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West of San Juan Bautista, on a hill turned gold by the summer sun, stands a barn built in the early 20th century. Just beside it, a group of archaeology students kneel in the dirt, sifting through layers of San Benito County’s past. 

One unearths what appears to be a button from the late 19th or early 20th century. Another finds a splintered redwood plank with rusted nails still in it, and carries it to Gabriel Sanchez, an archeologist and assistant professor at the University of Oregon.

“That’s most likely American, right?” Sanchez asks, and, around him, about a dozen students nod. It’s the nails, Sanchez explains, that give it away. If the plank dated back to the Mexican period—before the mid-19th century, when California was still part of Mexico—the nails would have been produced by blacksmiths, not machines.

But the plank, while curious, isn’t why they’re here.

Archaeology students from the University of Oregon and 16 members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band are searching for the remains of a two-story adobe once owned by Manuel Larios, a 19th-century Californio, one of the first Spanish settlers in California. 

Larios owned 48,000 acres east of what is now Hollister, as well as a smaller 4,000-acre property known as El Ranchito in the area that would become San Juan Bautista and surrounding San Benito County. 

Larios, Sanchez says, is “integral to the history of San Benito County,” because he lived through the three eras that shaped modern California. 

Born in 1798 during the Spanish period, he enlisted in the Spanish army as a young man. In the 1830s, under Mexican rule, he acquired his San Juan Bautista ranchito after the secularization of the missions, when the government stripped the Franciscan order of its land and sold it off. By the time he died in 1861, California had become part of the United States.

The land is now owned by the San Benito Agricultural Land Trust, which acquired the property in 2023, including the century-old barn visible from Hwy 156. During early efforts to stabilize and restore the barn, there were signs that an older structure might lie nearby, land trust Vice President Bob Connolly told BenitoLink.

Suspecting it could be the long-lost adobe in Manuel Larios’ ranchito, the organization reached out to Sanchez, who specializes in California history, and to the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, which identifies as descendants of the Indigenous people who survived the missions of Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista. 

“We’re collaborating because the adobe affects all of us,” Connolly said. “It brings the past to the present.”

Sanchez visited the site with a ground-penetrating radar and, a few feet from the barn, detected a rectangular shape which suggested there was a human-made structure underneath. “You usually don’t find rectangular things that occur naturally in the world,” he says.

So, in early July, he returned with a group of students and members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band to excavate.

For the Amah Mutsun, finding the adobe would mean bringing their history to light.

“Who would have been on the rancho working?” Sanchez says. “It would have been the Mission Indians. And who were the Mission Indians? It was the local Mutsun people, people from the surrounding areas, all the way to the Yokuts from the Central Valley.”

To Alec Apodaca, a staff member with the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, the nonprofit which protects and stewards the tribe’s cultural heritage, the adobe, if found, could help people today understand the world the Amah Mutsun once inhabited.

“When people made those adobes, they collected signatures of the environment,” Apodaca said. “When they made those adobe bricks, it preserved those seeds. So if we find that adobe—and if the conditions are right—we can extract those seeds and analyze them.”

The tribe also sees the excavation as an opportunity to train its members in archaeological methods and reconnect with their history. Unlike burial grounds or sacred sites, the barn and its surroundings are a place to practice excavation in a respectful way. Because the land holds layers from each of California’s historical periods, it allows for study without the fear of disturbing sacred sites.

The group plans to return to the barn in September to continue excavating. The hope is to uncover the adobe and, through it, tell the story of the Indigenous people who lived in what is now San Benito County, and whose lives are often left out of the history books.

“Through archaeology,” Apodaca said, “we can actually tell their story.”

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For years now, Woody Clendenen’s little barbershop on Main Street has doubled as an informal press briefing room for the Cottonwood Militia. While cutting customers’ hair, the cofounder of the Cottonwood Militia has also been known to give interviews to curious national reporters from the likes of Harper’s Magazine and CNN. 

Despite national media attention, Clendenen and his partner Dan Scoville — the other founder of the local militia — still feel largely misunderstood by the Shasta County community where local press has rarely spoken to the group. 

At the barber shop, a patron chimed in over the hum of Clendenen’s clippers flush against his nape. “Well, what was your opinion about the word ‘militia’?” the patron asked Shasta Scout while strapped into one of two barber chairs. “Did you think of your rednecks and your camo?”  

“It’s been tarnished by the media for years,” Scoville added. 

The negative connotation most Americans have when it comes to the term “militia,” according to Scoville and others in the barber shop that day, is related to intentional suppression of citizen self-reliance by the U.S. government. Nowadays, most Americans no longer grow their own food, tend to their own wounds or, according to Pew Research, live in a household with a firearm. 

The Cottonwood Militia has guns and know how to use them, but leaders describe a mindset that is more defensive than offensive. “The militia stance on weapons is that the gun is the last line of defense,” Scoville explained. 

Modern life is a far cry from the harsh conditions that required early white settlers to fend for themselves, as they slowly inched their way across the continent after landing in Plymouth Rock. Assembling a militia today, many members feel, continues to be not only a constitutional right but a patriotic duty. 

Founders say the group is prepared for combat but is mostly focused on survival skills and disaster preparedness. They engage members in tutorials on how to communicate via radio and are prepared for a regional shut down to the power grid. They also provide basic medical training, along with arms training, and coordinate their communication via Signal chats when local wildfires or protests occur.

The Cottonwood Militia bylaws include a quote pulled from the U.S. military oath of enlistment, emphasizing that members “stand ready to defend our nation from all its enemies, be they foreign or domestic.” 

Both founders spoke with reverence of the long tradition of militias throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, which, in Scoville’s words, “helped build America, because there was no military force, or not a very good one at first.”  

It’s true that early militias were pivotal to building present-day America. But the complex history of early militias also includes paid involvement in the forced removal of the earliest inhabitants of this land. Across California, including what is now known as Shasta County, the mass killing of Native people was carried out in large part by volunteer militias commissioned by the California governor.

Clendenen acknowledges that militias may have been involved in some past violence against California’s Indigenous people, something he strongly opposes, but isn’t convinced they played a major role in destroying Native life. Regardless, he said, that history should have no bearing on the way today’s militias are viewed by the public. 

“That has as much to do with us as the fact that there were white plantations that had slave owners and holding us as a modern society responsible for that. You know what I mean?” Clendenen said.

The militia and law enforcement 

The Cottonwood Militia began in 2009 at a “barn meeting” for local residents of Cottonwood, California. Founders say the community had been experiencing an uptick in crime made worse by a delayed response time from the county sheriff, whose deputies could take hours to reach the small community on the outskirts of Shasta County. 

In its early days, the local militia served as an enhanced neighborhood watch whose members subdued suspected criminals through citizens arrests while waiting for officers to reach the rural town of roughly 6,000. In time, according to militia founders, the group grew into an unofficial auxiliary of the official police force, with — they claim — the blessing of multiple municipal law enforcement agencies and officials, including the California Highway Patrol, the FBI, the Shasta County Sheriff, and certainly, some county supervisors.

“We’re not police officers or anything like that, but we do try to help our community,” Scoville explained, framing the group as a peace-keeping force that only intervenes when a crime is committed. They see their presence as support to deputized police officers, especially in situations that require crowd control.  

Shasta County Sheriff spokesperson Michael Johnson confirmed that he met with the militia when he first assumed his role in 2024, as he would with any interest group, but did not elaborate on the nature of the department’s relationship with the militia beyond that. A lieutenant with CHP’s Northern Division probed Shasta Scout on what the news agency knew about the militia before suggesting that reporters contact the Redding-based CHP office where Shasta Scout was unable to reach a local lieutenant despite repeated attempts. As for the FBI, a representative from the local field office said the organization has “no comment” on the group and a public records request yielded no related records.

In Shasta, militia members with radios and ear pieces can be seen at local protests, from a 2020 courthouse demonstration connected to the Black Lives Matter movement to a recent one-person sit-in at a county board meeting. Most recently, militia members showed up to a No Kings Protest on June 14. Beforehand, the group discussed plans to surveil the upcoming demonstration in person while emphasizing their central commitment to freedom of speech and expression.

“We’re founded on being able to protest our government,” Clendenen reminded militia members who showed up to the regular weekly meeting, a subset of the larger group. They ranged vastly in age and gender, mirroring the racial makeup of Shasta County — that is, mostly but not exclusively white. Clendenen advised group members that their purpose isn’t to stop protests from happening but to make sure nothing “gets out of hand.”

From the founders’ viewpoints, only lawbreakers should feel unease when militia members show up to conduct citizen patrols, monitor public events or have conversations with those at homeless camps about missing goods. “We know all the outlaws and thieves in our area,” Clendenen said. “I mean, we get new ones every now and then, but we know them.”

Clendenen said the militia offers the unhoused one-way bus tickets to “anywhere but Cottonwood,” adding, “If we go down to look for some stolen stuff in some of the homeless camps — if you show up with 10 guys, and I’m the littlest one and the oldest, they’re very polite. We never have any problems.” 

The statement illustrates how the militia treads the line of vigilanteism, relying on the strength of the larger group and their connections in the community to respond to perceived threats. In 2020, Carlos Zapata, a producer on the documentary series Red White and Blueprint who self-identified at the time as a member of the militia, warned that it wasn’t going to be peaceful much longer unless COVID restrictions were dropped. 

During a 2020 George Floyd-era racial justice protest, individuals who identified as militia members showed up at what they said was at the behest of local law enforcement in response to rumored threats of violence — including a bus full of “antifa” agitators headed to Shasta — that turns out to have never existed. Militia members pushed protesters towards a line of police in riot gear that night. The night eventually ended peacefully.  

In 2020 and 2021 several militia members made vague threats to a Shasta Scout reporter both in person and by phone, noting that they were being watched and should be careful what they do. In 2022, Clendenen compared journalists to Nazi war criminals saying “there’s a day coming when the media will have to pay.” 

And in late 2024, after protestor Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was arrested for protesting at a public meeting, militia members lined up at the back of the chambers as the meeting resumed. When asked if a county official requested the militia presence that night, Clendenen took a beat, then answered cryptically.

“I’ll just say we found out about it,” he said.

In the grand scheme of public safety, Clendenen believes that militias and rightwing organizations more generally, have a cleaner track record than protesters on “the left” who he accused of burning “over 50 cities” in 2020. Reporting shows the vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests were nondestructive, with notable exceptions in Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis. 

But Clendenen doesn’t trust media reports, which he accused of covering for the alleged crimes of protestors on the left. “Nobody can name a protest from the right where there are any cops attacked,” he said.

When asked about the reports of officers injured by demonstrators at the Capitol on January 6, Clendenen was skeptical. Police “might have got pushed around,” he said, “but there was not one person there with a gun.” Multiple investigations of the events of J6 have come to the opposite conclusion, finding that some protestors were armed not only with guns but also molotov cocktails.

Identifying who’s law enforcement

When some members of the Cottonwood Militia showed up to local BLM protests in tactical gear five years ago, it was hard to decipher civilians in tactical vests and gloves from what could have been a member of the National Guard or a DHS officer. Today, the porousness between vigilante and law enforcement has gone in the other direction, with the recent conduct of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) marking the agency as “vigilantes” in the eyes of some California politicians. 

Those blurred lines led California lawmakers to introduce both a state and national bill calling for agents to be required to clearly identify themselves. Senator Alex Padilla told Shasta Scout that it’s important for the safety of both law enforcement officers and community members. 

“You don’t know how an individual or a community is going to respond when they’re not sure if it’s law enforcement or not,” Padilla told Shasta Scout.

As Clendenen carefully groomed the hairline of one customer at the barbershop, Shasta Scout asked if the militia would consider coordinating with ICE in future. He paused briefly. “We’d help if they asked,” he chuckled, adding that he can’t imagine ICE actually doing so. 

He said that he’d heard that individuals in Texas were being given awards for their assistance with such work, a rumor that has yet to be corroborated. That mention prompted one customer to joke to Clendenen just before he left the barber shop, “It might be a good retirement gig for you!” as the little barbershop on Main Street filled with laughter.

Frontier democracy or lynch law? 

The emblem of the privately organized California State Militia, the larger umbrella group under which the Cottonwood Militia is founded, is a minuteman. It’s the name given to colonial Americans who organized to fight the British. Like contemporary militia members, many minutemen had their own complicated relationship to state authority, having both fought for the crown in previous wars against the French, then against Britain in defense of what would become the United States. 

After American independence, “militias participated in all the major wars in American history, beginning with the American Revolution,” Brendan Lindsay, a historian at Sacramento University, told Shasta Scout. Today, the Cottonwood Militia sees itself within that same tradition. 

When California became a state in 1850, Lindsay explained, militias played a key role in American settlement, particularly at a time when the new state’s funds were scant. “There was no money to actually have a regularly organized California militia,” Lindsay said, mentioning that the California National Guard didn’t form until 1903. Instead, the Golden State legalized the activities of volunteer soldiers — with a caveat. 

“But, big capital B-U-T, only if authorized by the governor,” Lindsay emphasized. As officially state-authorized groups, the volunteer militias of California’s past had a more formalized relationship with the government than the Cottonwood Militia has today. 

Part of that formalized relationship, as Lindsay has examined closely in his scholarship, was the militia’s role in perpetrating the genocide of California Indians. This kind of violence has a long legacy. As early as 1637, the New World’s first settler militias attacked Native communities shortly after crossing the Atlantic. 

Exploitation of natural resources by settlers and gold miners provoked Native-led resistance — the targeting of outsiders encroaching on their land. In response, settlers appealed to the governor to deputize volunteer militiamen from their communities to embark on various “expeditions,” or more aptly, massacres, including the Shasta Expedition of 1854. 

At the behest of white communities and backed by the early California government, these militias destroyed entire Native communities, submitted receipts to the state government, then received compensation.

It’s a dark chapter rarely discussed by modern militia groups which have seen a resurgence over the last 30 years. Flashpoints that reignited interest in armed self-defense began with the early 1990s standoffs in Waco and Ruby Ridge, the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, and the events of Sept. 11, 2001. More recently, both BLM and COVID-related protest movements have continued to reinforce the idea that self-sustenance, including self-defense, is core to American survival. 

Clendenen told reporters that he wasn’t aware of militias’ historic involvement in Indigenous massacres, emphasizing that he’s “not for any of the atrocities that were committed against the Native Americans,” and adding that “both my grandmas were Cherokee.” 

“I would guess that the government itself probably was responsible for more of the bad things that happened to the Natives than any militias,” he said.

Lindsay’s research — peer reviewed and based on the archived state receipts, newspaper reports and witness testimonies — indicates otherwise. But Clendenen expressed skepticism about academics, who he believes shouldn’t be immediately trusted at face value. “Historians are kind of like having an expert witness in a trial,” Clendenen said. “You know, you can get an expert witness on all sides.” 

Interpreting the Second Amendment 

From the early militias that formed the first chapters of the Ku Klux Klan to young Black Panthers in the inner cities of Oakland and Los Angeles, Americans have organized and armed themselves to both inflict and resist terror throughout the nation’s history. 

Like all constitutional rights, the Second Amendment is nonpartisan, but the choice to purchase a firearm often reflects the political atmosphere of the moment. In the midst of social unrest of the 2020 pandemic lockdown, American firearm sales hit an all time high. And in response to dehumanizing rhetoric and policy changes under Trump 2.0, some communities of vulnerable transgender people have started to arm themselves and engage in combat training.

The individual right to bear arms is only one part of the Second Amendment, which also includes a provision for militias, stating that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

How to define such a militia is the subject of debate between amateur and professional constitutionists alike. As Scoville noted, “Some liberal law organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that are far, far left, they say, oh, the militias became the National Guard.”

His comment is a reference to the Dick Act of 1903 that streamlined the nation’s citizen militias into two official categories: the “organized militia,” now known as the National Guard, and the “unorganized militia” or any mass of able bodied males aged 17–25. Under that legislation, only the government can call upon either group for response in times of insurrection and invasion.

Scoville disagrees that American militias can be defined so narrowly saying the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have put the power to activate militias into the hands of the government. “They would never let the federal government rule over the militia, because what they were afraid of most was the federal government,” he explained. Clendenen feels similarly, noting that he believes “the supreme law of the land is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” 

In Scoville’s interpretation of the Constitution, the fundamental right to bear arms is inseparable from the right to organize a military-style platoon of armed community members who can decide unilaterally when to act. And in a time of war, Clendenen confirmed for reporters, the Cottonwood Militia would activate without the approval of a state or federal authority or any other authority higher than itself — except for maybe the sheriff, he hinted. 

“Absolutely, we would heed the call [to battle even] if the president or governor didn’t ask us to,” Clendenen said.

Mary McCord, the executive director of Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown, is an attorney who scrutinizes the legality of local militias like the Cottonwood regiment. Speaking by phone with Shasta Scout, she agreed with Clendenen and Scoville that the Constitution is the highest law of the land.

But all laws, both state and federal, “are valid,” McCord emphasized. “There’s no concept within our law where people get to decide which one they want to abide by and how they want to abide.” As long as, she said, state laws are not in conflict with the Constitution.

That’s an issue that’s decided by the Supreme Court and in fact, the Supreme Court has weighed in twice on the legal boundaries of the militia. “The Supreme Court has been clear since 1896,” McCord said, “in a case called Presser v. Illinois, that the Second Amendment does not protect private paramilitary organizations” from being outlawed by individual states.

Like all states, California does impose limitations on armed groups. State penal code defines a “private paramilitary” broadly as two or more persons who assemble “for the purpose of practicing with weapons,” and engage in “instruction or training in guerrilla warfare.” It also prohibits such organizations from engaging in combat training. 

“If you’ve trained as a group, and you’re going to go out there to be the military force fighting against this, whatever, terrorist attack, then I would say there’s also likely a violation of [California’s] constitutional provision,” McCord concluded.

The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office did not answer Shasta Scout’s question about whether the Cottonwood Militia might be defined as an illegal paramilitary according to Penal Code § 11460, violations of which could lead to up to a year in prison, a $1,000 fine, or both.  

Going back even farther to the language of the Second Amendment itself, McCord remarked that the “well regulated” part of a “well regulated militia” has always meant “regulated by the government — not just, oh, we have a commander, so we’re well regulated, right?” 

Legal or not, thousands of people have cycled through Shasta County’s local militia workshops in the past decade, founders say, though Clendenen was unwilling to confirm the exact number of current members.

The number of active citizen militias across the country is also hard to quantify. Some groups are informal and hyperlocalized and others even operate criminally underground. There are well known white nationalist militias, but there are also militias that have no race or gender barriers.

As for the Cottonwood Militia, the organizational bylaws state that members shall defend the unalienable rights of all citizens regardless of “race, color, religion, sex, or natural origin”.

“Anybody can come into our group, if you believe in the Constitution,” Scoville said. “We don’t care if you’re purple. It doesn’t matter.”

Like the local group, many militias take it upon themselves to defend their families against both natural and political threats, some of which are undeniable, like climate disasters, and others more speculative and potentially tied to racial biases, such as foreign terrorist attacks and so-called “invasions” by undocumented immigrants. 

Such fears do not appear out of thin air. In current times they are informed by communications from the federal government itself. Among them, memos about “Iranian sleeper cells” put out to the public without credible evidence of an impending attack, and depictions of noncitizens as a class of violent interlopers intent on destroying the country from within despite well-documented and outsized contributions to the economy.

Ever looming disaster

Earlier this summer, fire season was underway in Shasta County, with evacuation orders set for the Buckeye region north of Redding. During the weekly militia meeting — held directly across the way from Clendenen’s barber shop — alerts from the nonprofit Watch Duty app went off while members discussed wildfire response plans. If the flames had advanced south toward Cottonwood, they may have sprung into action amid the inferno: coordinating with each other via radio when power lines went down and providing food and water to families in containment zones and evacuating livestock.

The group is also focused on providing mundane essential needs shared by any small town in America’s heartland: a farmer’s market, homesteading courses on preserving food and foraging native plants, children’s day camps that relieve working and often single parents while sharing militia values.

As attendees filled the militia hall in the minutes before the June 20 meeting, a woman who runs the militia’s summer camp for girls recounted a delicious rabbit stew she and the girls had made from a recent hunt. Next to her sat a family of three adolescent children, their father and a wobbling German Shepherd puppy still learning how to use its oversized legs. 

Clendenen led parts of the meeting. He has recently moved to Texas but commutes back to California for half of every week to care for his infant grandson who recently received a liver transplant, and cut hair part time at the barber shop he used to own. He’s officially retired from his role in the regiment, as militia rules require members to be California residents, but he remains deeply involved alongside Scoville and attends meetings during his days in Shasta.

Throughout the room, elderly couples, teenage couples and others from the Shasta community made polite small talk on a summer night. As Clendenen has often joked, militia meetings can feel more like a bingo night at a Catholic church. But public safety was top of mind, and not just the fire that kept triggering notifications on leaders’ cell phones.

Scoville prefaced the evening’s agenda by reiterating that the militia is committed to lawfulness and nonviolence, “so long as there remains a legitimate civil order in our society.” He then announced the resurrection of the militia’s citizen night patrol in Cottonwood and encouraged everyone to be observant of license plates and perpetrator descriptions should a crime occur. He recalled the story of a local nursery that had been robbed a few weeks prior — for the seventh time, he said — since the owner opened the business five years ago.

Scoville struck a careful tone, reminding members to wait for law enforcement before acting. In response, one expressed serious doubt about the competency of law enforcement. “They’re all just useful idiots with guns and badges. Maybe we should think of a way to stop the bad guys ourselves. I mean, I’m young enough to bust some heads!” he declared with a smile. Another woman uttered a quiet protest in response, reminding him of the militia’s official stance against vigilante violence. 

Members seemed more agreeable when it came to a bigger existential threat. “We got this war going on in Israel and Iran,” Scoville told the group of about 25, just two days before President Trump issued a command destroying key parts of Iranian nuclear facilities. He mused aloud about how the bombing might provoke new threats on American soil.

“If they drop that bomb into that bunker, they’re not gonna have anything left, other than most likely terrorist acts. We must be prepared,” Scoville said.

The crowd buzzed about the possibility of an Iranian retaliation led by suicidal militants lurking in America’s shadows. “They don’t care if they get killed, they’re good,” one man suggested, describing what he believes to be the Iranian people’s attitude toward their own mortality. Another woman joked, “they got a lot of virgins!” referring to the trope of Islamic martyrs receiving 72 virgins in heaven.

Scoville interjected in a more serious tone. “I don’t think [the president] wants to drop this bomb, I think he doesn’t want any civilian lives to be killed,” he said.

But if he does, Scoville concluded, “I think it’s going to be best for our kids in the future.”

This story is part of “Aquí Estamos/Here We Stand,” a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and ethnic/community news outlets statewide.

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Last Saturday, less than a thousand people cast votes on an issue they hope will soon determine the fate of 40 million Californians. 

New California State (NCS), a movement attempting to separate from California to form its own state, held the July 12 election in order to approve a provisional constitution. According to NCS, participants representing more than 50 of California’s 58 counties voted, with some making long drives to reach one of the 26 NCS precincts.

In Shasta County, ballots were cast in an unassuming conference room at the Redding Red Lion Hotel. One especially noteworthy voter was Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters (ROV) Clint Curtis, the public official tasked with running the county’s official California election process. Many of the same local activists who have consistently cast doubt on the integrity of the Shasta Election Office over the last several years helped administer the event.

While less than 0.003% of California’s population voted in the NCS election, those who did overwhelmingly passed the movement’s draft constitution. NCS hopes to present the results to Congress in an attempt to leave behind the “tyranny and corruption” of California’s government by establishing a 51st state.

While vote totals don’t show insubstantial support for the movement, efforts to form the new state are playing out against a backdrop of intense months-long conflict between the Trump administration and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Much of that conflict centers around immigration policy, including the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles over the sharp objections of Newsom, who is widely believed to have the dual goal of defending California sovereignty and positioning himself for a future presidential run.

Speaking to reporters at Saturday’s NCS event in Shasta, voters expressed dissatisfaction about the relatively small representation that rural voters have in the California State Senate and Assembly, the perceived “invasion” of immigrants, legal recognitions afforded to transgender Californians, vaccine mandates, unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the state’s tenuous financial solvency, among other issues. 

In Shasta, the NCS voting process was filmed and shared with the public via livestream. While reporters were not allowed access to the voting room, the NCS livestream of the space confirmed the involvement of Curtis, Shasta’s recently-appointed ROV, who can be seen marking a ballot and turning it in.

He declined Shasta Scout’s request to speak about his involvement in the event. Although Curtis has spoken to reporters in the past, staff said Monday that he doesn’t do media interviews. It’s a change from the stance Curtis took during while seeking the ROV position and at a campaign event shortly after his appointment, when he said that he and other staff wouldn’t “hide behind an office.”

He’s faced public scrutiny since before his appointment. Criticism has centered around his lack of election experience, inaccuracies and inconsistencies in his job application, a decision to fire his top election staffer and his connection with Shasta Election Commissioner Patty Plumb, who is also the chair of the Shasta branch of NCS.

Given Curtis’ refusal to speak with reporters this week, it is unclear how he voted on the constitution. Nevertheless, his participation signals interest in the partisan NCS movement. And Curtis is not the only person on the county’s payroll who’s participating. Chriss Street, a county contractor who’s been championed by county board Chair Kevin Crye, is the chief financial officer of NCS.

Why is NCS approving a constitution?

In efforts to create a 51st state, NCS drafted a constitution that was approved by the movement’s leaders on July 1. The group held the election last week to seek the approval of voters around the state who are aware of the NCS movement. Officials hope to produce a document that meets the demands of Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that every state protect its citizens from invasions and domestic violence while providing a “republican form of government.” 

NCS President Paul Preston told Shasta Scout that NCS plans to present the constitution to Congress in September — either via House Speaker Mike Johnson or President Donald Trump — but it would be up to a member of Congress to actually introduce a bill to ratify statehood, he said. If a member of Congress decides to introduce a bill seeking to make NCS a state, the legislative branch would scrutinize the new constitution to make sure that it meets federal standards before voting on the issue. Multiple states have followed a similar process in the past.

Preston claims that NCS has been working with Mike Johnson’s office, saying that members of the Trump administration have expressed significant support for transmitting the new constitution to Congress, although he declined to specify which members of the administration the group has interacted with so far. Spokespeople for Trump and Johnson did not respond to Shasta Scout when asked whether they have been in communication with NCS, but Preston said he’s confident that Congress will review and approve the statehood bill. 

“They’ll look at the constitution on its merits,” Preston said. “There may be some negotiations to tweak something, you know, and it would be on them to come to an agreement.” 

Notably, the current NCS constitution includes sections that appear to contradict past Supreme Court decisions regarding certain civil and constitutional rights. For instance, the NCS constitution defines marriage as a “covenant between one man and one woman,” something which conflicts with the Obergefell v. Hodges case, which guarantees the right to marriage to same sex couples in every state.

Asked specifically about the question of marriage equality, Preston said NCS would push Congress to allow the proposed state to define marriage only in heterosexual terms, and “see if they accept it or not.” 

The West Virginia Model

The process through which states have been admitted to the union over the past 249 years has varied, depending on factors such as whether the proposed state was previously a territory or was split off from a pre-existing state.  

NCS officials have said their attempted path to statehood is modeled on the birth of West Virginia, which became a state in 1863 after approval from both the state of Virginia and the federal government. In contrast to West Virginia, NCS will not be seeking the approval of California’s government, a step the movement is bypassing because officials view the state legislature to be tyrannical. 

NCS leaders say they see similarities in their motivations to seek statehood and those of early West Virginians. In the 1860s, West Virginia’s struggle to statehood came out of a desire to remain part of the Union instead of seceding along with the rest of Virginia during the Civil War. 

Officials with NCS claim that California is heading down a similarly treasonous path of secession as Virginia once did, prompting NCS supporters to create their own state in order to remain loyal to the nation rather than submit to what they perceive as California’s insurrectionist leaders. Preston cited COVID-19 and vaccination policies, the sanctuary state designation and bail reform as some examples of how NCS believes an insurrectionist California has tyrannically undermined the rights and safety of the people.

Unlike Virginia in 1861, California has not seceded from the Union, or even expressed interest in seceding. And there is no indication, at least publicly, that the U.S. Congress or the president have officially recognized the legitimacy of the NCS movement, as they did for West Virginia, prior to presentation to Congress.

Representation Matters 

NCS President Preston calls California “a self-professed representative democracy, which is a dictatorship,” and referred to true representational democracy as “mob rule.”

In reality, California, like all states, currently operates as a republic, meaning that voters elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. Because assembly and senatorial districts in California are determined by population size rather than geography, more populated parts of the state have more senators and assembly members in the state legislature, as compared to sparsely populated rural areas like Shasta. It’s a structure that’s designed to give each individual voter the same level of representation regardless of the geographical size of where they live. 

In contrast, under New California’s proposed structure, each county would have one senator, regardless of population numbers. That would mean the 2.5 million people in Riverside County would have the same number of senators as the 8,500 people who live in Modoc. The model would redistribute power away from diverse urban voters to rural — and in the North State — largely white communities. It’s one way to address the overarching issue of representation that vexes many rural conservative California voters whose voice, they feel, is drowned out by an overwhelmingly urban and liberal California population.

“When you compare [us] with the mighty power of L.A., San Diego and the Bay Area, they pretty much direct the state’s actions,” said Jim Burnett, a retired engineer who voted at last Saturday’s NCS election. “We’re not represented here in Shasta County and most of rural California.”

Annelise Pierce contributed reporting for this story.

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MENDOCINO CO., 7/16/25 — Hopland this weekend will celebrate the completion of a housing development dedicated to homeless members of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians. 

This Saturday, Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians’ Rancheria to celebrate the completion of a new fourplex dedicated to chronically homeless people of the Hopland tribe. 

The fourplex is for tribal members experiencing chronic homelessness, which is defined as a person who has a mental or physical disability and has been homeless for at least a year or has had four or more episodes of homelessness in the past three years.

Moriah McGill, deputy director of the Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority, a tribal housing group based in Ukiah that serves eight federally recognized tribes in Northern California, said in an interview that this weekend’s event is a celebration of the hard work that went into the project. 

“This event is a tribute to the dedication, commitment, and tenacity of the project team — and most importantly, a celebration of homecoming for four chronically homeless families of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians,” McGill said. “We extend our deepest gratitude to the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians for trusting us to build this project in alignment with their vision, values, and future.”

The fourplex is a multifamily development with two two-bedroom units and two three-bedroom units. The project received funding from both federal and state sources.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Hopland fourplex will be held Saturday from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the tribe’s rancheria, 13000 Nokomis Road in Hopland. The event will feature guest speakers, and lunch will be provided. 

The event is open to the public, but space is limited. To RSVP, call Karen Hamaker at (707) 468-1336, ext. 126, or email khamaker@nciha.org. 

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When Lynette Craig went to pick up her son Nick Patterson’s remains at a mortuary in Modoc County, she wasn’t sure how to feel. It was earlier this spring, and over a year since his partial remains were first recovered. 

“He was a big boy,” she said. “It was just weird to me, because my big old boy fit in this little box. It made me mad, but at the same time, it was good to hold him again.”

Craig is a member of the Pit River Tribe, whose ancestral homeland is located in Northern California. When she got her son’s remains back, she was glad she could finally bury him, an important aspect of tribal tradition that allows the deceased to journey on to what’s next. The long-awaited moment came after what she says has been a years-long struggle with local law enforcement to push Nick’s case forward. 

Nick, a member of the Atwamsini band of the Pit River Tribe, went missing more than five years ago in January 2020 when he was just 26. While some of his remains were finally found last year, the reason for his disappearance and death remains unsolved, leaving his family and friends still searching for answers.

His mom’s battle for the truth captures determination fueled by the profound grief of a mother who lost her child. But it is also emblematic of the structural challenges Native people often face when working with law enforcement and the ongoing systemic negligence that’s been documented in response to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP), whose cases are seven times less likely to be solved than those of non-Native people. 

Craig said she’s seen the effects of the MMIP crisis in her own Tribe. She recalled going to a funeral of an Indigenous child who went missing decades ago, Little George Montgomery. His body was dismembered, and all that was left was his skull, which was placed in a small box for his wake. 

“I just remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible. Nothing like that will ever happen to me,’” Craig recalled. “But now I have my own box.”

It wasn’t until Nick’s disappearance that Craig truly realized the gravity of the MMIP crisis, particularly in California, home to the largest Indigenous population in the United States.

“That’s one thing that kind of disturbs me, is it had to hit home first for me to realize and to really pay attention to what’s really been going on,” she said. 

California has made efforts in recent years to allocate resources toward the MMIP crisis, awarding millions of dollars to tribes to support MMIP investigations, including a grant to the Pit River Tribe last year. 

The state also established the Feather Alert system in 2022. Similar to the AMBER Alert, the system helps locate missing Indigenous people by prioritizing visibility for their cases. California State Assemblymember James Ramos, the first and only Native lawmaker in the assembly, also pushed a bill in 2020 that directed the state Department of Justice to increase law enforcement collaboration for MMIP cases.

But the related issues are complex and take time to solve. For example, a component of the Feather Alert system that allowed for subjective decision-making initially led to a high rate of request denials by law enforcement agencies. The issue was addressed last year by an amendment, which aims to reduce law enforcement’s discretion in which cases to flag for alerts. 

The struggle to get answers from law enforcement

Craig describes her son as a respectful and generous person. He played basketball, was an active member of his Tribe, gave enormous hugs and loved The Rolling Stones. Nick swore his purpose in life was to be a big brother, and he was known to always have his hand out to help others. 

“Whenever anybody seen Nick Patterson come in, they had a smile on their face,” Craig remembered. “They genuinely cared about him.” 

He was last seen on Jan. 5, 2020. A few days after he went missing, Craig filed a missing person report with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, which has jurisdiction over the area where her son went missing. She says she felt the office did not take Nick’s case seriously or handle it with enough urgency from the start, explaining that they asked if Nick just needed some time away or if he was out drinking, even after Craig assured them that it wasn’t like him to disappear without telling anyone. 

Craig said she requested that the sheriff use cadaver dogs to search for Nick, but the department claimed they couldn’t use the dogs until 30 days after the missing person report was filed. Later, while attending MMIP conferences, Craig was told that there is no waiting period to be able to use cadaver dogs. Neither the Shasta Sheriff’s Office nor the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training list any such restriction in its policies. 

A few months after Nick was last seen, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Around the same time, the Shasta Sheriff’s Office transferred Nick’s case to the Modoc County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the area where Nick resided at the time he disappeared. Craig claims the Shasta Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t release Nick’s official investigation records to Modoc — something neither the Shasta nor Modoc Sheriff have confirmed nor denied. 

“Ever since he went missing, I’ve hit every roadblock, every obstacle that there is,” Craig said. “It’s just stupid, like, unimaginable.” 

The Shasta Sheriff’s Office refused to answer a list of specific questions for this story, including requests to learn more about the department’s reportedly dismissive behavior toward Craig when she filed the missing person report and the alleged 30-day rule to use cadaver dogs, as well as claims about whether the investigative files were ever transferred to Modoc.

Instead, the Shasta office repeated a vague general statement about the case that’s been provided to the press in the past. 

“The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office treats all missing persons reports with the utmost seriousness and responds to them without delay, as required by California law,” Public Information Officer Tim Mapes said in an email statement. “We do so without bias or discrimination, regardless of a person’s gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or background. Every report is evaluated and acted upon with the same urgency and commitment to public safety.”

Many Native people distrust law enforcement for a variety of historical reasons, chief among them America’s history of government-endorsed violence against Native people and subsequent forced assimilation.

Federal laws enacted in the years that followed the massacres of tribal communities across Northern California furthered the harm against Indigenous people, laying the groundwork for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People crisis occurring today. Public Law 280, for example, has sometimes allowed crimes against Native people to go unaddressed since it required tribal police to share criminal jurisdiction with state police, causing overlap and confusion. 

Despite these substantial issues, tribal communities, like others, remain reliant on the help of police when seeking justice. Craig said the complexity of navigating that relationship is something she came face-to-face with while working on Nick’s case. 

“I wasn’t sure what I was gonna have to do to keep his case under investigation but be able to do it in a way where I wasn’t gonna be stepping on their toes, because I still need their help,” she said. 

Modoc Sheriff Tex Dowdy, himself a member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, said since his office took over Nick’s case in March 2020, “numerous leads have been followed, and multiple interviews have been conducted” in the investigation.

But Craig, who still thinks not enough has been done to solve Nick’s case, said it became increasingly clear to her over time that she would have to take matters into her own hands to make progress in finding the truth. 

Over the last few years, Craig has gathered records to aid in Nick’s case, facilitated communication with experts and officials and organized a grid search, which occurred this past June, to look for more of Nick’s remains — in effect, taking on the duties of an investigator, without training or compensation. 

In 2023, Craig consulted the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) website and read that dental records and/or DNA samples are pivotal for identifying people in missing person cases. 

It occurred to her that neither of the two sheriff’s offices had contacted her to collect this information, although, according to a Shasta County Sheriff’s Office policy, this information should have been collected shortly after Patterson’s missing person information was reported to the state’s Department of Justice. Craig checked Nick’s file on the DOJ site and saw there were still no dental records or DNA included. 

Reading through the information on the NamUs site to learn how best to help Nick’s case was one of many emotionally challenging parts of her efforts to find him, Craig said.

“When I tried to register Nick for NamUs, I still had high hopes that I would find my son alive, safe and in one piece,” she said. “When I started reading on the website about human remains, what it was all about, it took me probably two weeks to finally sit down long enough to register with NamUs.” 

Craig took the initiative to contact the California DoJ’s Office of Native American Affairs to request a family reference sample, which is used to help identify missing persons through DNA. Extra steps had to be taken to get the kit sent to Nick’s dad, who was in prison at the time. 

“I needed these tests done because I knew that Nick wasn’t around anymore,” she said. “There was no way to identify Nick if we did find him.” 

Craig also tracked down Nick’s dental records, but it wasn’t without struggle. She said Nick rarely went to the dentist because of how good his teeth were, and his orthodontist, who was based in Oregon, sold his practice. She was eventually able to get a hold of the records so that they could be included in Nick’s file. 

Finally, on April 24, 2024 — more than four years after he went missing — a skull and humorous bone were found by a civilian in Lookout, a small and remote area in Modoc County. After the Modoc Sheriff’s Office retrieved the bones, they were sent to a California DoJ evidentiary lab in Chico to be analyzed and tested and were eventually determined to belong to Nick.

Craig wasn’t notified of the remains until about three months later, after lab testing concluded. In the end, it was the dental records that she had worked so hard to acquire that allowed the skull to be identified as Nick’s.

As a cousin told Craig, without her efforts, “They wouldn’t even be able to identify him.” 

A month after the skull and humorous bone were identified, the Modoc County Sheriff’s Office conducted its first official search in the area where the bones had been found. Investigators discovered additional bones — vertebrae — they believed also belonged to Nick. They notified Craig about the additional remains.

After picking up Nick’s box of remains, Craig opened the box to place a beanie, something Nick often wore, on his skull for burial. She noticed the vertebrae were missing, something which neither the mortuary nor sheriff’s office had informed her about. 

She contacted the sheriff’s office and was told Nick’s vertebrae had been lost somewhere between the evidentiary lab in Chico and the sheriff’s office. An internal investigation was ongoing, the sheriff’s office told her, to find out what happened to the bones. Craig said she thinks if she hadn’t opened the box of Nick’s remains, they never would have told her the vertebrae were missing. They still haven’t been located, and it’s not clear if they were ever DNA-tested to ensure they belonged to Nick.

“I’m sick and tired of figuring out how to show these guys how to do their job,” Craig said. “My frustration is the only thing that’s pushing me.” 

Dowdy did not answer specific questions from Shasta Scout about the missing vertebrae, instead responding vaguely that “continued investigative efforts will bring clarity to these concerns in due time.”  

Despite Nick being found, the challenge continues

As a member of the Pit River Tribe, Craig had specific needs and concerns when it came to handling Nick’s remains. She said her Tribe believes that the deceased need to be buried quickly in order to travel to the next life. Because she wasn’t allowed to pick up Nick’s remains until this past May, more than a year after they were found, she worried that his spirit was stuck between here and the next life. This was another source of intense emotional distress. 

“There’s been nothing at all I can control during this whole thing,” she said. “That was kind of one of the things that I thought I could.” 

Noting his own tribal affiliation, Modoc Sheriff Dowdy said that he has approached the case with “great care and reverence” but did not explain why it took so long for Craig to get access to Nick’s remains for burial.

“Once specific Native American customs were brought to our attention,” Dowdy wrote, “we acted promptly and respectfully to ensure those traditions were honored.”

Nick’s cause of death still hasn’t been officially determined. For various reasons, Craig said she thinks her son was murdered, though law enforcement hasn’t shared any evidence to back that idea.

In late June, dissatisfied with the Modoc Sheriff’s Office’s prior efforts, Craig organized a grid search to try to look for more of Nick’s remains. About 20 people were involved, including family, members of the Pit River Tribe and the Modoc County Sheriff’s Office. The search went on for around seven hours, and cadaver dogs were used to try to find human remains. A few bones were found, but they still need to be tested to see if they’re human. 

Amanda Geopfert, a member of the Madesi band of the Pit River Tribe who attended the search for additional bones, said the mishandling of Nick’s remains has reinforced her belief that law enforcement hasn’t done enough for his case. 

“I feel like every step of the way, the system has failed their family and failed Nick, even as far as losing his remains,” Geopfert said. 

Craig said she was glad to see the search happen because it reinforced her belief in the community’s continued support for Nick. 

“It’s awesome to see everybody still interested in the case, still wanting to know what happened, where he’s at,” Craig said. “That helps me. He hasn’t been forgotten, and it’s still an issue.” 

Craig’s process through grief and growth

Over the five years since Nick went missing, his case has taken over Craig’s life. But it’s also been a major learning experience for her, she said. Not only has she navigated records requests, DNA sampling and communication with officials and experts, but she’s also had to learn how to be there for her family in new ways. She said she’s been careful not to overshare information about certain details in Nick’s case to avoid traumatizing or disturbing family members. And she’s also had to learn to not act on emotions. 

“With this, I have to make sure that when my daughter calls, that I’m not freaking out and being all upset because I have to be there for her,” Craig said. “I have to be able to do stuff like this.”

She feels like the process has affected her very perception of time.

“It feels like it was just the other day that he first went missing, and sometimes it feels forever and ever,” she said. “I’ve never missed anything so much in my entire life.” 

Not long after Nick disappeared, Craig said she met with a psychic to learn more about his disappearance. Since then, she said Nick’s spirit visited her in the times she’s needed him most. The first time she saw him, she said he told her that if she wants to see him again, then she has to go where he’s at — a sign to her that he’s passed into the afterlife. 

She said seeing Nick’s spirit has been a helpful part of the mourning process. 

“At first, I didn’t understand why this had to be such a long, drawn-out process, why we’ve had to do everything we’ve done,” she said. “But I do know now that if I would have found everything the first couple weeks, it would have been too much for me.” 

A piece of a complex crisis

Indigenous people go missing at a higher rate than the general population and are more likely to be victims of violent crime. Northern California has been identified by researchers as an epicenter of the MMIP crisis, ranking among the top areas of the country for missing and murdered Indigenous people.

After attending several MMIP conferences over the years and doing in-depth research, Craig said she’s been able to observe up-close how deep and complex the crisis truly is. She considers herself among the lucky ones because she has at least some answers. 

“There’s families out there that can’t even file a missing persons report because law enforcement won’t listen to them, or they’re being threatened,” she said. “Remaining grateful and thankful for the stuff that I do have is something I gotta remind myself of constantly. There’s been a lot done in [Nick’s] name. He’s doing good things for people, and he’s not even here still.”

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This article was written by BenitoLink intern Ariana Rivera. Lea este artículo en español aquí.

San Benito County officials are working on a policy to prioritize local residents for affordable housing units. The county Planning Commission is still ironing out details before the proposal goes before the Board of Supervisors. 

The debate surrounding the local preference plan stems from the board’s attempt to define who qualifies as a resident and how to decide between multiple eligible residents. The planning commissioners indicated their ultimate goals were to preserve community ties, remedy displacement and mitigate potential gentrification.

On June 18, the commissioners unanimously agreed to continue the item to their August meeting when they are expected to discuss adding seniors as a preference, removing a one-year residency requirement and other criteria.

The local tenant preference is intended to fall under local affordable housing regulations—projects in which the county plays a part in development approval or developmental assistance, and projects with four or more attached or detached units. 

Tenant applicants who meet the requirements would be given priority when landlords are looking to fill available units.

County officials have been considering the preference policy since April. 

Suggestions that sparked debate at the June 18 meeting included the addition of a one-year residency requirement and the removal of the weighted point system associated with the list of preferences.

The commissioners, who are appointed by the county board, discussed the legal challenges that could come with the addition of a residency requirement because of the potential violation of federal and state fair housing laws, and the privileges and immunities clause outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

Assistant County Counsel Sean Cameron said that any privileges and immunities provided to people within a jurisdiction must apply to all, irrespective of how long they’ve lived within a jurisdiction.

Commissioner Robert Gibson said that not having the one-year residency requirement defeated the purpose of a local tenant preference.

“It’s called the local tenant preference, but if you’re a local after the first day I don’t see a purpose for it. It seems useless at that point,” Gibson said.

San Benito County is not alone in attempting to keep locals from being displaced by rising housing costs.

Senior Planner Stephanie Reck said that she spoke with Santa Cruz County staff, who mentioned a similar durational residency provision, and their legal counsel has flagged similar concerns. Reck said Santa Cruz staff said though they have a one-year durational preference policy for local tenants, it was adopted as a resolution, which expresses the city’s stance but is not legally binding like an ordinance.

The local plan gives preference to:

• Involuntarily displaced households affected by natural disasters or a “no fault” eviction 
• Neighborhood residents
• County residents
• Workers employed in the county
• Residents with high rent or household costs
• Residents with children in a local school district
• Agricultural employees working in the county

A housing applicant earns a “point” for each preference that is met. The applicant would then be a higher priority candidate for the next available housing unit.

During their April meeting, the commissioners expressed discomfort about assigning additional weight to individuals who satisfied multiple preferences. 

“We’ve been talking for years about local preference and all of a sudden then if you’re one of these [people who meet a preference] you’re extra special,” Gibson said at the meeting. “I don’t like that.”

At the commission’s June 18 meeting, Reck sought the board’s input on alternative scoring systems. 

Following his statement on the value of the preference point system, especially when deciding between two eligible county residents, Commissioner Richard Way withdrew his initial request to remove it. Much of the board shared Way’s sentiment.

San Benito High School District financial advisor Jeff Small, who works for Capital Public Financial Group, asked the commissioners to consider an exemption for housing intended for local school staff.

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A controversial federal plan to sell up to 3.3 million acres of public land in the West — including in northern California — has been removed from the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” making its way through Congress. But Senator Mike Lee (R–Utah), the one who proposed the land sell-off, has already announced plans to revive the effort. 

The original provision, a source of bipartisan disagreement, called for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to sell millions of acres of public land in 11 U.S. states in the West. It didn’t specify exactly which lands would be sold, but made more than 250 million acres eligible for sale. 

In California, more than 16 million acres of land could’ve been put up for sale, including major portions of the North State, such as land surrounding Mount Shasta, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Modoc National Forest and Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. 

The “Big Beautiful Bill” is currently in the Senate, where Republicans have a self-imposed deadline to send a final version to President Donald Trump by July 4. The public lands provision was removed on June 23, after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that aspect of the bill couldn’t move forward because it violated the Byrd Rule, which prevents extraneous provisions in budget reconciliation bills. 

In response, Senator Lee posted on the social media platform X that he is planning to make changes to the provision to allow it to be included under chamber rules, including removing all Forest Service land that would’ve been eligible for sale and significantly reducing the amount of BLM land included. He also hopes to propose limiting the scope of eligible land to only include public land within five miles of population centers. So far his statements are informal only. 

While this would spare much of the California land that would’ve been eligible for sale, it still puts at risk portions of land near Whiskeytown National Recreation Area which are BLM-owned. 

The back and forth over the proposed public lands sale has increased uncertainty for regional environmental organizations, including the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center. The group, which helped propel North State land known as Sáttítla towards monument status over the last year, was one of several to sign a letter to the Senate announcing opposition to the public lands provision. 

While the land surrounding Mount Shasta is not currently under threat, the local ecology center is still concerned about what new proposals might occur going forward. Nick Joslin, the center’s policy and advocacy director, said even though the land surrounding Mount Shasta will likely be safe if Lee’s proposed updates are incorporated, he’s still worried about the threat of any public lands going on sale. 

“Ultimately, public lands are there for the public to use, and the idea that they would somehow be privatized and sold off to fill budget gaps that are related to tax cuts for the wealthy should be concerning for anybody who enjoys using public lands,” Joslin said. 

Not only are these lands important for the public to enjoy, he emphasized, they’re also significant to the wildlife and ecosystems that depend on them. Joslin said intact landscapes are important for biodiversity, meaning that if the lands are privatized and major sections of trees are cleared out, then biodiversity would be threatened among animal and plant species. The increased threat of logging if the lands are sold off would also prevent trees from being able to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, he said. 

Joslin noted that concern has been voiced from both sides of the political spectrum, saying public lands are a “chance to see that we actually do agree on a lot of things.” 

“What’s alarming is seeing these decisions get put forth by an administration that seems clearly detached from what the public actually values in these lands,” he said. 

Among those who support the sale of the North State’s public land is Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a Republican whose district includes much of far northern California, including Shasta County. Speaking on the House floor on June 23 about the public lands provision, LaMalfa said the land that would’ve been sold in the original provision, which is only about half a percent of the total amount of land the federal government owns, is a very small portion, and that much of it is mismanaged. 

“Northern California, my area, we’re tired of the lands not being managed, going up in smoke, burning out the wildlife, burning out the watersheds,” LaMalfa said, “which means all that ash, and then later on erosion, ends up in our waterways, in our water supply.” 

He said it’s important for conversations to be had about what to do with the land owned by the government, adding that “people on the left” have been telling lies about the provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” in hopes of deliberately misleading people into thinking that entire national forests and mountain ranges are at risk of being sold. 

According to a map created by the Wilderness Society showing which lands were eligible for sale under the original provision, entire national forests and mountain ranges weren’t included, but major sections of them in some areas were. The map has since been taken down until “legislative language is clarified.” 

A revised version of the public lands provision has not yet been announced, but the Republicans’ self-imposed deadline to pass the bill is fast approaching. 

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A project 23 years in the making, the Yurok Tribe and Western Rivers Conservancy jointly achieved the largest land back deal in California’s history this May. With over 47,000 acres of ancestral lands, the area doubles Yurok’s land holdings. It includes critical habitat for salmon and other wildlife along the eastern side of the lower Klamath River watershed, just a few miles up from the mouth of the river.

“One of the biggest takeaways from all of this is that things can change if you put in the work, and these initiatives take time,” said Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Fisheries Department and a citizen of the Yurok Tribe. “This is a 23-year process to get this land returned. And so it took many, many people over those years working on this and fighting for it.”

Within the over 73 square miles of land along the lower Klamath River, the Yurok Tribe will now be permanent managers, focusing on ecosystem health for fish, wildlife and the broader forest. 

In 2002, the potential to buy 47,907 acres along the lower Klamath River and Blue Creek from Green Diamond Resource Company opened up, according to Nelson Mathews, president of Western Rivers Conservancy. By 2009, Western Rivers Conservancy and the Yurok Tribe teamed up to purchase the land.

Today, 14,790 acres of that area are protected as Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary, providing critical cold water habitat for migrating salmon and steelhead. This is particularly important following the removal of the Klamath dams as the salmon begin to find their way back to historic spawning habitat in the upper river. The other 32,307 acres comprise the Yurok Tribal Community Forest, managed with sustainable forestry practices. 

“One of the really special things I think about this land being passed back to tribal management, which it never should have been taken from, is that I know that we are managing and restoring far beyond the human scope of understanding,” said Tianna Williams-Claussen, director of the Yurok Tribe Wildlife Department, and a citizen of the Yurok Tribe, from the village of Wehl-kwew’. “This is not something done for humanity. This is something that’s done for the world, for all of our wildlife and fisheries communities.”

Western Rivers Conservancy paid $56 million for the property and transferred $3.3 million generated from carbon credits to the Yurok Tribe, according to a press release, with overall project costs totaling $70 million. Western Rivers Conservancy cobbled together funding through private capital, loans, tax credits and carbon credit sales.

The Yurok Tribe is now full manager of the property.

“This project exemplifies the power of partnership, showcasing how conservation efforts and the land back movement can come together to benefit the rivers, fish, wildlife and people of an entire landscape,” said Mathews, in a press release. “After more than 20 years of close collaboration with the Yurok Tribe, we have together achieved this magnificent conservation success while ensuring these lands and waters are in the hands of those most deeply committed to their future health and sustainable use.”

The land returned to the Yurok Tribe includes 25 miles of the mainstem river and all nine miles of Blue Creek. Blue Creek provides critical habitat for fish including coho salmon, fall and spring chinook, winter steelhead, pacific lamprey and green sturgeon. The forested area, consisting of redwoods and mixed conifers, is also home to key wildlife, including the Humboldt marten, marbled murrelet and Northern spotted owl.

For Williams-Claussen, this land being returned to her people feels particularly impactful. She grew up along the river and in the forests. Though she grew up fishing, she has seen the river degrade so much that she can’t take her own daughter fishing because she fears that the river can’t support it.

Williams-Claussen hopes that with the undamming of the Klamath River and this land return that will be focused on restoration, one day her and her daughter will be able to fish in their ancestral homelands once more. 

“Even though the lands were taken from us through various ways, we never lost that connection, and we never ceded our obligation to be caretakers for the land, to live in reciprocity with it, both caretaking and then receiving the abundance from the lands itself,” Williams-Claussen said. “And so it’s a weird way to live estranged from something that is so integral to your heart and your well-being, to not have access to it, to not be able to take care of it. And receiving these lands back is a big step towards repairing that damage.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect accurate spelling of Nelson Mathews’ surname.

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