'Dear Mr. Khosla, Reconsider Your Exclusion of the Public From Martins Beach'

[The following letter — addressed to Martins Beach owner Vinod Khosla — from Clint Webb, Father, Surfer, Lawyer, Cherokee Nation Descendent, was submitted to Patch].

Dear Mr. Khosla,

On behalf of the excluded public, I respectfully request that you kindly reconsider your exclusion of the public from Martins Beach. [1]  

Such exclusion fundamentally runs contrary to the needs of our community.  As Chief Luther Standing Bear of the Teton Sioux witnessed,"[t]he old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth." [2]

You may feel justified in your determination to exclude the community from Martins Beach, given the consideration you have paid to obtain right to the land and further due to the substantial sums you have paid in legal representation to defend your determination to exclude others.  However, I big you consider older, more longstanding precedent in this matter.  Your lawyers cite 19th Century Federal Law as controlling with regard to Martins Beach access rights. However, Martins Beach lay open long before the time of your or my forefathers. Martins Beach lay open long before the United States government sought to subject it to federal law.  Indeed, for countless centuries before the United States government or the Mexican government claimed sovereignty over Martins Beach, this beach was inhabited by and subject to the practices of Native American tribesmen.  

Accordingly Sir, I submit that your 19th Century legal precedent is morally, if not legally predated and preempted by the laws and practices of these Native Americans, regarding which the historian John Alexander Williams recorded "[th]e Indians practiced communal land ownership. That is, the entire community owned the land upon which it lived." [3]

Lest you feel your legal, social, political, intellectual or economic standing makes your determination to exclude the public from Martins Beach immune from and superior to the ancient precedent of a conquered people, I bid you heed the self-evident observation of First Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, who noted "[p]ower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." [4]

Sir, I again humbly seek you reconsider your closure of Martins Beach, for I expect you see yourself as a great man with sound values.  However, your privatization of Martins Beach for your sole enjoyment bears not the hallmarks of a great and wise man, but rather the myopic, corrupt act of a powerful, though bad man.

Sincerely,
D.C.W.
Father, Surfer, Lawyer
Cherokee Nation Descendent

*     *     *     *Sources:
[1] http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/11/06/erin-wian-billionaire-closes-off-california-beach.cnn.html; http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/us/california-vinod-khosla-beach-access/index.html
[2] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~tessia/Native.html
[3] West Virginia: A History for Beginners (Charleston, WV: Appalachian Editions, 1993), 64
[4] Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907)