From the Sac Bee:
Little peace for Colfax Indian Cemetery
smagagnini@sacbee.com
Published Tuesday, May. 26, 2009
When a tree falls in the Colfax Indian Cemetery, who hears it?
Kathy Keck and her dogs, cats, goats and horses did when one of the cemetery’s giant Ponderosa pines crushed part of her fence one stormy February night in 2007.
So began a controversy that closed the cemetery where local chiefs are buried and raised an outcry from area Indians who claim their religious freedom is being violated.
Keck, whose family has lived in harmony with the cemetery and the Maidu, Miwok and Nisenan who have used it since the 1800s, sued in small claims court and won $3,000 from the Colfax Cemetery District.
Until Keck’s suit, both the district and the Colfax Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe believed the Indians owned the cemetery.
The Indians still think so, but the district had to pay off Keck’s lawsuit, forcing it to lock the cemetery in January because it had no liability insurance and couldn’t afford to pay off any more lawsuits.
“It’s a story about a clash of culture,” said Helen Wayland of the all-volunteer Colfax Cemetery District board.
Fellow board member John Dugan said he feels like he’s been demonized as “the hated white man.” Dugan, a retired auto parts manager for a Bay Area Cadillac dealership, rues the day he volunteered for the cemetery board, which he calls “the most thankless job I’ve ever done in my life.”
The district recently bought month-to-month insurance and unlocked the cemetery gate May 14, but the conditions only inflamed the CTVC tribe, the unrecognized band of Indians who are the primary users of the burial ground.
To insure the property, the district had to agree graves could no longer be dug by hand, and no alcohol would be allowed on the grounds.
If the Indians don’t sign a letter agreeing to these conditions, the locks will have to go back on until somebody else buys the half-acre cemetery for $37,000.
Steve Prout, vice chairman of the 300-member tribe, nearly wept after reading the conditions next to his father’s grave last Wednesday.
“We don’t even drink, we don’t allow that,” he said. Prout and other members are hurt more by the ban on traditional Indian burials. Prout and his family hand-dug his mother Lola Prout’s grave in December 2007, just before the tree fell on it.
“It’s heartbreaking to lose our traditions,” said Judy Marks. “We have – ever since anyone can remember – hand-dug graves. That’s not just our tribe but all native tribes.”
Wayland said the ban on alcohol and hand-dug graves applies to all Colfax cemeteries. “We have the same guidelines for our cemetery where the white people are buried,” she said. “We don’t allow parties out there with alcohol on the premises, and digging graves by hand is against state law.”
Wayland, who has lived in Colfax since 1955 and belongs to the Colfax Historical Society, recognizes the native burial ground’s long history. “Since the late 1800s, the Indians have pretty much had free rein and done their own burials and their own digging,” she said. “It’s almost full.”
The tribe, like dozens of other bands of landless California Indians, was given a rancheria. It was located on Highway 174 along the Bear River, but the tribe never occupied it because it sits on a cliff.
“It was undesirable back then and it’s probably worse now,” said Marks. “Because we never lived on it, the property was sold and we lost our federal recognition when the federal government terminated the rancheria in the 1960s.”
The tribe, which has traced its local ancestry back to the Gold Rush, has been working on federal recognition for eight years, Marks said.
But the tribe, whose members are scattered throughout the foothills, has no money for lawyers, let alone the $37,000 the district is asking for the cemetery, Prout said.
Dugan said the district – which was deeded the Indian cemetery in 1961 – can’t just give the land to the Indians for free. The recession has taken its toll on the cemetery business.
“People can’t afford to die – we’ve had one full burial this year,” he said.
More people are opting for cremation, given the average $2,000 price of a full burial, said cemetery manager Craig Ballenger.
The district board would love to see the tribe – or another tribe – take ownership and responsibility for the half-acre plot dotted with yellow California poppies.
Then the Indians could bury their dead however they saw fit, Dugan said. “We want the Indians to own the property and be gone and done with it.”
“We’re not selling it to developers from Reno,” added Ballenger.
The United Auburn Indian Community – which operates Thunder Valley Casino – also has ancestors buried there and is considering buying the property, said spokesman Doug Elmets.
“We’re in discussions with the cemetery district to possibly assist in preserving the cemetery for Native Americans who may be buried there in the future,” Elmets said. “It’s yet to be defined what roles the district and the tribes will play.”
The Colfax-area tribe has cut down several other giant Ponderosa pines in the cemetery to minimize the liability, said Prout. The 100-foot-tall tree with the 6-foot base that crushed Kathy Keck’s fence also fell on the graves of Prout’s mother and brother.
Prout’s nephew, Clyde Prout, was finally able to get into the cemetery on his 18th birthday, so he could honor the memory of his mom, who died when he was about 6 years old.
The need to preserve the native cemetery has taken on a sense of urgency in recent years as elders are stricken with diabetes and heart problems, “which often are hand-in-hand with native peoples,” Marks said.
Keck, who has lived across the street for 50 years, was friends with Prout’s mother and gave the Indians a large military flag to put in the cemetery.
She said the Indians have always dug their graves by hand except for one chief from Foresthill whose grave was dug by a backhoe last year.
Keck makes no apologies for her lawsuit. “If that tree fell the other way they’d have been after me like a duck on a June bug,” she said.
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