Native Americans honor their ancestors
Tribe members gather to clean cemetery
Locked out of the Colfax Indian Cemetery for five months, three dozen members of the Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe returned Saturday to prepare the overgrown, damaged cemetery for Memorial Day ceremonies. By Monday, they had restored the property to respectability. Around noon, members of the tribe welcomed a contingent of the American Legion and Colfax Post 2003, Veterans of Foreign Wars, who held ceremonies in honor of their Native American comrades-in-arms. The Colfax Cemetery District reopened the small cemetery earlier this month, but the tribe balked at the restrictions imposed by the district’s insurance company. Nevertheless, with Memorial Day approaching, tribe members and friends from as far away as Reno converged on the half-acre burial ground Saturday with lawn mowers and weed-whackers. While some cleared the cemetery grounds of overgrowth, others tended the gravesites of relatives and ancestors. In fact, two of the gravesites receiving attention were ones crushed when a tree fell onto a neighbor’s fence last winter. One of those graves was that of Richard Arlen Prout, who had been the first chairman of the tribe, said his widow, Jeanette Prout of Roseville. She and two of her foster children repaired the perimeter of her husband’s grave with bricks. At a nearby site, Clyde Prout III and Janelle Marks restored Prout’s mother’s grave, which had also been damaged. Although the Colfax Cemetery District has re-opened the cemetery on a month-to-month basis, tribe members were upset by the restrictions, particularly the prohibition against hand-digging graves, a Native American tradition that has been handed down through the generations. Clyde Prout Jr., 58, said he was taught to safely dig graves as a teenager, and he hopes to pass on the tradition. “I want the old way,” he said Saturday. Having safely dug graves in Colfax and Foresthill most of his life, Prout said, “I’ve never had no problems.” There appears to be a consensus among the cemetery district trustees, concerned community members, and the tribe itself that ownership of the cemetery should be returned to the Native Americans. Complex legal and financial barriers stand in the way, however. According to available documents, the district holds the title to the property. However, the Indians believe the property was once in their name. No documentation has been found that shows they either gave away or sold the land. Additionally, Placer County’s Local Area Formation Commission, which has jurisdiction over the Colfax Cemetery District, has yet to provide any guidance on when, how or even if the district can sell or transfer title to the Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe.
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What I wanted to say is, why shouldn't these people be allowed to honor and respect there people. What if you were in there shoes. How would you feel being locked out of your cemetary.,kept away from your family. All this show's is greed. This shouldn't even concern anyone else. What they do or why they do it. If its there tradition, why not. Different tribes have there own culture. What do you expect them to do dig up there people and put them somewhere else? That would be wrong. When loved ones are put in a special place, it was a place that is sacred to those people, and must not be disturbed, by anyone! This place was chosen for a reason. Leave these people alone, and let them honor there people in there way. What was done to them is so crule, and disrespectful. Think about it
I am Clyde Prout III's older sister, and Clyde Prout Jr.'s stepdaughter. My mother is buried in that cemetery, and it grieves me to think that when I come to visit later in the summer, I may not be able to visit my mother's grave. This cemetery has been in existence for a long time, and up until the incident of the fallen tree, there have been no problems. Please, I implore the cemetery district, keep the gates open. Do not lock us away from our loved ones. Thank you.