FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 13, 2003Contacts: Allen Foreman, Tribal Chairman, 541-783-2219
Bud Ullman, Tribes’ water attorney, 541-783-3081
Don Wharton, Native American Rights Fund (land issues) 303-447-8760
Joe Browder, Washington D.C., 202-546-3720
Monica Shovlin, The Ulum Group, 541-434-7028
Klamath Tribes Reject ONRC Alternative to Return of Reservation Lands, Refute Rumored Water-for-Land Swap
Klamath Falls, Ore. — The Klamath Tribes have flatly rejected an alternative proposal from the Oregon Natural Resources Council regarding the return of Reservation lands. In addition, the Tribes deny any interest in giving up their water rights in exchange for those lands, in spite of recent media reports to the contrary.
In a letter last week to U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith, the ONRC suggests the purchase of private land as a viable alternative to the re-designation of National Forest lands that originally belonged to the Tribes.
“The Klamath Tribes do not and will not support ONRC's proposed alternative,” Tribal chairman Allen Foreman wrote on Friday in his response to ONRC Conservation Director Jay Ward. “It is difficult for us to imagine how ONRC could even think that lands now private, in place of the Reservation lands that were designated as National Forest lands in 1961, could be a plausible solution to the taking of the Klamath Tribes homeland.”
“ONRC's opposition will not deter us from working to restore what was our homeland for fourteen thousand years before being designated National Forest only 42 years ago,” Foreman wrote.
Furthermore, Tribal leaders counter recent media reports characterizing the negotiations as a water-for-land swap.
“Any description of the proposed settlement as trading water or water rights for land is untrue,” Foreman explains. “The Klamath Tribes are proposing to recover and protect the Tribes' Treaty resources and the water rights needed to restore the resources, and, at the same time, to recover that part of the Tribes' homeland that was turned over to the U.S. Forest Service.”
“While recovery of these Klamath Tribes forest lands would be required by the Klamath Tribes as part of a settlement, the proposed land return rests on its own merits, just as a proposed water settlement depends on recovery of the Klamath Tribes' fisheries and other Treaty resources,” Foreman said.
Copies of a “Chronology of the Klamath Reservation” and “The Case for Klamath Tribal Lands Restoration” are available from Monica Shovlin at 541-434-7028 or mshovlin@ulum.com.
