The Future of the Konkow Maidu

Ever since the first Colonial contact the Konkow Maidu have been struggling and fighting to survive. The ones that were rounded up and taken away to Round Valley eventually found their way home for being "Good Indians" and helping the white militia hunt down other tribes and wiped them out. When they reached the Pulga area what we now call the Hwy 70 corridor our people had cattle, Gold and Jade mines that were eventually taken from us once again. Where the Cal-trans yard sit a 11-bedroom house stood that housed all the Gramps family for generations that was torn down, when they were forces to sale or it would have got taken away by the government to build the highway. 42 acers ... Our family cemetery (the only Indian cemetery recognized in Butte County) ... Our Culture .... All gone... But the Konkow are the ONLY non-federal tribe in Butte County. How you ask? Well, we are asking the same thing, we were Indian enough to have a Treaty (even if the Government lied and it was Unratified), we were Indian enough to get slaughtered and rounded up. We were Indian enough to be forced to live on a Reservation 100 miles away from our homelands. We were Indian enough to have our children taken and placed in to the Indian Boarding School in Greenville. And we were Indian enough to get the California Indian Compensation in the 70's. Today the Konkow Maidu have over 250 members, a Cultural department, Tribal Land Managment crew, Tribal Monitoring crew just like the federal tribes. This year we honored to be the first tribe non-federal tribe to have a contract with a national forest and also the first non-federal tribe to received funeral objects and ancestors bone from the 1990 federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires federally funded institutions, such as universities, to return Native American remains and cultural items to lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations. We have can along ways from the 1800's we have had our cultural, land and ideates taken but we are still here. We are bringing back the old ways and remembering our ancestors what they passed down generation after generation and breathing life back into it. This has not been an easy task but we come from a strong bloodline and I always like to think they made it through hell for me to be here.