For Mabel McKay, the renowned Pomo basket weaver, traditional doctor, and last speaker of her language, her relationship with the environment was an intrinsic part of life.

Mabel was born in 1907 and passed away in 1993. Over the course of her lifetime—which nearly spanned the entirety of the twentieth century—she would have experienced an enormous amount of social and political change. Born in Lake County in the town of Nice, California and raised near Cache Creek (now the present day Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation about forty minutes south of Sacramento), she witnessed the landscape around her changing. Pomo territory is very environmentally diverse, ranging from the coastal redwood forests of the Kashaya Pomo reservation near Fort Ross to the rolling grasslands and oak groves near Clear Lake.