on the cover / By Japhet Weeks

Aiy-yu-kwee, Goodbye

Mobile home park residents learn that rights in Indian Country are limited

(Jan. 17, 2008) In December of last year, residents of the Aiy-yu-kwee Mobile Home Park — located on the territory of the Blue Lake Rancheria — were expecting to receive the usual season’s greetings: good tidings and Christmas cheer. Instead, they got eviction notices.

When 76-year-old Sid Madjarac received his letter, the first thing he thought about was his age and how big a pain it would be to move. But Madjarac, a Korean-war vet, is a fighter. And as it turned out, his eviction came with a silver lining.

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Someone from the rancheria called him just before Christmas and invited him into the tribal offices for a chat. When he went in, Tribal Administrator Arla Ramsey told him she had good and bad news. Madjarac already knew the bad news — he had to leave. The good news was that the rancheria would arrange to rent him a new trailer for the same price he was paying at the mobile home park.

Madjarac, a frequent patron of the Blue Lake Casino, was delighted. “Wow, this is pretty good,” he thought to himself. He even wrote Ramsey a thank-you card. But then he learned that many of the park’s residents hadn’t been offered the same deal. Now he’s irate, and he refuses to accept what he considers to be the tribe’s inequitable offer.

Madjarac is the sort of guy who would blend in perfectly at a card table in Atlantic City in the 1970s. At a meeting held by the Aiy-yu-kwee Mobile Home Park residents on a rainy Sunday afternoon in January, the salt-and-pepper haired war veteran wore aviator glasses and a bright red turtleneck under a brown windbreaker jacket. In a voice made gravely by smoking, he explained how he’d decided to reject the tribe’s offer of alternative housing: “I woke up,” he said. “Hey man, that’s not Madjarac … I’m going to go down with the other people.”

The eviction notices, which the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe sent to all 18 units of the mobile home park at the beginning of December, were similar in spirit, but differed in their details. Residents have until Aug. 1, 2008, to vacate the property and clean up their lots, or else face litigation. But some residents were offered $5,000 if they agreed to voluntarily terminate their tenancy and vacate the premises by May 1. Others, like Madjarac, were promised housing elsewhere on the rancheria. And an unlucky few were sent packing empty-handed.

The state of California protects mobile home owners’ rights, but the Aiy-yu-kwee Mobile Home Park (aiy-yu-kwee means hello in Yurok) is on tribal land, and has been since April 2007, when the property entered into tribal trust. Because of the tribe’s sovereign nation status — like that of all Native American tribes in the United States — it’s not subject to state laws. Even though Aiy-yu-kwee residents work in California and vote in the state’s elections, they go to bed in a sovereign nation. That means it’s perfectly legal for the tribe to come up with its own conditions for evicting mobile home park residents.

Whether or not the tribe’s actions are fair is another matter. Many of the affected residents wonder how a tribe that promotes itself as a positive force in the community and a protector of the disenfranchised — according to the rancheria’s website, its business goal is “to serve those who remain underserved by the system” — is kicking them out. For the tribe’s part, they feel they are acting in the best interest of their members by redeveloping a park that loses money into something that will turn a profit.

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