Taking a Cue from Our Chenery Street Namesake

By Evelyn Rose

When things seem to be going awry everywhere all at once, where should one turn for guidance? In these challenging times, historical retrospection can be rather informative. So, while ruminating over one of the current events garnering our collective dismay, I recalled an action taken 173 years ago by the namesake of the Glen Park district’s main artery. So, what possible insights could California pioneer Richard Chenery provide?

One Upheaval Among Many

Funded by We, the People for nearly 60 years, America's Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) have offered an array of journalistic, documentary, science, and history programming, not to mention a slew of cooking shows, children's learning, and those beloved British dramas. According to CPB President and CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison, "Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country."

In more traditional times when a particular television or radio program failed to poke our curiosity, we would simply exercise our freedom of choice and change the channel. Yet what has come to light in recent weeks is the number of Americans who find channel changing should no longer be a right. Those who vehemently oppose public broadcasting include the current administration, certain members of the U.S. Congress, and their supporters. They say that public media, especially NPR, is too liberal and "unfair to conservatives and a waste of taxpayer money." At a recent congressional hearing that grilled NPR and PBS leaders, some lawmakers added that public broadcasting programming is “too focused on issues of race and gender.”

In truth, much of this news is not new news. Congress passed the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967 and President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, signed it into law. In the 58 years since through today, we have had 7 Republican presidencies. That amounts to 33 years of Republican leadership, or about 57% of the life of American public broadcasting.

Each of those Republican administrations similarly complained that programming was too liberal and pressed for action to limit federal funding. Yet despite the ongoing complaints under predominantly Republican leadership, public broadcasting has continued to enjoy viewership across the political spectrum. A 2025 Harris Poll funded by NPR found that two-thirds of all Americans – 58% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats – support federal funding for public radio and that it provides good value.

But no administration had ever gone to the extreme of defunding. With sign-off of the so-called “one big beautiful bill,” the US Congress clawed back $1.1 billion of public broadcasting funding through fiscal year 2027. And when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced in August 2025 that they would be winding down as a result, a collective gasp of shock and sorrow was heard across America.

Can PBS and NPR survive without the CPB? Federal grants for PBS, including those received through CPB, have historically been about 15% of its annual budget, and NPR about 2%. While each will likely continue, these cuts will change the breadth and depth of programming offered.

In fact, we are already seeing the impact. In July, WGBH in Boston announced  that it is pausing production of one of the most respected television programs in all of broadcasting. After 37 years of high-quality programming uncovering all facets of American history, American Experience will, for now, no longer produce new documentaries. Production was immediately stopped for new programs spotlighting our national highway system, the G.I. Bill, birthright citizenship, and the history of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory. What the future portends for FRONTLINE, MASTERPIECE, NOVA, and Antiques Roadshow that are also produced by WGBH remains unclear.

PBS and NPR also receive additional funds from federally supported independent member stations. And for those independent members in tribal and rural areas, the loss of federal funding will be catastrophic. To date, these stations have been receiving federal grants directly, based on a formula that considers their inequitable access to donors and programming sponsors.

Native Public Media advocates for and supports 59 Indigenous radio and 3 television stations that reach 1.5 million people in tribal nations across America (see interactive map – scroll down, some links may be inactive). These stations are often the only emergency lifeline within their communities. They keep locals informed about regional news and events, national and international news, public health and safety advisories, and emergency alerts. Many of these reports are delivered in Native languages that, in turn, help to preserve and sustain these languages. Independent stations also spotlight local musicians and Indigenous artists, as well as music from cultures across the globe.  

But according to one Republican lawmaker, as reported by the New York Times, July 14, 2025, “widespread internet access has made news coverage from rural stations increasingly unnecessary.” Well, except for the fact that people in these regions still have First Amendment rights to the free exchange of information. Moreover, cable television and broadband access is still rather spotty in many Midwestern, Southwestern, and Western rural areas. That is, if they have access to any service at all. In 2022, 14% of households on Native American reservations were still unelectrified, a number that is 10% above the national average.

And now as a result of the “one big beautiful bill,” about 3 dozen Native public radio stations are at risk of going dark when the fiscal year begins on October 1, 2025. Two of those stations are in Northern California: KIDE in Hoopa, Humboldt County (the first Native station in California), and KGUA in Gualala, Mendocino County, the latter serving Sonoma and Mendocino coastal communities, Pomo Rancherias, and Latino neighbors.

This certainly is not the first time in the past 249 years that the Federal government has failed America’s Indigenous communities. So, what action did Richard Chenery take in 1852? How might that action help inform us today about how to help offset the adversity being forced upon California’s Indigenous people because of catastrophic federal decision-making? Let me first share some backstory.

Indigenous Californians: From Freedom to Incarceration

After Gaspar de Portolá and his party discovered San Francisco Bay in 1769, life for the Indigenous people of the region would never be the same. With forceful conversion to European ways without any respect paid to their independence, culture, language, and community, and near decimation upon exposure to European diseases, Bay Area Native Californians were already struggling by the time the Americans took possession of California.

The first governor of California, Peter Hardemann Burnett (1849-1851), was a former slave owner from Tennessee who believed the West should be for White people only. In the same election in which he became governor-elect, California approved its first state constitution. Because the constitution prohibited slavery in California, Burnett’s desire to ban Black people from the State were quashed.

Yet, when the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians came to his desk in 1850 to sign into law, he did so without hesitation. Contrary to what the law’s name seemed to imply, it legalized the capture of Indigenous people by White Californians to force them into indentured servitude. According to Burnett, “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”

The Pomo of Clear Lake already knew all too well how the future of their very existence was at grave risk. Beginning in 1847, the Pomo had been enslaved, starved, mistreated, and sexually abused by two White cattle ranchers and their associates. When a White settler in 1850 shot and killed a young Pomo man (after the young man had already received 100 lashes for a perceived misdeed), Pomo tribe members killed the ranchers.

In retaliation, the ranchers’ family members and other White settlers called up the U.S. Army First Dragoons Regiment and began killing Pomo members indiscriminately. Many Pomo fled to an island in the lake they called Bo-No-Po-Ti that for millennia had served as a traditional fishing site during the spawn. But the Dragoons soon caught up with them. The captain who led the attack later commented that the island had been the “perfect slaughtering pen.”  When it was over, up to 200 Pomo men, women, and children were dead.

Today, Bo-No-Po-Ti is also known as Bloody Island. On the site of the massacre in May of each year, the Pomo of Robinson Rancheria hold a sunrise ceremony to remember the ancestors whose lives were lost.

Then in 1851, 18 treaties "of friendship and peace" by the federal government were developed for tribes throughout Northern California. Three treaty commissioners appointed by President Millard Fillmore had been approved by the U.S. Senate. The commissioner appointed for the Pomo tribes of Clear Lake and Russian River was Redick McKee.

The treaties were often delivered to tribe representatives in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking person, who then translated it to a speaker of the local language. The difficulties of communicating legal language in this way became evident in Clear Lake: while the interpreter could understand the treaty's language, they "could not explain it freely, in turn." That all signatures of tribal representatives were an "X" likely indicates that the Pomo spoke neither English nor Spanish and, therefore, did not fully comprehend the literal wording of the treaty.

According to Robert F. Heizer of UC-Berkeley (1972), “The three Commissioners did not have the slightest idea of the actual extent of tribal lands of any group they met with…Taken all together, one cannot imagine a more poorly conceived, more inaccurate, less informed, and less democratic process…It was a farce from the beginning.” As a result, the Senate failed to ratify the treaties in 1852 and ordered them to be filed under an injunction of secrecy until 1905.

One of the stipulations in the treaty for Clear Lake (see Heizer, pages 83) required that “the United States, in addition to the presents of ten head of beef cattle, three sacks of bread, and sundry clothing, made to them at this council, will also furnish them, free of charge, at or near Vallejo, or elsewhere, as may be most convenient, with one hundred (100) head of beef-cattle, to average in weight five hundred pounds net, and two hundred (200) sacks of flour of fifty pounds each, in all ten thousand pounds, during the present year (1851), and a like quantity in each of the years 1852 and 1853.” The Russian River treaty was similar (Heizer, page 90), also stating, “just equality with the Indians now residing on Clear lake [sic].”

But in 1852, without any appropriations being approved by Congress and unable to fulfill the promises in the treaties, Redick McKee found himself in a fix. So, he reached out to Richard Chenery for help.

Richard Chenery Steps Up

After Massachusetts native Richard Chenery was elected captain of the Holyoke Northampton Mining Company, the group of about 40 men departed for Chagres, Panamá in February 1849. After a lengthy delay due to the unavailability of passage up the Pacific coast, they finally boarded the Copiapo for San Francisco.

By the time they reached Monterey, Chenery had apparently had his fill of ocean travel. He disembarked and traveled the remainder of the trip on horseback. After arriving in San Francisco in August, Chenery published a letter in The Springfield (Massachusetts) Daily Republican on October 29, 1849: "I traveled through some as fine country as ever I saw, between Monterey and San Francisco...The first night after leaving Monterey, we reached San Juan Mission, where is a hotel kept by an Irishman, and two stores owned by Yankee boys. The second day's travel took me through beautiful valleys, filled with cattle and horses...I never saw finer cattle any where [sic] than are found here, and I have seen them in droves of 1500 to 2000 head."

Afterwards, it seems Chenery never made it up to the gold diggings in the Sierra foothills. Instead, he would find his immediate wealth in Sacramento as hotel proprietor of The Globe (on K Street between Front and Second Streets in today's Old Sacramento; he also maintained an interest in the National Hotel near Montgomery and Washington Streets in San Francisco). On top of that, he was also a Sacramento merchant: Chenery & Hazeltine sold just about everything a 49’er could want and need, and then some. Then with flour being a commodity that was worth its weight in gold, he opened a flour mill in 1852 as Chenery & Lambert. Mimicking the announcement by Samuel Brannan in 1848 of Gold! Gold! Gold!, he advertised, Flour! Flour! Flour! 

Chenery’s Gold Rush ventures were so wildly successful that he was concurrently running three steamers up the Sacramento River, maintained a fourth as a powder magazine, and eventually had at least 5 steamers running between San Francisco and Stockton as part of the California Steam Navigation Company. The Springfield Daily Republican, May 13, 1852, reported that Chenery was “…doing a large and successful business at Sacramento City, and that he is one of the most popular men in town. He is now an Alderman of the city, and was recently offered the nomination for, and consequent election to, mayor, but he declined the honor.” According to the New York Times, May 18, 1852, Chenery had been elected Treasurer of Sacramento.

By early 1853, he had relocated to San Francisco where, in late 1862, he would be named president of the Pacific Railroad Homestead Association and have the portion of the old San José Road (the original El Camino Real) running through the new development named for him. By 1864, the homestead association had been renamed Fairmount.

So, when McKee needed to get out of his jam, he knew exactly where to go for help: Richard Chenery, the most respected man in town. Chenery had the cash on-hand ($8,000, which is about $307,000 today) to provide 100,000 pounds of beef to help feed the Pomo Indians at Clear Lake and Russian River. The Pomo had been "…threatening hostilities and plunder on the white settlements if their demands were refused, as they were destitute of food to live upon; they had been removed from their favorite hunting grounds by the commissioner, and demanded the fulfilment of the obligations which the commissioner had entered into on behalf of the government." McKee promised Chenery the federal government would repay him “with promptitude.” Chenery immediately supplied the beef in support of the Pomo tribes. It would take 11 years for the government to approve his reimbursement.

Chenery’s Cue for Action

It may sometimes seem that as individuals, we lack sufficient power to curb the dramatic changes in America that are happening everywhere all at once. But there are things we can do individually and locally to help those who may be in greater need.

Some may say that Richard Chenery acted solely to prevent the bloodshed the Pomo threatened. Or that with a guarantee of prompt reimbursement by the federal government, why not just go ahead and expend the funds anyway. Certainly, the prevention of bloodshed was a major consideration for both sides. And when McKee promised “prompt reimbursement,” Chenery already knew the federal government had broken the promises enshrined in the treaty, so he may have very likely provided the beef while never expecting to ever see his money again.  

From what I have been able to garner about Chenery’s life and personality, it seems he was a good and honest man, respected by the majority, and one who believed in rights for all. He was a great supporter of President Lincoln and was chosen to lead the California contingent in Lincoln’s inaugural parade in Washington, D.C. in 1861. I believe Chenery chose to help the Pomo in their time of most dire need from the goodness of his heart and a desire to help his fellow man. And that’s the lesson we can learn from Richard Chenery: to help others regardless of the consequences.

There are so many today who are in dire need, and many more likely to come. We can all reach out to help in some way, and supporting the First Amendment right of all Americans to the free exchange of information might be one avenue among many to choose from.

Fortunately, on August 19, 2025, the Knight Foundation, Pivotal, MacArthur, Ford, Schmidt Family, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations joined together to contribute $36.5 million in emergency funding to safeguard rural, Indigenous, and underserved public media stations. And if within our means, we can help too.

Learn more about how to support Indigenous and rural public broadcasting at KGUA-Gualala, KIDE-Hoopa, Native Public Media, or IndiJ Public Media (formerly Indian Country Today, based in Arizona).