on the cover / By Malcolm Terence

Klamath: Direct Action!

Myers is of Yurok and Karuk descent and he comes from a family of Native American activists. His father sits on the Yurok Tribal Council and an uncle was arrested in the Fish Wars of the 1970s when Yurok were establishing their fishing rights. One of Charlie’s brothers was locked up as a child during the campaign in the 1980s that stopped the G-O Road. Indians said the road would despoil sites sacred to at least four tribes.

Besides his political pedigree, Myers has the kind of muscular physique ideal for going up and down trees, but he listened attentively as Farmer went through the nine-step safety check list before he began the ascent. Farmer, who’s seen much forest protection action in coastal redwood forests, was also intently focused.

Myers managed the whole process easily and promised that he’d practice more on trees in his neighbor’s backyard. If there was no other way but civil disobedience to correct the Forest Service malpractice, he explained, “then it’s something you have to do.”

Tree climbs were only one part of the three-day KJC training camp. There were discussions of the history and effectiveness of non-violent civil disobedience and demonstrations as well as diagrams of many ways to block a log road or a timber sale. One handout was ambitiously titled “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” and it ranged from 1) Public Speeches to 30) Rude gestures to 173) Nonviolent obstruction. This was a monkey wrench grad school.

The training was attended by members of Hupa, Karuk and Yurok tribes as well as many non-natives from neighboring communities. Leaf Hillman started the proceedings with an old story. Hillman, director of the Karuk Department of Natural Resources, has the uncommon gift of being able to tell a long story without sounding long-winded, and he held the crowd.

“In the beginning of time,” he began, and he told the story of long ago when Spirit People ruled the earth and eventually transformed themselves into natural beings — rocks, trees, fish, air, water and the rest. Some of the Spirit People even chose to be humans, he explained, but they were the worst type of spirit being because they had the shortest memories.

He said that’s why Karuks have Pikyávish ceremonies, the annual world renewal. “We come together to remind ourselves and the priest goes into the mountains,” Hillman said. “Why him? Humans are bad at giving thanks. That’s why the priest goes on the spiritual trails.”

Hillman, himself in his teens in the 1980s, was training to be a priest when he joined other tribal members to block logging at Offield Mountain near Somes Bar. That operation built haul roads through the spiritual trails near Katimin (pronounced kot-uh-meen), still a prominent ceremonial village and the center of the world in Karuk cosmology. In that case, Karuk activists camped on the Offield site and prayed until the Forest Service eventually canceled the sale.

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