ABSTRACT

In 2004, the City of Eureka, California, returned 40 acres of land on Indian Island in Humboldt Bay, the site of a massacre in 1860 that brought the Wiyot to the brink of extinction. Ten years later the City of Eureka initiated the extraordinary action of apologizing to the Wiyot for the massacre that occurred 154 years earlier. The official apology which had been released to the public was transformed into a statement of support after review by the City’s legal counsel. The historical significance of the attempted inhalation of the Wiyot and the actions of the City of Eureka in the proceeding century to deny and eventually to acknowledge that history is a case study in localized efforts to address historical atrocities by both the perpetrators beneficiaries and the descendants of the victims. Efforts of remembrance inspired a municipality to acknowledge and address an atrocity of the past to heal a rift between the Indians and the non-Indians.