Return of Duluwat

   Cheryl Seidner, former Wiyot Tribal Chair who began the effort to reclaim     Tuluwat, at today's ceremonies.  Lost Coast Outpost photo.

The ancestral island of the Wiyot tribe, the center of the Wiyot world where the annual World Renewal Ceremony was held for untold centuries, was today returned legally to the Wiyot by the City of Eureka.

By some accounts, the ceremonial site and one of the Wiyot village sites on the island is called Tuluwat, while the island as a whole is Duluwat Island.  It has been known as Indian Island since 1860, when some of Eureka's leading citizens massacred women and children on the island during the ceremonies, as part of a coordinated attack on Wiyot wherever they were, that devastated the small tribe.  I wrote about this incident and the Wiyot activities to commemorate the dead and to buy back the land in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004.

Last vigil held in February 2008.  BK photo.

Since 1992, tribal chair Cheryl Seidner had organized vigils open to all on the anniversary of the massacre, and spearheaded a fund raising campaign to buy back 1.5 acres so that the World Renewal Ceremony could once again be performed there.  She and her sister Leona are direct descendants of an infant survivor of the massacre.

Shortly after the article appeared, the Eureka City Council donated 40 acres of the land on the island it owned.  Today's ceremony marked the official transfer of the remaining 200 acres to the Wiyot tribe.  Both the initial gift and this final return appear to be unprecedented and unique.

But as worthy as these gestures are, the Tribe has basically been left to pay for and accomplish the clean-up of debris and toxic waste that pollutes the island, all left there by now defunct industries.  It took a decade of clean-up and construction--until 2014--until it was safe to hold a single World Renewal Ceremony.  That work continues.  Current tribal chair Ted Hernandez hopes to hold another World Renewal Ceremony in 2020.

Cheryl at the last vigil.  In foreground the candle in a paper cup
that many participants held.  I still have mine from this last vigil.
BK photo.

From the beginning, Cheryl Seidner insisted that commemorating the massacre was the healing of "two communities"--Native and non-Native.  Beginning with a few non-Native participants, the candlelight vigils grew to become a community event, and it was this emphasis on a common humanity that probably made today's event possible.  Congratulations to all.