Coming of Age Ceremony Interference

In 2006, we held our first Coming of Age Ceremony, Bałas Chonas, in 85 years for Marine Sisk, the daughter of Chief and Spiritual Leader Caleen Sisk.

Unfortunately, the ceremony was marred by intrusion and heckling from recreational boaters, and these incidents remain emblematic of our struggle to practice our religion freely.

Imagine if rampaging motorcyclists barged into the middle of a Baptism or the reading of the Torah during a Bat Mitzvah. This is essentially what happens to us during the  Baɬas Chonas ceremonies because the federal government won’t provide us the privacy we need.

The ceremonies are held at the sacred Puberty Rock site (Kokospom in Winnemem), which is located on the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake and is now owned by the U.S. Forest Service. The tribe has held ceremonies here for millennia.  The Baɬas Chonas represents the coming of age for our teenage girls who symbolically transition into womanhood by swimming across the river on the last day.

During the 2006 Baɬas Chonas, the Forest Service refused to close the small 300-yard stretch of the McCloud we needed for the ceremony, instead only applying a “voluntary closure.” Several boaters, some of whom were drunk, didn’t heed the closure and interfered with the ceremony. One group parked their houseboat a stone’s throw from the cedar barkhut where Marine stayed during the ceremony, while another group of boaters drunkenly yelled obscenities and told us “It’s our river too, dude”. One woman on the boat flashed her breasts at us. This was captured on video and is included in this short film.

In 2010, as we prepared for Jessica and Winona’s Bałas Chonas, again the Forest Service was unwilling to enforce a full closure of the site, even though the 2008 Farm Bill provided them the authority to do so for American Indian religious ceremonies. They argue that the bill doesn’t apply to us because we aren’t a “federally recognized” tribe, despite the fact we have a Memorandum of Understanding with the Forest Service in which they state the Winnemem Wintu are the indigenous people from the McCloud River. How is that not an act of recognition?

A security team from the American Indian Movement-West attended to ensure the ugliness of 2006 was not repeated. While a few boats did pass through the ceremony site, they did so relatively quietly. Forest Service Law Enforcement did the right thing on the final day, fully closing the river to ensure Jessica and Winona could safely swim across.

This July we had planned to hold another Bałas Chonas for Marisa Sisk, the young woman who is training to be the Tribe’s next leader, but again we couldn’t secure a mandatory closure from the Forest Service.

Ultimately, our Chief decided the danger was too great not only to Marisa but the future of our Tribe, and she postponed the ceremony until next year. We will be campaigning through various ways for the next year to get a river closure for 2012.

You can stay up to date by visiting the Bałas Chonas blog, and by linking to our Facebook and Change.org profiles. Also, don’t hesitate to send a letter directly to Senators Feinstein and Boxer.

These ceremonies are vital to the fabric of our culture, and if our ceremonies aren’t protected, it means many others’ won’t be as well. To have true religious freedom in this country means every religion must be respected.