By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A Californian city will return a historic island to its former Native American owners on Monday, more than 150 years after the tribe was decimated, in a move which indigenous groups said could inspire other land transfers across the country.
The voluntary transfer of the 280-acre Duluwat Island from the northern Californian city of Eureka to the Wiyot tribe is nationally unique, indigenous activists said, and could provide a model for such processes elsewhere.
“We look forward to other such land transfers from cities to tribal nations and hope this serves as a practical path forward to resolve similar issues elsewhere,” said a spokesman for the National Congress of American Indians, an umbrella group.
Nearly 7 million Native Americans live in the United States – making up about 2% of the population, according to census figures.
Most native lands in the country are governed as sovereign territories but continue to be administered, and legally held in trust, by the federal government.
Duluwat Island, also known as Indian Island, “is considered the ceremonial centre of the Wiyot world and the creation or birthplace of Wiyot people,” said Michelle Vassel, the tribe’s administrator.
While the Wiyot held “aboriginal title” to the island, white settlers in 1860 filed a claim on the land with the federal U.S. government — and days later, launched a massacre that killed dozens of women, children and elders during the ceremony, said Vassel.
Duluwat Island “had been a bloody stain in the middle of Humboldt Bay for 140 years,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of the transfer on Monday.
“This model worked because it was about coming together as people and doing what was right.”
