Federal land - The county avoids taking a stand in opposition to a revived reservation

It was a Kumbaya moment in the Klamath Basin.

After an unorthodox public hearing Tuesday, Klamath County commissioners reversed course and set aside the conflict-ridden question of returning a huge swath of federal forest to the Klamath Tribes to restore their reservation.

The unanimous decision of the three commissioners followed more than five hours of testimony that often felt more like group therapy than a government hearing.

The commissioners were considering a resolution to oppose the federal government selling or giving land in the Winema National Forest to the tribes, even though there's no immediate plan in the works.

An overflow crowd of about 100 people filled the chambers and an adjacent room where the hearing played on a TV set.

Commissioner John Elliott began by warning those in the audience that he reserved the right to clear the room if speakers became unruly. What followed was hour after hour of airing old arguments, grudges and perceived wrongdoings going back generations.

There were recitations of tribal treaty history, lofty soliloquies on the U.S. Constitution and stories of picking huckleberries near Crater Lake. Speakers ran so long that the meeting had to be briefly adjourned for one commissioner to go to the dentist. Testimony threatened to fill the six-hour tape recording the proceedings.

"I've never seen that happen in the 13 years I've been here," said Tom Cooley, the county's video producer.

Congress dissolved the tribes and their 880,000-acre reservation in 1954 and later converted the bulk of it into national forest.

The tribes regained federal recognition in 1986 but have no home for their roughly 3,500 members. In recent years, they have pushed to regain the land but stepped back from the effort in 2005 to concentrate on what they said were more pressing issues such as water rights in the arid and heavily farmed basin.

The commission hearing was prompted by a petition from the Klamath Basin Alliance, a group opposed to the tribes taking over the federal land.

Tribe makes offer

Late in the afternoon, Klamath Tribal Chairman Allen Foreman came to the podium. Instead of addressing the commissioners, he turned to Glenn Howard, chairman of the alliance.

Would the alliance, he asked, withdraw its petition if the tribes gave group members a place at the table in any future talks over a possible land transfer?

Howard, noting he had to check with his board of directors, tentatively agreed. "I don't see any reason why things can't be worked out to where we all understand each other a little better," he said.

With that, the commissioners put aside, at least for now, a vote on the resolution.

"I think it's a very statesmanlike position both of you have taken today," Elliott said. "I think we could have retreated to our corners, come out swinging and last man standing wins."

The alliance isn't the only group opposed to a reservation made up of federal forest. In 2003, a coalition of 17 Northwest conservation groups came out against the tribes taking control of the land, fearing escalated logging in the pine lands.

"In general, I think our concerns are still there," said Steve Pedery of Oregon Wild. "As are the concerns of a lot of other folks, both in the Klamath Basin and in the larger public lands community in the West."

But for battle-weary residents of the Klamath Basin, Tuesday's detente seemed to be part of a new cooperative spirit that has grown out of the 2001 water crisis, when irrigation water was curtailed to protect endangered fish, said Becky Hyde, a Beatty rancher.

"This was beautiful," she said. "We need to work together. It's our only survival."

Matthew Preusch: 541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com.