5/30/15
Since the Eureka City Council embraced the Wiyot Tribe’s proposal to transfer the remaining city-owned portion of Indian Island to the tribe, several meetings have taken place and the process is inching forward. The City Council voted unanimously April 7 to return the property, which spans more than 200 acres.
Eureka City Manager Greg Sparks said Wednesday that the City Council representatives — Kim Bergel and Natalie Arroyo — gathered with tribal representatives and both city and tribal staff on May 1 to begin the discussion.
Since that time there have been staff-level discussions between Eureka city staff and Wiyot Tribal staff, Spark said.
At the staff-level meetings, Sparks said, topics have ranged from whether the 2004 land transfer between the city and the tribe is a good basis for the current transfer, as well as discussion of tideland leases held by the city. The California Lands Commission controls tidelands and leases the tidelands.
The city has hired an appraiser to appraise the value of the island. That appraisal is expected to be conducted next week, Sparks said.
State law prohibits “gifting” of public land, Sparks said.
One of the unanswered questions thus far in the discussion is what the city will receive from the deal. That compensation, Sparks said, doesn’t have to be monetary.
“At this point, we don’t have any draft agreement,” he said.
The next step is arranging a meeting between the city attorney and the tribe’s attorney.
When the city transferred 60 acres of Indian Island to the tribe in 2004, one of the conditions was giving the city the first right of refusal should the tribe ever decide to dispose of the property. That, the city manager said, allowed the transfer without cost and avoided “gifting” the island property.
“There are a number of options,” Sparks said.
Former Wiyot Tribal Chairwoman and current Tribal Council member Cheryl Seidner said the process is in the preliminary stages.
“We just started the negotiations,” she said. “It’s going well.”
As to when the process will be completed, Seidner said that’s an unknown. The 2004 land transfer was particularly quick, with the process beginning at the very end of 2003 and complete by May 2004.
“It was really quick,” she said.
That process, Seidner said, did not involve any remuneration between the city of Eureka and the Wiyot Tribe.
The May 18, 2004 city resolution supporting the transfer of the city-owned property on the east end of Indian Island, notes that the transfer was based on social and cultural factors, was a matter of public interest and “thus hereby waives the requirements of the City’s policy and procedure memorandum file no. 2.01 (regarding sale of City-owned real property), including waiver of appraisal, competitive auction and bidding requirements.” Then Eureka Mayor Peter LaVallee, then City Clerk Kathleen Franco Simmons and then City Attorney David Tranberg signed the resolution.
Four years earlier, in 2000, the tribe had purchased 1.5 acres of the original Tuluwat village on Indian Island and began an intensive clean-up of toxic waste left with the longtime operation of a ship repair facility. The clean-up continued with the additional 60 acres deeded by the city, and was completed in 2013 with the assistance of private and public funding. The Environmental Protection Agency deemed the land safe for tribal use in August 2013.
Indian Island had been the site of the tribe’s World Renewal Ceremony until 1860. That year, a group of white men boated to the Island and massacred some 200 sleeping, men, women and children following the ceremony. Beginning in 1992, an annual vigil commemorating the massacre has been held annually on Woodley Island.
In 2014, after a 154-year hiatus, the tribe held World Renewal Ceremony where it had always been held — on Indian Island.
“The center of our world is Indian Island,” Seidner told the Eureka City Council at its April 7 meeting. “This is where we come, this is where we sing, this is where we pray.”
