rights.
"We don't perceive traditional tribal gathering of ocean resources to be some kind of delinquent activity, but the state and feds do," said Yurok Tribal Heritage Preservation Officer, Bob McConnell. "We harvest from the ocean for our ceremonies and physical health. It is time to decriminalize our culture."
"The Tribe's rights are nonnegotiable," emphasized Yurok Chairman Thomas O'Rourke Sr. "As long as we are here, we will continue to gather in culturally appropriate way that is beneficial to all species."
The tribe said state parks and national marine reserves and parks do "disproportionate and unjustifiable harm" to California's indigenous people who need access to marine resources in order to perpetuate complex spiritual practices and life ways.
"Our methods of take enhance these resources rather than harm them. We offer as evidence the abundance of coastal resources prior to European contact," McConnell said. "Prayer is an integral part of the process as no life can be taken without acknowledgement of that life. We thank the creator and the plant/animal for that life each and every time we gather a resource."
The tribe noted that decades have passed and public perceptions about Native Americans have changed since most of the rules that govern California's coast were signed into law.
"These government bodies have made criminals out of people for embracing their culture. We want the people of California to know that and join us in the process of reversing it," McConnell concluded.
For more information, contact: Matt Mais, Yurok Tribe, (707) 482-1350 ext. 306, (707)954-0976, www.yuroktribe.org.
The California Fish & Game Commission (CFGC) will meet in Stockton on June 29-30 to discuss and adopt the amended "unified" proposal for marine protected areas on the North Coast. For more details on the amended plan, please read Frank Hartzell's article, http://www.mendocinobeacon.com/news/ci_18287706?source=rss
MLPA Initiative Background:
The Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) is a law, signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999, designed to create a network of marine protected areas off the California Coast. However, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004 created the privately-funded MLPA "Initiative" to "implement" the law, effectively eviscerating the MLPA.
The "marine protected areas" created under the MLPA Initiative fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, water pollution, military testing, wave and wind energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering.
The MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Forces that oversaw the implementation of "marine protected areas" included a big oil lobbyist, marina developer, real estate executive and other individuals with numerous conflicts of interest. Catherine Reheis Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association who is pushing for new oil drilling off the California coast, served as the chair of the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast.
The MLPA Initiative operated through a controversial private/public "partnership funded by the shadowy Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. The Schwarzenegger administration, under intense criticism by grassroots environmentalists, fishermen and Tribal members, authorized the implementation of marine protected areas under the initiative through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the foundation and the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG).
Tribal members, fishermen, grassroots environmentalists, human rights advocates and civil liberties activists have slammed the MLPA Initiative for the violation of numerous state, federal and international laws. Critics charge that the initiative, privatized by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004, has violated the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act, Brown Act, California Administrative Procedures Act, American Indian Religious Freedom Act and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
MLPA and state officials refused to appoint any tribal scientists to the MLPA Science Advisory Team (SAT), in spite of the fact that the Yurok Tribe alone has a Natural Resources Department with over 70 staff members, including many scientists. The MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force also didn't include any tribal representatives until 2010 when one was finally appointed to the panel.
"Whether it is their intention or not, what the Marine Life Protection Act does to tribes is it systematically decimates our ability to be who we are," stated Frankie Joe Myers, a Yurok tribal citizen and organizer for the Coastal Justice Coalition on July 21, 2010, during a historic direct protest against the MLPA's violation of tribal rights in Fort Bragg. "That is the definition of cultural genocide."
"It is our sovereign and sacred right to harvest coastal resources according to our customs," said Hoopa Tribal Citizen Dania Rose Colegrove, an organizer for the Klamath Justice Coalition. "We will no longer allow the state or the feds to criminalize our culture."
