Alameda Native History Project

Tag: bay area tribes

  • Alternatives to Shuumi 2025

    This was created as a direct response to our community’s need for restorative justice–making things right.

    You likely feel a personal connection to Indigenous People. You want to contribute to the well-being and sustainability of First Peoples locally, and around the world. (Especially Ohlone people who are the first inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay Area.)

    We wanted to help guide you towards contributing to reputable, accountable, and transparent organizations making measurable positive impacts in the local Indigenous and Native American communities.

    This list exists because “Shuumi” doesn’t actually benefit Ohlone people, even though Ohlone language and identity are a thoroughly appropriated facet of a local land trust’s fundraising.

    We wanted to re-frame “decolonization,” “landback,” and “rematriation” (all centered around returning ancestral lands to their original Indigenous caretakers) into locally actionable concepts that celebrate the plurality and diversity of our local community organizations, and the work they do to:

    • Uplift our voices. Empower and Advocate.
    • Cultivate wellness, vitality and expression.
    • Preserve and celebrate our Heritage and Traditions.

    Benefitting the local Native American and Indigenous Communities of the San Francisco Bay Area means looking at the big picture.

    Our diversity is our strength. Understanding the inter-tribal nature of the Bay Area, as well as being able to recognize true Tribal Governments, and Indigenous Organizations is essential for your role in supporting Indigenous Liberation.

    By presenting you with local Indigenous organizations making a positive, measurable impact in the community, we are re-focusing attention on community driven initiatives with a proven track-record of success and accountability.

    We acknowledge that the Bay Area is an Inter-tribal Urban Reservation. That the continued un-recognition of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area has resulted in political erasure and loss of Muwekma’s hereditary homelands in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, San Jose, and parts of Napa, Santa Cruz, Solano, and San Joaquin counties.

    We occupy Muwekma Ohlone Land. And we should do what we can to honor the first people of the Bay Area.

    You deserve to know that your contributions are being used to benefit Ohlone People and the greater Native American Community. This is why it’s essential to contribute only to organizations which are transparent, accountable, and provide a measurable positive impact to Ohlone People and local Indigenous Communities.

    Organizations can sign up to be on this list here.

    Alternatives to Shuumi 2025 List

    Our short list of Indigenous Organizations making a positive, local, impact.

    Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation

    Dedicated to preserving Ohlone culture, language, and traditional practices, this foundation supports the direct needs of Ohlone people in the Bay Area. Contributions fund cultural revitalization, education, and ancestral territory preservation efforts, promoting Ohlone self-determination and community well-being.

    CURYJ

    (Pronounced “courage”) seeks to unlock the leadership of young people to “dream beyond bars.” From their website: “We look to young people to lead the way in transforming our communities by investing in their healing, aspirations, and activism.”

    Native American Health Center

    Promotes Community Wellness, Provides direct Medical Care, Celebrates the rich Culture and Heritage of All Nations through diverse programming and events, including the Indigenous Red Market, and Annual NAHC Powwow.

    Friendship House SF

    Provides wellness and rehabilitative services to Native American People from all over the Nation. Many tribes send their members to the SF Friendship house for care. [As of writing, the website is down. Best way to reach them is to call. (415) 865-0964 Ask for Finance, or: Lena Ma ext. 4021, or Pinky Huree ext. 4012]

    Intertribal Friendship House

    Legit Native American community center in Oakland. A small place with a big impact. From their website: “Intertribal Friendship House (IFH), located in Oakland, CA, was founded in 1955 and is one of the first urban American Indian community centers in the nation… For urban Native people, IFH serves as a vital “Urban Reservation” and cultural homeland, providing a crucial space to stay connected to their heritage and traditions.”

    Our community deserves better than empty promises and appropriation.

    By supporting transparent, accountable organizations that truly benefit Ohlone people and local Indigenous communities, we can create meaningful change.

    Let’s reclaim our responsibility to honor the first people of this land and work towards a future where Indigenous voices are amplified, not erased.

    Together, we can make a difference – let this be a starting point for positive action.

    Would you like to join this list?

    Apply to be an Alternative Organization

    Apply Here

  • SF Bay Area Shellmounds Are Some of the Most Endangered Cultural Resources in the World

    Save Shellmounds Not Parking Lots campaign image of archaeologists sifting through soil in a cemetery. Title reads: “You wouldn’t let them dig up your grandma. Why would you let them dig up ours?”

    The San Francisco Bay Area had well over 425 shellmounds.

    Gabriel Duncan, from the Alameda Native History Project, estimates the true number of shellmounds around the S.F. Bay Area’s shoreline is closer to seven or eight-hundred shellmounds, which existed before European invasion and colonization.

    Shellmounds are ancient burial grounds used by the First People of the San Francisco Bay Area for over 10,000 years. Shellmounds form ancient mortuary complexes created by Ohlone, Miwok, and Karkin people. Shellmounds were not village sites; but they were places where ceremonies dedicated to indigenous ancestors were performed; and large seasonal gatherings were held nearby to celebrate the unity, harmony, and balance indigenous people share with the earth, each other, our ancestors, and all creation.

    Grave robbing by universities and treasure hunters; as well as desecration by railroad companies, oil refineries, and quarry operators, has made the remaining San Francisco Bay Area Shellmounds one of the most endangered cultural resources in the world.

    One of the chief defilers of shellmounds are quarry companies. These companies are still operating today, at places like the San Rafael Rock Quarry–which is home to no less than five shellmounds; and Dutra Materials Quarry, in Richmond, California–an area dotted with the highest concentration of shellmounds in the East Bay.

    But not much is being said about the historical and ongoing desecration and defiling of indigenous bodies to build the infrastructure and institutions all around us.

    This is surprising, considering the amount of time, effort, and fundraising which has gone into “preserving” a parking lot in West Berkeley, and protesting a thriving and established shopping mall in Emeryville, California.

    While other cities and corporations used shellmounds to level their train tracks, and pack for roadways: the Angel Island Immigration Station is one of the best surviving answers to the question of “What Happened to the Shellmounds?”

    Angel Island was home to about four shellmounds. All of which were quarried and used as a base for the concrete to construct the immigration buildings now standing as Angel Island State Park. However, there is no mention of this fact in the park brochure, or uttered by any tour guide on the island.

    The historical and continuing desecration goes unspoken, and right before our very eyes; all over the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Instead of directly addressing and challenging the corporations and cities responsible for the desecration of Ohlone, Miwok, and Karkin burial grounds, and sacred sites: advocates and allies are being fooled into believing these parking lots (in West Berkeley), and post-industrial waste sites (in East Oakland) are the priority for the fight against desecration of indigenous land. This is not true.

    “Saving” parking lots is not an indigenous priority over stopping the desecration of indigenous sacred sites today.

    Optic-driven, PR events, like urban gardens, and cultural easements to use our own land for free, do not address the fact that shellmounds are being quarried into extinction. That these ancient structures are being erased by shoreline development, and urbanization of the San Francisco Bay Area waterfront.

    This situation will not change; the desecration will not stop, until our supporters and allies start to critically assess the information being given to them by non-profit corporations trying to fundraise for their money, and compare that with information provided by scholars, experts, and bona fide tribes like the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Save shellmounds. Not parking lots.

  • Text of CA Senate Joint Resolution re: Muwekma Ohlone Tribe Federal Recognition

    Amended in Senate June 08, 2022

    CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION

    Senate Joint Resolution
    No. 13

    Introduced by Senator Cortese
    (Coauthor: Senator Wieckowski)
    (Coauthors: Assembly Members Kalra, Lee, and Low)

    March 07, 2022

    Relative to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

    LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

    SJR 13, as amended, Cortese. Muwekma Ohlone Tribe: federal recognition.

    This measure would urge the United States Congress and the Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Indian Affairs to reaffirm and restore the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe as a federally recognized Indian tribe and include the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in the Federal Register as a recognized tribe.

    Fiscal Committee: NO

    WHEREAS, The United States Federal District Court of the District of Columbia recognized in Muwekma Tribe v. Babbitt (2000) 133 F.Supp.2d 30 that “The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is a tribe of Ohlone Indians indigenous to the present-day San Francisco Bay Area. In the early part of the Twentieth Century, the Department of the Interior recognized the Muwekma Tribe as an Indian tribe under the jurisdiction of the United States. In more recent times, however, and despite its steadfast efforts, the Muwekma Tribe has been unable to obtain federal recognition, a status vital for the Tribe and its members.”; and

    WHEREAS, The United States Federal District Court of the District of Columbia recognized in Muwekma Ohlone Tribe v. Kempthorne (D.D.C. 2006) 452 F.Supp.2d 105 that “The following facts are not in dispute. Muwekma is a group of American Indians indigenous to the San Francisco Bay area, the members of which are direct descendants of the historical Mission San Jose Tribe, also known as the Pleasanton or Verona Band of Alameda County (the “Verona Band”). From 1914 to 1927, the Verona Band was recognized by the federal government as an Indian tribe. Neither the United States Congress nor any executive agency ever formally withdrew federal recognition of the Verona Band.”; and

    WHEREAS, The Muwekma Ohlone people, who never left their aboriginal land and were once pronounced extinct by anthropologists, have retained their culture and social identity for the past 230 years; and

    WHEREAS, The Muwekma Ohlone people have left a record of approximately 13,000 years of human history; and

    WHEREAS, The United States government maintained a “trust” relationship with three Costanoan tribal groups, including the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, historically identified as the Verona Band, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1906 to 1927; and

    WHEREAS, The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe was wrongly removed from the Federal Register in 1927 despite its “trust” relationship and its previous efforts to foster and secure federal recognition as an Indian tribe; and

    WHEREAS, The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe enrolled with and was approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the years between 1928 and 1933, inclusive, 1948 and 1957, inclusive, and 1968 and 1971, inclusive, under the 1928 California Jurisdictional Act, attended Indian boarding schools between 1930 and 1950, inclusive, and have since organized according to the Bureau’s directives, but still have no right to be legally considered an Indian tribe without first obtaining reaffirmation and formal acknowledgment by the Secretary of the Interior; and

    WHEREAS, There are over 600 individual descendants of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in the San Francisco Bay Area who have been identified by the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and

    WHEREAS, European migration led to the near decimation of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the lack of formal recognition after 1927 by the Department of the Interior suggests a disregard for the cultural diversity and historical presence that the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe has offered to our state, including service in the United States Armed Services in previous wars and military conflicts spanning from World War I through the present day; and

    WHEREAS, Several California counties and elected officials have officially supported the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in its efforts for recognition through legislation commending their efforts and historical and social accomplishments, supporting requests for historical claim by the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, and urging the federal government to reaffirm and restore the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe as a federally recognized tribe; and

    WHEREAS, It is imperative that the Department of the Interior and the federal government officially recognize the historical and social history of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe through its efforts to attain federal recognition; now, therefore, be it

    Resolved by the Senate and the Assembly of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature does hereby urge the United States Congress and the Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Indian Affairs to reaffirm and restore the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe as a federally recognized tribe and include the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in the Federal Register as a recognized tribe; and be it further

    Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Secretary of the Interior, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and to each Senator and Representative from California in the United States Congress.

    This text of the Senate Joint Resolution Number 13 was taken directly from the California Legislative Information website. You can find more information about the Senate Joint Resolution for Federal Recognition of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe–as well as read the current text of the resolution–on the official CA Legislative Information website, at:

    https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/face/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SJR13

    To Learn More About The Tribe’s Efforts, visit the Muwekma website, here:

    http://muwekma.org/learn-more-about-the-tribes-efforts.html

  • Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Map

    After studying maps, and reading literally thousands–maybe tens of thousands–of pages about the First Peoples of the San Francisco Bay Area; I’ve learned a lot.

    It took a while to read works from the beginning (1800’s), up to the latest, including Randall Milliken’s work; which goes beyond the 2009, “A Time of Little Choice”.

    He also did work on the Graton Rancheria; and the Confederated Coastal Miwok and Southern Pomo tribes.

    But I found Milliken’s “Ethnohistory and Ethnography of the Coast Miwok and Their Neighbors, 1783-1840” on Marin Miwok‘s website. That document has a map of “Coast Miwok and Pomo Communities withing the Zone of Franciscan Mission Disruption, their Probable Locations and Possible Boundaries”. Very handy. I immediately printed it out and used it to figure out where Indian Beach is in all of this.

  • Bay Area Tribal Lands + Shellmounds Map

    This map shows the Tribal Lands and Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region.

    Bay Area Tribal Lands & Shellmounds; created by Gabriel Duncan, based on Nelson(1909) Shellmounds Maps; Base map is “Watercolor” by Stamen Designs.

    Most maps of this area show “Language Groups”. I think it’s important to specifically mention that Language Groups are not Tribes, and do not accurately reflect the culture or specific Identity of a Tribal Group, or “Triblet”.