Tribes celebrate yucca harvest as climate change, encroachment threaten sacred tradition

Thanks to an unexpectedly wet winter, it’s not hard this spring to spot chaparral yucca blooming on hillsides and ridgelines throughout Southern California.

The plant is known as “our Lord’s candle” thanks to its thick green stalk that can grow for as long as 10 years, to more than a dozen feet, before shooting out a massive spike of white flowers shaped a bit like a candle’s flame. And once that flame is extinguished, as the flowers fade, the plant’s life ends.

For generations upon generations, the Serrano people — or the Maara’yam, as they were known before the Spanish arrived — followed the yucca’s white flame over some 7.4 million acres of ancestral lands. They selectively harvested the plants as they bloomed, first in the spring, when they’d erupt in local valleys and, later each summer, when the flame would guide them to higher elevations. And they used every bit of the plants they took, turning the yucca’s blossoms into food, its hollowed-out stalks into quivers, and its fibrous fronds into baskets, rope, sandals or even homes.

Colonization ended that way of life a couple centuries ago. But the Yuhaaviatam clan of Serrano people — best known today as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians — still honors that cultural legacy each spring with an intertribal Yucca Harvest. The celebration draws Indigenous people from as far as Yosemite and, collectively, they give thanks for what the earth has provided.

“That plant alone was able to help sustain us in so many different ways,” Laurena Bolden, a tribal council member with San Manuel, explained during Saturday’s festival on her reservation.

“Now we just want to keep that tradition alive by teaching our younger generation so we never lose sight of the plants that helped maintain who we are.”

But between traditional dances and songs, shared meals and crafts for kids, members of several California tribes also spoke Saturday about how outside forces — namely encroachment from non-Native people and complications of climate change — are threatening their ability to maintain this ancient rite of spring along with other traditions they hold sacred. Some of those traditions have both cultural and economic importance, with yucca fibers, for example, still used to start baskets that some expert weavers sell to help earn a living.

That’s why Assemblymember James Ramos, D-Highland, a former chair of the tribe and the first Native American elected to the California legislature, thinks it’s time to consider special protection status for the chaparral yucca. He also hopes that educating the public about how important yucca is in local Indigenous cultures might prevent people from cutting the plant for development or ornamental use.

It’s only quite recently, Ramos and other tribal leaders said, that non-Native groups have started to show a real interest in helping to protect such culturally sensitive resources and in learning how sustainable Indigenous practices might help mitigate climate change and other environmental problems. Rather than feel resentment as outside folk ask for help repairing ancestral lands they’ve let burn, Bolden said they’re proud to share their traditions and to remind everyone that they’re still here, breathing new life into ancient practices.

“Our doors have always been open,” she said. “It’s just that nobody has ever bothered to knock.”

A way of life interrupted

The Serrano people have always had a deep connection to the plants and animals that share their ancestral lands, Bolden said. They would follow those resources through the seasons, going east from the Antelope Valley to the Colorado River, and south to modern-day Riverside, sweeping up the San Bernardino Mountains along the way.

That connection between humans, plants and animals is key to the Yuhaaviatam clan’s creation story, which Ramos shared in stages between songs during Saturday’s festival.

The clan’s creator, Kü̱ktac, died on land near Big Bear Lake. As the people wept for Kü̱ktac, Ramos said, their tears fell to the ground and turned into pine trees that laid the foundation for Big Bear Valley. That’s why their name, Yuhaaviatam, means “People of the Pines.”

Each year, before winter settled into the Big Bear Valley, the Yuhaaviatam would walk down the mountain into the San Bernardino Valley. As plants started to bloom each spring, the tribe would harvest yucca from local hillsides all the way up to modern-day Running Springs. Then they’d continue up to Baldwin Lake to gather pinon nuts and acorns into the fall, before heading to lower elevations to wait out winter again.

That free-roaming way of life faced challenges starting in the 1700s, when European settlers introduced diseases and forced Native people to help build missions. Then, in 1866, Ramos recounted a 32-day battle that changed tribal life forever.

That year, a state-sanctioned militia headed into the San Bernardino Mountains with the goal of driving out all Indian people. When the genocide was over, thousands of Serrano people had been murdered and the Yuhaaviatam clan was left with fewer than 30 people.

Those survivors first formed a small village near the site of today’s National Orange Show in San Bernardino. But non-Natives pushed them further and further into the foothills, until, in 1891, they ended up confined to the San Manuel Reservation, which then was just 640 acres near what today is the city of Highland.

For decades, the federal government made decisions for the tribe. Children were forced to leave the reservation and attend non-Native schools, where their language and cultural practices — such as annual yucca harvests — were forbidden. They also were conscripted to work in the booming citrus industry, forced labor that today is recognized in an exhibit at the California Citrus State Historic Park in Riverside.

In 1975, San Manuel and other tribes finally received official federal recognition as sovereign nations. A decade later, when gaming started on the reservation, tribes had the financial resources to formally safeguard traditions they’d secretly passed along from generation to generation.

That included hiring linguists to develop a written form of their once-banned native language, which they now teach in their own classrooms. They also hired and trained botanists to create a seedbank, greenhouse and planting program, so they can ensure native plant species like the yucca continue to thrive.

Harvesting yucca

On Friday, a group of several dozen San Manuel members plus cultural bearers from neighboring tribes set out into the foothills.

Some were singers or dressmakers or plant gatherers from the reservation. Me-wuk dancers, from the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians near Yosemite, were invited to join in. So was RoseAnn Hamilton, a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians near Anza who learned basket weaving from her great-grandmothers.

Together, they gathered a handful of yucca plants to prepare for Saturday’s harvest celebration.

At the festival, Ramos helped stir a large pot full of yucca blossoms. After they’re boiled and tender (the consistency is similar to the inner leaves of an artichoke) they’re distributed to the elders, who eat them to honor that cultural tradition. Raul “Beanie” Chacon, Ramos’ uncle, said he likes to mix yucca blossoms into his bacon and eggs.

Ramos and other tribe members also demonstrated Saturday how they take yucca fronds and break them down into fibers that can be used for weaving. They rinse the fronds along the way, creating natural soap that can be used for washing.

Then Hamilton showed how she takes the fibers and uses them to start the center of her baskets, which are completed by weaving in deer grass and other natural materials.

This year, Ramos said, it wasn’t difficult to find enough blooming yucca nearby in one day for the ceremony. But in recent drought years that hasn’t always been the case, and he suspects they’ll struggle again in years to come.

Threats to tradition

During the peak of the drought, Ramos said it became much more challenging to find traditional plants nearby. That’s been particularly true for the yucca, which depends on a years-long growing cycle and a specific yucca moth for pollination.

“It’s been slim pickings, or the material itself is throw-away,” Hamilton, 59, said. Climate adaptations, she explained, can make the yucca fibers too short or too tough to be useful for weaving.

Hamilton felt the hit. She sells baskets, along with products such as elderberry syrup, that weren’t viable during the drought years. Other members of her tribe count on rain to sustain their cattle or water the trees that produce pinon nuts, which they eat and sell.

“The last few years have been really, really tough,” Hamilton said, noting that clan members have been forced to roam further and further to find what they need.

Along with using the plants that grow on their own reservation, tribes have a right to harvest traditional plants from federal lands without a need for special permits, according to Jamie Hinrichs, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service. And after some outreach and education, Ramos said, San Manuel also has agreements to harvest yucca from ancestral lands now owned by a local water district.

“This is about retaining the culture,” Ramos said. “But (it’s) also reaffirming to our tribal members that this isn’t all we have is this Indian reservation here. This whole area is our territory, so we can roam and collect plants that are blooming.”

Another threat has come from the development of housing in traditional harvest areas, such as along the Cajon Pass and east Highland. Native people don’t want to stop all such developments, Ramos said. But he added, “We think there should be a balance.”

Clan members sometimes have had trouble with locals objecting when they went to harvest, Ramos said. He recounted a story of a group that once tried to stop harvesters, telling them “Joshua trees” were protected — though the members were harvesting yucca. They simply left at the time to avoid confrontation, Ramos said, but went back later to collect the plant.

Today, the bigger issue seems to be with people taking blooming yuccas for their own use.

“We’d go places where we traditionally would harvest,” Ramos said. “We’ve seen that things were being clear cut. Then we have also seen where some of these stalks were used for lighting fixtures and stuff like that.”

Along the trail down to the Three Sister Falls, on National Forest land near Julian in San Diego County, multiple yucca stalks can be seen this spring with their tops lopped off. A Cleveland National Forest archaeologist affirmed that tribal members would not harvest in that manner, Hinrichs said. So it very well could have been signs of non-Indian people illegally gathering plants from federal lands.

It’s always a bit tricky, Bolden noted, to raise awareness of a plant’s cultural significance without making it take on mythical status that could lead to real shortages, like what they’re facing with white sage. With yucca, she emphasized, the power is in its connection to their ancestors and traditions. And that’s a power that belongs to Native people.