Karuk medicine man Norman Goodwin was born and stil lives near Somes Bar, which the tribe calls "the Center of the World."
Photo by Bob Pennell
By PAUL FATTIG
SOMES BAR, Calif. Medicine man Norman Goodwin is quick to reject suggestions that Uncle Sam has given land back to the Karuk tribe.
"We're not getting the land back," he stressed. "It has always been here for the Karuk people. Nobody has taken any of the land from us."
True, the 26-acre parcel along the Klamath River held sacred by the tribe was occupied by others whose papers claimed ownership until the land was turned over to the tribe during a simple ceremony Wednesday.
But the heart and soul of the land they call Katimin "the Center of the World" has always been with the Karuks, he said.
"This is the center of the Karuk world you can't take that away," he explained of the sacred ground about 80 miles southwest of Yreka.
Yet Goodwin, 67, a soft-spoken retired timber faller with shoulder-length hair, is just as quick to express appreciation for those Indian and whites alike who worked to obtain a conditional use permit signed by Klamath National Forest officials that turned over management of the Forest Service parcel to the Karuk people.
"This is our ceremonial land we've waited a long time for this," he said.
Vera Davis, 67, a council member for the roughly 2,500-member tribe, agreed.
"It's like Independence Day for us," she said, then added, "No matter who was on it, we always claimed it."
The Forest Service land, coupled with four acres seized by the government from an alleged marijuana grower and turned over to the tribe earlier this year, comprises the sacred ground above a Klamath River waterfall where the tribe holds annual ceremonies known collectively as Pic-Ya-Wish. It is here the Karuks conduct their annual ritual to renew the world, ensuring the return of salmon and acorns.
"The Center of the World doesn't come back to the people every day," observed Crow Monk, a tribal member who had been working with Goodwin and others to regain control of the land from the federal government.
They had been negotiating since the 1960s, but the paperwork didn't come together until this year.
As Monk spoke during this week's ceremony, a drum beat lightly in the background. Wafting through the air was the sweet smell of slabs of pink salmon baked before a firepit filled with chunks of madrone.
"We're in a constant struggle between right and wrong," said Ronnie Reed, 35, a forestry technician and tribal member. "But I feel like we're moving forward now."
Speaking for the U.S. government, Klamath Forest Supervisor Barbara Holder noted a growing trust between the Karuks and the government.
"This has been a long time in coming, but there has never been any doubt in my mind what Katimin means to your tribe," she told those gathered for the ceremony.
In his prayer during the ceremony, Goodwin, speaking in his native Karuk tongue, asked the Great Spirit to watch over those involved with Katimin.
"We pray that all the players involved will work in harmony as nature works in harmony," Goodwin said, according to a translator.
The ceremony came a week after the Nez Perce tribe purchased more than 10,000 acres of its ancestral land in northeastern Oregon from the Bonneville Power Administration.
Strong ancestral ties to the land generally mean good stewardship, said Goodwin, who was born on the land overlooking the falls at Katimin where a village of some 40 to 50 houses once stood.
As evidence, he points to blackened and broken rocks at the base of nearby trees.
"Those were the rocks we used to cook acorns and warming rocks," he said. "After they get to the point where you can't heat them anymore they crack real bad we don't toss them anyplace. We put them around a tree. They have served their purpose. They did a good job."
But newcomers did not treat the land the same.
Gold miners, scrambling to find land to search for gold, burned down the village in 1852, and other whites again burned it in 1883, according to historic records. Much of the tribe's ancestral land fell into white hands over the years.
By the 1950s, the U.S. government began a policy of encouraging Indians to meld into the American mainstream. Goodwin, who spoke the Karuk language before learning English, attended an Indian vocational school in Riverside, Calif. However, he graduated from Happy Camp High School in 1947.
Although he has traveled widely throughout the United States, from Alaska to Washington, D.C., he was never away from Katimin for more than a few months at a time.
"I always came back for the ceremonies," he said.
Although ceremonies are held in three other sites in the region, Katimin has the greatest significance in Karuk theology. They believe man was created at this spot, and from a nearby medicine mountain will ascend at his death to join the stars of the Milky Way.
During the time of the Dark Moon _ September _ the people gathered in the shadow of Sugarloaf Rock near the falls to hold their world renewal ceremony, he said.
"They always say we are immigrants, that we came across the Bering Straits," he said of scientific theories. "That irks me. All of my learnings is that we are from here. This is where we originated. That's what I was taught. That's what I believe."
Goodwin, whose mother was born on the site overlooking the falls in 1904, pointed to a grassy spot near the falls where the White Deer Dance was last held in 1910.
"My mother was about 6 when she watched it there," he said.
"That's where I'm going to hold it this year."
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