Tag Archives: Native American lands

Indigenous Peoples, Native American lands, Sogorea Te’

Ohlone People Rejoice After City of Berkeley Votes to Return Sacred Land to Tribe

[Comment by BenIndy contributor Roger Straw – This is GREAT news for all the People!! In 2006, I walked many miles with Sogorea Te’ co-founder Corrina Gould. I was surprised and sad that she was not in the photo, but then heartened to see her quoted at the very moving end of the KQED/AP article:
Corrina Gould, co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and tribal chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Ohlone, attended Tuesday’s City Council meeting via video conference and wiped away tears after the council voted to return the land. The mound that once stood there was ‘a place where we first said goodbye to someone,’ she said. ‘To have this place saved forever, I am beyond words.’
Others from the former Vallejo Inter-Tribal Council, including my old friend, Wounded Knee Ocampo and his extended family, and VIC Chairperson Midge Wagner had a lot to do with the struggle to save sacred indigenous sites over the years. – RS]

Berkeley buys Ohlone shellmound, returns it to Indigenous people

Melissa Nelson, chair of the board of directors of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, middle, gestures while speaking at a news conference in Berkeley, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Berkeley’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday, March 12, 2024, to adopt an ordinance giving the title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led, San Francisco Bay Area collective that works to return land to Indigenous people and that raised the funds needed to reach the agreement. (Jeff Chiu/AP Photo)

KQED News, Associated Press, by Janie Har, Mar 13, 2024

Ohlone people and others rejoiced Wednesday over the return of sacred native land dating back thousands of years, saying the move righted a historic wrong and restored the people who were first on the land now called Berkeley to their rightful place in history.

The 2.2-acre parking lot is the only undeveloped portion of the shell mound in West Berkeley, where ancestors of today’s Ohlone people established the first human settlement on the shores of the San Francisco Bay 5,700 years ago.

Berkeley’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an ordinance giving the title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a San Francisco Bay Area collective led by women that works to return land to Indigenous people. The collective raised most of the money needed to reach an agreement with developers who own the land.

“The site will be home to education, prayer and preservation, and will outlast every one of us today to continue telling the story of the Ohlone people,” said Mayor Jesse Arreguín at a celebratory press conference on Fourth Street in Berkeley Wednesday. He said their history is “marked not by adversity, but more importantly, by their unwavering resilience as a community.”

Arreguín added that he thought it was “pretty absurd” that they had to buy the site to give it back to indigenous people “when this was theirs all along, and we stole it from them.”

“[I]t’s been a long effort … long, long legal battles, many meetings. People prayed, people protested. But all along, it’s been an incredible community effort. And I’m very grateful that we were able to do this today,” Arreguín said.

Cheyenne Zepeda from the Confederated Villages of Ocean Nation said that they’ve been praying and fighting for this recognition for over 25 years.

“We see a huge parking lot that’s been paved over, we’re looking towards the train tracks, there’s also the freeway that’s here off of university, and we don’t see the beautiful ground that it was before, but we will … we will again,” Zepeda said.

‘[W]e don’t see the beautiful ground that it was before, but we will … we will again.’Cheyenne Zepeda, Confederated Villages of Ocean Nation
The crowd cheered as speakers talked of a movement to restore other lands to Indigenous people. The site — a three-block area Berkeley designated as a landmark in 2000 — will be home to native medicines and foods, an oasis for pollinators and wildlife, and a place for youth to learn about their heritage, including ancient dances and ceremonies, said Melissa Nelson, chair of the board of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

“Thousands of years ago, this site was a thriving … urban center for Native Americans, for California Indians with their beautiful shell mounds dotted all around the bay,” Nelson said. “We want to be a place for global Indigenous leadership to come and gather in solidarity. We want to educate, we want to restore, and we want to heal.”

Before Spanish colonizers arrived in the region, the area held a village and a massive shell mound with a height of 20 feet and the length and width of a football field that was a ceremonial and burial site. Built over years with mussel, clam and oyster shells, human remains, and artifacts, the mound also served as a lookout.

The Spanish removed the Ohlone from their villages and forced them into labor at local missions. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Anglo settlers took over the land and razed the shell mound to line roadbeds in Berkeley with shells.

The agreement with Berkeley-based Ruegg & Ellsworth LLC, which owns the parking lot, comes after a six-year legal fight that started in 2018 when the developer sued the city after officials denied its application to build a 260-unit apartment building with 50% affordable housing and 27,500 feet of retail and parking space.

The settlement was reached after Ruegg & Ellsworth agreed to accept $27 million to settle all outstanding claims and to turn the property over to Berkeley. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust contributed $25.5 million and Berkeley paid $1.5 million, officials said.

The trust plans to build a commemorative park with a new shell mound and a cultural center to house some of the pottery, jewelry, baskets and other artifacts found over the years and that are in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Corrina Gould, co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and tribal chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Ohlone, attended Tuesday’s City Council meeting via video conference and wiped away tears after the council voted to return the land.

The mound that once stood there was “a place where we first said goodbye to someone,” she said. “To have this place saved forever, I am beyond words.”

KQED’s Sara Hossaini contributed to this story.

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust Co-Founder Corrina Gould

Indigenous Peoples Day (October 11), Native American lands

On the cusp of Indigenous Peoples Day (October 11th)

Hey Colonizers

Art by Ruben Guadalupe Marquez

Women’s Foundation California, by Torre Freeman, October 6, 2021

If that greeting stings a little bit, this message is for you.

We’re on the cusp of Indigenous Peoples Day (October 11th) and Thanksgiving is right around the corner too. So let’s chat about how we can decolonize our feminism (and everything else too).

Maybe you’re upset that I called you a colonizer, maybe you feel defensive, maybe you’re rolling your eyes because you already know. Whatever your response, if I’ve engendered some big feelings, I’m hopeful that those feelings will inspire you to keep reading. How about we collectively agree to stop it with gentleness that reinforces white fragility.

I want to acknowledge that I’m a white ciswoman and it is not my place to speak for Indigenous People; there’s an endless list of folks who’s stories and perspectives should be heard before mine. But the burden shouldn’t fall solely on the Indigenous community to lead us along this journey of decolonization.

As an intersectional feminist and a person that works for a feminist organization, these are the exact conversations I want to have with our community- How do we show up for Indigenous people? How do we educate ourselves about the reality of American history? How do we lift up Indigenous stories? How do we defetishize our relationship to Indigenous culture? How do we Thanksgiving or do we Thanksgiving at all? How do we rematriate the land? How do we authentically continue these decolonization efforts throughout the year and not just when it’s trending on social media?

For us to heal from the horrors of our colonial past (and present), most of us, as descendants of colonizers, have to acknowledge the ugliest corners of our history and dismantle the mythologies around the pilgrim and “Indian” story. As we approach Indigenous People’s Day we’re committing to radical honesty and fostering a deep understanding of colonialism and how we are (still) perpetuating colonizer violence. From this place of understanding, let us take action to celebrate Indigenous stories, educate our children and our loved ones, give reparations, and support Indigenous artists, changemakers, farmers, and businesses in a deliberate effort to return what we have stolen.

Here’s a few things you can do right now to further this effort:

  1. Native Land Digital – Benicia, CA. (Click image to enlarge. Go here for interactive display.)

    Acknowledge whose land you’re on. Which traditional territories are you residing on? Learn about and honor their enduring relationship to the land. WFC is based on stolen Lisjan Ohlone land. This land (like all land) carries Indigenous stories, knowledge and belongs to the true stewards of our earth.“Land acknowledgements can be a powerful entry point for deeper engagement in the work of rematriation but are also often token or rhetorical acts of performative allyship. Here are a few resources to learn more about how to make land acknowledgements in a way that support real Indigenous sovereignty.” 

  2. Attend a local or virtual event in celebration of Indigenous People’s Day (consult Google or your local tribal headquarters for events near you).
  3. Donate to Indigenous-led organizations that are working to  uphold Indigenous rights and land practices. Our grant partner Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust in the California Bay Area working to return Indigenous land to Indigenous hands. Check out their Shuumi Land Tax calculator. 
  4. Make a ruckus change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Columbus Day should be abolished and Indigenous Peoples Day should have Federal Holiday status.
  5. Learn more about the #LandBack movement & get involved.
  6. Consider thoughtful ways to honor and celebrate Indigenous people this Thanksgiving. Start the conversation with family about how and what you’re celebrating, learn together about the real history of Thanksgiving.
  7. Deepen your knowledge around the epidemic of gender-based violence experienced by Indigenous women and two spirit people through the critical and radical work of organizations like the Sovereign Bodies Institute.
  8. Decolonize your social media feed – follow Indigenous creators – share their stories. Here’s a few accounts we recommend:

Depending on what kind of overachiever you are – you may accomplish all the things on the above list, or just one, or two things. Whatever way you show up to this conversation and these learnings, please remember, this is not some kind of woke Olympics – justice is not an event where we’re competing for a gold medal. But we can strive to grow in our knowledge, support, and celebrations of Indigenous/Native communities, their contributions, their stewardship, and their stories.

Hopefully you leave this blog, take action, and share in this feeling: there is momentum building as we continue this process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. I can’t help but feel a little sanguine (& that’s a big deal for this full-time cynic here), that we are moving toward a new beginning, that the Indigenous People of this world could someday be reunited with what belongs to them. Until that day comes- keep learning, keep listening, keep changing and keep Maya Angelou’s refrain on repeat: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”