Published in The Mammoth Times on July 22, 2021
“Consider this whole area,” says Tribal Chairwoman Charlotte Lange. “Before time immemorial, there were over 10,000 of our relatives that lived here, and moved around this whole lake for gathering, eating, getting ready for winter and summer. This is quite unique, this whole area here.”
She is referring to the Mono Basin, and the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe–hunters, gatherers, and basket weavers who found expert and innovative ways to thrive in this harsh, high desert environment.
But in the 1850s, when white ranchers and gold miners first entered the Eastern Sierra, they violently displaced Indigenous people from their ancestral lands in the Mono Basin. What followed was an assault on the survival and way of life of tribes in the area, including the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe.
In the modern day, the Kutzadika’a culture and way of life is most certainly still present and thriving in the Mono Basin, and yet the force of colonization is still at work, presenting the tribe with barriers and challenges including one of the most long-lived and tumultuous, its fight for federal recognition. The tribe, which includes 83 enrolled members today, has been fighting for this recognition for almost 150 years. It is one of several tribes in California fighting for the reclamation of their ancestral lands.
Federal recognition would formally establish the Kutzadika’a Tribe as a sovereign nation, bringing with it many benefits. These benefits, tribal members say, will allow for revitalization of Kutzadika’a culture and a return to traditional practices that benefit both people and the environment. These traditions and beliefs–including economic ideology rooted in sharing and collectivism, and a responsibility to care for and preserve the environment–fuel the tribe’s perseverance in fighting for federal recognition, and represent the ultimate goal of gaining that recognition.
The tribe’s fight for federal recognition has seen many promising and unprecedented developments this year, and many are hopeful. “People nowadays, they see what we stand for, and we’re kind of fighting all the same fight–conservation, water rights, protecting the land,” said tribal member Jason Small. “I think this year will be our best shot.”
Recent developments in the struggle include new partnerships with organizations in the Mono Basin, political action on the federal scale, and a wider breadth of communication with tribes and other allies across the nation. “Our letter is going out today. We’re going to send it to the Natural Resource Committee, the President, the Vice President, Senator Diane Feinstein, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House and the Senate,” said Lange. “We have a lot of people contacting us that want to help us, from Arizona to Nevada to New Mexico. We have had our story out in Indian Country, so it’s starting to move again.” This political action will help back the Congressional bill introduced by Representative Jay Obernolte in June that, if passed, will extend federal recognition to the Kutzadika’a Tribe. But the hope provided by these efforts is not a guarantee, and they need as much support as possible. For information on how to do so, see the end of this article.
And this fresh momentum didn’t come out of nowhere. It is founded on hundreds of years of perseverance in the face of oppression, which is both disheartening and inspiring for the tribal members continuing their ancestors’ battle today–150 years of struggling to be officially recognized by the United States government. “I have some documents that my grandmother had, in 1926. They were paying $6 a year to try to help with contacting the government to get them to acknowledge that the Mono Lake Paiutes were here, and that they needed help,” said tribal member Vicki Glazier. “For a long time, [Charlotte’s grandfather, Frank Sam] wrote letters to the federal government, but they were never really acknowledged. That was the sad part. We were here, but not as far as the government cared,” she said.
Some members of the tribe have been dedicated to the fight for over twenty years on their own, with part of their motivation being to respect and honor their elders’ dedication to the very same struggle. “We’ve been trying to be recognized for over 100 years,” said tribal secretary and treasurer Barbara Coons. “Here we are, a people who have been here forever, and we have to jump through hoop after hoop answering question after question and we’re still not recognized.” Glazier added, “we keep having to prove who we are. We’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m in my seventh decade of waiting for recognition.”
These decades of advocacy have been in the name of securing several important changes that will bolster the tribe’s political power, economic status, and ability to continue preserving its culture and heritage. “Federal Recognition would allow the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a Tribe to be formally recognized as a sovereign nation. Under the law of the land, there are only three sovereign forms of government: federal, state and tribal governments,” said Dean Tonenna, tribal elder. “The status of a sovereign nation is no small thing and there are many out there who would jump at the chance to have such status. With a sovereign status, the Tribe would have the same rights, responsibilities and privileges that other nations across the world possess.” These rights include entitlement to apply for government programs that support tribal government, tribal nation-building, and economic assistance for tribal citizens. Other services that the tribe would become eligible for include programs similar to those that a state government offers, such as education, social services, resource protection, and health services.
But with the legal implications of sovereignty comes something bigger, most tribal members say, a reclamation of their land, culture, and ideas that have been violently ripped away by colonization. Lange recounted: “A long story I was once told was of Captain John, who lived over in Parker. Eventually they moved him, and kept moving him, and when the mining came in and the ranchers came in, they just kept moving him farther and farther until he ended up out on the north shore of Mono Lake in sagebrush country in the Bodie Hills,” she said. “That was the treatment of the Native people, to be pushed out of their homelands. That’s a heart wrenching story.”
The implications of this forced removal did not end after the first settlers made their homes in the area. “Our people are disadvantaged through the loss of our homeland,” said Tonenna. “We remain vulnerable to continued losses, even under the ‘law’ because we do not have the status to assert our rights as a people and as a nation.” In the modern day, knowledge of this violent history of forced removal serves to oppress and disadvantage tribal members, but also deepens their connection to the land and their cultural obligation to preserve it. “Everybody has a deed to this land, parcels, or whatever they’ve acquired,” explained Lange. “But in our hearts, this is all our land, even though we don’t ‘own it’ per say, we do still, because we take care of it.”
That’s why the legal reclamation of land is cornerstone to the tribe’s goals of further strengthening their culture and presence in the Mono Basin. Becoming federally recognized would mean the Secretary of the Interior would put land in trust for the tribe, and give it more autonomy for establishing jobs and housing. With the tribe’s members currently distributed from New York to New Mexico to Arizona, California, and Nevada, said Lange, “our goal is to obtain land, so that our people can come home.” Small added, “If we became a tribe, we could get everybody back here. They need to be home.”
Lange explained how connection to this specific part of the Eastern Sierra is so key to her culture: “It’s our traditional ways… we are here to take care of the land and preserve all of those traditions that we do, like the basket weaving, and plants that we eat, the fire that brings back those plants in full force, because some plants need to be burnt. Taking care of other areas, and keeping the meadows… taking care of Mono Lake.”
When asked what sustains her connection to this land, Glazier simply responded: “That’s the way we were raised.”
As part of the forced claimation of land by white settlers was a rejection of Kutzadika’a culture and ways. While still sustained by tribal members today, many say that federal recognition will be a large and necessary support for a revitalization of their way of thinking. Tonenna explained: “Federal recognition would acknowledge that our people have always been here and are here today. It would mean that we have traditions and worldviews that are distinct and worthy in their own right.”
To explain these worldviews, many tribal members used examples of sharing and collectivism. “We’ve never been selfish. We’ve taken what we need to survive, and we didn’t fence things off and make money for each other,” said Small. “Back in the days… as a tribe we took what we needed and left what we didn’t. We didn’t just take all this land and all this property and try to make better for ourselves.”
But historically, as the colonizers’ mindset began to shift the way of life in the Mono Basin, society’s orientation shifted away from collectivism and preservation of the environment, and towards earning money. “People came in and right away wanted to destroy and start building for money’s sake,” Glazier explained. This shift left behind large amounts of detrimental change to both people and the environment.
“It’s quite important that we be federally recognized to protect these lands for our future children,” said Lange. “There’s a lot of destruction that we need to take care of now, to get it back in sync with ecological aspects.” Federal recognition would provide the tribe with the power and resources to move towards making these changes on a more official level, starting with gathering the resources to practice cultural traditions as best as possible, and better educating Mono County residents about Indigenous practices.
For example, “If we are federally recognized, we can protect our people as far as repatriation,” said Lange. “Right now, we have to rely on other tribal entities because we are not federally recognized. When we had to repatriate one of our oldest members from UCLA, we had to get ahold of Benton to help us repatriate one of our loved ones. Those kind of things are really important.”
The significance of preserving culture and tradition holds true for many tribal members, and federal recognition is seen as a key step towards success. “If we get recognized, we become an entity, and our word will carry a lot more weight, said Small. “I think that we need to preserve what we have. We’ve lost a lot of family members, we’ve lost a lot of tribal members, we’ve lost a lot of our heritage. And that stuff needs to come back… We’ve lost everything, and it would be nice to get that back. To teach the young kids, their families, our tribal members, who we are. We are definitely a unique people… We’re from this area, and we’re from Yosemite, so the gathering, the hunting, and all of that stuff is really important. We’re going to lose it if we don’t have the programs in place to teach these young people.”
For younger tribal members, especially those not located in the Mono Basin, cultural preservation holds a very specific type of urgency. “I would give my perspective being a younger person and really thinking about when I have kids,” said Jocelyn Sheltraw, a tribal member. “Being so close to my grandmother, and not feeling like I have all of the stories, all of our cultural heritage, so much of this is just new to me. When I think about having kids, it’s important that I’m passing down the stories and my heritage… for our future generations, this is incredibly important.”
Starting here in Mono County, a wider acknowledgement and recognition of the Kutzadika’a tribe will go a long way. “There’s a lot of people that don’t know that we’re here,” said Glazier. “We want the respect of being a Native American tribe,” added Small. “We want to be respected as who we are, which is the Mono Lake Paiutes.”
To support the Kutzadika’a fight for federal recognition, use the resources at:
https://linktr.ee/kutzadikaa.tribe.support
With seven floors of striking architecture, UMoMA shows exhibitions of international contemporary art, sometimes along with art historical retrospectives. Existential, political, and philosophical issues are intrinsic to our program. As visitor, you are invited to guided tours artist talks, lectures, film screenings, and other events with free admission.