In their endless struggle to regain federal recognition, the Winnemem Wintu traveled to Sacramento today to lobby for passage of a non-binding resolution — AJR 39 (Assembly Joint Resolution 39) — which would urge the U.S. Congress to look into their situation and take corrective action. We filmed the Winnemem’s day in the halls of power to document the energy it takes to fight for recognition and to illustrate the bizarre process the Winnemem endure as they patiently tell their story over and over and over again in search of political support and justice.

Sponsored by California Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D, Marin County), the resolution ran into predictable Republican opposition at a hearing of the Committee on Governmental Organization. Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries from Lake Elsinore said, “I guess the 800 pound gorilla that hasn’t been mentioned by anybody here so far is the concern that there are supporters of your effort whose goal it is to either tear down or stop the continued existence of Shasta Dam. That would appear to be some of the groups that are endorsing this effort. I totally respect your rights as native people to fight over the use of your historical lands. I do not like the idea of other people using your tribe as pawns in a game that has to deal with statewide water issues.” Others accused the Winnemem of seeking a casino. With tribal leader Caleen Sisk-Franco sitting behind him, Headman Mark Franco handled all the questions carefully and with characteristic humor.

The key moment came when African American Assemblyman Mike Davis turned the tide with an offer of solidarity: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… Errors occur all the time and I think it should be our honor to move this motion in the right direction.” AJR 39 passed the committee by a vote of 11 to 1, with 2 not voting. It now goes to the floor of the Assembly, and then on to the State Senate.

Committee Chair Alberto Torrico said that just before the hearing started the committee received a letter from a tribal member that disputed Caleen and Mark’s roles as leaders of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. A woman who has been tossed out of several tribal groups, and who has been curiously associated with a Republican PR firm, Gorton and Moore, wrote in the letter: “Caleen and Mark want absolute control over traditional Winnemem Wintu lands and sacred sites to keep other Winnemem from having access to them…One of the strategies Caleen and Mark often use is to get guilty white Americans to support them financially and politically…They have stolen the history of all our people.”

The nasty letter attacking Caleen and Mark got me thinking about identity and history. I looked at some old photos from the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives and asked Mark and Caleen who the people in the photos were. Caleen replied, “That’s my great-great-grandfather, Charlie Pitt, also known as Theodore Charles. He was married to Judia Charles, Tunalulimet,” who according to anthropologist Peter Nabokov was “a noted medicine woman.” Mark added, “Charlie Pitt was disinterred when Shasta Dam flooded the McCloud River villages and he was reburied next to the big tree in the new cemetery.” Charlie Pitt was also the late Winnemem healer Florence Jones’s grandfather, and Florence probably handled the re-burial, moving her salmon-fishing ancestor to a site close to where she had also reburied her own parents, near where Florence now rests.