Southern Paiute: A Portrait

Mathew Leivas

166 1. Carobeth Laird, The Chemehuevis (Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press, 1976), 3. Mathew, an all-star middle linebacker at Riverside Indian School, perfectly fits Carobeth Laird’s description: “Chemehuevi men are almost invariably built like the buffalo, with enormous, broad, and heavy shoulders tapering down to slender waist and thighs.”1 Mathew’s harmonica, electric guitar, amp, ceremownial gourd, and chainsaw all stand ready in his living room. For such a large and powerful man, he’s very soft spoken, which contrasts with the urgency of his stories, most of which emerge from his ever-present awareness that this moment is a crux for his people. He tells a number of off-record stories, but they unfold like the ones below, traversing the continuum between the personal, the political, and the spiritual. Ifirst became politically active when Southern California Edison was planning to build a four-stack incinerator out there in Ivanpah Valley. They were going to steal the Hopi’s water and slurry coal fine that they couldn’t burn at the Page plant in Arizona. They were planning water slurries through the desert from Moapa and from Laughlin. Insane. I really jumped into that issue. I was on the Chemehuevi Council at that time, so we contacted the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT). We requested help getting an environmental assessment, to get some baseline data about the pristine air quality here in Chemehuevi Valley. We had class one air. Water of course was the other issue, slurries in the desert. We stopped that incinerator. Growing up in Parker Valley, Hanks’ Village, it was undeveloped agricultural land right around us, and outside that was desert. As a kid I played out there, learned how to hunt. When we moved back to Chemehuevi, it was all desert. I was game warden for the Chemehuevi Tribe from 1977 to 1989, federally commissioned. I was the sole federal agent. It was part of my job to look over the reservation and monitor the land, the water, air, all those issues. I got to appreciate the desert more every time I went out. I’ve always had respect for the land, especially after traversing it in all kinds of ways, by boat, plane, helicopter, horseback , walking. And to find some of these cultural sites, start feeling the spirit. I didn’t know at first; it took years for me to know what was really happening. Then we went through a political turmoil with a tribal government; Christine Walker was the chairwoman. A lot of good people got fired. Mathew Leivas chemehuevi tribe, October 19, 1952 168 I told people we’d have to take action. There was supposed to be an election coming up, but it felt like they weren’t going to hold one. So talking to other Chemehuevis, reading Chemehuevi history, I tried to figure out what the old people would do in situations like this for the betterment of the group, how they’d meet, discuss things and take action as a whole. Then [our opponents] started bringing in medicine people from different reservations and having ceremonies. They had a teepee set up at the northern end of territory and had a Navajo roadman doing peyote ceremonies to empower them. What was weird was that their roadman left his stuff behind and it somehow came to me. A roadman never leaves his stuff behind. I didn’t want it around. My cousin, David Chavez, has a Navajo wife, Sandy. Her sister returned it to another roadman back on their rez. He prayed over it, blessed it, and they decided to return the eagle bone whistle to me. Anyway, I came to the realization that we weren’t dealing with a physical or political battle; it was a spiritual battle. I was compelled to take it a step further and organize a gathering. We were just starting with the Salt Songs at that time. They’re a conglomeration of songs from different places and different times all put into the one hundred forty or so song cycle. For me, it started way back, with my grandfather, my uncles, learning the songs. When my brother came back from Vietnam, he had a reel-to-reel recorder. He recorded my mother, my Uncle Mio, my Uncle Moses, my Aunt Nettie, Charlie Smith Sr., sometimes McKinley Fisher Sr. This is in the late sixties. I had made a gourd rattle; it really went around. I remember McKinley using it; Charlie Smith used...