Isolated Tribe Struggles Without Phones, Power

WEITCHPEC, Calif. —  On her occasional trips to Washington, Yurok tribal Chairwoman Sue Masten hears the same wearisome question from federal officials: So, how are you surviving those California power blackouts?

Her answer shocks them: “The Yurok people would love the luxury of a temporary power outage,” Masten says. “Because most of our reservation exists without either electricity or telephones.”

This isolated swath of Indian land tucked behind California’s Redwood Curtain, 350 miles north of San Francisco, is a place both Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison forgot. Here amid a landscape of rolling old-growth forest, 1,500 native Yuroks labor mostly as sustenance fishermen, catching Coho salmon along the graceful sweep of the Klamath River.

Just hours away from the Silicon Valley--America’s symbol of technological savvy--many Yuroks continue an arduous life fashioned from an earlier century.

Nearly half of the reservation’s 500 homes exist without the simplest phone or electric service. Many families use kerosene lamps and gas-powered generators for light and heat--relying on radio phones and citizens band radios to keep in rudimentary contact with the outside world.

Here on “the Rez,” as most residents call it, some students do their homework by the glow of a flashlight. Many have only the dimmest concept of the World Wide Web because there are no phone lines to connect classroom computers to the Internet.

On this finger-shaped reservation that runs 47 miles northward from the confluence of the Klamath and Trinity rivers, elderly residents such as Lorraine Wilder resort to wood-burning stoves when their unreliable generators fail them on cold winter nights.

In the Yurok language, no word has evolved for electricity, elders say, because there has never been a need for one.

This lack of modern convenience may have even cost lives. A 5-year-old boy drowned while swimming in the Klamath River earlier this month, and tribal elders said the boy might have been saved if they’d had a reliable land-based telephone to summon help.

“We couldn’t get the doctors here in time,” says tribal Vice Chairman Howard “Louie” McConnell. “And now a baby child is gone.”

In recent months, the Yuroks have made strides to join the modern world. They successfully petitioned the state Public Utilities Commission to approve more phone service for a handful of households, and the tribe is devising ways to raise the $8 million needed to extend electricity to the entire reservation.

But with an annual budget of just $14 million--almost entirely the product of federal grants--tribal leaders cannot afford the matching funds needed for additional government grants. The tribe’s valuable stock of redwoods has been logged out. And with this year’s drought, even the salmon are in short supply.

“People should know--we’re living under Third World conditions here,” says Masten. “We feel like a forgotten tribe.”

Few Places in State Endure More Hardship

Across California, 535,000 homes still have no telephone service, many of them in remote unincorporated areas, according to the state Department of Finance and data from the 2000 census.

About 83,000 homes statewide lacked any type of fuel--either gas or electric, according to the 1990 census, the last year for which such information is available.

But few places--even among the 102 Indian reservations scattered across the state--endure more hardship than the Yuroks.

More than 85% of them live below the national poverty level, surviving on a median household income of $8,000 a year. Unemployment hovers at 80%.

Many reservation roads are little more than gravel tracks. California 169, the main paved artery, is a narrow one-lane thoroughfare with numerous blind curves where residents tangle with lumbering logging trucks.

Masten says the real losers of this primitive reservation life are the tribe’s schoolchildren, most of whom find themselves ill-prepared for college.

“In this technological era, our kids are falling behind--they can’t compete without phones and electricity,” she says. “The so-called Digital Divide is wider here than any other place in California.”

Standing just outside the town of Weitchpec, which in Yurok means “where two mighty rivers meet,” McConnell gazes up at what he calls the last power pole--the point where electric officials stopped their work more than 20 years ago.

The former long-distance trucker gestures toward the forest, saying that all the homes beyond the pole are on their own when it comes to phones and electricity. And that makes him angry.

“Why didn’t they keep going?” he says of power officials. “There’s all kinds of isolated places in this state with electricity. Why not here? Because this is a reservation? Were they afraid we didn’t have the money? Maybe they thought that just because we’re Indians, we could build campfires.”

Extending Power Lines, Adding Phone Service

Electric officials say they have been working with the tribe to extend the power lines for another five miles. That would give service to 48 additional homes but still leave some 200 homes without power. But that project has been slowed by disagreement among tribal leaders as to where the power lines should run.

“We’re just waiting for word from the tribe,” says Staci Homrig, a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric.

In response to the tribe’s lobbying, the PUC this month required a local phone company to broaden its service to the reservation. But tribal officials say the victory was hollow. The PUC ruling affects only 35 homes and provides for a few pay phones.

The Yuroks are also counting on help from a bill recently introduced by Assemblywoman Virginia Strom-Martin (D-Duncans Mill). The measure would make state grants available to help unserved communities such as the Yurok reservation pay for the cost of infrastructure construction.

Meanwhile, the tribe seeks to raise the money to extend electrical service to its remaining homes.

Possibilities include opening a casino and even building a nuclear power plant. “Even if we build it,” McConnell says of the casino, “they might not come. We’re too isolated, even for gamblers.”

But not everyone on the reservation wants phones and electricity.

“I’ve lived in the city before, and I know what electricity is all about,” says 25-year-old Richard Myers II. “Flipping the switch for light was fun for a while. But pretty soon the novelty wears off.”

As she stands by the road holding a newborn puppy, 13-year-old Sally Boone admits she’s never surfed the Internet. And she doesn’t miss it one bit. Having utilities would only mean more people. “And we like our reservation just the way it is.”

For 23 years, Wilder has led a simple life without phone or power, staying fit by chasing the cows and deer from her backyard garden. Does she need a phone at her age?

“If you have a phone, people will just call you all the time to bother you,” she says stubbornly. “They can keep their telephones.”

But Dolores Reed wants both electricity and a phone. She says a telephone would provide a much-needed lifeline. She recalls the day her husband, who uses a wheelchair, fell on the floor of their riverside home. She was too weak to lift him and there was no one else around.

“All I could do was throw a blanket over him and wait the four hours until my son-in-law came home,” Reed says. “I had no phone to call for help, and I didn’t want to leave him alone. Those four hours seemed like days.”

Joy Muhleck, administrator for the reservation’s two elementary schools, says one is powered by a generator and the other has electricity. Both use radio phones. Still, state education officials don’t cut any slack when it comes to test scores and student achievement.

“They expect us to keep pace with the richer schools,” she says. “It’s like it’s our fault we don’t have electricity.”

Muhleck says many poorer students--whose parents can’t afford to burn kerosene lamps late into the night--do their homework by flashlight.

As a result, teachers have cut back on homework assignments and offer students time during class to complete their work.

“Still, this reservation often seems like the land before time,” Muhleck says. “Everything we do takes twice the effort and time.”

Since few families have phones, teachers who need to contact parents often must go to absurd lengths: They post notes outside the general store or at school bus stops. As a last resort, they’ll even tack them to roadside trees along California 169, hoping parents will spot them.

“We can’t use the radio phone for parent conferences because people listen in,” says Muhleck. “Like with those old party lines, no phone call is private. Eavesdropping on phone conversations provides sort of a tribal soap opera.”

Despite the odds against his people, McConnell makes a bold prediction. “I’ll see electricity here in my lifetime,” he says, standing beneath the last power pole along the highway. “You mark my words, we’ll have phone service and high-speed Internet lines. Just like regular people have.”