Protect the Winnemem Wintu Tribe's Cultural Survival

June 02, 2012

U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs
ATTN: Monique Hartgrove; Hillary Renick
Office of the Assistant Secretary/BIA
MS–3071, MIB
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20240
Tel: 202.208.6597

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re: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST for United States treaties with Winnemem Wintu

Dear Ms. Hartgrove and Ms. Renick:

I am writing to submit a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

I am an independent postdoctoral researcher based in Santa Cruz, California, who advocates for those in need of government intervention. I often share the results of my research with the government, the media and nonprofit organizations.

To place my FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST in context, I ask you to read the following article from the Wall Street Journal and videos produced by the Winnemem Wintu.

http://tinyurl.com/84wxlve

To quote the Wall Street Journal:

"The Winnemem Wintu Indians want to mark their girls' coming of age as their ancestors did, with a private ceremony in which the girls swim across the McCloud River here.

They don't want boaters motoring by, shouting slurs, like in past years. But the U.S. Forest Service hasn't restricted public access to the site, even though it does that for many other tribes in similar situations.

The Winnemem are in a legal limbo, along with hundreds of other tribes that Washington doesn't acknowledge. Generations ago, when the U.S. was assigning rights to Indian groups, these tribes didn't make the list. Today, they don't get the same access to federal funds and historical sites that recognized tribes get.

For the Winnemem, that means they must perform their girls' four–day late June ceremony in public on the river in Northern California.

The tribe says it has filmed drunken boaters exposing themselves and harassing the girls in past years."


Since the U.S. Government has reneged on its pledges to the Winnemem Wintu by violating treaties made with them, thus creating the tragic predicament the Winnemem Wintu find themselves in, I ask for copies of all treaties entered into with the Winnemem Wintu by the U.S. government.

Our nation was founded on the principle of religious freedom — it's fundamental to our democracy — yet the Winnemem Wintu are not allowed to exercise their religious rights without public interference and disrespect from hostile boaters who heckle and expose themselves. This is scandalous. It must be remedied.

Please view these videos about the public harassment and disrespect Winnemem Wintu young women are exposed to when they conduct their coming of age ceremonies:

http://tinyurl.com/d45x978

http://tinyurl.com/8a7s5z2

I urge you to visit the Winnemem Wintu's website at:

http://www.winnememwintu.us/

I am willing to pay fees up to $100. If you estimate that the fees will exceed this limit, please inform me first, so that I may narrow my request.

However, I request a waiver of all fees for this request. I believe disclosure of the requested information to me is in the public interest because it will likely contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government and is not primarily in my commercial interest. Specifically, I intend to share these treaties with the carbon copied news media for their dissemination of information about how the U.S. government has failed to protect the cultural life of the Winnemem Wintu, which could ultimately result in their cultural genocide. I believe that the U.S. government is responsible to ensure that Winnemem Wintu culture can be passed from this generation to the next, ensuring their cultural survival.

It would be tragic if the Winnemem Wintu's culture is extinguished because the U.S. government cannot close off a small river to hostile boaters for just four days a year. It saddens me that the Winnemem Wintu have had to advocate unscusscessfully for such a small accommodation from the U.S. Forestry Service. Is the U.S. government so miserly that it cannot accommodate this small request to ensure an indigenous people's survival?

I ask that if the requested materials are electronically available in Portable Document Format (PDF), MS Word Document (DOC), Hypertext Markup (HTM), eXtensible Style Language (XLS), Rich Text Format (RTF), JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PICT or PNG or referenced on the Internet by hyperlinks that they be provided to me in one of those forms or as hyperlink references.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely yours,
John E. Colby, Ph.D.

email: colby [at] docktorcat.com
twitter: @jecolbe