Karuk Tribe Outlaws

by Karuk Tribal Member James Waddell

(HERE for KBC News Indian Table of Contents)

"Here is what I have to say…  of the Karuk Tribe of California…  Abbreviated…"

James A. Waddell has stated:

1.              On this day of May 5, 2009…

2.              I have given this statement, or a similar statement, in an Affidavit to Daniel Effman, another member of the Karuk Tribe ... to be entered into court…

3.              For my entire life, I have watched as outside forces have come to exercise undue influence over the Tribe …

My Background

4.              I am a descendant of the Titus family.  …

5.              I have worked as a local logger, a log scaler, a timber cruiser…

6.              Later… I worked as a history writer … outdoor photographer, fishing guide and part-time gold miner.  I still own land in Happy Camp, CA.  Due to (US Army) medical reasons I now live in … central California.

7.              In 1970, I was a member of the elected and first-organized Karuk Tribal Council, which included Dave Titus, Gary Hobbs, Josephine Aubrey, Hazel Davis and me, James A. Waddell.  … 

8.              … the Karuk Tribe had not yet been recognized by the federal government  

9.              All this is under question because Redick McKee’s treaty for the Karuks, Yuruks and Hupa people at Weitchepec, CA was named treaty “Q” of the lower and mid-Klamath Tribes in 1851.  …   

10.           Then treaty “R” was made to include the natives that were from Tim’s Peak north of Thompson Creek to the mid-County valleys and to include the… New River Shasta Hokan, Chimariko Hokan and Wintu Penutian.  …

11.           Treaty “R” was for the tribes of Klamath River at the mouth of the Scott River and of the Scott Valley and Shasta Valley tribes in 1851.  … All these Treaties of Redick McKee were made but never approved by the US Senate.  There is confusion in the lack of US Senate approval of these Treaties and the unsettled legal effects of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. 

Drug Grower Environmentalists as a Corrupting Influence

12.           Many of the problems for local loggers and timber industry people began when… “hippies”, moved into the areas of western Siskiyou County… 1970s.  … Marijuana hippies … ‘…BMW and a paper sack full of money.’” 

13.           Two of the leaders of the Salmon River group were the now-deceased Phil Brucker and his brother Peter “Petey” Brucker, who are reported to have spearheaded the formation of the Salmon River Restoration Council (SRRC) …

14.           Felice Pace of the Audubon Society was buddies with… the SRRC.  I and many others believed that SRRC was a front organization for the marijuana growers …

15.           Norman Goodwin and later Leaf Hillman were… a part of the marijuana growers’ organized group.  … 

16.           Norman Goodwin was in a drunken bar fight in Willow Creek… retrieved his handgun and shot and killed the man… 

17.           Norman Goodwin continued his hostile demands of him being a Shaman

18.           In about 1971, Norman Goodwin was a “False Shaman” …

19.           Gary Beck … had been elected Chairman of the Karuk Tribe of California … Beck had … a dishonorable discharge from the US Navy for drugs and gambling. 

20.           Gary Beck was owner of a tavern … when I witnessed a man of a group of motorcycle riders … Beck took the man’s black leather motorcycle glove … and went into the back room.  He came back with the glove…  The motorcycle man… handed Gary Beck a folded packet of what appeared to be money.  …

21.           In about the late 1980s… Gary Beck was arrested and sent to prison for stealing or embezzling at least $154,000 from the Karuk Tribe of California.  I talked to the contract auditor… he was sure that Gary Beck had stolen… $350,000.  … now dead.

22.           Norman Goodwin had become a friend of Leaf Hillman… Together they boasted of being the best marijuana growers in Orleans. 

23.           …1980s, Karuk Earl “Scrub” Aubrey, Jr. was… drug dealer…

24.           Within the Karuk Tribe of California, Mr. Alvin “Bud” Johnson and Mr. Gary Beck were leaders in developing a relationship with the environmentalists … the marijuana growers could help keep their marijuana gardens from being found.

25.           These timber sale obstructionists filed administrative appeals and lawsuits … the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, and Audubon Society.  …

26.           Timber production with loggers, timber cruisers and forest service workers posed the greatest threat of exposure of the marijuana growers, …

27.           The largest round of legal disruptions of Forest Service timber sales was made in the Salmon River Ranger District in the years of 1989 and 1990.  … 

28.           In attempt to resolve these 14 Appeals, … Mediation Action Group … 

29.           In that MAG were: Barbara Holder and Mike Lee of the Forest Service; Susie Van Kirk of the Sierra Club, Patti Shiferlee of the Wilderness Society, Felice Pace of the Audubon Society, Peter Brucker and David Jacque of the Salmon River Restoration Council for the Environmental Groups …; then Gearhart Bendix Owner of High Ridge Lumber Company, Dwain Cross Co-Owner of Croman Corporation and myself, James A. Waddell, as… representatives of the Timber Industry.  …

30.           After a series of meetings in Etna and meetings on the lands of disputed timber sales and five months of negotiations, an agreement of resolution was reached. 

31.           However, while the Forest Service and the timber industry people would not relinquish Forest Service rules or “Best Management Practices” … the Post-Agreement ground workers of the Forest Service changed their sale planning and lay-outs to be more in line with environmentalists’ wishes in spite of the MAG’s agreement.  …

32.           The Karuk Tribe of California … marijuana growers and the stopping of timber sales.  … members of the Karuk Tribe… no longer wanted to be associated with the Karuk management…   

A Climate of Lawlessness and Corruption Develops

33.           Law enforcement did very little about the marijuana growers, … 

34.           When I was trying to evaluate a timber sale in Dunn Creek of OR, I was threatened… by a trio of .357 Mag-armed pot growers…

35.           In 1975-1976, there was a feud between Herb Cook, Jr. and his uncle Antone Aubrey, which resulted in kidnapping and death to Herb’s brother Bill Cook’s little boy, and Herb being shot and killed at Somes Bar World Renewal Ceremony...

36.           …when a funeral services had been held for Herb Cook, Jr., I was threatened by Indians.  … Jeff Thom thought that I knew that he and these other Indians had an illegal business of growing marijuana, poaching deer and netting and selling salmon by the tons in refrigerated trucks to the cities.  Later Jeff Thom even threatened to kill his unwitting Wintu wife!  …to keep her silent…

37.           In Grave Creek of the Rogue River … I was harshly confronted by a… man… He told me “Do not go further up this road…  You might get shot.”

38.           While I made my appraisal on that forty acres, three well-spaced rifle shots were fired uphill in my direction.  … marijuana gardens… busted.

39.           In Humboldt County… a booby-trapped marijuana garden of the forest east of Eureka, CA had shotgun-blasted the legs of a timber cruiser/appraiser. 

40.           … Salmon River area, I was evaluating standing timber when as I walked around … I had walked into scattered-out plants of a garden of marijuana plants with drip nozzles.  … North Fork of Salmon like Olson Creek, Big Creek, and on the South Fork of the Salmon River in Methodist Creek and Sign Creek. 

41.           Other locally-known and locally-discussed sites of marijuana gardens over the last 35 years were at the “Marijuana Gardens” at the Turner Mine … on Seiad Creek… on Huckleberry Mountain… at Horse Creek… Beaver Creek in the news… and on the…land adjacent to our Waddell Homestead.

42.           On Deadman Point in the 1990s, at elevation 3,400, a marijuana garden had been discovered.  … in further examination found a bomb buried…

43.           … the marijuana growers had taken in … local Forest Service persons…   

44.           In the 1980s, Forest Service employee Bier was believed to have had a Pot-garden in China Gulch.  … man named Olson was suspected and arrested for growing pot on Forest Service land adjacent to his land at Methodist Creek. 

45.           Some Siskiyou County citizens have told of believing that “cops” did not seem to interfere with the marijuana growers.  …   

46.           I was asked by Charles “Doc” Hall, a contract pilot for firefighter bombers of borate drops, “Did you report this to the cops?”  I said that I had reported such before, but nothing was done.  …   

47.           … I bought Walt Robinson’s logs in the 1980s, just before his being arrested as FS cop… for stealing confiscated Pot!   

48.           When Charley Byrd was campaigning for Siskiyou County Sheriff, Jim Bley and I asked him if he would try to get rid of marijuana growers in the forest, and the corruption in the Karuk Tribe and in the cop-shop.  He said that he would …

The Karuk Tribes Anti-Logging Efforts Harm the Community

49.           In my opinion the Karuk Tribe has pursued policies that are damaging to the interests of Tribal members and other working citizens of Northern California.  … 

50.           Because Happy Camp is dominated by Forest Service land (more than 99% of the local acreage…), once the environmentalists and Karuk Tribe had halted timber sales, workers had to leave town to find jobs.  Karuk and non-Karuk people…

51.           Happy Camp’s population has fallen from 3,000 in the 1980s to an estimated 840 by 1997. 

52.           Many “real” members of the Karuk people of the Klamath River did not like these anti-human developments and chose to stay away from Gary Beck, Bud Johnson and the greedy members of the Karuk Tribal Council.  …

How Tribal Leadership Avoids Accountability

53.           Over the years, Karuk Tribal policies have changed to provide great pay to Tribal Council members.  … Now the chairman get over $60,000…

54.           While there are 3,508 registered Tribal members, the identities of these members are confidential …

55.            The Tribe also changed its election policies to require anyone wishing to campaign for tribal chairperson, vice-chairperson or tribal council members to live within 100 miles of Karuk Territory… Karuk elections are fixed…

56.           This small group, of “So-Called” Karuks of the “Karuk Tribe of California”, does not have the permission of any majority of the tribal members…

57.           Nor do these money-gathering members have all Karuk bloodlines, because the Native Americans of the Klamath Mountain Province have used a tradition of exogamy, marrying outside of their clan groups, for many centuries.  … 

58.           The current Karuk Tribal leadership also appears to be fostering a policy of racism.  “…running you white-faces outa town”.  …

The Karuk Tribe and Salmon Netting

59.           In the early 1970s, I assisted Herb Cook, Jr. and Earl “Scrub” Aubrey, Jr. with Herb’s dip-netting of salmon at Ishi Pishi Falls.  Herb did the netting.  Scrub did the clubbing to kill the salmon.  … Denis Ambersisni and I did the gutting and packing. Herb and Scrub then delivered the Salmon to the elderly and needy people.  …   

60.           The current Karuk Tribal dip-netting harvest rarely ever serves any historic purpose of feeding the elderly and the needy; … the salmon that are sold in roadside stands throughout northern California.

61.           The dip-netting of salmon at the Ishi-Pishi Falls has been allowed to be done by Karuk people in DF&G rules, but such was never a part of any treaty.  …

62.           Claims by self-proclaimed Tribal spokespersons such as Mr. Leaf Hillman and the Karuk Tribal Council’s hired interloper Mr. Craig Tucker, that Karuk Tribal members and Indian children are starving because “the salmon are all gone” are false. Most Tribal members of the Karuk, Yuruk and Hupa tribes purchase beef, pork, bread, vegetables and everything else, including salmon, at supermarkets … like everybody else. 

63.           The Karuk Tribe of California got the media to help them proclaim that the salmon were almost all gone in early 1988.  But the runs of salmon in summer and fall of 1988 were greatly the highest in total numbers ever recorded.  I was there!  …

64.           These Karuk Tribe of California-led political actions against loggers, gold miners, farmers and Klamath dams are not really about saving salmon.  Indians kill and sell tens of thousands of salmon per year? 

65.           If anybody wanted to save salmon they would seek slowdowns on other fish killers.  They would not get rid of a fish hatchery …

66.           I can remember when a lady born in 1909, of Thompson Creek of the Klamath River, had written a Letter to government years ago… that the Fish Ducks were too thick and eating up thousands of fish.  … government did nothing!

67.           A significant problem in salmon management is the widespread gillnetting of salmon by the lower Klamath River Tribes of Karuk, Yuruk, and Hupa tribal people primarily.  There seems to be no control… while 40,000 to 80,000 salmon are killed!

68.           In 2008, in a letter to Klamath Basin Crisis website, Karuk Rick Crocker of Happy Camp, CA made a report of these Indian-gill-netters… “… told me and bragged… if they are allowed 40,000 salmon, they will take 60,000 or 80,000 … 

69.           The best-known recent political actions of the Karuk Tribe of California are the continued attempts to halt the little private businesses of gold dredge miners and the falsely proclaimed need to remove the Klamath River dams.  … 

70.           The only salmon fish that were ever known to be in the Klamath Falls area were planted there and now are being told of as being illegal under the Endangered Species Act because the salmon were not native to these waters and thereby created unnatural competition for the real native fish.

71.           It has always been obvious to me that the Karuk Tribal leadership’s war against suction dredge mining had nothing to do with protecting fish, and everything to do with protecting marijuana growers.  …

72.           AB 1032 was by CA Assembly woman Lois Wolk of the Davis and Vacaville area and had done so in spite of existing laws, … In recent days, I read that Patricia Wiggins of the north central CA coastal counties has made the same kind of legislative bill in the CA Senate to do what the Karuk Tribe of California couldn’t do in three tries in court and the prior legislative bill by Ms. Wolk.

A Long History of Corrupt Karuk Tribe Leaders

73.           For years the Karuk Tribe of California had submitted grant applications in which the Karuk grant writers state that the Karuk Tribe of California is a “…drug free and alcohol free” organization.  That is false.  … 

74.           Mr. Leaf Grant Hillman, until very recently a member of the Karuk Tribal Council (currently suspended on account of an arrest for meth possession) has bragged repeatedly in the past about his prowess as a Pot Grower.  …   

75.           Leaf Hillman… had arrogantly ignored his responsibility… 

76.           Goodwin and Hillman have attempted to portray themselves as Tribal “Shamans,” but I say that they are “False Shamans” by being outlaws and never having been obedient, long-term students of older Shamen.  …   

77.           I was at the Karuk Department of Natural Resources for a meeting… 

78.           Leaf Hillman… post interview … for Karuk Land Surveyor… by telephone, offered me a job … for $4.15 per hour … just to get rid of me!

79.           A cousin of mine, Ms. Derry, was on the Tribal Council earlier in this decade, when she and Mr. Frank Wood attempted to halt tribal council corruption.  Ms. Derry was harassed with threats against her, her family and children, …   

80.           Mr. Robert Goodwin was a Councilman (no relation to Norman Goodwin, now gone I understand), who misused his position as a California Highway patrolman to harass Ms. Derry’s children in school.  …

81.           Mr. Robert Goodwin and the Karuk Tribal Council attempted to make a hostile “Take-Over” of the Happy Camp Health Clinic in 2007.  …

82.           Mr. Alvis “Bud” Johnson is an ally of Mr. Hillman and the Tribal council, and has also been verbally abusive to Tribal employees…   

83.           Mr. Arch Super, the current Tribal Chairman, is a locally known transvestite who did so in public… Mr. Super has not tried to control the outlaw gang…   

84.           It has been discussed in many places that Indian Tribes, Labor Unions and other political groups can give large amounts of money to legislators…

85.           Author, research writer and Pioneer Press reporter Barry Clausen told in one of his 2007 columns, “With luck the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will review the information supplied relative to the Karuk Tribal Council and the allegations of ‘corruption.”  As of yet the BIA has done nothing…

86.           In another letter…  “From Barry R. Clausen – August 2007, ‘In My Opinion piece titled ‘Karuk Intimidation Game,” …by the present Tribal leadership.

87.           In or about the early or mid-1990s, Karuk Enrollment Officer Harvey Shinar was fired from this Karuk Tribe of California job for being drunk in public…

88.           In the 1990s, Sue Burcell was hired as Chief-of-Staff by the Karuk Tribal Council.  … I told her… all Karuk Members were equal in importance… copies of financial reports…  that should be available.   I was harshly told by Sue Burcell “No!  The financial reports belong to the Tribal Council.” 

89.           Later Sue Burcell was having a late night beer… at the Woodsman Bar…  Sue Burcell crashed her car into Luther Gulch… Sue Burcell was still drunk and very profane… The cops also reported that Sue Burcell had a very large amount of cash money scattered around on the back seat of her car.  Sue Burcell was fired… 

90.           In about 2002, a Karuk Newsletter had a report that Sue Burcell was a “Hired Consultant” for the Karuk Tribe of California. 

91.           … local talk and numerous newspaper articles tell of Karuk Leaf Grant Hillman’s 2007 arrest for assault and battery, assault and battery with intent to do great bodily harm, assault and battery in the presence of his own little children, onto the mother of these children… that Leaf Hillman used Karuk money to put up his $35,000 bail…

92.           … Leaf Grant Hillman was arrested in Jackson County Oregon for possession of methamphetamines…  

93.           In April 2009, I found out that the District Attorney’s office and the court of Judge Karen Dixon made a really poor judgment agreement to allow Leaf Grant Hillman to “…attend a Karuk Anger Management Course inside of the Karuk Tribe…”  

94.           Leaf Hillman is not a “…one time outlaw… who lost control in anger!” 

95.           Tom Waddell wrote a letter to Tribal Chairman Arch super… that Leaf Hillman should be fired…

96.           Arch Super’s return letter just tells of Leaf Hillman being suspended as tribal vice-chairman “…pending the outcome of these matters.”  …

97.           Get rid of Leaf Hillman… and get rid of Craig Tucker too! 

98.           Leaf Grant Hillman’s son Grant Ike Hillman, was arrested for marijuana use, marijuana possession and for possession of other drugs in a Karuk vehicle… 2007.

Conclusion

99.           In a letter to the California and Oregon people by way of the www.klamathbasincrisis.org website in 2008 by me…  “As I have said, for the last 30-35 years about Pot Growers, money gangsters, and terrorists' threats… isn't anybody going to do anything?  Ever?” 

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James A. Waddell