At this year’s Fall Celebration, EPIC will be honoring Priscilla Hunter and Polly Girvin with the Sempervirens Lifetime Achievement Award. Priscilla and Polly are longtime Tribal and environmental advocates who have left a lasting impact on the North Coast.
Priscilla Hunter is a member of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the proud mother of Michael and Melinda Hunter, and the grandmother of four grandkids and five great grandkids. As the matriarch of her Tribe her grandmother taught her to respect the land—its beauty, food, medicinal herbs, and spiritual connections and Priscilla has in turn passed these teachings onto her children.
When Priscilla was still a young child, the Army Corp of Engineers decided to construct a dam on the Russian River that would submerge her Tribe’s lands. On July 10, 1957, Congress enacted HR 6692 terminating the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians and the Army Corps of Engineers seized the Coyote Valley Rancheria land. The newly constructed “Coyote Valley Dam” formed Lake Mendocino and left her Tribe landless.
Over the coming decades, Priscilla’s elders worked hard to keep her Tribe together and resist termination. After almost 20 years of being “terminated” by the Federal Government, the Coyote Valley Band was restored in 1976 thanks to litigation by California Legal Services. After the restoration of her Tribe to federal recognition Priscilla was appointed Tribal Administrator and was responsible for building the roads, homes and tribal office on the reservation as well as crafting the formative constitutional documents and resolutions establishing the Tribal government. She also established a Native American tribal college satellite branch on the reservation from which her mom obtained an AA degree. One of the tasks at this time, which she viewed as most important, was reintroducing traditional dance and songs to the tribal youth. Priscilla has long been an advocate for Native American cultural preservation and for the protection of ancestral sacred sites. She served through the administrations of four state governors as an appointed member of the Native American Heritage Commission.
Priscilla, after serving as Tribal Administrator, became the Chairperson of her Tribe. During her tenure as Tribal Chairwoman, an education center and gym with an Olympic size pool were built and a Tribal Environmental Protection Agency was established, in which tribal youth each summer participate in environmental protection projects on their tribal land. While Tribal Chairwoman, she also played a key role in a statewide campaign to advance the economic wellbeing of all California Tribes. She served as the Chair of the Legislative Committee of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association on which she advocated for the unique needs of the smaller, rural Tribes of Northern California and helped strategize the course of two statewide initiatives culminating in an amendment to the State Constitution that enabled the development of casinos on tribal lands. Today, the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians has restored itself as a thriving, economically self-sufficient Indian nation dedicated to taking stands to enhance tribal sovereignty and preserve and protect their cultural heritage and the environment.
Priscilla has long worked with environmental organizations and engaged in government to government consultations with federal and state agencies to protect her people’s sacred landscapes and cultural resources, both archaeological and biological. When EPIC filed the lawsuit EPIC v Johnson in order to protect Sally Bell Grove, Priscilla acted as a co-plaintiff while she was a Board member of the International Indian Treaty Council. The lawsuit opened the door for the eventual return of 3,845 acres of aboriginal Sinkyone land to local tribal control and stewardship. Priscilla helped found the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a consortium of ten Northern California Tribes which, in 1997, established the first-ever InterTribal “Wilderness”. Priscilla has been the Chairwoman of this organization from its inception to present. Today, the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council works to protect and revitalize this critical part of Sinkyone territory through the reintroduction of tribal members’ cultural-ecological stewardship and traditional land uses. They have placed a wilderness easement on the land, permanently protecting it from development and commercial logging. The entire forest is simply being allowed to heal itself.
Polly Girvin, is a proud Chicana woman who has dedicated her life to helping people and protecting the environment. She graduated from UC Berkeley and Columbia Law and uses her degrees to assist the most vulnerable. Polly has been fighting for civil rights since a teen when she participated as a student leader in the fight to integrate the schools of Berkeley as the President of the Berkeley Youth Chapter of the NAACP and organized a door-to-door Get Out The Vote canvassing campaign in East Oakland for the presidential primary of Bobby Kennedy. She then went on to be a political consultant in a US Senatorial, a New York Gubernatorial, and a Venezuelan presidential campaign. Later, as a Human Rights Fellow at Columbia Law School she was honored to once again work with the NAACP on a national equal protection challenge to the death penalty. After graduating from law school, she went on to work with California Indian Legal Service in Eureka where she developed a love for the redwoods and spent the Reagan years at the Institute for the Development of Indian Law in D.C. shaping federal and international policy on Indian Self Determination, treaty and sovereignty rights.
Thereafter, Polly moved to Mendocino where she worked as an attorney who helped women out of abusive relationships. Polly also participated in many Earth First! actions, including Redwood Summer. She has been arrested many times for the trees and deeply believes in the power of nonviolent direct action to effect social change. This firm belief of hers is rooted in the civil rights and anti-war activism of her youth in which she was able to meet both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the former who shaped her commitment to non-violence and the latter of whom has served as her role model for courage ever since. It was during a rally against the first Gulf War held in Boonville, California that Polly first met Priscilla.
Polly thereafter taught classes at the reservation as part of a satellite branch of DQ University, one of the first ever Tribal Universities in the United States. Together, Polly and Priscilla then travelled to Chiapas, Mexico to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Zapatistas during their revolution against the Mexican government. Upon their return from Chiapas, Polly served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Congress’ Advisory Council on California Indian Policy on which Priscilla served as a tribally elected and Secretary of Interior appointed representative for Northern California Tribes. This federal commission’s task was to recommend policy solutions to the US government regarding the status issues facing California’s terminated, unrecognized, and federally recognized Tribes.
Since then, Polly and Priscilla have been inseparable and have participated in many, many campaigns including travelling the state with Jesse Jackson and tribal leaders to fight against the elimination of affirmative action in the UC University system. They also recently joined with Mendocino County environmentalists in a campaign to protect both the wetlands and many ancestral sacred sites during the construction of the Caltrans Willits Bypass Project. Out of this collaboration, an affinity group of environmental justice advocates, SIEJ (Social, Indigenous and Environmental Justice) was formed in which they both continue to be active members.
Priscilla and Polly have both lived incredible lives and the previous paragraphs only cover a small fraction of their important work. And their work continues! Polly and Priscilla have both been pivotal in the fight to preserve Jackson Demonstration State Forest. EPIC is so happy that Polly and Priscilla will be attending our event and we are excited to honor them both for their achievements. Please join us on October 8th at EPIC's 45th AnnualFall Celebration!