LAND OF THEIR OWN

Finally, a place to call their own.

The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation took ownership last week of 896 acres of conifer and oak forestland that straddles Henness Ridge, a slice of private land in Mariposa County squeezed between Yosemite National Park and the Sierra National Forest .

The acreage was owned by the Pacific Forest Trust and the sale made possible with a $3.6 million grant from the state through the California Natural Resources Agency’s Tribal Nature Based Solutions Program.

It is a historic private land deal, coming 175 years after the Miwuk and other indigenous tribes were forced out of what we now call Yosemite during the California Gold Rush and the Mariposa Indian War.

“We are going to be up there forever now,” said Tara Fouch-Moore, secretary of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation (SSM), also known as the American Indian Council of Mariposa County.

“We’ve never owned land before, even traditionally. It just wasn’t a concept that we had,” she said.

Such a land acquisition could mark a turning point for the tribe and its 650 members, or at least a new pathway, to long sought federal recognition. (See related story).

“We’ve really had to fight to just prove we even exist, as a tribe and as a community. So having a land base, something physical, is really important just to demonstrate that we’re here,” Fouch-Moore said.

The land is deed restricted against any future development and is to be used by the tribe for cultural and conservation purposes.

The tribe intends to gather traditional foods, medicines and fibers, as well as practice traditional prescribed burns.

The tribe’s new land is adjacent to the upscale Yosemite West community, with its multi-million dollar vacation homes perched along a slope.

“I think at this point, we just wanted to protect it from development,” Fouch-Moore said.

Land back for the Miwuk

The land deal was about four years in the making.

The Mariposa based Sierra Foothills Conservancy played a supporting role in bringing the parties together.

“This is really big,” said Bridget Fithian, director of the Conservancy. “Having it in tribal ownership is really valuable because there’s such an active focus on care and restoration.”

Fithian said the conservancy was aware of the land for several years and knew there was an opportunity for the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation.

“This property was kind of in limbo for quite a while, honestly. It was actively listed for about a decade,” Fithian said.

The Pacific Forest Trust originally purchased the land 20 years ago at the request of Yosemite National Park, with the intention of transferring it back to the park eventually, said Laurie Wayburn, the president and co-founder of the trust.

But Congressman Tom McClintock opposed transferring the land to Yosemite National Park, saying in 2009 on the house floor, “The public good is not served by the mindless and endless acquisition of property.”

Yosemite’s loss, the tribe’s gain.

“This is an even more fitting outcome to have happened,” said Wayburn. “They say faith works in mysterious ways, and I think this is a wonderful outcome to occur as a result.”

The breakthrough, and the money, came from California’s Tribal Nature-Based Solutions Program (TNBS), which requires the lands acquired be put into conservation in perpetuity.

About $2.4 million of the $3.6 million grant was used to purchase the property from the Pacific Land Trust at its assessed value. The remaining $1.2 million will support the tribe’s nature based planning efforts.

The Conservancy advocated that the transaction should be conducted as a direct sale to the tribe, without any intermediary, to protect the tribe’s independence and autonomy.

It is the second “land back” transaction the conservancy coordinated with the tribe. Last year the tribe acquired 96 acres near Bootjack through a $520,000 grant from the Wildlife Conservation Board.

“We are a very under-resourced tribe,” said Fouch-Moore, who is also the tribe’s director of landscape. “We have never experienced a real estate transaction like this before.”

She credited the tribe’s partnership with the conservancy for making the deal happen.

“There’s trust, we know they’re not going to try and pull the rug out from under us,” Fouch-Moore added.

History of Henness Ridge

Henness Ridge, with an elevation between 5,700 and 6,300 feet, separates the north and south fork of the Merced River.

The ridge served as a natural passageway and migration route from Yosemite to the Central Valley for both indigenous people and animals, especially deer.

The Miwuk occupied the river canyons on either side of Henness

Ridge, and used the ridge as a passage way when they left Yosemite Valley in the fall to seek lower elevations.

Wayburn, of the Pacific Forest Trust, believes the historical connection is important for the Miwuk.

“It shows the integrity it has with that larger landscape,” she said.

“When you think about the history of these people being displaced and now they have a place again, that’s a wonderful kind of full circle,” Wayburn said.

Historically, Henness Ridge has frequently been a dividing line over tensions between conservation and commerce.

When Yosemite National Park was formed, naturalist John Muir wanted Henness Ridge and its surrounding land incorporated into the park’s boundaries.

But the Yosemite Lumber Company, which formed in 1910, rejected that proposal and kept 3,000 acres of forest land to continue its logging operations.

The Yosemite Lumber Company built a railroad out to the end point of Henness Ridge, where an enormous incline delivered timber down to El Portal, and from there to a sawmill in Merced Falls.

The Yosemite Lumber Company dissolved in 1940.

For a time, the land was operated as a dude ranch before it was broken into three separate 1,000 acre parcels that eventually were divided among the Sierra National Forest, Yosemite West and several large properties that remain in private hands.

Leaving Yosemite Valley today along Highway 41, Henness Ridge comes into view shortly after exiting the other side of tunnel view.

It is recognizable from a sawtooth stubble of trees along its ridge line that were incinerated by the Ferguson Fire seven years ago.

Culture and conservation

Pillaged for lumber, exploited for vacation homes and ravaged by fire, there is an opportunity for the tribe to bring the land back into harmony with nature.

It could become a kind of living laboratory of cultural practices.

“We will be doing trainings up there under this grant program in cultural burning and traditional ecological practices. Ways of tending to the land that our ancestors would have done to bring the land back into health from an indigenous perspective,” Fouch-Moore said.

Under the TNBS grant the land is to be used to “facilitate healing of reciprocal relations, intergenerational remembering of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and training a tribal workforce to implement nature-based solutions and reclaim the SSM’s role as first stewards.”

“Under tribal ownership, this beautiful landscape will be stewarded to build conserved habitat connectivity between the Yosemite National Park and Sierra National Forest that will support forests, meadows, springs, biodiversity and local workforce development of this beloved area,” said California Natural Resources Agency Deputy Secretary for Tribal Affairs Geneva E. B. Thompson in a statement.

The ridge is named after Patrick Henness, who developed Henness Pass, a Gold Rush era mountain route near Reno that was considered less treacherous than Donner Pass.

“We don’t necessarily want to continue calling it Henness Ridge. But that is a community process that we’re going to begin now,” Fouch-Moore said.

“First we have to get to know the land, and then we need to start remembering what its old name was, and what’s the best way to refer to it today,” she explained.

It is clearly a new and hopeful phase for the tribe after nearly two centuries of uncertainty.

Ultimately, Fouch-Moore said, the property acquisition is about future generations of the Miwuk nation who must decide what’s best for the land.

“You know, I think that’s something folks kind of forget about tribal nations is that we’re in it for the long haul,” she said