on the cover / By Japhet Weeks

Aiy-yu-kwee, Goodbye

“We’re not trying to be disrespectful,” said a soft-spoken Susie Holderman. “We just want them [the tribe] to play fair.”

Resident Bonnie Sue George tried to explain how difficult the move is going to be on her and her husband Michael. “People seem to think these are little boxes that can be picked up and moved,” she said. “But we’re moving our entire lives and our dreams in one blow.”

In a letter George gave to the city council, she wrote, “Don’t ever think you can’t become homeless when you have worked all your life with plans of saving money, just to pay medicines, pay off your home, to keep a roof over your head.”

In the end, Holliday promised to arrange a meeting between the tribal business council and the park’s residents — the first yet. She did this, she said, “so you [the residents] can have a perceived bigger voice.”

A crowd of almost 40people gathered peacefully in front of the Blue Lake Rancheria’s tribal office on Sunday, Jan. 13, hoping to be allowed into the first meeting ever between the mobile home park residents as a group and the tribe’s business council, which had voted last September to evict them. In attendance were residents, their children and grandchildren, Blue Lake community members (including a large delegation of students from Dell’Arte) and two members of the Blue Lake Rancheria tribe, who came to show their support for the residents.

At the entrance to the tribal office stood three security guards; at least one of them, according to his ID tag, was an employee of the Blue Lake Casino. The tribe announced that only park residents would be allowed into the meeting, and that videotaping was prohibited. Even close family members were not able to go in. Resident Bonnie Sue George wanted her daughter to accompany her, and Helen Studdert wanted her daughter and granddaughter to come in, but all three were told to remain outside. Two Blue Lake Rancheria tribal members, Helen Lance and her son Joe, were also denied entrance to the building.

Just an hour earlier when the mobile home park residents had met to discuss how they planned to bargain with the business council at that afternoon’s meeting, the group resonated with a tangible sense of purpose and hope. Their faces were bright and smiling and everyone had donned their Sunday best. They had been waiting a long time to face the tribe together and thought they might actually get the chance to hammer out a more equitable solution to their problems. They had planned to introduce themselves one by one to the business council, with a member of the Blue Lake community standing beside each resident for moral support. They hoped that if the tribal council members heard their individual stories, they might reconsider their decision. But standing in front of the tribal office and being told that neither Blue Lake community members nor the press could attend the meeting took the wind out of their sails. For a moment they considered backing out. If it wasn’t going to happen on their terms, maybe it shouldn’t happen at all, some argued. But in the end, they decided to go in alone — even if fewer voices would be heard, that was better than nothing, they reasoned.

Waiting outside for her mother on a park bench, Helen Studdert’s daughter Nancy Buzzard was upset that she hadn’t been allowed in. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said about the evictions. “They’re going to be basically homeless.”

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