THE GOLD RUSH, TOXIC MERCURY, ECOCIDE, AND THE MASS EXTINCTION OF SPECIES AND TRIBES
on trauma, rematriation, and renewal- CORRECTED 2 DATES
REPOSTING WITH TWO DATE CORRECTIONS!
Thanks to my friend Carol catching two errors, i am reposting yesterday’s article with the right dates. Jackson’s Removal Act was 1830, not 1930. When discussing the Gold rush later on, it should read 1849, not 1949
You’re right, it is a long title - for a far longer untold tale. Follow the tracks and crumbs of how circumstances and events connect, and sooner or later you weave your web way back in time - learning history as it was, not at all as the colonizers wrote.
THE COLONIZERS.
They’ve been everywhere throughout time, rampaging life to extinction in the name of power - forever holocausting the indigenous - with hatchets, rifles, bombs and now today, chasing all of us with deplatforming and DEWs.
It’s been a violent land and power grab since day one of man. Evil just changed hats a few hundred dozen times, and marched on.
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THE COLONIZERS.
Genocidal. Ecocidal. Ruthless.
As for me, i’ve never given any thought at all to the California Gold Rush; and i wonder, have you?
However, now that i live near the extant mines of the 1850’s Gold Rush, i’ve begun to see and feel life through the land here, in deeply disturbing ways.
Let me share what i can here. Please prepare as we filter through some top notch horrors.
Who among us realized that President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into LAW in 1830, and that bounty hunting was actually legalized and well compensated across this country as early as the 1700’s?
Didn't Jackson mean
“Indian Extermination Act”, or Ecocidal Extinction Act?
“Removal” sounds so banal, compared to the actual results…
…and so in 1930, Congress authorized the forced removal of Native peoples from their homesteads and seizure of their lands at any cost. By the 1860’s, THE COLONIZERS were still blood thirsty and really desperate to erase the Indians, because bounties could reach $500 per Indian scalp turned in.
Earlier, during the California Gold Rush, vicious marauding men (and some women) made a full 2 1/2 days wages for every single murder reported and accompanied by the victims’s heads.
Extermination by design.
(louder, please…)
Extermination by design.
No, nor did i ever realize the vast scope and gravity of this…
i reflect here that the Native American Holocaust seems to be a lot like Hitler Germany, and Israel over Gaza (and an equal evil to how Israel sold their own people to the great reset with the poison shots); and just like any good ol’ world war; and like the targeted elimination of journalists by the thousands in war torn countries run by dictators today. Or - the mysterious and consistent deaths of thousands of freedom doctors and whistle blowers across the world. Same novel, different page.
Holocausted once again, by their own government, no less.
And it’s also like patenting GMO seeds and the annihilation of biodiversity to favor monoculture; or even geoengineering; and like clearcutting and parceling off our great forestlands - and in fact clearcutting the world’s most ancient rainforests for sale to the highest bidder with the biggest oozies and explosives and the most mob men in the wings…
So much abomination in the last 200 years alone!
For today, let’s look at these Sierra Foothills, where i landed last year by the swift winds of grace, and where my cells have evidently been summoned by some force yet unknown by me.
These are the Sierra Foothills, where for 13,000 years Native American peoples made their homes. For thousands of years, indigenous tribes were part of the landscape and part of the land. The entire region of Grass Valley and Nevada City was Native American territory.
Native peoples were genocided off their land by THE COLONIZERS during the Gold Rush; stripped of their tribal status by the federal government; and for the mostpart erased from history. They were homeless, nameless, and faceless on their ancestral terrain, all benefits, rights and protections cruelly denied by the feudal bureaucracy that should not be. Some tribes are now recognized again, but sadly, many have been permanently erased.
TRAUMA, UPON TRAUMA, UPON TRAUMA is buried in this land; and in the cellular memories born within each and every one of us.
We all come from holocausted peoples, somewhere on the planet. Somewhere back in time, our ancestors fled to survive, and not all did. The memory and atrocity of war lives on in our DNA. Epigenetic trauma, it is called; and research shows that such traumas remain imprinted for at least fourteen generations - which is as long as such research has gone on. It is predicted from this research that epigenetic ancestral traumas are carried indefinitely into the future, unless and until they are resolved.
As i walk this land, i feel the Earth weep, even as She regenerates Her giant stands of trees that THE COLONIZERS flattened to the ground, leaving behind ravaged stumps, dead rivers, and dry naked sand; i acutely feel the First Peoples’ endless pains, and in every dimension where they appear to me, i see immense strain across their brows.
Native peoples are still here, thank god…i’ve long waited to know this…
and…trauma belongs to everyone on the planet today!
Traumatized are the people of the world, all the way back to the first seed.
TRAUMA, UPON TRAUMA, UPON TRAUMA never heals when it is pushed deep below the detritus choking the soil.
Unacknowledged trauma festers - and these festering wounds in our own blood and bones keep the disease of disconnection and dissociation alive and well across space and time.
In this fractured state, society and culture will never become whole again. We cannot ignore the evil that has transpired, literally under our own feet. We cannot pretend that indigenous tribes did not exist, or that American history begins with us…
At some point way back, the Native American people here in Nevada City, Grass Valley, and the Sacramento Valley were thousands strong.
Then in 1849, the California Gold Rush hit, with its cascades of mass migration and violent assaults upon the peoples who stewarded this sacred and glorious land for thousands of years, tending to the ecosystem as if it were their own child.
(photo UNSPLASH.COM)
Apparently, California became the melting pot for tribes from across the land - starting with the local indigenous populations - like Maidu, Nisenan, Pomo and Miwok - then adding and assimilating the many tribes forced to migrate here when the government stole their tribal lands.
By 1852, two years into the Gold rush, the grizzly bears had all been culled, the land and its bounteous species decimated, and once pristine rivers were at standstill and stagnant - filled with mercury, gravel, silt and mud. There were no fish.
Mining is no act of kindness to the land, and it leaves a physically and emotionally toxic legacy behind. Within a few decades, the once healthy Native American population had been severely reduced, and their homelands and burial grounds henceforth absolutely closed to them.
But they are still here, and many, still homeless and faceless.
Native peoples are of this land.
TOXIC MERCURY BEDS AND MINING DISASTERS
The rich hillsides of the Sierras were blasted with dynamite and power washed away (“hydraulic mining”) to free up the gold. The violence of industrial power washing (“hydraulic mining”) flooded the rivers with dirt, gravel, mud, silt, and…mercury. Because mercury acts as a magnet for gold, millions of tons of mercury were dumped along the hillsides, causing an ecological crisis of vast proportions and a wildlife extinction event. According to concerned locals, “10 million pounds of mercury remain in the Sierra Nevadas today from the Gold Rush.”
Mercury does not simply degrade, but washes into reservoirs and off gases into the air.
People living in the area today still worry if they should let their children swim and play outside… The cleanup continues to this day.
ABRIDGED TIMELINE OF HISTORY
1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law.
1850, California Governor Peter Burnett waged a war of extermination, financing the militia with 1.1 million dollars to hunt and kill Natives.
1851, US treaties were signed with Native tribes to protect their land and culture - but these treaties were never ratified.
1856, Indian Relocation Act (also known as Public Law 959 or the Adult Vocational Training Program) pushed natives into cities for “assimilation”.
1913, President Woodrow Wilson awarded federal recognition to America’s tribes of Native peoples, and many fought for America in World War One.
1956, 1957, 1958, California Rancheria Termination Acts passed as part of the Indian Termination Policy. Fifty-one (51) tribes were terminated and their lands confiscated, and through extensive legislation, some thirty rancherias (reservations) were restored to their rightful owners - the tribes.
1950’s-1960’s, tribal peoples were stripped of federal recognition and all rights and benefits denied when their Rancherias were terminated, and they were thrown off their land. The termination of Native American Reservations - which are known as “Rancherias” in California - was finally made illegal in the 70’s, and over 30 Rancherias have been restored, but tragically, not all.
Native Americans are indivisible from their ancestral land and landscape, and the lifestyles their peoples have always lived. Too many of those wandering homeless fell prey to alcohol, fentanyl, drug addiction, or outright suicide.
As i walk this land, i feel the Earth weep, even as She regenerates Her giant stands of trees that THE COLONIZERS flattened to the ground, leaving behind ravaged stumps, dead rivers, and dry naked sand; i acutely feel the First Peoples’ endless pains, and in every dimension where they appear to me, i see immense strain across their brows.
For the Native American nation, nothing could be more meaningful than rematriation - being returned to their native homelands - and for those who’ve been erased from history, recognition that their tribes still stand.
Rematriation honors nurturing interrelationship with the land.
Rematriate
“The Essence of Rematriation: Rematriation is a term that carries profound meaning, transcending the mere act of returning land to indigenous communities. It encapsulates the idea of re-establishing an inseparable connection between the people and their ancestral land, allowing them to engage in reciprocal relationships guided by respect, reverence, and care. This process acknowledges that the land is not just a physical space, but a spiritual and cultural foundation that shapes the identity and worldview of indigenous communities.”
Rematriation also speaks to the role of women in Native American village life, and the renaissance of feminine wisdom, relationship, and power.
Indigenous women are the heart of rematriation.
“Their intricate knowledge of local ecosystems, plant medicines, and sustainable practices has been instrumental in maintaining the delicate balance between human existence and the natural world.”
Rematriation and Regenerative Agriculture are close kin. The time to return to this lifestyle is now. Let us sit with the Grandmothers and learn how to truly care for Life.
i have deepest respect for the sacredness of this tale, and the buried truth of what really happened to the first peoples of this and every other land, and i pray rematriation for the holocausted people of all lands.
RELATED ARTICLE on Rematriation Through Women in Regenerative Agriculture:
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE: A MOVEMENT ARISES AND GROWS
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Apr 29
REGENERATION IS NATURE’S AUTOGRAPH AND SACRED IMPRINT UPON ALL FORMS OF LIFE.
The time to return to this lifestyle is now. Let us sit with the Grandmothers and learn how to truly care for Life.
Thanks for reading!
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What a compelling piece, Yolanda, while I knew about the genocide was not aware of the mercury, destroying the land as well as the people. Bless you for digging into all this, a heroic effort.
What a compelling piece, Yolanda, while I knew about the genocide was not aware of the mercury, destroying the land as well as the people. Bless you for digging into all this, a heroic effort.