Month: November 2023

  • East Bay Indigenous History Resources

    Where to find Selected Primary and Secondary Sources regarding the Native American (Indigenous) History of the East Bay.

    Sources for the studious, tenacious, and determined, scholars.

    Muwekma Ohlone Tribe

    Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Recognition Process

    US DOI Bureau of Indian Affairs, Petition #111 Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of San Francisco Bay, CA

    Muwekma Tribal Publications (Research Documents)
    Featuring articles by Les Field, Alan Leventhal, and more.

    Randall Milliken

    A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769-1810

    Native Americans at San Jose

    Old research papers by

    • Maxwell Uhle (Final Report on the Emeryville Shellmound),
    • N.C. Nelson (Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region),
    • Robert F. Heizer (The California Indians, a source book),
    • Richard Levy (Handbook of the North American Indians),
    • and Alfred Kroeber, among others.

    Can be found under Keywords like:

    • Costanoan“; “Mission Indians“; “California Indians”; “Shellmound”; “Verona Band“; “Fremont Indian“; “Rosemary Cambra”; “Jose Guzman”; etc.

    Find UC Berkeley Research Papers

    Access Archive Finding Aids

    These resources are for people who are willing to commit the time and effort into finding and reading the primary and secondary resources created by anthropologists, archaeologists, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, and Ohlone People themselves.

    This is not a complete list of sources. For instance, the California State Universities are another source for information not listed here–even though Alan Leventhal is associated with the CSU system. This is just a selected list of some resources to get you started.

    If you find other resources for primary and secondary materials which are not listed here, please let us know.


    Right now, we’re in the process of finding and compiling local archival sources.

    If you are an individual or organization who also keeps their own libraries and collections regarding this subject, or Native Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you would like to share, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

  • Alternatives to Shuumi (2023)

    Wondering which Native American organizations you should give to on Giving Tuesday?

    Hopefully, when you read this, you already know that Shuumi Land Tax doesn’t really go to all Ohlone people. (But we don’t want to discourage your well-meaning intent and your need to help Indigenous people in anyway you can.)

    If you really want to help the Native American People in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve compiled a list of organizations where your generous donation and goodwill have a measurable impact.

    The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area

    This is the real Ohlone tribe you probably thought you were donating money to when you considered paying Shuumi “Land Tax”.

    With over 10,000 years of continuous habitation of this place now known as the San Francisco Bay Area, your donation directly to this tribe of over 600 enrolled members will be felt immediately; and put to use as Muwekma reawaken their Chochenyo language, remember dances, and revitalize their culture.

    The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is a bonafide native American Tribe, which has been recognized over and over again by The Courts, but still struggles for recognition with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Muwekma is set to begin their Trail of Truth in their epic battle for justice; in the form of a Tribal Homeland, Education, Housing, Medical Services, and–last but not least: Sovereignty.

    If you want to help Ohlone people in the San Francisco Bay Area (and beyond):

    Go to Muwekma.org to educate yourself and your friends about the Indigenous People of the San Francisco Bay Area.

    [See also: “Who/What/Where is Lisjan?“, “Who are the Lisjan Ohlone? What does Chochenyo mean?”, “Corrina Gould Convicted of Fraud“]

    Intertribal Friendship House Oakland

    Established in 1955 as one of the first urban American Indian community centers in the nation.

    It was founded by the American Friends Service Committee to serve the needs of American Indian people relocated from reservations to the San Francisco Bay Area.

    The Bay Area American Indian community is multi-tribal, made of Native people and their descendants—those who originate here and those who have come to the Bay region from all over the United States and from other parts of this hemisphere.

    IFH Oakland’s local programming is important and impactful.

    Friendship House SF

    Friendship House SF provides a girth of wellness services for Native American People in the SF urban rez.

    One of the most important services the Friendship House SF provides is treatment and recovery services for Native Americans. Lots of tribes will send their members to the Friendship House SF for their treatment and recovery services.

    The Friendship House SF also provides meeting space for other organizations to hold their events and retreats. Very thankful to the Friendship House SF for giving me and organizations I’ve been a part space for so many years.

    Native American Health Center

    Provides primary care, mental health, and dental services primarily. Also organizes and hold the Indigenous Red Market, contributes to Powwows, and other Native American Events and Programs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Contributing to this organization will also support a wider range of programs and services in the Bay Area.

    NAHC is a pretty solid choice, all around.

    American Indian Cultural Center

    A member of Intersection for the Arts.

    Since 1968, the purpose of the American Indian Center has been to create a community space based on Native American values, culture, programming, traditional foods, and community support.

    Contributing to this organization will help sustain AICC’s mission to improve and promote the well-being of the American Indian community and to increase the visibility of American Indian cultures in an urban setting in order to cultivate awareness, understanding and respect.

    American Indian Child Resource Center

    The American Indian Child Resource Center is a non-profit social services and educational community-based organization serving American Indian community members from across the greater Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area and surrounding counties.

    The American Indian Child Resource Center is a COA Accredited Organization.

    First Nations Development Institute

    Economic Development Corporation which invests in and creates innovative institutions and models that strengthen asset control (land stewardship is one example) and support economic development (through grants and programs) for American Indian people and their communities.

    First Nations Development Institute is another solid choice because you know your money will be well invested, and you can read the reports on how it was used.

    Which Native American Organizations Should You Donate To?

    Hopefully, this helps you decide where to invest for Giving Tuesday in the year 2023!

    P.S.
    You can always donate to the Alameda Native History Project, or any of these other organizations, any time of the year! Don’t wait until Thanksgiving.

  • Scarcity Mindset As A Hurdle to Museum Accountability

    By now there should be no doubt that most museums, which display or hold Native American artifacts, directly benefit from grave robbing, or the often racist, prejudiced language and ignorant beliefs regarding Native Americans first uttered by now dead anthropologists [like Alfred Kroeber], and perpetuated by the ailing volunteers and aging septuagenarians responsible for interpreting and curating these artifacts today.

    Many of these museums do no care to get the information or facts straight, and continue to present California Native Americans as “extinct”, “disappeared”, and brush off or dismiss any mention of actual living Native people as someone trying to raise trouble.

    Advocates for the truthful portrayal, accurate naming, and return of tribal objects and remains are often called “hostile”, dismissed as rabble rousers, and subjected to projection by the very people who should have read White Fragility.

    Even more infuriating is the belief consulting with any Native American individual on any subject–whether or not it’s related to the stolen Tribal Grave Goods or Ceremonial Objects in these Museum’s possession–is used as cover for the Museum to continue to disregard the wishes of the very real, and still living Native American people who have a lawful claim, and a legal right to demand the return and repatriation of these Native American Tribal Resources and Cultural Objects.

    In fact, many of the people museums choose to consult with regarding Native American artifacts are not Native Americans at all.

    Truthfully, Native American people are consistently shut out of events, exhibitions and lectures about their own culture and identity.

    A lot of apologists will say “it’s not like this anymore”; or dismiss the Standard Operating Procedures museums as a thing of the past…. But these conditions till persist.

    Native American People continue to be discounted, ignored; and their history, culture and contributions continue to be minimized and ignored.

    But the truth remains: The artifacts and objects on display in most museums have been stolen from Native American People, their graves, and do not belong to the museums who refuse to return them.

    There are three main reasons why Museums refuse to return Tribal Cultural Objects.

    The first is that there is no Federally Recognized Tribe which claims these objects to return them to. This is especially true for the Repatriation of Native American Remains.

    It’s a shame that these institutions are unwilling to do the research and work necessary to properly identify Tribal Cultural Objects and Native American Remains to repatriate the same way they did the research to identify and prepare the same goods and burials for exhibition.

    It’s despicable the way Museums claim such helplessness and ignorance when it comes time to give stolen objects back, even though the exact same objects are the she subjects of fundraising events and lectures proudly given by white anthropologists, and non-native experts, even today.

    Charlene Nijmeh, the Chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, talks about how the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe was removed from the rolls of Native American Tribes simply for the purpose of denying Ohlone people in the San Francisco Bay Area their right to a tribal land base; because land in the Bay Area is so valuable.

    In this same way, institutions like the University of California Berkeley (which holds the remains of thousands of Native Americans) are incentivized to claim an inability to identify which tribes the bodies in their crypt belong to.

    So, too, are Museums incentivized to weaponize their incompetence in order to keep their pilfered goods.

    The second reason is the fallacy that Native American Remains are “more valuable” as research or display objects.

    This is a completely reprehensible argument that bears no merit, as far as I’m concerned. Simply because these same people would not agree that their family members are more valuable being dug up, defiled in the name of science, and put on display without so much of a whisper of their name or life’s story.

    It’s worth saying, “If you’re not okay with your grandma being dug up and put on display, why are you doing it to mine?”

    The blatant disrespect of Native American Graves as things which can be dug up, broken, moved to a landfill, reburied, and used as overspread is something which has been enabled by the statements of people like Alfred Kroeber, who explicitly declared entire tribes of Native Americans (like Ohlone people) “extinct”.

    It s because these remains are considered “ancient”, or attributed to a time before our modern history where no living descendants exist–“pre-historic” for all intents and purposes–that oil companies, city, state and federal governments have dug up the bodies of our ancestors with impunity. And why money is still being given to universities to study our ancestors’ remains, even today.

    But this is a fallacy, because Native American people are not extinct; they have not disappeared. We are still here, today. And we do not want anyone digging up our relatives to build pipelines, parking lots… or “for science”. Period!

    (How come laws against the abuse of a corpse apply to every body except for Native American bodies?)

    The third, and final, reason why institutions refuse to even consider returning stolen Native American artifacts to tribes is an extension of the preceding “more valuable for science” reasoning.

    However, the very basis of some museums’ refusal to return tribal objects is clearly rooted in the scarcity mindset.

    Museum Fallacy #3:

    “If we give away all of our artifacts, we won’t have any left!”

    “If we give away all of our artifacts, we won’t have any left!” This was actually said to me by a volunteer at the Alameda Museum.

    This is dissonant because many museum’s holdings are made of stolen property. Repatriation is the only correct course of action; anything less is a travesty.

    This standing also presumes the only thing of value the museum has to offer is the exhibition of original artifacts, no matter how broken or uninteresting those artifacts are; and, in spite of the fact that curators and museum staff and volunteers have no […] clue how those objects are used, where they actually came, or what the history of their use and development is.

    In all of this, there is not even a hint of concern about whether or not the museum has a duty to investigate/research, find, and try to contact the tribe associated with the Native American objects and artifacts in their possession.

    Consideration of actual Native American People is so far removed from the discussion, it’s a little ridiculous.

    Representation of average museum volunteer docents. (AI-generated.)

    Especially given the fact that these Museum are inviting Native American people to give lectures during Native American Heritage Month. (But consider the audience….)

    The idea that there aren’t enough artifacts is a fallacy based upon a false sense of ownership and authority magically imbued by the mere possession of these stolen grave goods.

    The implied scarcity mindsight that the only thing which gives museums like the Alameda Museum any value is a handful of broken pieces of bones and tools–which no one knows the use for (or even the names of)–is laughable in its appeal to ignorance.

    The fact that Alameda Museum is not, and has never been, the place to see Native American artifacts belies this mindset as a straw man argument for the lack of interest or determination of the museum to change or do any better. But, in the end, it’s the museum which must do the work.

    So let’s get down to brass tax here:

    1. Museums need to get real about the fact that no one cares whether or not they exhibit real artifacts if their exhibits are trash and don’t actually provide any education value; especially if Museum Staff & Volunteers don’t know anything about them. [There’s no value here.]
    2. Returning Native American Grave Goods is the right thing to do. (It’s probably illegal for museums to possess them.) And Museums owe money, and other restitution, to Tribes for their illegal conversion of Tribal Property.
    3. Contacting Tribes to begin the repatriation process is necessary.
    4. Museums need to seriously consider purchasing replicas made by Native American artisans in exchanging for the return of Grave Good and Ceremonial Objects.
    5. Museums are required to pay Indigenous People for their time and consultation at a rate commensurate with like professionals in the same or similar industries–regardless of whether or not those Indigenous Consultants have any academic credentials.

    Indigenous Peoples’ lived experiences and actual subject matter expertise are more valuable than any degree.

    Indigenous science is valid.

    Indigenous science is a distinct, time-tested, and methodological knowledge system that can enhance and complement western science. Indigenous science is about the knowledge of the environment and knowledge of the ecosystem that Indigenous Peoples have. It is the knowledge of survival since time immemorial and includes multiple systems of knowledge(s) such as the knowledge of plants, the weather, animal behavior and patterns, birds, and water among others.

    Indigenous people are experts.

    Museums will do well to remember these facts when treating Indigenous People with the reverence and respect they deserve.

  • Beyond Land Acknowledgment

    Alameda Native History Project has a standing policy to never contact or involve Tribal Members or Tribes unless there is a clear and tangential Tribal Benefit To Participation.

    Truthfully, the reason why this policy was set was mostly out of respect for the lived experiences of the Tribal Members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area.

    And as a direct response to the continuing tokenization and empty promises of non-indigenous corporations, governments, and individuals who seek to monetize the appearance of Indigenous People at their events, solely for the exclusive benefit of the hosting organization/corporation.

    And, while people like Corrina Gould are more than happy to take a check for their appearance, and play the part of a Tribal Chairperson; the real Indians–bona fide Native Americans–actual, self-respecting Indigenous People–will likely never respond to these invitations.

    Because Land Acknowledgements don’t mean shit to someone looking across the sea of pale faces who now occupy their tribal territory, destroy their tribal homelands, and want us to acknowledge that this land is stolen by the very same people who are giving us these false platitudes and empty promises.

    I mean… really… how do “well-meaning”, “progressive”, non-indigenous people manage to come up with more and more ritually ridiculous ways to re-traumatize a group of people they tried to murder, and wipe off the planet?

    And they think letting us tell them they’re thieving, murderous interlopers is doing us a favor? No, Land Acknowledgments are yet another song and dance indigenous people are being expected to perform (for free) to put white people at ease.

    The earliest examples of the Land Acknowledgment ritual goes back to Australia in the form of a “Welcome to Country” ritual, which is meant to put newcomers at ease, in order to form a friendly relationship between indigenous people, and their visitors, so mutually beneficial exchanges can begin between the two groups.

    [Read that as: Welcome to Country rituals were created by aboriginal people to appease white people, and put them at ease in order to foster an exploitive/extractive interaction which didn’t result in aboriginal people being massacred; yet. See also: Dear White People, and, What It Means to Be Unapologetically Black, to understand why “putting white people at ease” is even a thing.]

    Mind you, every interaction with white people during the “Discovery Era” was exploitive and extractive; and, of course, only benefitted the colonizer with free food, riches, labor, etc.

    It’s important to note the similarities between the intent of both Aboriginal Australians, and Indigenous, and First Peoples of the Americas, when meeting newcomers.

    In a very American context: Native Americans dancing exhibitions commonly occurred at Forts and Missions to appease visiting dignitaries and military officials; and were another way for indigenous people to ensure their ongoing survival. By making their captors look good in front of their superiors, and put white people at ease in doing so. [“Look how well he commands the savages under his control!”]

    Veritably, the white-washed version of the “discovery” and “founding” of America includes references to the “First Thanksgiving” as a celebration of how Native people “helped” white people to survive a place these Colonizers knew nothing about, and would have perished in, if left on their own.

    The clean, anesthetized, version of White History yields so many selfless examples of Indigenous generosity and kindness.

    And demonizes the audacity of indigenous people who object to the taking of their land, destruction of their resources, and kidnapping, enslavement and abuse, and murder, of their people.

    Such examples of White-Washed History include:
    • “The Indians gave us their food so we could live,”
    • “The Indians agreed to move off their land so we could build our cities,”
    • The Indians agreed that white people were superior, and decided to learn their language, religion, and culture, so they could finally abandon their dirty, heathenness savagery and live clean and pure, like God intended.

    It’s all so guilt free.

    White History carries with it a sense of smugness and blamelessness, which purports to release all white people, all colonizers (and their descendants), of the liability for their damages, ill-doings, and complicity, in what today are called War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity….

    And Land Acknowledgments are just another way to side step “all of that ugliness.”

    Using Indigenous People to perform Land Acknowledgments gives white people another way to avoid acknowledging the ugliness of their ancestors. Because it makes us apologize for them, for everything they did, including stealing our land.

    Even worse, Indigenous People giving Land Acknowledgments can sometimes give corporations and organizations the green light to continue desecrating sacred land, exploiting natural resources, and completely disregard indigenous people from that point on because we already apologized for them.

    And, even more worse than that: when indigenous people give headdresses out to people like The Pope: it really signals absolute forgiveness for something which white people haven’t even begun to admit to, much less atone for; and releases them from the burden of ever performing a genuine confession, reconciliation and/or atonement.

    Most of the time, Land Acknowledgments are used in the place of real soul-searching, and a meaningful truth and reconciliation process.

    When pressed, organizations will fess up pretty quickly:

    We didn’t invite you here to acknowledge the wrong-doings of our ancestors, or the continuing injustices against Native Americans we commit, or are complicit in….

    “We really just wanted someone with shell jewelry and feathers to burn sage, give a blessing–and play the part of what we believe an idealized Native American should look like, so we can check that box on our Diversity Equity and Inclusion component for this year….

    We didn’t actually mean to do any work.

    But maybe you should do the work of making sure the tribe you contact is bona fide; making sure the money you donate actually benefits indigenous people; and making sure you understand that land acknowledgments are meaningless tokenization without true tribal benefits.