Alicia Knadler
Indian Valley Editor
11/4/2009

Last month Plumas County supervisors approved a partnership with the Maidu Summit Consortium, a group whose members seek to obtain Pacific Gas and Electric lands on the east shore of Lake Almanor, Butt and Humbug valleys.
“All of these lands were Maidu lands taken from Maidu people,” they wrote in a letter to Brian Morris of the Plumas County Flood Control and Water Conservation District. (The supervisors sit as the board of directors for the district.)
The consortium is represented by Mountain Maidu from nine groups, including recognized and petitioning tribes, nonprofit organizations and grassroots groups.
Back in 2007, consortium members submitted a land-management plan to the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council, the organization charged with conservation of about 140,000 acres of PG&E land through a donation and stewardship program.
Maidu Summit Consortium Secretary and Treasurer Lorena Gorbet then talked about plans for the land during a 2008 gathering at the Yellow Creek Campground in Humbug, when a representative of the Stewardship Council attended to explain the land title and conservation easement process.
Thousands of acres of land were taken from the Mountain Maidu of Big Springs and other parts of Lake Almanor, Gorbet explained.
Although they were given some money, though not directly, many of the descendents think it was done in unfair and shady deals, she said, and now consortium members are trying to get some of that land back through the PG&E bankruptcy settlement process that started back in 2003.
It has been a journey of education for Gorbet, who has been in the middle of it since the beginning.
“What’s the big deal?” Gorbet was once asked about the importance of a stretch of land at Prattville, where lake water covers a Maidu cemetery. “It was dredged all through there in the 1930s.”
“Then we tell them that the whole bottom of the lake is a cemetery now,” she told the group. “PG&E has been a very bad caretaker.”
In their recent letter to the county, Gorbet and other members of the consortium reminded officials of their stake in the lands and the Stewardship Council process, and they asked the county to support them while they continue to develop partnerships and action plans with other stakeholders, including native and non-native organizations.
“We are committed to a collaborative approach in working with you and the Stewardship Council, including working to develop land conservation plans that return PG&E lands to Maidu stewardship,” Morris wrote back on behalf of the county.
He recalled several recent occasions of other collaborative work with Maidu groups and various stakeholder groups.
For the Humbug Valley area, the county successfully worked with other stakeholder groups during the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission project, including the consortium, Cal-Trout, the Forest Service and others.
The county also collaborated with the Greenville and Enterprise rancherias on the Stewardship Council’s Bucks Lake planning unit, which was offered during the first round of pilot projects.
Other collaborative efforts include educational projects and those of the Quincy Library Group, whose goals for a pre-European-contact forest are similar to the consortium’s.
Also, the consortium has become a member of the Feather River Regional Water Management Group and fills one of the eight seats on the steering committee.
In closing, Morris re-emphasized the desire of county officials to continue their partnership with the consortium and its members in the interests of restoring and maintaining healthy watersheds and ecosystems, promoting cultural awareness and seeking social justice.
The next steps in the process, according to Gorbet, are for the Stewardship Council to list the eligible land donees, which will be followed by a field tour in December of the lands available.
The eligible recipients will then need to collaborate and come up with a proposal for the available lands.
Gorbet said she appreciates all the support the consortium has received from the Plumas and Lassen National Forests, county supervisors, the Feather River Coordinated Resources Management Group, Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, the Sierra Alliance and others.
For more information, those interested may visit Maidu Summit Consortium members at the Roundhouse Council, the Greenville and Susanville rancherias, or at stewardshipcouncil.org.