In one of the most famous scenes from the 1982 movie Poltergeist, a suburban home begins to collapse into chaos. A mother, played by JoBeth Williams, slips into a half-finished swimming pool as a storm rages above her. The water churns with mud, lightning flashes, and dozens of corpses rise to the surface. Coffins burst through the ground. Skeletons float around her, brushing against her arms as she screams for help.
It looks like pure Hollywood horror. But what most people don’t know is that those weren’t fake skeletons. They were real human remains.
When Poltergeist was filmed, the production used actual human skeletons for the pool scene because they were cheaper and more realistic than plastic props at the time. The special effects team bought them from a company that supplied anatomical specimens to universities.
In the early 1980s, high-quality plastic skeletons weren’t common, and real ones cost less. It was a practical but deeply questionable choice. When the story came out, it added to the film’s reputation for being cursed. Crew members, including the special effects artist Craig Reardon, later confirmed in interviews and court depositions that the skeletons were genuine.
That detail has become Hollywood legend, a bit of trivia traded at Halloween parties.
But when I say “Alameda was made with real skeletons, too,” it isn’t a punchline… It’s history.
Alameda Times Star Tuesday, April 23, 1901
ROAD PAVED WITH BONES
Grewsome Covering On Bay Island Thoroughfare.
Skeletons of Indians From the Old Mound Found to Make Perfect Paving
The road from the Bay Farm Island bridge south toward the island is being paved with human bones. The city, under whose supervision the work is being done, had no intention of putting such grewsome covering on the road when the improvement was undertaken. it was understood that the earth to make the fill with was to be taken from the old mound in the Sather tract. it was supposed that a few Indians had been buried there in the long, long ago, but was never imagined that when the mound was levelled to build the Bay Farm Island road that human bones would be found there as thick as the sands of the sea.
The horror was never hidden. It was printed in black and white. Alameda’s own newspapers documented the use of Native graves as paving material and no one stopped it.
Shellmounds were cemeteries built by Ohlone people. They were not ancient ruins of some vanished people; they were active burial grounds and ceremonial places within living memory when the United States was declaring independence.
In 1776, Ohlone communities were still here, speaking their language, tending their lands, and burying their dead. They were later forced into missions and labor camps designed to destroy their way of life, and Ohlone Peoples’ ties to their language, beliefs, and cultural practices.
By the time Americans arrived in California, settlers pretended the people were gone.
Newspapers and government officials asked “Where are all the Indians?” while state militias and vigilantes carried out massacres. California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, openly declared that a war of extermination would be waged until the Native race was gone.
Within that system of genocide, settlers desecrated Ohlone cemeteries.
They dug into cemeteries and smashed human bones–not shells, but skulls, ribs, and limbs–into fragments. Those remains were shoveled into carts and mixed with lime to make concrete for sidewalks, roads, and foundations.
Bone dust and ash were spread across fields and gardens, used as fill to raise ground and fertilize crops.
The people who did this didn’t move the bodies with care or ceremony. They desecrated graves and used human remains as raw material for construction. They built the city of Alameda out of Ohlone cemeteries.
Some of the remains were sold to museums and universities, including UC Berkeley, where they were tagged and stored as “specimens.” [There are still thousands of stolen, unclaimed ancestors languishing in UC Berkeley’s crypt.]
Others were discarded, dumped, or paved over. This was not accidental archaeology. It was desecration committed in the shadow of a government that had already declared open war on Native people. By any moral or legal measure, it was a violation of human rights and human dignity.
Alameda once had several shellmounds. But only one of them was known until the Alameda Native History Project did the research and work that institutions like the Alameda Museum were too afraid or disinterested to do, and discovered there were at least 4 shellmounds in Alameda.
The bodies of Ohlone people were razed and pulverized to build the City of Alameda.
Developers leveled shellmounds (Ohlone cemeteries) to grade the city. Local newspapers reported on these uses as they were happening. Ohlone human remains and funerary items were used in landfill across the island, including Bay Farm Road, which was literally paved with bones.
These burial grounds are still being disturbed. Human remains are still unearthed during construction, and the City of Alameda knows exactly where these cemeteries are.
The city knows what was done to the bodies of Ohlone people and still refuses to acknowledge it.
There are no protections, no memorials, and no apologies.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, direct descendants of the Ohlone people whose cemeteries were destroyed, continue to fight for recognition, repatriation, and truth about what lies beneath the city.
So when I say “Alameda was made with real skeletons,” it’s not metaphor or exaggeration. The city’s foundations were literally built with the bodies of Ohlone ancestors, disturbed, ground up, and reused without consent. That is not heritage. It is desecration, theft, and ongoing violence. It is a crime against memory, and against humanity.
This city cannot call itself progressive while it buries the truth. Alameda must acknowledge the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, apologize for the desecration of Ohlone cemeteries, and take immediate steps to protect the remaining burial grounds.
Every sidewalk, every home foundation, every patch of landfill poured on top of those graves is a reminder that justice has not yet been done.
It is time for residents, allies, and institutions to advocate for justice for the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and demand accountability from the city that built itself on their ancestors’ bones.
Until there is public acknowledgment, apology, and action, Alameda remains complicit in the California Genocide.
Ohlone people buried their loved ones in mounds long before any of us ever came here.
They’re called shellmounds.
The “Ancient Indian Burial Mounds” of Ohlone people–ancestors of the present-day Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area.
They were built long before any of this was here.
Long before some old dead white dudes squatted on what was then a peninsula. Before it got dredged into an Island and eventually called “Alameda.”
Long before this place was called la Bolsa de Encinal to Mexicans, land grant parcels on the extension of former Mission Lands that stretched north from San Jose de Guadalupe, to the Carquinez Strait.
Long before Ohlone were called Costanoan, when Portola came through in who-cares-when. Before the missions were founded in 1776[–which is the same time a meddlesome group of colonists declared their independence from England on the East Coast of this continent.]
Even longer before: when this area was just a valley with a little river in it…..
THIS PLACE HAS BEEN OHLONE TERRITORY SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL
10,000+ years of habitation meant those shellmounds were real, and big.
There were thousands of shellmounds all over the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the biggest recorded shellmounds were in Emeryville.
At least 4 shellmounds were right here, in Alameda.
And while many may not exist above ground.
Ohlone Ancestors still lie in wait below.
To be discovered during foundation upgrades, trenching, and in-ground pool installations.
The Shellmounds of Alameda
I grew up in a pre-victorian house on Court Street, about a block away from my grandparent’s house, which was firmly on the edge of the Mound Street Shellmound, around Santa Clara and Mound Street.
Being an Indian kid, adopted out of his tribe from birth, raised on an island that’s just as well known for its racism as it is the former naval air station, things were tough. And, I’ll be honest, I only ever wanted to go home.
So, maybe it was my spirit calling that influenced what I saw as a child. Because my white adopted parents’ money paid for all the psychological and physical testing that proved I wasn’t suffering from some psychosis or more serious condition. [Laying down in a dark room with electrodes attached to my head was an interesting experience.]
I never really got a lot of peace in that house when I was alone. From an early age, I learned not to go too far into the basement by myself. Not necessarily because it was dangerous; but because other things lived there.
The House on Court Street
The Bad Dream Light
Before my sister came to live with us, (she’s adopted, too; and came home in 1989,) I slept in the room which would become hers.
It was a small, narrow room, with popcorn ceiling, and walls; with access to the attic through a panel in the ceiling of the closet.
Next to the was an old “ancient” light fixture which had probably been there since the house was electrified. [It was also moved from the corner of Benton & Santa Clara to the place on the 1300 block of Court Street where this all occurs.]
My dad remembers that I called that the “Bad Dream Light”. He doesn’t remember why specifically. But, he told me, when it came time to pick which room I would sleep in once my sister arrived, I picked the room at the front of the house–not the one with the light.
This is only a footnote about myself that was told to me. And it shrouds the next story in even more mystery because it makes me wonder if it came from the attic.
Ruby In the Attic
My earliest memory of something being a little off seems somewhat inconsequential. It’s more of a passing note.
But, at some point, I remember finding some jewelry in my mom’s jewelry box and somehow knowing that it was the kind of jewelry that Ruby used to wear.
I never met someone named Ruby; and I have no idea how I could know that. But I remember telling my dad that Ruby was the woman who lived in the attic.
Of course, nobody could live in the attic; it was just a crawl space.
This whole thing was forgotten until many years later, into my adulthood, when I remembered this, and asked my Dad who Ruby was. [In fact, I asked both my parents, and my birth mother.]
It turns out: Ruby is the name of my father’s great aunt.
The Procession in the Hallway
I don’t like talking about this. Because, out of all my experiences, this is the one that legitimately makes me seem crazy. Despite the confidence of having had a total psychological and physical work up, and knowing this wasn’t the product of some kind of illness: it’s still something that bothers me to this day.
Have you ever had a light shined in your eyes that you could see even after you closed them? Like a silvery, shadowy afterimage burned into your retinas? Some people call them “eidetic images”, mental images with unusual vividness–an exceptional ability that only children between 6 and 12 are able to possess.
Now, imagine you’re a 6 year old who can’t sleep; so you went into the living room, and are watching late-night/early-morning television on the big recliner in front of the T.V.
At some point, you become aware of something moving out of the corner of your eye. So you look. And what you see is the outline, a silvery shadowy outline of a person. And it’s walking down the hallway.
You watch, as it walks down the hallway, behind the living room wall…. And then appears in the other living room entryway, at the same pace, in the same manner. Just minding its own business.
It can’t be real. Because it looks just like the afterimage of a bright light shined in your face. And you know no one’s there, because it’s too late, it’s night time, and there’s no one there.
But it is.
Except, it’s not minding its business. It has noticed you. So it’s stopped, and turned to face you directly, staring back. With no face, no details, just this weird shadowy figure.
You will the thing to go away, to leave you alone. But it does not disappear when you close your eyes and open them again. It turns back and walks down the hall on its own time.
In the beginning it was just one figure watching me from the hallway. Then it was two or three.
If I kept my eyes on the TV and pretended like I didn’t notice them, they would keep going, only occasionally stopping to look at me.
It terrified me to see them. But my room was also terrifying on its own, too. Sometimes the bed would move, vibrate, or I would … feel like there was something waiting to pour forth from my closet the whole time.
But it wasn’t as simple as just ignoring them.
They never came into the living room. Never approached me. Never made a sound.
But there were so many that the hallway seemed crowded.
Something changed that made it stop. I can’t remember what.
But it’s worth noting that from the time I was born and lived in that house, the neighboring block, the former site of Lincoln School, had been razed and was being developed into the south-west inspired houses that sit there now. [From 1986 to 1991 at least.]
Considering how many burials are still being unearthed in 2025: Who knows how many burials were hiding just below the surface of the former high school grounds.
Is it possible that I saw Ohlone ancestors wandering through my house, searching for their way back home? Or were they the figment of an overactive imagination?
The Basement Double
Because the house had been moved from its original lot at Benton Street and Santa Clara Avenue, it never had a real foundation. At some point, my dad had paid for a foundation to be built underneath the half that held our bedrooms, but the rest of the “foundation” was a collection of 4×4 posts sitting on piles of bricks.
This meant the “basement”–the ground floor of the house–was mostly dirt, covered by plywood.
The basement was always spooky. Not because it was dark, or dangerous. But because I could tell something else lived there. And that I was an interloper. It’s a feeling that never left me, no matter how well let, or how cozy it ever became.
When it was still mostly unfinished, the two most recognizable rooms were the laundry room, and the workshop. Early on, my dad spent a lot of time in both. Mostly doing laundry, and sometimes tinkering in the workshop. If he couldn’t be found upstairs, he was downstairs doing either.
To get to the “basement”, you would go out a side door in the back of the house, and walk down a staircase that wrapped around to the exterior door–which was padlocked shut when no one was in there.
Usually, I could be left to my own devices. I would entertain myself or play games, read books. But at this point in the day, I got bored and went looking for my dad.
I checked the bedrooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom. No one was around. So, I figured he was probably downstairs.
When I poked my head out of the side door, I saw the back of him turn the corner at the bottom landing.
I shouted, “Dad!”
And jumped down the stars a landing at a time. Reaching the bottom and turning just in time to see him disappear into the basement.
At this point I’m thinking he’s playing a game. So I rushed into the basement calling out for him.
But the basement was dark. There was no sign my dad was down there. The washing machine wasn’t running. There were no lights on anywhere, not in the workshop. Not in the garage.
I realized very quickly that I was alone.
That, maybe, this was a trap.
And with these realizations, things started to feel like they were closing in on me. I felt exposed. Viscerally. Almost … in danger.
Even though I knew I should probably run, I felt frozen.
It wasn’t until I heard the toilet flush upstairs that I was able to gather my wits, and zoom out the door.
I caught my dad just as he was coming out of the bathroom door.
Not wanting to let on about the terrifying experience I just escaped, I cried, “Oh, there you are!”
The Vertebra
I found a bone in the dirt in this little room in the back of the basement. The room itself was squared off by walls, and it had a large step of poured concrete, much like a bulk-head–but very much unlike every other part of the basement. This looked like the most built up part of the whole house to be honest. Even though it lacked real walls, and a real floor.
I was messing around in the dirt in the back there, because it was so powdery and light. It was just dust, I liked running my hands through it because of its smooth, silky texture.
And that’s when I found it.
A bone, pale, pitted, but whole. With no obvious cuts or missing pieces: I could tell it was a vertebra. [Because reference books were my only friends.]
When I showed my mom, she told me it was a dog.
Or a cow, when I pushed back. But I knew.
I kept that bone for years. The last time I saw it was in my room, on my bookshelf. But I can’t tell you where it is today. It’s probably somewhere in storage, waiting to be re-discovered.
Living on a Haunted Island
My house wasn’t the only place where I experienced things. Most of Alameda is haunted by its own past. The Shellmounds of Alameda had long been used as overspread, the bones of Muwekma ancestors used for fertilizing rose bushes … and paving Bay Farm Road.
But even its more contemporary history echoed in the abandoned halls of buildings long forgotten.
My personal history of exploring the abandoned buildings on the former Alameda naval air station as a teenager is extensive.
And some of the most heart-pounding experiences I have ever shared with my friends have taken place in buildings that no longer even stand today.
This is not to introduce a story so far away from home as it is to introduce the fact that I have had experiences which have been shared and witnessed with other people.
The Swaying Woman in the Closet
At some point during my teenage years, I had removed the door from my closet. My childhood fears of what lurked inside had been abandoned.
In that version of my bedroom layout, my bed was positioned directly across from the closet.
One night, a friend was sleeping over. The lights were off. We were getting ready to go to sleep. I was just starting to relax when I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye.
In the doorway of the closet, there was the outline or shadow of a woman with long hair.
She was standing there. Her feet were planted. But she was swaying side to side–moving left to right unnaturally fast. Ping-ponging in place between the door jambs.
No human could move that way. And no one else was in the room besides us. This woman wasn’t really there. Even though I could see her, and feel her angry, unsettled energy.
I saw it. But, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to scare my friend.
After a moment, they asked, “Do you see that?”
Which meant they saw it too.
I just replied, “Go to sleep,”
And pulled the blanket over their head.
Rosa in the Den
Rosa was a rescue dog from Guatemala. A collie type dog with calico colors and spots.
At this point, I was in my 20’s. The house had been renovated almost a decade ago, so there was a den in the basement now, with a real locking door to the rest of the still-unfinished basement.
My sister’s dog had recently passed. He was a miniature Dachshund who succumbed to old age. This happened not long after.
Rosa and I would sit downstairs on the couch in the den and watch TV together. (She had actually started watching it with me, commenting in her own way on what was happening on the screen. Which was … almost more fun to watch than TV.)
Tonight was no different.
Except, Rosa suddenly cued up on something.
She started, and looked at the recliner across from us. Then she seemed to watch something go from the recliner to the floor. And continued to track something as it went under the coffee table directly in front of us.
Then she let out a whimper. And covered her eyes with her paws.
I couldn’t ask her what she saw. But it seemed like it was small, almost like another animal. I still wonder about it to this day.
The Bureau Shadow
Sometimes it was hard to tell if I was just imagining things. If something was really there. Or if I were somehow picking up on the echoes of the past.
Upstairs, on the main floor, the renovations to the house saw an addition of a bathroom in my parents’ room, as well as the removal of the walls separating the living room from the hallway and the dining room. We now had an open floor plan, and stairs leading down into the den from the dining room.
Other changes had been made. For instance, the front door now had a frosted glass oval window in the center, and another window frame on top. This allowed the porch light to illuminate the whole space with a gentle glow.
I could basically walk in a diagonal line from my room to the bathroom. I guess that’s not really a big deal now that I think of it. But I wonder why I didn’t just take that route one night when I saw a shadow in the hallway.
It wasn’t one of the things I used to see walking through the hall when I was younger. This was different.
In the hallway, along the wall between my sister’s bedroom door–the narrow bedroom between my parents’ and mine … was a bureau of draws, about waist height, with a mirror mounted lengthwise on top.
It was long, sturdy. And it used to belong to my mom’s parents. My grandmother used it, and it used to have a picture of me and her wedged in the frame. But that was long ago.
Now it was in the hallway. And it held linen and place settings for the dining room table.
But there was something else there tonight.
A shadow of a person. Standing in front of the bureau, its hands flat on the table top, gazing into the mirror.
I could have walked around it, like I said. I probably should have. But, for some reason, I didn’t. I thought, like all of the other strange things, it would just disappear as soon as I came too close to it.
I was wrong.
It only became more solid the closer I got.
Until I was standing next to it.
Realizing that it was blocking the light.
And that I could sense its presence like you can sense someone standing next to you.
I didn’t walk through it. I didn’t touch it. In fact, I moved around it, and said, “Excuse me”, as I passed.
Then I went into my room. Locked the door. And didn’t leave for the rest of the night.
The Grandparents’ House on the Shellmound
My dad’s parents lived three blocks away from us. At about Santa Clara Avenue, and Mound Street. Well within the bounds of the shellmound on Mound Street.
I never felt alone in that house. And I never really felt at ease. It always seemed like I was just one corner away from seeing something I was really prepared for. Whatever that thing would be. I felt it lurking in the walls, behind every door, and inside every cabinet.
The place vibrated with a strong, unsettling feeling. Even outside, I felt like everything inside was watching me through the windows. Was waiting for me behind the trees. Even in the open space of the backyard, the detached shed–which was actually a nice, newer, single room building–had that vibe to it.
Something not necessarily foreboding, but just not entirely welcoming or at-ease.
I was the most scared of the dorm room on the third floor my dad and his three brothers (my uncles) shared growing up. But the basement–real basement–with my grandpa’s den and the cellar were a very close second. However, I felt like I could stay there for a little longer without feeling too creeped out.
Up on the third floor, I became paranoid that things were happening on the floors below me, just out of sight. But down in the den, I didn’t want to turn my back on anything.
My fear of the house was so strong that I never wanted to stay the night. Ever. And I don’t think I ever stayed more than one night at any time.
The last time I slept there, I slept in the living room on the couch because I didn’t want to go any deeper into the house.
My dad’s cousin said he and my uncles used to dig up arrowheads in the cellar. I never ventured onto the dirt over there. Even after both my grandparents had passed, it was my job to pack up the house. My partner at the time was there, working with me.
Our workflow was to pick up stuff, wrap it in packing paper, then put it in a box, label the box, seal it up, and transfer it to storage.
One of the first things I did was teach myself how to use the security system, and assign myself and all my family members separate pins for the alarm. It seemed important because I wanted to make sure the house was secure since no one was living inside it anymore. It was a basic system that chimed and announced when a door or window was opened.
So my partner and I had managed to make really good progress on packing everything up, and had managed to work our way down to the den.
At some point, we ran out of some packing supplies. My partner stayed working in the den as I locked the door and left to get more.
When I came back, he was visibly shaken. And he wanted to know if I had come back earlier.
When I asked him why, he told me that he heard someone come into the house, and walk all the way to the back room, where my grandparents used to sit and watch TV all the time.
No one else was in the house. The alarm would have announced an open door. But there was no record of any event other than my return.
Maybe I never saw anything in the house because I never wanted to. Because I was scared enough just being there that I didn’t need to.
I still dream about both my childhood house, and my grandparents’ house. They’re usually nightmares about growing up on the burial mound.
It wasn’t until I started doing local research that I learned about the other shellmounds in Alameda.
I know I’m not the only one who’s had these experiences.
Hopefully this gives other people the courage to reach out and share theirs.
A Living Model for Indigenous-Led Environmental and Cultural Restoration
The ACORNS! Project Arc is an Indigenous-led initiative of the Alameda Native History Project that restores the living relationship between people, oaks, and the land that sustains them. It was created to provide tangible tribal benefit by rebuilding systems of reciprocity where cultural revitalization and environmental repair move forward together.
The project transforms Indigenous ecological knowledge into collective action, bringing together community members, educators, and tribal partners in a continuous cycle of gathering, building, and sharing. Every part of the Arc, from granary construction and willow harvests to acorn processing and community meals, creates measurable benefit for Indigenous people while offering the broader public a respectful way to take part in restoration guided by Native leadership.
Reconnecting People and Land
ACORNS! grew from the Alameda Native History Project’s broader effort to document Indigenous history and revive living foodways in the San Francisco Bay Area. What began as community-based educational events evolved into a working model of Indigenous stewardship.
The project’s foundation is reciprocity: the idea that cultural and ecological restoration must return real value to Indigenous people, not just symbolic recognition. Through every stage, participants learn how care for the land, material use, and community participation can be expressions of sovereignty and responsibility.
Acorns gathered during the harvest season are processed into flour that is freely given to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and other Indigenous communities. Any proceeds from small public sales are reinvested to sustain future harvests, workshops, and educational events. The result is a complete feedback loop of generosity, accountability, and tangible tribal benefit.
The Project Arc in Practice
Granary Builds
Each granary build is both an engineering project and a cultural act. Using willow, tule, and other natural materials, participants construct traditional storage structures that blend Indigenous architecture with principles of geometry, physics, and sustainable design. The work begins with a willow harvest, where people learn to identify, gather, and prepare branches in ways that honor ecological cycles. These builds restore traditional technologies while serving as public symbols of cultural continuity and environmental care.
Acorn Harvest
The harvest reconnects participants with the landscape through observation and respect. Before gathering begins, community build days are held to create wooden Acorn Tenders and custom storage buckets designed for minimal ecological impact. Participants learn to recognize oak species, monitor ripeness, and collect acorns responsibly while avoiding damage to trees or habitats. The practice combines traditional ecological knowledge with modern environmental science, teaching gratitude, restraint, and stewardship through hands-on experience.
Processing and Sharing
After the harvest, participants gather to crack, sort, and process acorns into flour. This stage preserves not only food but also relationship. The ACORNS! Project Arc developed a custom acorn leaching machine that mimics natural water flow while meeting food safety standards, addressing the loss of clean freshwater systems caused by pollution and urbanization. The finished flour is nutrient-rich and long-lasting, distributed freely to tribal communities and shared through workshops that teach participants how to process acorns safely at home.
Culinary Series
The final phase turns restored foodways into shared experience. Through the ACORNS! Culinary Series, participants cook with acorn flour, learning to prepare traditional dishes such as acorn mush alongside modern recipes that blend Indigenous ingredients with contemporary methods. These events highlight that food is both ceremony and science, where chemistry, ecology, and culture meet. By eating together, participants complete the full circle of care and reciprocity that defines the Arc.
Addressing Barriers to Indigenous Food Sovereignty
Access to land for gathering, harvesting, and cultural use remains one of the greatest barriers faced by Indigenous communities. Many ancestral areas have been privatized or restricted by land-use policies that criminalize traditional sustenance practices. Indigenous people are often required to obtain costly permits or face harassment for gathering on public lands that historically belonged to their nations.
Environmental degradation further compounds these challenges. Streams once used for acorn leaching are now diverted or contaminated, making traditional food preparation unsafe. Bureaucratic barriers such as liability policies and conservation restrictions often exclude tribes, particularly those without federal recognition, from using public land for cultural purposes.
The ACORNS! Project Arc demonstrates a path forward within these constraints. By forming partnerships with agencies and land trusts, maintaining transparency, and emphasizing Indigenous-led collaboration, the project shows that policy goals can be met through cooperation rather than control. Each event functions as both cultural restoration and environmental education, reclaiming access while modeling responsible land stewardship.
Legal and Policy Foundations
ACORNS! is rooted in existing state, federal, and international frameworks that affirm Indigenous rights to land, resources, and cultural practice. California’s Public Resources Code §§5097.9–5097.994, known as the Native American Historic Resource Protection Act, prohibits disturbance of Native cultural sites and recognizes the importance of traditional gathering areas. Senate Bill 18 and Assembly Bill 52 require consultation with tribes in land-use planning, while recent legislation such as AB 389 strengthens the repatriation of Native heritage and human remains.
At the international level, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms the right of Indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their spiritual and material relationships with lands and resources. Articles 25, 26, and 31 specifically recognize the rights to stewardship, ownership, and transmission of traditional knowledge. The ACORNS! Project Arc brings those rights to life through direct action. Every harvest, granary build, and meal is an exercise of cultural sovereignty and self-determination.
Restoring Balance Through Practice
The project’s outcomes reflect a model of applied policy and measurable benefit. Each year, ACORNS! hosts multiple community events, engages hundreds of participants, and produces acorn flour that is shared freely with Indigenous communities. The work integrates oak restoration, pollinator habitat planting, and soil monitoring, connecting food sovereignty with environmental health.
Beyond numbers, ACORNS! fosters healing. Participants describe a sense of reconnection and grounding through the act of gathering and sharing food. Traditional foodways strengthen identity and promote wellness, echoing public health findings that Indigenous diets rooted in local ecosystems improve physical and emotional well-being.
By turning rights and consultation frameworks into living systems of care, ACORNS! transforms policy language into practice. It demonstrates that Indigenous leadership is not symbolic; it is essential to the survival of ecosystems and cultures alike.
A Living Model for the Future
The ACORNS! Project Arc is more than a program. It is a working model for how Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities can coexist in mutual respect, restoring both land and relationship. Through its cycle of harvest, building, education, and nourishment, it provides a blueprint for action that fulfills the promises of environmental justice, cultural survival, and reciprocity.
The project continues to grow, expanding partnerships and refining methods that unite ecological science with Indigenous knowledge. In doing so, it reaffirms a simple but profound truth: sustainability begins with respect, and restoration begins with relationship.
This is big. For the first time ever, the entire San Francisco Bay Area shoreline has been reconstructed and shared as a public, interactive, open-access map.
Historic Shoreline of the San Francisco Bay Area shows what the Bay once looked like, its original coastlines and wetlands before 1900, in a way no one has seen before. This is not just another overlay on top of modern maps. It is a full digital reconstruction that lets you see exactly where the old Bay met the land, and how much we have changed it.
This project was handmade by myself, Gabriel Duncan, Paiute, Two-Spirit, and member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, as part of the Alameda Native History Project GIS Lab. It was built using open data, open-source software, and a lot of patience. I stitched together historic shoreline datasets from NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS), the same data used to update nautical charts and define the nation’s territorial boundaries, to bring the Bay’s past back into focus.
Each section of shoreline was aligned, corrected, and merged into a single, continuous dataset covering the entire Bay. I colored the wetland areas by hand, guided by original survey markings, to give a sense of the marshes and tidal zones that once surrounded the Bay.
Like all historical maps, there are limitations. The data comes from surveys done more than a century ago using methods that predate modern GIS and satellite imagery. Small distortions and projection differences are expected. But that is part of what makes it powerful. This map connects us to a moment in time when the Bay was still alive in ways most people have never seen.
This work represents Native innovation in STEM and the continuation of Indigenous relationships with land, water, and technology. It stands as proof that Indigenous people are not just caretakers of the past but builders of the future, mapping, coding, and visualizing our histories through the tools of today.
The dataset itself is reserved for Indigenous researchers and organizations.
This map joins the Bay Area Shellmounds Map, the Historic Alameda Ecology Map, and other original GIS projects in our Indigenous mapping initiative. Together they form a living record of place, memory, and truth, created by Native hands for everyone to see.
The Alameda Native History Project and the San Lorenzo Library co-hosted Acorn Granary Workshop 2.0 on Saturday, bringing together families, students, and community members to rebuild the Acorn Granary in the library’s outdoor viewing area. The event was part of an ongoing collaboration between the Alameda Native History Project and the Alameda County Library System to reconnect the public with Indigenous knowledge and land-based traditions.
From 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., more than 20 participants, including about 10 children, worked together to weave willow poles, lash frames, and construct the granary. The effort followed the unexpected removal of the original structure earlier this month by Alameda County General Services Agency.
“For us, this was not about loss,” said Gabriel Duncan, founder of the Alameda Native History Project. “In traditional practice, granaries were never permanent. They might be damaged by weather, animals, or time. Rebuilding is part of the cycle and a living reminder of community resilience.”
The project would not have been possible without the support of the John Muir Land Trust, which hosted a willow harvest on October 12 at Family Harvest Farm in Pittsburg. Volunteers gathered and prepared the willow branches used in the new granary, linking the harvest directly to the hands-on reconstruction at San Lorenzo Library.
Granaries have long been integral to Indigenous food systems in California, used to store acorns safely through the winter and maintain a sustainable food supply. Rebuilding and teaching these practices supports the Alameda Native History Project’s mission to reopen Indigenous foodways across the East Bay through workshops, acorn harvests, and cultural education programs.
“Building and rebuilding together deepens our relationship with the land and with one another,” Duncan said. “It is how we remember, how we teach, and how we continue to care for the foods that sustain us.”
The new granary now stands at the San Lorenzo Library as a community-built symbol of renewal, cultural continuity, and partnership.
