Defending Mendocino’s Sacred Sites
The “Mendocino War” was a bloody conflict between the Yuki tribe and white settlers in Northern California. White settlers raided and stole Yuki lands and massacring hundreds of Yuki in the process. The Yuki fled to “The Mountain” in what is now known as the Jackson Demonstration State Forest to escape the violence. Those villages in the forest are now sacred sites to the Coastal Yuki and Northern Pomo tribes.
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The state of California is allowing logging companies to log the 50,000 acre Jackson Forest for profit to finance CalFire’s operations fighting wildfires. Despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s direction for California state agencies to co-manage state lands with local Native American tribes and seek opportunities to return State lands to Native American tribes, the Dept. of Natural Resources has only designated 75 acres as “sacred sites.”
The Pacific Northwest has a long history of organizing and direct action around logging and timber industries. From the Wobblies trying to organize the logging sector in the early twentieth century to Earth First!’s campaigns to stop old growth logging to the new generation of forest defenders linking the struggle for wild places and communities to the climate crisis, direct action has always tried to get the goods.
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