Indian Island cleanup nearly finished
Wiyot Tribe searching for additional project funding
6/13/12
The Wiyot Tribe has almost finished restoring Indian Island to a place where its members can continue their traditions.
But after a dozen years of removing lead batteries, contaminated soil and other debris, tribal representatives are searching for additional funding to complete the environmental cleanup.
Environmental Director Stephen Kullmann said he had hoped the island restoration, part of the Tuluwat Restoration Project, would be finished this summer, but an estimated $350,000 is needed to cover the contaminants that couldn’t be removed. The tribe has spent roughly $2 million in grant funding and volunteer work on the environmental cleanup and restoration work, Kullmann estimated.
Much of the contaminated soil has been removed, but there are still various metals and other low-level contaminants, Kullmann said. The permeable cap will protect the public from anything that might still be in the soil, he said. It will also be used to differentiate from historical material and material that’s been brought to the island from the outside, Kullmann said.
“Every shovelful needed to be sifted and gone through by hazardous waste-trained archeologists,” he said. “That’s someone that doesn’t come cheap. The tribe wanted to disturb as little as possible.” Indian Island’s entire 275 acres is sacred to the Wiyot people, who consider it the center of their universe, said Cheryl Seidner, the tribe’s cultural liaison. It is the site of the tribe’s World Renewal Ceremony, an annual dance ceremony that lasts seven to 10 days. All people are welcome to attend the ceremony, which is the Wiyot people’s way of putting the world right, Seidner said. Since 1860, the dance has not been completed, she said. There has not been a World Renewal Ceremony since then.
Under cover of darkness following a ceremony in February 1860, a group of Eureka men, armed with hatchets and knives, went to the island and killed the sleeping men, women and children, according to the tribe’s website. Seidner said the massacre interrupted the World Renewal Ceremony.
“Why does anyone harm anyone,” Seidner said. “It’s over greed. Over money. And things of that nature — property. In the end it’s all greed.” Robert Gunther, who purchased the land in 1860, took possession of the island following the massacre and the Tuluwat Village site was leased to Duff Shipyard Drydock, which ran a ship repair facility well into the 1970s and 1980s, Kullmann said. In the process of repairing those ships, the wood would be treated with preservatives and chemical paint, which seeped into the soil, he said.
The tribe purchased 1.5 acres of the original village site in 2000, Kullmann said. They thought they’d just be able to clean it, but what they found was highly contaminated debris including a paint shed with chemical barrels and a retaining wall made out of old marine batteries, he said. “There wasn’t much concern for the health of the area,” Kullmann said, referring to the people who had leased the land prior to the tribe purchasing it.
“Someone else let amateur archeologists dig up bones and artifacts. It takes a lot of work to try and repatriate remains and artifacts. It’s a hugely complicated process.” In 2004, the city of Eureka returned more than 60 acres of island north of the Samoa Bridge back to the Wiyot Tribe, Seidner said. “That was a fabulous day,” she said.
Since 2000, the tribe has removed some of the old buildings and rebuilt a bulkhead to allow barges to land, Kullmann said.
Remnants of the rails the ship repair facility used to bring boats on shore are still visible at low tide.
The tribe has also had to deal with trespassers and homeless encampments, Kullmann said.
The tribe has also worked to convert much of the land Eureka gave to them to saltwater marsh, Kullmann said.
