Tribe looks beyond tragedy

COVELO -- In the remote Round Valley, hope has been hard to come by.

Crushing poverty, rampant drug and alcohol use and chronic racial tensions have largely defined the isolated valley, hidden in a rugged backwoods region of northeastern Mendocino County. The 3,000 residents are almost equally divided between white residents and members of the Round Valley Indian Tribes, whose reservation is the second largest in the state.

"It's not easy living here," said Ken Wright, a tribal council member.

Yet even in the face of the most recent tragedy to strike the community, Covelo is displaying a remarkable resilience.

"We've been hardened by a long and dark history," said tribal president Eugene Jamison Jr.

The local Indian community is mourning the deaths two weeks ago of Jolene Thomson and Marshall Britton, two well-known teens who were seen as having potential to become future tribal leaders. They were killed, and four other local teens injured, when a 1998 Ford Explorer driven by Thomson swerved out of control and rolled over several times on a reservation road.

CHP investigators quickly blamed alcohol and high speed. They said evidence found at the scene, and statements made by some of the survivors, support that assessment.

Yet Thomson's family this week clung to a belief that toxicology tests will show that the 19-year-old was sober at the time of the accident.

Family members said Thomson was an anti-alcohol activist who had started traveling the globe on behalf of a Native American sobriety movement called "The Red Road." A year ago, Thomson spent three months in England performing native ceremonies as part of the program.

"As far as I know, she didn't drink," said her grandmother, Illace Freeman.

She described her granddaughter as vivacious, spirited and deeply committed to preserving her Indian heritage.

"She was determined to create a future for herself, and her generation," Freeman said.

Tribal president Jamison said in the wake of Thomson and Britton's deaths, tribal leaders are even more determined to push forward with an ambitious economic development program so reservation youth can grasp a better future.

"It's been a long struggle, but I believe we've finally at a turning point," Jamison said.

Last year tribal leaders opened a small casino, gift shop and cigarette store north of town after much internal debate. Jamison said 32 reservation residents are employed in the first new jobs created in the valley in at least 20 years.

"The development offers hope," Jamison said.

An expanding tribal gravel operation is aimed at providing more jobs, along with the planned development of a RV park, youth summer camp, and new mini-market and retail gasoline complex. Tribal leaders also have renewed lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., to have 35 miles of a forest service road paved through the Mendocino National Forest so Highway 162 can extend into the Sacramento Valley.

"If we could get that done, we'd be able to tap into a huge population base and end the isolation that's always hampered our local economy," Jamison said.

He is among the small number of tribal members who at a young age left the valley in search of higher education and a better life. After a career as a metallurgist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in the Bay Area, Jamison returned home in 1989 to be with family.

Jamison said after years of grousing about tribal affairs, he decided to stop complaining and get involved. He recently was re-elected to a second term as tribal president.

"We're going to create economic opportunities for our young people so they can go away to get an education and then come back home to live," Jamison said.

Such optimism flies in the face of Round Valley's past.

For 150 years, the community's dark history has cast shadows across a setting so stunningly beautiful that it's been described as one of the last true vestiges of early California.

Peaceful Yuki tribal members were once the sole inhabitants of the valley, but their quiet lives ended abruptly with arrival of the first white settlers. In 1856, federal troops carved out the Round Valley reservation after rounding up hundreds of surviving members of six different tribes -- some historic enemies -- from across Northern California and forcing them to live together.

A long history of tragic intra-tribal conflicts and confrontations with the outside community has left deep scars.

"But I truly believe a lot of people are now looking to the future, and not dwelling on our past," Jamison said.

Council member Wright agreed. "As things develop, I think people are starting to believe in themselves again," he said.

You can reach Staff Writer

Mike Geniella at 462-6470 or mgeniella@pressdemocrat.com.