OROVILLE, CA (MPG) - The Butte County Board of Supervisors approved a letter of support earlier this month for the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu Indians of Butte County as the tribe continues its effort to obtain federal recognition.

In the letter, Board Chair Bill Connelly wrote that the county recognizes the Konkow people as the original inhabitants of the area surrounding the West Branch of the Feather River and its tributaries and encouraged fair consideration of the tribe’s petition for federal recognition. 

The Konkow, also spelled Concow, are one branch of the Maidu people whose traditional territory included the Feather River watershed in present-day Butte County.

Butte County officials acknowledge that many of the Konkow people were relocated in the 19th century to what was then called the Nome Cult Farm, now the Round Valley Indian Reservation in Mendocino County.

The Konkow Valley Band of Maidu Indians based in Oroville represents descendants of those historic communities, Butte officials said. Federal records show the tribe filed a Letter of Intent to petition for federal acknowledgment with the U.S. Department of the Interior in August 1998. The filing placed the tribe in the Bureau of Indian Affairs federal acknowledgment process as Petitioner No. 197.

Federal recognition would establish a government-to-government relationship with the United States and make the tribe eligible for federal tribal programs and services. Such recognition also provides access to federal programs that support tribal governments, health services, housing, education, and long-term cultural and environmental stewardship, officials said.

Supervisors approved the letter on the consent agenda during their March 10 meeting.