Jan 21, 2019 — One of the oldest known pending court cases in California stalled at the first Board of Supervisors meeting this month.
At issue is 68 acres of land, a private trust, and the legacy of a Northern California racial policy on par with the severities of the Jim Crow South.
History was present in the board chambers as county counsel, a Native American historian, a local lawyer, and descendants of once-unlawful property owners cited handwritten documents, oral histories, and decades of court proceedings to support their version of what happened on Orr Springs Road at the end of the 19th century.
That’s when a group of families from assorted Pomo tribes bought and traded some land for the use of homeless Indians. The exact number of families and the precise acreage differs in the different tellings. But Verle Anderson, the founder and CEO of Native American History Project, submitted an 11-page summary of indigenous land purchases to the board earlier this month. In it, she wrote that some of those families escaped the well-documented atrocities of Round Valley, led by a man named Captain Jack.
But at that time, Indians were not allowed to own property. So the court appointed Anglo trustees to administer the land in the interests of the owners and their descendants, or beneficiaries.
In 2002, the trusteeship was dissolved. In 2011, Willits attorney Chris Neary was appointed receiver for the property, and now the Pinoleville Nation wants to buy the majority of the property for $340,000.
The only thing standing in the way is a list of code violations.
In the following story, we’ll hear what happened in the Board of Supervisors chambers earlier this month and at a court proceeding the following week. We’ll finish up by listening to what that land means to two of the beneficiaries, their ancestors who are buried there, and the people who live there today.