![]() There were problems: A wildfire gave PG&E an excuse to clear-cut sacred sites and glean a little more profit before getting out. They tackled on-the-ground projects - building cedar fences to protect gravesites and designing an interpretive kiosk, all as directed by a PG&E-appointed committee, in order to prove their ability to be good stewards on land they’d already tended for centuries. They formed a nonprofit consortium, weaseled their way into meetings and recruited allies. Like other outsiders, company representatives dismissed the Maidu as a loose band, a tribe without a central government and - until now - without a land base. But PG&E did not consider the Mountain Maidu potential stewards. It had been a long saga: A judge in the early aughts, in the wake of the Enron scandal, ordered the utility to relinquish thousands of acres to conservation stewards. After more than a decade of trying, the Mountain Maidu, a small and federally unrecognized tribe, had reclaimed title to Humbug Valley from Pacific Gas & Electric Company. Which by the looks of it would be no easy task. As the new executive director of the Maidu Summit Consortium, one of the last remaining speakers of the Maidu language, and the youngest son of elder, author and activist Beverly Ogle, he was in charge of wrangling this lively crowd. Now, six months later, Ken held a passel of responsibilities. They crossed with ease and turned around to return as the sun glowed gauzy on a ridge-top fringe of conifers, the few still standing. The log was weathered gray, the creek shallow, the kids wildly exuberant. He placed the camera and his car keys in the duff beneath a ponderosa pine, and set off to lead the way. Ken tossed an expensive camera over one shoulder, then reconsidered. A healing ceremony for land damaged by logging in Humbug Valley, a 4,500-foot-elevation valley sacred to the Mountain Maidu, had just concluded. The last time I’d seen Ken, he’d been balancing barefoot across a log over Yellow Creek with his two young kids in tow. He greeted me, as he’d greeted everyone, with a firm handshake and a wide boyish grin, and said he had a good story to tell. Ken Holbrook approached, wearing a crisp white shirt, gray jeans and a red tie, the only tie in the room. Outside, kids clambered on boulders, adults smoked a courteous distance from the door, and dogs lounged in the shade. ![]() We were high in the Northern Sierra, in the shadow of Mount Lassen, and the California sun, even in November, shone yellow through picture windows. A potluck table held salad and store-bought sheet cakes, and a crockpot full of venison stew sat atop a counter crowded with small-sized Dixie cups - the kind that hold mouthwash at the dentist or grape juice in some church communion ceremonies - filled with what looked like pudding. Several young men, heavyset with braids and ball caps and baggy jeans, held squirming kids while a group of women set up drums in a circle. Folding chairs clattered, and conversations echoed off high ceilings.
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