Protecting a sacred rite
Northstate Indian tribe conducting annual ceremony
This article was published on 06.28.12
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/protecting-a-sacred-rite/content?oid=6482270
The Coming of Age ceremony is the biggest step a young woman in the Winnemem Wintu tribe can take. After four days of prayer in a traditional birch hut and visiting the sacred spots of her people, she swims across the McCloud River to join her tribe, emerging on the opposite bank to celebrate her newfound womanhood. It is a deeply revered tradition passed down by people who have inhabited the area for more than 6,000 years.
So when passing Lake Shasta boaters yelled taunts and racial slurs, revved their engines and flashed breasts during such a ceremony in June 2010, the tribe considered it profoundly disrespectful. Tribal spokesman Gary Hayward Slaughter Mulcahy offered a comparison.
“Let’s say a priest was in a prayer during Mass and someone blew a blow horn in the middle of church,” he said during a recent interview. “It’s about that disruptive.”
For the last six years, the 150-member tribe has unsuccessfully lobbied the U.S. Forest Service to close a 400-yard section adjacent to the McCloud Bridge Campground on Shasta Lake to ensure a peaceful ceremony. But a recent outpouring of local public support—including hundreds of phone calls and letters to Washington D.C. and Regional Forester Randy Moore—prompted the Forest Service to announce it would close the McCloud River to boaters for the four-day ceremony beginning June 30.
The Forest Service cannot, however, prevent passersby from entering the campsite—not without federal recognition of the tribe from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“Unless the BIA tells the Forest Service, ‘Yes, these people are recognized descendants of California Natives and they are afforded the rights of all other Indian people,’ they can’t close the campground,” Mulcahy said. “The Forest Service has gone as far as they legally can. It’s ridiculous to have one federal agency causing the other so much trouble because of their inaction.”
This year’s ceremony is particularly important. Chief Caleen Sisk’s 16-year-old niece, Marisa, will undergo the Coming of Age ceremony in preparation for her duties as future leader of the tribe. As the rite must be performed before a girl turns 17, this year represents a now-or-never moment for Marisa.
Chief Sisk and her nephew, Arron, have been fasting in protest since June 19, and plan to continue until the BIA grants the Wintu tribe federal recognition and their ceremony can take place away from the public eye.
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