Remembering Priscilla Hunter

[00:00:02] Speaker A: KMUD podcast presents. All right, it's time for the epic. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Environment show with Tom Wheeler. Take it away, Tom. [00:00:19] Speaker C: All right, welcome to another epic edition of the KMUD Environment Show. Welcome everyone. So today we have an important show, a sad show, but an important show. We are getting to reflect on the legacy of a dear friend who recently passed, Priscilla Hunter. We have Priscilla's family, friends, loved ones here with us to share their memories. I think that this is going to be a very beautiful hour and so want to pay tribute to Priscilla. So Polly, as Priscilla's partner, I want you to kick it off and tell us a little bit about Priscilla's childhood and how that, I think that in understanding her childhood will kind of understand Priscilla as an adult and her concerns and all the work that she did on behalf of the environment, on behalf, on behalf of her people. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Well, Priscilla was raised in a very loving family that had wonderful times on their reservation land. The old Coyote Valley Rancheria. They'd had a lot. They just roamed those hills, had a great old time, fished the river. Oh, they had even a large area for baseball. Other tribes would come and have baseball games. She has a fond memories of her childhood and her time with her cousins. But then at around 10, she sort of remembered, you know, these little hush hush meetings like, oh, the BIA is coming, the BIA is coming to town. And her elders sort of gathering and trying to, you know, talking silent, secretively, the kids out of the room. But that was when the government was planning to terminate them from their rancheria lands to build a water supply for Sonoma county, which became came the Coyote Valley Dam. The menacing in here and near Ukiah in her former lands. And she remembers getting in the back of a truck, watching, watching all this equipment, you know, bulldozers and such down below her and being taken up to a mountain where her uncles, hardworking men in the local mill, always providing for their children and an extended family providing for many cousins, their meals each night. Well, she remembers being taken up to this hillside where first they had to live in army tent attached to a shack. Then the uncles and family built a home. And that was, you know, this happened to her when she was 10. She had a fairly nice upbringing in Ukiah. She enjoyed the school system and her friends. She then went to college. And at Hayward State she was found out really for the first time. The deprivations, the genocide, the horrors experienced by the Indian people of California systematically throughout the state and very roughly up here too. And so that sparked in her who she'd been A baseball player. She'd been, you know, just a kid growing up like any kid in high school. But it sparked within her when she went to Cal State Hayward and learned the truth of the Indian genocide in California. It sparked within her the fight for justice and wanting to serve her people. Priscilla's primary commitment in her life was to her Indian people. And these Indian people meant from here, locally, the tribes, to far afield in Chiapas, Mexico, to the unrecognized tribes that many federally recognized tribes with casinos wanted to block their access to justice. But she would always take on causes that she thought they were right. And she was a very moral person is what I. A deeply moral person. And I think it had to do. It had to do a lot with her connection to her heritage and even to the land because she fought for 25 years. We always thought it was a pipe dream and we'd go with her. John Trudell would have a concert, we'd go and they would have pass a hat around, oh, yeah, we're going to get an inter tribal park. We're going to get land back. We're going to. And her goal was to help heal the people, to get people, her people, who had been forcibly removed, slaughtered, raped, maltreated, enslaved to get and removed from a land of 10,000 years of occupation. But she had this dream, and when she was with the park service up there and all the state players trying to regain and protect some lands from a third clear cut with local activists from southern Humboldt and the nuns with a nunnery up there, I mean, it was really amazing. And the kids running from Covalo to the coast and the spirit gatherings, she really, we did it all. But she always said we had to do it on the ground. We had to put the prayers to the ground. We had to run from our various rancherias to the coast. And little kids did. Elders did so. And even to going to chop us, she said we had to go on the ground. We had to be on Mother Earth all the way down. So she had a deep connection to the land and her heritage and she pulled it off. I mean, that was the amazing thing they gave. The state said, well, we could give you a quarter acreage for a dance grounds. And she said, that's a good start. And then 4,500 acres later, negotiating with philanthropists, with many agencies, with state agencies, with trust for public lands, with the people who give money for lands, she was able to get $1.8 million and purchase back land for her people. So to me, that's her broader. Because that's for 10 tribes are in the council of this. And the managers and owners of this tribe. So that's her broader desire to help Indian people locally. Then she went to the state level and helped amend the state. It's not easy to amend a state constitution. And it took the tribe several years. One failed attempt, then a second attempt. And in this time she served on the California Nations Indian Gaming Board of Directors. She was the legislative, I don't know, legislative committee chair for California Nations Indian Gaming association for many years. Every Wednesday she was on a call with high powered lobbyists with tribal leaders from throughout the state, steering the policy direction of a state when, when people, when she was asked to. When they had Janet Reno had a special meeting with all California tribes seeking gaming. They sought a spokesperson for this meeting with Janet Reno and they chose Priscilla, the whole state of California, all the leaders. She went out there with a terrible gallbladder injury. She made the speech and then I had to take her right to the hospital. But her dedication was remarkable. Remarkable. I mean, I lived and walked through life and loved what could only be characterized as a living legend, really a living legend of California Indian history. And so from. And then fighting for the unrecognized was not popular casino. Tribes with a tribe up the road that might get into gaming would try to fight their ability to get into gaming. And PC stood with a downtrodden. You don't know how many people we helped at our kitchen table. People without money, people who needed help, people in crisis, Indian people. And we succeeded in most instances in representing them and getting them the justice they sought, always at the last minute. I don't know what it is. Indians like to avoid going to court, so you come in a week before the hearing, stuff like that. But once again, I want to go back, though I have to stress, and this is one of her. In the last few days of her dying process, she was in and out of consciousness, of course, between two worlds. And she just stood up in the bed once and said, polly, don't you think it's better for Indian people now? And I thought, damn, girl. Well, you sure had a lot to do with that. And of course, my immediate answer was yes, and you had a lot to do with that. So she could negotiate with Republican, Democrat, corporate lobbyists. She could be at the reservation level bringing back the dances and the culture to her people. Her first grant she wrote as a tribal administrator was to get the songs and the dances back and to give that to the future and to her children. So she was always very forgiving. She went through turmoil and tribulations within tribal politics, within her own tribe, and yet never stepped away from the love of her people. I mean, a level of profound forgiveness that only I think a spiritual person could have. And that was what she taught me. She taught me to go for the spirit. She'd say, polly, don't let the spirit. Don't get ahead of the spirit. Don't let your mind leap ahead of the spirit. And what she meant is, we with elitist educations, in the highest of credentialed law schools and academies, we learn a sort of quick thinking, you know, always have to have a prompt answer. Always have to be there right on the spot. Our mind's clicking all the time. But she taught me to. To go to a different place. Go to a place of just wait. Wait till the spirit spoke through me. No one had ever taught me that before or even said it was the path to follow. So she was my teacher, of course, my lover, my friend. But also, she said this often, and I think it's true, for she's a very intelligent woman, very talented woman, very, very brilliant political strategist. But she told me, I'm not in it for the glory. Polly. She said this many a time to me. She said it is. We go to meetings, us Indian folks, us tribes, we lay it on the line. We tell them it's all wrong what they're doing, but then we don't follow through. She said, we have to dig in and do the paperwork. We have to dig in and know how to go on record in building up a case, probably culminating in litigation generally, but so they're not in it for the glory. I don't know many people who could say that. And I can honestly say that was true of her character and that we had fun. We really had fun. We liked talking truth to power. We liked being smart enough to take on any agency men and to take on any lawyers for the casino investors. We just told it like it was. We never backed down. And because we didn't back down, because we knew we could do what we were doing, and we gave it our all. We won some tremendously difficult victories. And I think it's basically because we enjoyed fighting for justice. I mean, it's good to have a life of purpose. Someone saw us in the Noyo harbor at a restaurant. It was people from Jackson Demonstration State Forest and the front line of people on that struggle. And we were just having a grand old time. And this real rich looking woman comes up to me and goes, well, you guys seem to be having such a great time. What do you. What are you doing? What do you do? What. Who are you? What are you doing? I said, well, we're fighting for Jackson State Forest. Told a little bit about that struggle. And she said, so you have purpose? I said, yeah, we have purpose. She goes, well, you know what? I believe a life well led is a life with purpose. And here's some woman from Orange County. I think so. We were genuine together. We were honest together. We were not afraid to reach out to people brighter than us in certain areas to help us out and to help teach us what we needed to know. EPIC certainly is one of those allies that helped us understand ceqa, understand some of the difficult cultural resource protection issues. Phil Gregory, another great lawyer, and Sharon Duggan greatly helped us with the Willits bypass. It's important to have allies and she knew this. Priscilla knew she could not do the sinkion without the support of non native allies. And so she has always been a bridge builder between two cultures and a loving member of the coalitions we formed. She said, even on the ones we don't win Will, it's bypassed. What a crazy decision. But we still make great friends. And right here on the phone with us tonight are some of the great friends. We met Kim Bancroft. She locked down to heavy equipment at the Willits bypass. Mariah Gillardin, the videographer of the movement of the Willits bypass. And Vicki Patterson, who's been a collaborator with her on projects for many, many years. So I'm going to defer to the group now. We are all so lucky, I believe, to be the dear friends of Priscilla Hunter. You asked me why we called her PC. I'll tell you real quick. She told me PC stands for pretty cute. I and I had to agree with that. So that's how Priscilla Hunter was called PC. Take it off, kid. You guys from there you can go. [00:15:54] Speaker C: Thank you, Polly. I. I want somebody to. To love me enough to call me PC someday. You know that. It's such a wonderful nickname and it always warmed my heart whenever I heard you call her that. Kim, let's start with you. I know that you are a historian, you are a writer, you are working on a book. And this is a book together with Priscilla where you were capturing Priscilla's words. The history of the. Do you have anything that you'd like to share from your book? Maybe kind of focus on this area of Priscilla's ongoing constant work to maintain her tribe and her people through termination, through re recognition by the feds. She did a ton for her people, and I'd love to hear maybe in Priscilla's own words, some stories. [00:16:52] Speaker D: Sure. Well, the book came about, actually, and it's called Coyote Valley Building a Tribal Nation. And her granddaughter, Tristan Hunter, provided the subtitle. And the book really came about because Priscilla so much wanted to preserve the history of Coyote Valley, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, and share how her ancestors, her grandmother and grandfather Angelina and Henry Campbell, were really the progenitors of this family tribe. And the extended family and kids jumped in when the opportunity arose to take land back. And one of the statements that Priscilla said was, how ironic is it that we have to buy back our own land? But once they had been removed from the original Coyote Valley Rancheria to some land further up the hill, it was Eddie Knight, another cousin, another one of the Campbell cousins, who brought a case against, essentially, the federal government for having disenrolled and terminated the Coyote Valley Rancheria folks from the BIA roles. And that case then led them to be re enrolled and get funding from the BIA for all kinds of things, not to mention getting scholarships, which is originally what Eddie and Priscilla wanted when they went off to college, but also to buy land back and to get housing, build infrastructure. It was an enormously complex process. And Priscilla wanted to be sure that that understanding of how this wonderful reservation came into being because of the work of her Aunt Doris and Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Ira and Uncle Hyram and people I came to know as these uncles and aunts who had pitched together to work for this. And as Polly said so wonderfully, Priscilla was really dedicated to making the tribe rejuvenated and the reservation built up so that there would be a home base, a land base. And her daughter Melinda, who I also got to interview, said at one point, God, mom, you're just. You're always at meetings and you're working so hard, and what is this all for? We were Indians, didn't want to be on reservations. Why are we doing this? And. And Priscilla said, so that you would have a home. And so she helped oversee, as. As Polly also said, bringing in lots of help, including one from Redwood Valley, Steve Rugg, who was instrumental and funding and in order to build 30 houses originally, and then later when the BIA would say, well, you're presenting us with the idea of having a baseball field. We don't usually do that. Or a gymnasium, a swimming pool. And Priscilla always just reached for what she called the pie in the sky. To make these opportunities available for the youth at the. At the reservation and then reaching far beyond. So she told a lot of these wonderful stories. And I think, as Polly said, she emphasized how wonderful it was to grow up at the original rancheria in the. In Coyote. What was Coyote Valley, now Lake Mendocino, and have that connection to nature. And that never left her. And she always wanted to. I just to love nature and its critters and the opportunities for the kids to be in nature wherever it was, whether it was sinkion or on their reservation, too. So one thing I want to do is maybe a segue to Vicki Patterson here, who was an even longer older friend than I was able to be. One of the things that Priscilla made very significant and Polly referred to this was the importance of rejuvenating the cultural practices. And Eddie Knight told a great story that's also in the book about going to Hayward and learning fancy dancing, which comes from the Plains Indians, and realizing, wait, I'm a California Indian. Where are our traditions? And then going back to speak with his uncles, Ira and Hyrum, and the other elders of the. Of what was going to be the tribe that. What happened to our dances and our songs and our regalia? And they said, oh, you want to know about those? They remembered, they knew. And so they brought them back into the fold of being able to do the dancing and the songs, brought people from other tribes and communities to teach them. And so that was an important thing. But she also talked about how she had to get over the idea. She learned in high school that the Indians were the savages. That's what they heard. Oh, they're the ones who killed the settlers. They didn't get to hear the positive things of what Native people had created and how they had survived for thousands of years. And she always referred to Vicki Patterson, how Vicki, as an anthropologist, knew this history really well from across different parts of California and said, you know, Vicki reminded me, look at how they. What they did with acorns and with seaweed and with seafoods and how they were able to build houses and live in nature and survive and thrive. And so I always salute Vicky for being somebody who could help Priscilla really celebrate that aspect of Pomo culture. And so I turn it over to you, Vicki. [00:23:20] Speaker C: Yeah, Vicki, I would love to hear how you came to know Priscilla and hear some stories about your work together over the years. [00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Well, mainly I was a friend, a friend of Priscilla's, and we met in the 1970s. Excuse me. When I was the director of the UKIAH Unified Bilingual Bicultural Project. At that time, it was the only Title VII project in California that included Indians. And so we were left with the task of trying to figure out some kind of curriculum, you know, what language we were going to teach, just starting from zero. And at the time, her brother, Tom Ramis was very involved in Indian dancing, in powwow dancing and other dancing. And he took kids around to dance at different places. And he was very involved with this project. He wanted his kids to be in a school where they could learn something about their heritage. So it was through him that I met her. And I'll never forget the first time she came into my office. She had really long hair and she came in in a very regal manner, straight back and sat in a chair completely silently looking at me. And I was very intimidated by this stern looking person. But after I got to know her, we became really good friends. And in fact, when her son was little, we used to drive around in a car to make him go to sleep. We put him in the car and drive around town and then go to sleep. And, you know, she had very, very distinct opinions about everything. And she wasn't afraid to demand what she wanted. And I'll never forget one time making, making lunch. We're making sandwiches. I think we're making bologna sandwiches. And she said, no, you're not making it right. I said, what do you mean? She said, the mayonnaise has to go on this bread, this side of the bread, and the lettuce has to go on this side of the bread. You can't put them on the wrong side of the bread. So we had to remake all of those sandwiches. But after I got to know her, we did participate. I did participate in many projects with her, including doing research for the sinkion and for tribal recognition and for NAGPRA stuff. And she told me that when she was young, JCPenney's used to be in Ukiah, downtown Ukiah. And when she went there to buy something, the salesperson would not take the money from her hand. She had to put the money on the counter because they didn't want to touch an Indian. And that remained with her as, you know, very shocking example of racism in Ukiah. She did tell me a lot about playing with her cousins, playing baseball. They very close knit, you know, because they were isolated, kind of on the rancheria. They were each other's friends. And later on she said that her family came first. Whatever relationship she had, her family came first. If her cousin needed something, she'd have to leave her immediate family and go help that cousin. So the notion of tribe was very deeply embedded in her consciousness. And she felt responsibility not just for herself and her own nuclear family, but also for that all extended family, which, you know, if you look at traditional Pomo culture is a tribe, the tribe's words, families. And so she was an example of that in practice. She had a wonderful sense of humor. Very dry, very dry humor that really made me laugh a lot. [00:27:04] Speaker A: And. [00:27:07] Speaker B: She just was a good friend. I mean, I've known her for a really, really, really long time. But through our kids growing up and their kids growing up and it's. I. I miss her a lot. Just as a friend, just as somebody to talk to, hang out with. I got the opportunity to go with her and Polly to Mexico when the Zapatista army moved back into Mexico City on their big pilgrimage march. That was quite an interesting trip. [00:27:40] Speaker C: I would love to talk about that trip because this is something that I think comes up in every recounting of her life. It seems like this must have been a very important thing in Priscilla's life. So how did this trip come about in the first place? An Indian from Ukiah make their way all the way to Oaxaca. [00:28:02] Speaker B: It's the Tsuchiyapas. Polly has the story, probably comment on. [00:28:06] Speaker A: That. [00:28:09] Speaker B: Was the coda to that was the end, you know, the end result of that. But Polly was on that original trip. [00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah. We had had an occupation at the reservation by the FBI in which that I had come to assist Priscilla with another attorney friend of mine. We were here day and night, day and night. I mean, had to do. It was rough because there's racist reactions from the community and we had to deal with. It was a hard time. And after that was over, right then pretty much the Zapatistas took a stand against NAFTA's implementation. On 1st January, I said to Priscilla, look, I've been here, I've been a teacher also at a DQ satellite branch at the reservation. That's a Native American junior college. But I said, so I taught her aunties. I was pretty enmeshed in the tribe as a teacher. And I said, I've done this all for you. I stood by you. Darkest hour. Now, my people, I'm Chicana, my people in Mexico, my native ancestors are rising up, rising up because they can't take it anymore. They just can't take it anymore. The lack of electricity, the slave labor and the local coffee plantations. Just a harsh, hard life. And it was an armed uprising of the Indians of four Mayan tribes. But I said, and her mom and I work closely. She was one of my students. And I said, delma, you know, would you be willing, if I got it organized, if maybe you and I could help get it off the ground? Would you go with me to chop us if we could get this to happen? But we knew we had to have Priscilla as a director because she's very, very calm. It was one of her attributes. And I've seen her in meetings where people just yelling about, and she'd stay centered and she'd get the people on to the next step of what really had to be done, not all the yelling back and forth. So I knew she had to be on the trip, but she was very busy. So her mother and I organized it, did a lot of fundraising. Oh, my God. Did a lot. And another elder from Covelo Normanite, a dear friend of her mother's, they were on the DQ board together. So we did. It took us about three months to raise the money. And Priscilla was yet willing to go. You know, she was going to help lead us down there. Someone was assassinated in the presidential campaign at the time. I said, priscilla, it's pretty volatile in Mexico. Could I think we should just fly in to Tuxla Gutierrez and get the money in, get whatever we're taking and get it in to the movements there. She said, oh, no, we have to go over land. Because she had this feeling that we had to pray the whole way down. No alcohol, no drugs. We had to meet with the other Indian reservations en route, spread the word. Half of what we were doing was spreading the word locally amongst many tribes we visited in universities, student groups on the way down to the border was to let them know what was going on in Chiapas, that it was very similar to what occurred here. The courts were facilitating the land theft of the Indian ejidos, the communal land holdings. They had privatized the ejidos communal land holdings through a constitutional provision. They had changed. So we knew it was pretty much like what had happened up here, that they were just going to steal the land base which the Zapatista revolution originally under Emiliano Zapata, had created these ejidos, communal plants. They're going to get rid of those. And they had taken a stand. I mean, these little Indians, they're about 4 foot 6, some of the rifles were bigger than the women were taking a stand against the Mexican government, saying, this is just too much. So we thought they were going to get slaughtered, that there's every chance they'd be Annihilated by the Mexican government. So we went as witnesses for peace. And we worked with the Indian movement of The Southlands, the 500 years of resistance. That's a group down there, a big national group. We worked with the former head of the BIA of Mexico. I forget what that institution's called, but he said we couldn't come without safe passage papers. I only met him on the Internet, but through some professor at Arizona State University. But we got from the president's office through a commission that was set up to amend the constitution to more and more support Indian customs and traditions. And a full blooded Mixtec Governor of Oaxaca, Eladio Ramirez was on that commission at the presidential level. And he got us a safe passage document that our caravan was to go through all military and civilian checkpoints unimpeded. Okay, fine. We had this piece of paper, it had two names of lawyers, should we encounter any difficulty to be phoned into the capitol. So here we had only a little piece of paper. We thought, is this going to work? So as we're approaching, we had to get to the first military checkpoint. I hand the letter out the window saying, you know, well, this is the caravan. It wasn't that big. I mean, small group. We will. This is our directive from the presidential president's office. By the way, Senator Pell, the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, helped me. I have to say. I worked on one of his campaigns when I was younger. But Senator McCain helped us get our computers over. The. They wanted to stop the computers. They did not want computers and modems going to Indian organizations. So we had 10 of them. We had $80,000 of medicine from Direct Relief International out of Santa Barbara, I believe, or San Diego, I can't remember. And so we really did have stuff to help bring. And we had spiritual gifts from all these tribes. Big eagle feather. I mean, just whole sort of spiritual offerings. And we, we got through. We were stymied though, because we had those computers, but we got through. That's a whole nother story. But. And then we would get. We eventually got through six, they called them ray tens, the six military installations on the way into the jungle with the paperwork out the window. Here we go. And we made it through. And we made it through into the deepest jungle. And we were met by squadrons like in military running, in military cohesion. And little squares all uniformed with bandanas on their faces. And Priscilla proceeded with a medicine man from the Palo reservation, proceeded to bless every single one of these soldiers and this big massive group. It was really Inspiring moment in my life and hers as well. And then they decided to kick out all of the foreign supporters of the Zapatista, all the organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, groups like that. We're going to all be expelled from Mexico. We were called in from the field. Get back. Get back. They're expelling everybody. So we get back. And then Priscilla has to pray up a whole group of people who are frightened for their. What would happen to them. What was going to happen was the military going to evict them? What the heck? So then she blessed all these people from Europe and other places, and then she said, paulie, we have to stay. I said, what? Anyway, that's because she said, if we leave now, that's when they'll go in and kill him. So we stayed. And it was a wonderful experience of meeting the Indian activist women of Mexico, Mayan leaders and their lawyers and just wonderful people and doctors and Doctors Without Borders and other more traditional Indian medicine people. And even the Bishop of Don Samuel Ruiz blessed us. And I'd never seen a Catholic priest use the eagle feather and sage and. And go to the four directions. And I'm like, dang, this is a different form of Catholicism than what I saw in the United States. So that was pretty groovy too, I have to admit. So many moments like that. Really great people. And that's the thing about being an activist with Priscilla. We met great people. I have met the best and the brightest in Indian country. Really, really dedicated people. And so it was challenging and hard, but it was really fun. And she does have a good sense of humor. Even in going past all those military checkpoints, she generally had me and her mother laughing right after we got through. We would act a little serious before that, but it was like, they called it the Eagle and the Condor. The Eagle of the north and the Condor of the South. This is prophecy, Maya. Prophecy. We're to unite. And when that unity occurred, there is going to be a renaissance of Indian wisdom that was going to help heal the world. And that the people who stood of, like, consciousness with the Indians in this quest for justice would be the ones that survived. They're talking about some big, maybe heavy climate change changes coming down and that some of us would survive. But happy to tell you, epic. Since you're a good ally of the Indians, you're part of the prophecy. They said you guys would make it, too. So anyway, that was Chiapas. Chiapas was. And we were in love. I mean, God dang, I forgot that part. [00:38:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I Want to talk about that? [00:39:00] Speaker B: Because this is on the way down. [00:39:02] Speaker A: We're with the White Mountain Apache. We go up to this mountain where the Vatican wanted to put in a telescope. So we're with the activists who are opposing the telescope on this mountain, sacred mountain. We're being buzzed by helicopters while we're up there. But we were under this huge fur where we pitched our sleeping bags. And the next morning, overlooking this valley way down below on this jutting out, I proposed to Priscilla. Actually. I said, I'd like to live a life with you. And then as we were driving through the desert, I swear to God, rainbow after rainbow after rainbow crossed the highway as we were driving through. I'm like, oh my God, getting the chills, you know, But. But yeah. So it was a ra. What you call a revolutionary honeymoon. And maybe that was a fortunate part of it too. For me, it was. I was in love and we were going to do a marvelous thing together. And so when you start out like that, gee, I didn't think it could get any better. But it did because her love of her people, and that's Kim, is really right on. On that one. She put her people first because I was handed sort of a baby at age 42 while she and Michael headed off to fight for the casino rights. And I helped raise her granddaughter. Now I'm helping raise her granddaughter's children. And so she brought to me not only, of course, passionate love, great romance, wonderful struggles and many movement moments, but she primarily brought to me love and unconditional love. And everybody should have it. Everybody should have it. And it was through the children and my ability to nurture children, which I, as an independent attorney activist, hadn't thought that would be part of my path. But it's the best part. It's the best part of the path that Priscilla gave me is the love that I have for her, her descendancy and. And to want to show them and what she was and remind them of what she stood for and to pass the baton onto the little ones. And that's with these gray hairs. That's what I'm doing now. So that's Chiapas. And that is the adventure of my life, I probably have to say. [00:41:42] Speaker C: It sounds like. [00:41:43] Speaker A: And it was fun too. We played Bob Marley riding through the jungle. We were just grooving the whole damn way and. And really having fun. That's the weird part that how many people would have fun going into the heart of a revolution, not knowing if you're come back alive? But we did. We really really did. So that's Chiapas. [00:42:07] Speaker B: And then we went back. We went back after the Zapatista army emerged from the jungle and they began their big march through Mexico. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Oh, yes. [00:42:16] Speaker B: We went back and to see what was going on. And we were in the Sokolo in Mexico City with, I don't know, thousands and thousands of people as they marched into Mexico City, which was quite stirring to see this caravan of jungle people what march into Mexico City through hundreds and hundreds of people watching and waiting for them. [00:42:38] Speaker A: I'd say hundreds of thousands. It took them a half hour just to get through the streets of Mexico. [00:42:45] Speaker B: And we were in a soccer stadium with a whole bunch of people from all over the world waiting for the Zapatistas to show up. And Polly said, I bet I know somebody here. And she turned around and there was somebody that she knew from California. Remember that? [00:43:04] Speaker A: Yes, I do. My friend, Mariana Rivera. [00:43:08] Speaker B: That's amazing. [00:43:11] Speaker A: She remembers it, too. [00:43:14] Speaker D: KMUD is a community radio station in the Redwood region of Northern California. Donate to support people powered [email protected]. [00:43:28] Speaker C: So, something I want to get into is the formation and the idea behind the Intertribal Sinkion Wilderness Council. You know, very few people have legacies that you can see from outer space. And, you know, if we were to go up in a satellite. If we were to look at a satellite image, you can see part of Priscilla's legacy from outer space with the land preserved from the Intertribal Sink Young Wilderness Council. Victoria, you were friends with her at the formation. [00:44:02] Speaker B: I helped. I did a lot of work for them, preliminary work. I went and interviewed many, many, many people from Round Valley and from. [00:44:14] Speaker A: You. [00:44:14] Speaker B: Know, the south, southern Humboldt county and northern Mendocino county about what they would like to see in a wilderness park. Very interesting answers to the questions. Some people wanted to be able to drive right up to the beach. Some people wanted a convenience store there with snacks that they could buy. But there were people like Richard Ginger, who was involved at that time, who said, no, no cars. No cars at all. And other people wanted signs. You know, go here, go there, don't go here. It's dangerous. But Coyote, who was working there also with Richard, said, no, we don't have signs. People should know where they can't go, where they shouldn't go, and if they go there and then something happens to them, that's on them. They didn't listen to themselves. So we had those kinds of discussions and worked a lot with the Coastal Conservancy, who came up several times to walk through and look at stuff. And I did a survey of the resources available in the sinkion and a little overview of the original sink young people. And so we were able to get a lot of background information on an area that wasn't well known because the sinkion were thought to be extinct. The people. Sikyung people. Yeah. [00:45:41] Speaker C: It's always been a very inspiring organization to me, the idea of bringing together multiple federally recognized tribes, multiple people in this collaborative fashion to do land conservation. Polly, do you have any reflections. Do you have any stories of Priscilla's about. [00:46:02] Speaker B: I just want to mention one thing, one little story that I did. This is why people want to. This is why tribes are interested. When I was asking them, what would you like to see? What do you think of this idea? I remember some people from kovalo saying to me, if we don't do something now, our grandchildren will have to go to a museum to see a tree. So they felt very deeply the need to preserve some area. And one of the original motivations was at the time, Sacramento or the government of California wanted to do some kind of monument to indians in Sacramento. And Priscilla said, what, they want to put a statue or something? Let's have something real to be a monument to Indians. And that's what she felt about the sink young. [00:46:48] Speaker A: I think she also felt a tremendous. Priscilla always has felt a tremendous connection to her ancestors. It's nearly visceral up at the willits bypass once with a very degraded site that all sorts of wick drains had been pounded into an ancient village. She went over to pray, and she actually was feeling, in her chest, constricting. I mean, she physically felt the wounds of her people of the past. And it's a connection that it's hard for me to fathom. It's sort of maybe like the chinese culture where you really worship your ancestors. I mean, but she had a deep reverence for her ancestors and what they went through. And for her, it was to heal the wounds of the past, to get this land base where people could go to the wilderness. The wilderness was an important concept to her, that there be a place where the critters are safe, where they can be free, and to also keep the trees standing. It was like trees, roots, water. She saw a connection, an organic connection for healing to Indians had to include land backs. And it was just her vision. I don't know if anybody else had the vision at the time. Oh, wait, the treaty council, the international treaty council. Her good friend Tony gonzalez, who is now AiM west, he took her out there she didn't even know where she's going, okay, we're going to take you out, way out in the wilderness. She'd go, okay, I'll go check it out. And she was on the board of the International Treaty Council at the time and said, okay, let's go for it. She really didn't know what it meant or what the path would be. But as Vicki said, she goes for pie in the sky. That's what she'd say. Don't go for pie in the sky first and then back down if you have to. But no, no, gotta go for pie in the sky first. So. And I saw her make lawyers be stronger. I swear to God, I saw her in negotiations, say, no, no, no, I'm not agreeing to what you want to put on the table. It can't be that. They'd have to shut up and do what she wanted. And I always thought that was cool, that, that this gal that, you know, I don't think she got to be filing. She had to come home and create the tribe. I don't think she even ever got a BA And I'm like, dang girl, you're smarter than all these lawyers. Because you know, here I am with my degrees in a law degree too and you know, being around everyone, I've been around real smart people. But she had an intelligence that was, it just went straight through to where you had to get to. And she, she didn't get distracted. She was very, very determined person and very, very intelligent. So I think that it really always ordered the lawyers around, I gotta be honest with you, ordered the high paid lobbyists around too. And at one time I talked to an Indian man up here from the Cado tribe and I said, well, he'd been in a chairman and he'd been working on. Or he'd been in some position where he was working on the gaming issues. And she had created an alliance of all the Northern California little teeny remote, rural, remote tribes to be able to pursue their interests. I said, well, how'd you guys do? And he said, well, we just did what Priscilla told us to do. So I always thought that was pretty cool, but. But yeah, what a woman. What a mighty force of nature. I think that's what Malcolm Margolem said. She was a force of nature and she really was. She had it all. She had it all going on. She had the love of the sacred connection of her heart to nature. She had the love of her people. She did it in a way that was fun and she could make even People adversaries across the table had been in rough negotiations. She'd go out to dinner with them, I mean, afterwards, and have Shelby telling jokes and Heidi, har har. And she just had a way where people liked being with her because she was funny and she was fun and she was real, real, very real person. So, yeah, marvelous person. Really. Really. I've met a lot of dedicated and good people, but Priscilla is unique, really. And she's a treasure. She's a little treasure of the history of Mendocino county and even beyond state, the state of California, Mexico. So what a great person. I'm just happy that we have the friends we do and the people that have helped us along the way and that we have love in our heart. That she really did. She was tough and a little scary. Could be, but she really came from a place of love for her people. I've never met anybody. And she did put her people first. This is really true. Everything she did, she did for Coyote Valley, maybe not Mexico. I mean, I remember someone saying, while you're going there, you should be home taking care of us. And I mean. But. But. So I did get her outside of the little, little basket into a big, broad adventure. I think probably no one quite expected her to do anything like that, but I'm glad we did it together. [00:53:10] Speaker C: Well, you could break up her life story and any one of those chunks would be enough for one person's life. And she had so many momentous things that she did in her life. I'm just totally inspired by her and I want folks listening to be inspired. I want folks to be able to take something away from this. So maybe briefly, we have about seven minutes left in the show. If you could pass along a trait of hers or if there was something about her that you could recommend to other folks who are listening to be a better person, to be a better activist, to be more impactful in this world, what would it be? [00:53:56] Speaker A: Perseverance. She took 25 years to get intertribal sinkione off the ground in Indian country. It might not be in other areas, but in Indian law and advocacy, it often takes about 15 to 30 years to get the justice one is seeking. I've seen that over my lifetime as an Indian law attorney. So perseverance and then belief in the spirit she had. I don't know. Everyone comes to that connection to the sacred or the meaningful, deep meaningful to the mystery of life in their own way. But Priscilla always prayed. She. I, I learned to pray before I went to meetings. I never did that before. And she was so forgiving, I gotta tell you that. A profound amount of forgiveness and I don't know where that comes from. I'm not as good at that as she is. Was. Was. But. And she'd just be curious. She really liked meeting a whole lot of different types of people. And she didn't feel. I mean, maybe it's because she had had such an insular growing up, a very small circle of people, relatively. But she just enjoyed learning from people and listening to their stories. She was a good listener. She wasn't a big talker. And when she talked, it was really cut right to the chase. It got you. So I'd say listening, perseverance and courage. She was very courageous. [00:55:43] Speaker B: And asking for fire in the sky. [00:55:46] Speaker A: Oh, and going for the biggest possible rectification of justice and not being afraid to ask for the biggest possible rectification of the injustices of her predecessor, her predecessors faced. Yeah, she amended that. She helped amend the state constitution. Now, this is not an easy task, you guys. It did help to have millions of dollars from investors who all of a sudden were in love with tribal sovereignty. Really not, you know, but. But it was, it was something that is something. [00:56:23] Speaker C: Kim, do you have anything that you are going to take away from your relationship with Priscilla? [00:56:29] Speaker D: Many things, but one thing I, I will provide a few words that she said. And one thing she said is if I hear there's a protest, I'm on it. It feels good to join with other people, raise our voices, Raise our voices to say something. It gives you energy. And so that's, you know, even late in her, her life, she was still joining in, but that energy was combined with, as Polly said, with her commitment to spirituality. And another. I'll just one more quote from her. She said over time we had different protests over whatever it was, JDSF, the bypass, etc. Somebody always stepped in to help. We always prayed to the Creator for support. I believe that helped our trust in prayers. Sometimes things don't happen the way you want, but you can still have belief that it will happen, faith that it will be taken care of in a good way. I do. [00:57:38] Speaker C: That's absolutely lovely. Thank you, Kim. Vicki, is there anything that you wanted to share? [00:57:46] Speaker B: Well, again, about her spirituality, there was a time in her life before she became involved with Polly in politics where she was actually on the verge of becoming a medicine person. She had a very strong belief in Indian medicine and she felt like she had a spiritual connection. But it's very difficult to do that. You have to give up a lot to become a medicine person. And she was too involved with her family and the tribe to do to do that, but she had a strong push in that direction. [00:58:27] Speaker C: Well, I'm so glad that all of you were able to join the show and able to share your memories of Priscilla. Something that I've been thinking about throughout tonight's show is this saying that we should try to make our ancestors proud. And I think that Priscilla absolutely made her ancestors proud. I am in awe of her legacy. The world is a bit dimmer without her, but it's a better place because she lived. So I hope that listeners, you enjoyed getting to learn about Priscilla and we will carry her in our hearts and we'll be at the next protest and we'll have her watching over us as we do it. So, Polly, Kim, Mariah, I'm sorry that we never got to you. And Melody, I'm sorry we didn't get to you either. And Vicky, thank you so much for joining me tonight. This has been another epic edition of the KMAT environment show. And have a good night. [00:59:30] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:59:31] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:59:33] Speaker D: This has been a KMUT podcast to listen to other shows and more episodes of this show. Find us on all the platforms where you get your podcast and also on our website, kmud.org.