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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 18, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Anti-Indian racism heavy in trial of 'Bear' Lincoln

By Richard Becker in Ukiah, Calif.

The trial of Eugene "Bear" Lincoln is nearing its end. Lincoln, a Wailaki Indian resident of the Round Valley reservation in Northern California, is charged with the murder of Mendocino County sheriff's deputy Bob Davis and faces the death penalty if convicted.

The extremely limited and contradictory prosecution evidence has convinced many that Lincoln is the victim of a classic racist frame-up, designed to cover up police violence.

In the early evening of April 14, 1995, a shooting incident left one Native person, Gene Britton, dead in the reservation town of Covelo. A suspect in the shooting was Arylis Peters. There was a history of bad relations between the Peters and Britton families.

There had previously been accusations that the police in the area sided with the Brittons against the more traditional Peters and Lincoln families.

Four hours later, sheriff's deputies Davis and Dennis Miller ambushed Leonard Peters--brother of Arylis Peters-- and Bear Lincoln as they walked along a remote mountain road. The deputies apparently mistook Leonard Peters for his brother.

Leonard Peters was killed instantly. In total darkness and not knowing who had opened fire on them, Bear Lincoln shot back in self-defense and then fled, with the deputies in pursuit firing wildly in the night. When and by whom Deputy Davis was shot remains a question.

The only witness against Bear Lincoln, Deputy Miller, has changed his story. He at first claimed to have seen only one person, Leonard Peters. The deputy said Peters had opened fire without warning.

When forensic tests a few days later showed that Peters' rifle had not been fired at all, Miller suddenly "remembered" seeing a second person in the darkness--Bear Lincoln. Miller completely changed his story, claiming that Lincoln had killed Deputy Davis as he knelt over the body of Leonard Peters. Bear Lincoln's rifle has never been found.

GENOCIDE IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Such a case could only be brought to trial in an area saturated with anti-Indian racism. Since the beginning of white settlement in the 1850s, Northern California has met that description.

Dozens of Native peoples were completely wiped out, their languages and cultures obliterated, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As noted defense attorney Tony Serra pointed out in his opening statement, 90 percent of the Native people in the Round Valley area were killed within 10 years of the arrival of white settlers in the 1850s, right after California became a state.

After the shootings, a massive police occupation of the Round Valley reservation--California's largest--was marked by harsh abuse. Reservation residents sent out a press release protesting the "state of terror" they were living under. "They've roughed up our elders and put guns to our children's heads," said the statement. People listening to police scanners reported hearing "shoot to kill" orders against Bear Lincoln.

California Gov. Pete Wilson put up a $100,000 reward. But the far-flung police dragnet failed to turn up Bear Lincoln. Neither did a racist episode of the TV show "America's Most Wanted," six weeks later, which depicted Lincoln as a cold- blooded, vicious "cop killer."

Bear Lincoln avoided capture for four months, living in the woods. Then he decided to fight to prove his innocence in court. But he didn't turn himself in to Mendocino sheriffs, fearing that would mean immediate death. Instead, he surfaced dramatically at a press conference at the office of Tony Serra in San Francisco.

STRONG SUPPORT FOR BEAR LINCOLN

Despite the isolation of the Round Valley reservation--two hours by twisting mountain roads from the trial site in Ukiah--there's a strong movement of community support for Lincoln.

The reservation efforts are led by the Lincoln-Peters Defense Alliance and the Round Valley Indians for Justice. Other Native and progressive supporters include Dennis Banks and the American Indian Movement, the Mendocino Environmental Center and the Native Support Network.

Every day the 60-seat courtroom is packed with supporters. During trial recesses, Native people drum outside the courthouse while activists hold up signs and distribute literature about the case.

But the big question remains to be answered: Can an all- white Mendocino County jury see through an obvious police frame-up?

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