Annual Membership Meeting Notice and Notification of Qualified Nominations

              Tribal members are encouraged to attend the Annual Membership meeting to be held on April 1st 2005, 10 am at the Tribal Community Center.  The Annual membership meeting is held the 1^st Saturday in April each year.  The meeting will consist of Tribal elections, and Staff Departmental reports.  As Tribal Council members serve alternating 2 year terms, the 2006 elections will consist of the nomination and election of the Chair, Treasurer, and Council member. 

Tribal members present for the 2005 Annual General Council meeting amended the Constitution to refine the election process.  Nominations to participate in this 2006 election had to be submitted to the Tribal office no later than January 15th.  The nominations for the 2006 elections are as follows: 

Cheryl A. Seidner Chair

Leona Wilkinson Treasurer

Joycelyn Teague Councilmember

The above qualified nominees will each submit an article about themselves prior to the April elections in order to retain their nomination status. 

Updated constitutions are available at the Tribal Office.  Please call (707) 733-5055 or (800) 388-7633 for more information or to obtain a copy.        

15th Annual Candlelight Vigil 

The Wiyot Tribe invites members of the community to the 15^th Annual Indian Island Candlelight Vigil.  This event will be held rain or shine.  On Saturday February 25^th from 6-8 p.m. on the West end of Woodley Island.  Please bring a candle.

The Wiyot peoples are the aboriginal inhabitants of Humboldt County, California.  Their territory spans from Little River to Capetown to Scotia and as far as Blue Lake and Kneeland.  Indian Island, the center of the Wiyot World, was a place for a dance known as a “World renewal ceremony, which lasted for seven to ten days in a village called Tuluwat.  The significance of this ceremony was to ask the Creator to bless all people and the land in preparation for the New Year.

Traditionally, the men would leave the island and return the next day with the day’s supplies.  The elders, women and children were left to rest on the island along with a few men.  During the early morning of February 26^th, 1860, the day after the world renewal ceremony a group of local Eureka men armed with hatchets, clubs and knives, paddled their boats over to the island.  Guns were left behind so the noise would not be so great.  Exhausted from the ceremonial dance, sleeping men, women and children were brutally slain.  History would tell that this was not the only massacre that took place that morning.  Two other Wiyot village sites were also attacked.  A total of eighty to one hundred people or more were brutally murdered that cold February morning.

After 1860 there were an estimated population of 200 Wiyot people left.  By 1910 there was an estimate of less than 100 full blood Wiyot people living within Wiyot territory.  This rapid decline in population was due to disease, slavery, target practice, “protection”, and being herded from place to place, and of course massacres.  Today the Wiyot Tribe resides on 88 acres of land called Table Bluff, 16 miles south from the city of Eureka.

Currently there are over 550 enrolled Wiyot members that continue to struggle for the survival of their cultural way of life.  The Wiyot people would like to invite you to the 15^th Annual Indian Island Candlelight vigil.  This even serves to promote healing and strengthen community relations between Wiyot peoples and the community at large.  Please join members of the Wiyot Tribe for the 15^th Annual Indian Island Candlelight Vigil.  This even will be held rain or shine on Saturday, February 25, 2006 form 6-8 p.m. on Woodley Island.  Please bring a Candle.  Community Welcome.