Native Sustainment: the North Fork Mono Tribe's
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Native Sustainment The North Fork Mono Tribe's Stories, History, and Teaching of Its Land and Water Tenure in 1918 and 2009 Jared Dahl Aldern Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Prescott College in Education with a Concentration in Sustainability Education May 2010 Steven J. Crum, Ph.D. George Lipsitz, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member Margaret Field, Ph.D. Theresa Gregor, Ph.D. External Expert Reader External Expert Reader Pramod Parajuli, Ph.D. Committee Chair Native Sustainment ii Copyright © 2010 by Jared Dahl Aldern. All rights reserved. No part of this dissertation may be used, reproduced, stored, recorded, or transmitted in any form or manner whatsoever without written permission from the copyright holder or his agent(s), except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the papers of students, and in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Requests for such permission should be addressed to: Jared Dahl Aldern 2658 East Alluvial Avenue, #103 Clovis, CA 93611 Native Sustainment iii Acknowledgments Gratitude to: The North Fork Mono Tribe, its Chairman, Ron Goode, and members Melvin Carmen (R.I.P.), Lois Conner, Stan Dandy, Richard Lavelle, Ruby Pomona, and Grace Tex for their support, kindnesses, and teachings. My doctoral committee: Steven J. Crum, Margaret Field, Theresa Gregor, George Lipsitz, and Pramod Parajuli for listening, for reading, and for their mentorship. Jagannath Adhikari, Kat Anderson, Steve Archer, Donna Begay, Lisa Bennett, Paul Burkhardt, Noël Cox Caniglia, Richard Cellarius, Dirk Charley, Jon Christensen, Joan Clingan, Lori Clune, Barbara Cross, Steve Crouthamel, Charles Ettner, Michael Cuddington, Robin Maria DeLugan, Bill Deverell, Glenn DeVoogd, Patricia Dixon, Dorian Fougères, Ross Frank, Ed Grumbine, Kamyar Guivetchi, Ken Hansen, Barry Hill, Mary Anna Sung Hsi, Andrea Johnson, Kimberly Johnston-Dodds, Brad Jones, Gaylen Lee, Linda Locklear, Rick Medrick, John Minkler, Jim Mullooly, Erin Potter, Dereka Rushbrook, Mark Somma, Jordana DeZeeuw Spencer, Priscilla Stuckey, Eileen Walsh, Steven Walker, Katherine Ward, Mike Wilken, La Querencia neighbors, and audiences at the 2010 Conference of the American Society for Environmental History, at Palomar College, at Prescott College, and at San Diego State University for helpful responses and conversations. Karyn Finnell, Rich Lewis, Jody Lichtenberg, Deb Morrison, Vita Marie Phares, Kistie Simmons, and other Prescott College staff members, faculty members, and administrators for invaluable and always-professional support and assistance. Staff members at the Auberry Branch of the Fresno County Public Library, the Bancroft Library, the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State, the National Archives at San Francisco, and the Sierra National Forest for their expert counsel. The staff of the California State Department of Water Resources and the Center for Collaborative Policy (California State University, Sacramento), and fellow members of the 2009 California Tribal Water Summit Planning Team for their collaboration. My fellow members of Cohort 2 of the Prescott College Ph.D. Program for their comradeship. The Aldern, Grunwald, Hsi, Sung, Groethe, Solbach, Lim, and Shindo families for their interest in my work, for their hospitality, and for their countless generosities. Mary, Natalie, Jackie, and Belinda for their sustainment. Native Sustainment iv Abstract This dissertation focuses on the North Fork Mono (or Nium) Tribe‘s historiography and oral narratives about its land and water tenure. I begin with a recounting of my recent experiences with writing elementary school curriculum about Native American people and the environment and a discussion of the clash in worldviews that this work brought to the surface. Then, by drawing on secondary sources, on archival research into federal land records and anthropologists‘ correspondence and field notes, on an analysis of the content and structure of traditional stories recorded by the anthropologist E. W. Gifford in 1918 (and of Gifford‘s publications), and on my participation in and observation of the 2009 California Tribal Water Summit, I describe the traditional Nium fire regime and the history of the Tribe‘s land and water tenure. My dissertation supports the Tribe‘s sovereignty and environmental jurisdiction; I focus on an investigation of how the Nium have expressed water tenure and rights in the watershed of the San Joaquin River and on how Nium stories operate as educational media. My literary and historical analysis shows how Nium narratives can drive ecological restoration and how these narratives sustain people, land, and water by articulating the connections among all these entities. In clarifying this sustainment – this persistent, reciprocal support and nourishment among Nium people, land, and water over time – for a broader audience, my objective is to contribute to other groups‘ capacities to sustain themselves and that which surrounds them – to accomplish the goal, in other words, of sustainability education. Native Sustainment v Table of Contents Acknowledgments…………………...………………………...…………………….…….…iii Abstract ……………...………………...…….………………………………...……………… iv Figure 1 Map of the Upper San Joaquin Watershed ……………………….………….……………...…vii Chapter One Introduction: Stories, Relationship, and Sustainment………………………...…………………………..1 ―The Story Needs to Paint a Clearer Picture:‖ State Curriculum Alignment………...…….3 Further Collaboration with Ron Goode………………..………………………….………5 Worldview and Cosmology ……………………………..…………………….…………..7 Gifford‘s Stories and Nium Stories……………………...…………………… …….…….8 Ecological Legitimacy, Recognition, Sovereignty, Jurisdiction, and My Work……..…...9 My Work in Relation to Others: A Brief Review………………………….……………12 Historians, Ecological Indians, Sustainability, and Conservation………….……............17 History and Narrative Education.......................................................................................24 Notes on Sources…………………………………………………….…………………..27 Cosmology and Policy……………………………………………….…………………..28 Chapter Two A Brief History of Nium Fire and Land Tenure to 1918………………………….31 Nium Trails and Fire……………………………………………………….……………32 Anglo American Invasion, Settlement, and Changes in the Fire Regime………….……37 Livestock Grazing and the Preservation Movement Affect the Nium…………….…….40 Hydropower in the Sierra……………………………………………………….……….43 Indian Homesteads, Allotment, the Winters Decision, and Water……………………....44 Tourism………...………………………………………………………………………...50 Education, Labor, Alcohol, and Wildfire………………………………………………..53 Chapter Three Fairy Tales and Respectable Antiquity: Gifford and the Nium…………………...57 Gifford‘s and Kroeber‘s Claims……………………………………………….………...58 Gifford‘s Correspondence Regarding the North Fork Mono…………………………....61 The Upshot………………………………………………………………………………69 Chapter Four Nium Story and North Fork Mono Land and Water……………………...………72 Native Sustainment vi Animism and Sustainability: A Community Includes All Things………………………76 Parallelism, Parataxis, Seriation, and Causality…………………………………………80 Cultures of Place………………………………………………………………………...84 Five Nium Stories……………………………………………………………………….86 Chapter Five Water Stories, Education, and Meadow Restoration………………………...….103 The State of California Makes Space for Stories………………………………………105 The Tribal Water Summit……..………………………………………………………..107 The Summit Starts……………………………………………………………………...109 ―We Have to Have a Lesson:‖ Stories and Education at the Summit ………………….111 History, Stories, Rights, and Responsibilities ………………………………………….116 ―The Doors Are Opening:‖ Discussions of Next Steps at the Summit………………...119 Native Water Rights and Meadow Restoration………………………………………...122 The Beneficial Uses of Water in Montane Meadow Restoration………………………127 Chapter Six Total Recall and the Move from Sustainment to Sustainability…………………134 Intercultural Teaching and Learning…………………………………………………...137 Conclusion (and Future Work)…………………………………………………………146 Appendix Constitution of the North Fork Mono Tribe, Article I: Territory……………………………… 150 Figure 2 The North Fork Mono Tribe‘s 2007 map of its traditional territory……………………………151 Figure 3 E. W. Gifford‘s 1932 map of North Fork Mono and surrounding lands……………………….152 Figure 4 A.L. Kroeber‘s map of south-central California (1925)………………………………………..153 Figure 5 Map of linguistic groups in central and southern California…………………………………...154 Figure 6 The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation‘s map of the proposed Temperance Flat Reservoir…………155 Figure 7 Map of the Waters of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Sierra Nevada…………………156 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..157 Native Sustainment vii Figure 1: Map of the Upper San Joaquin Watershed Native Sustainment 1 Chapter One Introduction: Stories, Relationship, and Sustainment It is difficult to separate the perception of the landscape by any one culture or people from their ecology and territoriality. Dispossession of the land predicated the displacement of traditional environmental relations and loss of traditional membership in nature. -- Richmond L. Clow and Imre Sutton (2001) This dissertation tells stories about stories. My interest is in stories as a method of education, as a method of increasing the capacities for thought and action in individuals and communities. As a sustainability educator I am particularly interested in stories that increase the capacity of communities to sustain, support, and nourish relationships