“California’s Forage Wars - In Mendocino County, these ‘guerilla gatherers’ risk fines and jail time to keep food culture alive”: Here’s an article on abalone, foraging, Indigenous rights, and local foods in the Klamath Mountains region and coastal northern California. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in 2014, banned abalone gathering before 8:00 AM. Then, due to non-Native poaching and over-harvest, California closed abalone gathering entirely from 2018 until 2021, preventing Indigenous peoples’ access to culturally important foods. Here are some excerpts. This article was written by Debra Utacia Krol, with photos by Rian Dundon, and published in September 2019.

For millennia, Pomo, Coast Yuki, Sinkyone, Yurok and other Northern California tribes have sustainably harvested mollusks, surf fish, seaweed, shells and medicines in the summer, as well as acorns and other inland foods, Renick says. She explains that each summer, after her Pomo band gathered their first harvest, neighboring tribes, and even tribes as far away as Pit River – on the east side of the Sacramento Valley – were invited to harvest. “When they were done, we sent runners [to] Pit River and invited them to gather,” says Renick. […]

Hillary Renick hikes down scree and rocks worn smooth by waves to reach the sandy beach below. The morning fog has receded, but the sky is still gray along the Mendocino County coastline as Renick scrambles up, down, and around Pomo village and nearby sites, where her people harvest traditional foods and collect materials for regalia, such as shells. “The rocky inlets are where the abalone hang out,” says Renick.  

Renick, a citizen of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, and her group of self-described “guerilla gatherers,” are scouting Glass Beach in Fort Bragg for abalone, seaweed and shells they use for food, regalia and ceremonies. “We like to say we’re badass Indian women gathering under cover of darkness, crawling under fences, over rocks, around no trespassing signs, and through the mud to provide for funerals, feasts and celebrations,” Renick says—although men are also part of the group. […]

To Indigenous peoples living in the food deserts of Northern California, sea palm, tono – the Pomo word for some of the more common seaweed along the coast – and other such greens of the ocean don’t just hold cultural significance, they’re an important source of nutrition.

While the food cooks, the conversation turns to more mundane concerns, and even some gossip. “It’s pretty easy now with technology to figure out when the tide is right,” says Shawn Padi, from the nearby Hopland Pomo community, as he looks out over the waves. “A hundred years ago, you’d have to read the moon and leave the valley three days ahead of time to walk over here and hit the big tides.”

Talk soon turns to more serious topics. Gensaw and Renick discuss how the Yuroks can bring abalone back to their own diets, and of course, the law, and why the guerrilla gatherers need to defy it.

Renick says when it comes to prohibitive state regulations, the solution is simple: “Change the laws.”

[Source: Debra Utacia Krol, Roads and Kingdoms, 17 Septmeber 2019.]