News From Native California - Spring 2016 Volume 29 Issue 3 | Page 11

LENA (KARUK) & LOREN ME’-LASH-NE
BOMELYNN (TOLOWA)

RUBY TUTTLE (YUROK/KARUK/MAIDU/YUKI) &
PYUWA BOMMELYN (TOLOWA DEE-‘NI/KARUK)

It has been almost forty years this summer [since] we met
in the physical. I actually saw him in a dream a few months
before I met him; in my dream he was this big Indian man
with long black hair over by Junction City. What I found out
later is that his dad is from Junction City. I saw him sitting in
his car in a parking lot in Crescent City when I was working
for a summer youth work program in Humboldt County.
He was heading up a trail crew in Del Norte County, heading
to a retreat. Well when I saw him I knew he was it. So I
followed him to the retreat and life after that just followed.
We have never really been apart since then except when
he was in grad school and we saw each other on weekends.
But that was after three kids and twenty-five years of marriage.
That was our meeting and of course the rest is history, as
they say. Most people don’t know how we met. They just think
we have always been together. Most of the people who
knew us before are gone. Seriously, our lives were brought
together by the spirit to accomplish the things we have in
our lives: building the first dance house in a couple of generations and bringing the Tolowa ceremonies along with it;
becoming medicine woman for my Karuk people at the
center of our world; Loren saving the Tolowa language;
regalia making [and] basket making, to say a few. Not to
mention the most wonderful children and their great
accomplishments. —Lena

We grew up going to Ceremony. Our families would
see each other during this time and throughout the year.
A friendship was created and then blossomed into a
relationship once Ruby attended college. We were married
before we knew it and started a family and now we have
three children. We work to instill in them the teachings they
have learned from their elders and family, including a commitment to speak Tolowa Dee-ni’ in our home and ensuring
that our children will know and use the language. —Pyuwa
Olivia Chilcote and Peter Nelson, photo courtesy of Olivia Chilcote. Amanda
Geisdorff and Carlos Geisdorff, photo courtesy of Carlos Geisdorff. Kayla
Begay and Carl Begay, photo courtesy of Louisa McCovey. Maymi PrestonDonahue and Dennis Donahue, photo courtesy of Maymi Preston-Donahue.
Lena Bommelyn and Loren Me’-lash-ne Bommelyn, photo courtesy of Lena
Bommelyn. Ruby Tuttle and Pyuwa Bommelyn, photo courtesy of Ruby Tuttle.

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