North Coast Journal August 23, 2007 : IN THE NEWS : SHORT STORIES

August 23, 2007

Karuk Leader Arrested

On Monday evening, the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department arrested Karuk Tribe Vice Chairman Leaf Grant Hillman in Happy Camp. The previous Friday, Aug. 17, the Siskiyou County District Attorney's office had filed a felony domestic violence charge against Hillman. Siskiyou County D.A. Kirk Andrus said Hillman, who lives in Orleans, is charged with one count corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant, and with two special allegations: inflicting great bodily injury and using a deadly weapon. Hillman's bail has been set at $50,000.

The charges stem from an incident in which Hillman allegedly was involved on July 28 at Nordheimer Flat on the Salmon River, a tributary to the Klamath, where a group had assembled for the Jammin" for the Salmon Music Festival. The festival was the concluding party to week-long events, hosted by several salmon advocacy and river restoration groups, that included the annual Salmon River spring Chinook and summer steelhead dives to count fish in the river and workshops and talks in the 2nd Annual Spring-run Chinook Symposium.

According to Siskiyou County Undersheriff Mike Murphy, his department received call at 11:37 p.m. on July 28 from a CalFire (California Department of Forestry) dispatcher reporting domestic violence at Nordheimer Flat. CalFire had a received a call from someone at the scene, said Murphy. "The [Sheriff's] deputy started responding down there, then he got a call from them saying that by the time he got there, nobody would be there," Murphy said. "It's a two-hour drive." The closer Hoopa substation of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office sent an investigator to take statements, and forwarded them to Siskiyou.

According to a report by Barry Clausen in the Aug. 8 Pioneer Press, the victim "was treated at the scene and taken to Hoopa by medical personnel from Salmon River Volunteer Fire and Rescue. Hoopa Ambulance then took her to Mad River Community Hospital in Arcata where she was treated for blunt head trauma and multiple face lacerations." Clausen's report alleged that the victim had been "hit on the head with a beer bottle" -- details he said he obtained from talking to people in Happy Camp who said they'd witnessed or heard of the event. Clausen also reported that several tribal elders asked the Karuk Tribal Council to "ask Leaf Hillman to resign his position as tribal vice chairman."

This Monday, one of these elders, Pauline Attebery, of Happy Camp, confirmed that report. "We went there the following Monday. The council was in a planning meeting, and Mr. Hillman was there. But he did not stay to attend the meeting we had afterward" with the council, she said. "We told them we felt [the incident] warranted dismissal. The council said they needed to get legal advice. And we accepted that." Attebery said she was not at the Nordheimer event, and that she had heard of it secondhand. She also said the victim had been released from the hospital.

The victim signed a form asking the Sheriff's Department not to release her name, said Murphy.

Hillman, who's been vice chair of the tribal council since 2002, has been a major player in efforts to restore the Klamath River watershed and salmon habitat; he has been at the forefront of pushing for removal of the Klamath dams. He has been director of the tribe's natural resources department and the tribe's fisheries department, and has served on numerous committees and task forces. In 2005, he was named a finalist for the Buffett Award for Indigenous Leadership. Hillman, whose family is a dance keeper, also leads the Karuk World Renewal Ceremony each year, called Pikyowish.

As of Tuesday afternoon, an arraignment hearing date had not been set.

-- Heidi Walters

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Toy Test

It's enough to make you want to rip off all your clothes and just run around nekked. And to tell your kids they can play only with ... air -- or, safer yet, only make-believe friends. We're talking about poison clothes and toys. There's the latest toy recall, this time by Mattel, of millions of toys made in China whose paint jobs contained unhealthful levels of lead. There were the easily-dislodged magnets that tykes could choke on. And now there's a story circulating the globe that certain cotton and wool clothes from China -- adults' and children's -- have been infused with abominably high levels of formaldehyde, a chemical that helps keep duds crease- and mold-free.

Above: Dawn Craghead at Moon's Play & Learn in Eureka tests toys for the presence of lead. Photo By Heidi Walters

But -- deep breath -- there's no need yet to vault back to the wilderness. True, we don't know yet what to say about the clothing concern. But, in general, a good way to inform yourself is to check out the latest recalls at www.recalls.gov. And, for the lead problem, you can wash your kids" toys and keep your house dusted and clean and let the water run in those lead pipes if you have them -- all things recommended by our safety monitors. You can also buy those little sticks at your local hardware store and rub them all over suspect stuff to see if anything's got lead in it. Last Thursday, that's what Dawn Craghead was doing at Moon's Play & Learn in Eureka. Craghead, Moon's manager, wasn't particularly concerned about the Mattel recall because her store doesn't carry Mattel products.

"The companies we normally buy from have higher standards than the big, mass-market companies like Mattel," she said, as she squished a little, white "Lead Check" stick and then rubbed it on a red triangle piece of a shapes game. "But I just decided, to ease our customers" minds, I would test some of the things in our store."

She tested wooden toys in particular. "I tested a variety of products, from newer to older, and baby things, because that's what goes in the mouth. And for wooden toys, reds and yellows are usually more likely" to have lead, if it's present at all.

Everything passed "with flying colors," she said. Craghead also has been showing her customers copies of a Time Magazine article, posted online, called "The Recall: A Parents" Guide." And she's telling them that they "can't just assume that everything in a store is safe."

"The true danger is in people not giving age-appropriate toys," Craghead said. "That's where more accidents happen. And with the lead -- you can't get lead poisoning just by touching it. You have to do a serious amount of chewing. People should educate themselves about how lead poisoning works."

Most local hardware stores, including Shafer's Ace Hardware, Pierson's, Sunny Brae Ace and Scotia True Value, carry the little lead-check sticks. At Shafer's in Henderson Center, the checkout guy said to a customer purchasing a packet of two sticks, "We'll probably have a run on these now with that toy recall." The sticks go for about $7-$9 -- a bit of a ripoff, you might think, because you only get a couple of swipes out of each stick. But hey, it's better than watching your kid babble to the air in a toy-free joyless space.

-- Heidi Walters

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