Kumeyaay - The Campo Comes to Life
By : Jessica Maxwell
May-June 1995 AUDUBON,
A California tribe reclaims its ruined lands and its ancient heritage.
When the Spanish first saw the meadows of the mountain valleys east of what we now call San Diego, they pronounced them "excellent pasture." They assumed them to be natural and, being European herdsmen, considered them prime grazing land. They did not recognize the mindful cultivation that had produced these grasslands century after century for thousands of years: controlled burns, broadcast reseeding, transplanting, groundwater enhancement, and erosion control. The early invaders were, in fact, gazing upon the ancient grainfields of the indigenous Kumeyaay Indians, some of the earliest—and best—environmental managers in North America.
The original territory of the Kumeyaay (pronounced "KOO-mee-eye") stretched from the Pacific edge of southwest California all the way inland to what is now Mexicali, Mexico. Once the Spanish built the San Diego mission in 1768, they followed old Kumeyaay trails east and began to turn their sheep and cattle onto the Kumeyaay grainfields. Over the next 100 years settlers took more and more Kumeyaay land, and gold prospectors simply murdered any Indians living on possible claim sites.
Some 2,500 descendants of the Kumeyaay reside on a dozen reservations within San Diego County. (Another 1,000 reside on six reservations, or ejidos, in Mexico, just across the border.) Some 300 California Kumeyaay now Iive on 16,000 acres of woefully overgrazed chaparral and chemise 45 highway miles east of San Diego proper, on the Campo (after the Spanish word for countryside) Indian Reservation. In 1990 tribal leaders formed the Campo Environmental Protection Agency and begin to bring their land back, an example of the nationwide movement of tribal environmental management under a new system created by Native American leaders within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
"Historically, the United States' policies toward the tribes and their lands were destructive," explained Terry Williams, newly appointed director of the first American Indian Environmental Office within the EPA and a member of the Tulalip Tribe of Washington State. "Even after the creation of the reservations, treaties continued to be broken and our lands were sold off or stolen outright. Because of this, proper care of tribal lands by U.S. agencies was unheard?of."
In the early 1900s, for instance, forested tribal lands were often contracted out to off?reservation foresters, who would sell the timber) pay the tribes minimal fees if any, and never replant. Historically, both federal agencies and local governments viewed' reservation lands as convenient sites for landfills, even nuclear?waste dumps.
"In the late forties and fifties, some of the tribes started fighting back," Williams said. "They began to demand self?government, which is how it was supposed to have been from the beginning. By treaty decree, tribes are sovereign governments."
In the 1960s tribal leaders began pushing hard for education, health care, jobs, and the resources to manage their own lands. But when the EPA was created, in 1972, the tribes were overlooked.
"So here we are, twenty?five years later," said Williams, "and thanks to Carol Browner, the EPA administrator who created the American Indian Environmental Office, we're just now getting through the door."
Mike Connolly is the director and, despite his modesty, clearly the visionary of the Campo EPA, better known as CEPA. After a successful 12 year career as an aerospace engineer with Rockwell International, Northrop, and Rohr Industries, Connolly moved in 1986, to the Campo Reservation. homeland of his mother, a full-blooded Campo Indian. In 1990 he agreed to head up the fledgling CEPA, taking a 50 percent pay cut to do it. Funded by the tribe's general budget, grants from the U.S. EPA, developers' fees, fines, and donations, Connolly and CEPA's six other staff members have launched oak- and riparian?restoration projects to enhance native species, control erosion, manage ranges and protect wellheads, streamwater, and groundwater. They also maintain an education program that targets Campo Children.
Connolly agreed to shuttle me and my seven?year?old nephew, Jesse, to the reservation for a look at CEPA's actvities. He drove and talked as he seems to do everything—fast. "The chaparral forest has been cut down," Connolly said as we drove east on Intersrate 8 "They replanted with Canary Island pines and eucalyptus from Australia, which they planned to use for railroad ties, but the twisted grain was unsuitable.
"Look up there," he directed Jesse, "up on the Laguna Hills. Se the pine, That's native. But most of this is chemise, which is a woody plant that grows four to six feet tall."
Jesse nodded, but being an amphibian specialist, he was far more interested in the main reason we had come: to witness CEPA's recently created wetland and its new year?round creek. He suffered politely through Connolly's description of the original valleys ("They used to be solid oak—what you see out there now are European plants called filaree"), raised an eyebrow at the murderous activities of the forty?niners ("They were supported by the government they didn't even have to pay tor the bullets"), then looked out the window with genuine relief when Connolly finally anpounced, "Now we're on Campo”.
The Campo Reservation connsists of two disconnected properties equaling 25 square miles, four of which drain into the Salton Sea basin; the rest dlrain into the Tijuana River basin, in Baja California. European land?use practices did the Campo Reservation no favors. Early homesteaders cut down many of the old oaks for firewood and to clear the terrain for grazing, after which they habitually planted the European grasses with which they were familiar.
Cows trampled and denuded stream banks so badly that erosion has dropped some streams far below their original levels. Bovine feeding habits have decimated indigenous grasses and destroyed wetlands by killing off willows and cottonwoods, whose water?binding root systems are critical to riparian health.
Some of the brittle beauty of the high chaparral country remains. Fans and bolls of dusty grasses soften the look of the place. Rock outcroppings push bald spots into the dark?green coverture of the hills. A few roads cut bleached scars here and there, and even in winter, clouds hang in the turquoise sky like desiccated bones. But mostly what Connolly and his staff inherited was a pillaged expanse of weathered granite that looks little like the fecund Kumeyaay grasslands the Spanish so admired. Mercifully, there are few buildings, so this semiarid desert runs unbroken for miles.
After pointing out the Campo sand mine, the Campo weather starion, and the Campo EPA nursery; where scores of fledgling native plants thrive, Connolly escorted us into the CEPA offices. They are small, packed with desks, computers, and bookshelves that threaten to break under the weight of government documents, academic studies, and videos with names like "Riparian Enhancement Teams." A floor?to?ceiling magazine rack offers a smorgasbord of eco?publications—Garbage magazine, Environmental Adviser, even Hazardous Waste News. The Campo EPA, it was clear, meant business.
"Maria brought in some baskets," Connolly said. Maria Dyche is the CEPA secretary of CEPA and chair of its board of commissioners. Her baskets are things of beauty, elegantly patterned and nearly flat, with a slight lip for winnowing acorns. "They were made by my greatgrandmother' she explained. "Then my grandmother used them: then they were passed on to me." The Kumeyaav were famous for their baskets. The finest were woven of an indigenous plant called deer grass, one of the many wiped out years ago by cattle. "That's one of the things we're bringing back 'said Connolly.
"The main reason we're restoring our land is to preserve our culture. Dyche explained. "It's to preserve the past for future generations, because it was taken away from us—we didn't have a choice."
We stood, finally, on the cusp of Campo's impressive new wetland, a few minutes' drive from the CEPA offices. At its heart a strong, small creek ran full tilt. "This used to be just a dry ditch," said Connolly, "a gully that flowed a couple of weeks a year after a heavy rain. Now it's a perennial stream.
It's been running steady for two years." Even in winter, red?winged blackbirds darted in and out of the nearby willows.
"We got the last cow off our land last week," Connolly said with both relief and pride. "The willows coming up here are all natural."
A cottontail rabbit started and dashed to the left, leading my eye to a disturbing sight: my nephew. covered in mud.
"I fell in he announced, proving with astounding personal sogginess the efficacy of CEPA's riparian?restoration efforts.
I had no idea what to do with his muddy clothes. and he looked embarrassed. Suddenly he brightened. "My dad put some plastic bags in my suitcase in case something like this happened he said. Connolly's laughter made his ponytail bounce against the back of his black leather jacket.
We walked over to see Campo Creek proper. "It flows into Mexico Connolly said as we walked, "then back into the United States for one?sixteenth of a mile; then it hooks into the Tijuana River."
Erosion had sunk Campo Creek a good 20 feet below its original level. On the way back to the car, just a few yards from the creek. Connolly stopped to show us an oddity: A baby oak, maybe three feet high. was thriving beneath a thicket of branches provided by a limb that had broken off of its 100?year?old mother tree. It was the only young oak we could see.
"An acorn happened to sprout under here," Connollv said, "and the cows couldn't eat the baby tree that grew from it. It shows you what this place will look like again now that we've gotten rid of the cows.
Our last stop was also the most beautiful. Again, Campo Creek ran far below its original bank. But if you hiked up you found yourself beneath a great oak whose limbs reached as far as the width of two houses. There in its shadows was a massive, pockmarked slab of granite.
"That's where they ground acorns," Connolly said. This is the site of an old Kumeyaay village."
Originally, the creek would have run right beside it. Originally, it would have been a very nice place to work, especially in the summer when temperatures can hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The Bureau of Indian Affairs had a school and an office here in the fifties," Connolly told us. "They left in 1950; then we burned their buildings down.
We followed the creek back to a man-made dam built during the 193O’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to supply water to the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices.
"The CCC paid good wages to 'tribal workers,"' Connolly said. "When the Depression ended, we went back to poverty."
Part of the charm of this stretch of Campo Creek is the tremendous granite boulders that shelter one side like a two?story wall. "The tribe wanted to put a quarry there. But we found a much better place. So rthis is a good example of what we do—if there were no Campo EPA the tribe would be mining rock here right now.”
And without the Campo EPA there would be no seedling pinon pines, no rare Cayamaca cypresses, no incense cedars, no live oaks or Jeffrey pines growing in the CEPA nursery. No rain data coming in from the CEPA weather station to help unravel the mysteries of the terrain's hydrology. No baby oak trees sprouting from fallen acorns. No willows or cottonwoods coming up where only sagebrush grew before. The land would remain depleted and out of balance, with little hope of returning to the flourishing state that early Kumeyaay land?management practices had kept it in.
"Neither thc philosophy of the Wise Use people nor that of the antihuman environmentalists will work," Connolly said. "They're both still asking the same question: How much can we do to the environment without destroying it? Well, how about seeing humans as a positive factor? There are instances where people have affected the environment quite a bit, but in a positive way. That's what we're doing here at Campo—taking what we've always done and putting it in a modern context that works."
A roadrunner raced across me the highway like an exclamation point. Then two California quail appeared, like a final ser of quotation marks. "This is Campo Valley," Connolly said. "It used to be a big wetland. Just look at it now—so overgrazed and dry. But it wants to come back. It's just aching to come back."