00:08:09.700because we're a non-federally recognized tribe. And we had been doing work in the Bay Area for
00:08:17.680years about bringing our ancestral remains out of the universities and institutions and putting
00:08:23.940them back into the land. But as non-federally recognized tribe, we have no land base. But it's
00:08:31.420important for us to also talk about that this is an intertribal women-led land trust. And the reason0.54
00:08:36.780is because of the policies of the United States government of forced relocation into cities that0.90
00:08:43.300we decided that we're working with women that have been here for three and four generations now0.83
00:08:49.220that have been moved into urban settings and needed places where they are able to have ceremony,
00:08:56.300able to be in touch with the land and grow traditional foods and to have medicines available,
00:09:02.320grandchildren that have not ever been back home to their own territories. And what does it mean
00:09:07.560for us as the indigenous people of this land to take care of the guests in our territory?
00:09:13.480But rematriation is really about maintaining and passing on to every new generation the languages, ceremonies, customs, and laws of our people and maintaining the sacred ties to our ancestral lands and keeping with the original instructions given to us by the creator.
00:09:31.820And so because of colonization and the way that it happened here in California is different than in any place else in the country because of the genocidal policies that happen with the Catholic Church and the chattel slavery that happened within those missions.
00:09:50.900And then when the new Mexican government happened, our tribal people were also enslaved by them and then by the United States government.
00:10:00.280so when we look at that whole thing and the disruption of family ties with each other and
00:10:07.680the loss of land and the loss of our ceremonial ways it really is Segorite's job and work to
00:10:15.780rematriate the way I talked about is to bring back those ceremonial songs the languages this
00:10:22.320the ceremonial places. And we've been blessed to receive the first quarter acre of our territory
00:10:30.200back to us a few years ago and working with people that are now in our lands. And the reason
00:10:37.500is so interesting that this is all tied to other indigenous places. The reason that land came back
00:10:43.900to us, besides doing the hard work of doing the education, was that people began to hear that
00:10:50.900there is something that's more meaningful when people are doing work. People were moved
00:10:56.900by the work of our relatives at Standing Rock. And people from all over the world went to Standing
00:11:03.940Rock and helped to stand for the water. And when folks from the Bay Area did that, these young
00:11:10.520people that run Planting Justice had two acres of land on our territory, and they were running an
00:11:17.820organic nursery there. But what they did was they were so moved by the work that was happening at
00:11:24.460Standing Rock, they actually went to the elders there and asked what they should do when they
00:11:29.260came home. And the elders told them that they should work with the First Nation peoples on
00:11:34.360whose land they're on. And they really took it to heart. And they set up a meeting with Janela
00:11:39.640LaRose and myself. And Janela is the co-founder of both Indian People Organizing for Change and
00:11:45.640the Seguritay Land Trust, and we've been doing work together for over two decades. They offered
00:11:50.620us this quarter acre of land on the two acre piece of property they were using to give it back to us
00:11:56.420to create a cultural easement so that we could have land back. And the way these ancestors are
00:12:03.420amaze me because this piece of land sits along the LaShawn Creek where our tribe is named for.
00:12:10.820And it's a half mile walk from my own home. And in the idea of rematriation, of bringing back our traditional ways of really thinking about what do we leave for the next seven generations or even for our grandchildren, this gift of creating an arbor on our territory that had not been here for over 200 years was created not just by the indigenous people,
00:12:39.900But people from all walks of life were able to come to the land when we had brought the redwood trees there and helped us to take the bark off the redwoods, to sand them down, to ready them to be stood up, to create an arbor, a place where we have ceremony, a place where California Native people dance together, that we are able to welcome people onto our lands.
00:13:05.600This place was created here on our territory so that it would be a center of bringing people to that fire again, to not just remember as Indigenous people the connection to our land, but for all people that are now living on our territory.
00:13:21.560What does it mean to be a guest on indigenous people's land? What does it mean for us to have
00:13:28.000a reciprocity with the land again? How do we be good guests and good hosts while we're taking
00:13:33.940care of this land? And what does that mean together to dream of being on this territory?
00:13:40.340It seems like even more recently over the spring and summer, we've seen a tremendous amount of
00:13:47.800movement that is causing settlers to begin examining their relationship to place. And I'm
00:13:53.700thinking specifically about the mass removal of statues depicting incredibly genocidal and
00:13:59.280oppressive figures. But I've also seen how this momentum has been really challenging for others
00:14:05.700because of the dominant telling of history. And it's led me to think about our attachment to
00:14:10.860histories that diminish settler shame and how as long as we remain attached, collective ignorance
00:14:17.400will grow. So I'd like to ask you about how reconnecting with the land through Indigenous
00:14:23.220led stewardship requires all of us to talk about the distortion of land. How is it necessary that0.96
00:14:30.080in order to meaningfully participate in land restoration, we need to congruently relearn
00:14:35.860history? That's a great question. You know, a couple weeks ago, the statue of Junipero Serra
00:14:43.460was taken down in Golden Gate Park and in 2015 we led a movement around No Sainthood for Sarah0.58
00:14:53.320and the Catholic Church decided to make this horrific genocidal maniac a saint and you know0.82
00:15:03.420we liken him to Hitler you know because of the genocide that happened because he brought the0.84
00:15:11.940Catholic Church and his ideologies from Europe to our territories. And that was the beginning0.97
00:15:17.860of the end of our ceremonies and our sacred places and our languages and songs. And so for
00:15:26.300many California Native people, it was a very big time of mourning when this happened. And the crazy
00:15:33.280thing that we really learned while we were doing this, and this took place all over the country
00:15:39.460around Junipero Serra becoming a saint within the Catholic Church, it really began the conversations
00:15:45.300of what does it mean to have this sainthood, but also what does it mean to really look back
00:15:53.000in history and find out how did this all begin? And I think that within the, in the United States
00:16:00.000at least, we do a very poor job at telling the history of, from the indigenous people's point
00:16:07.440of view. And it does a really good job of what I call paper genocide of our people. Our people1.00
00:16:14.640are talked about in fourth grade about how we used to live and never talk about the current
00:16:20.440situation. So it's always about an Indian in the past, almost this romantic idea of indigeneity a
00:16:28.740long time ago and of a primitive people, but never talked about in a present form. And so it's what
00:16:35.820I call, again, paper genocide, we're thought about as we're extinct. Even within the city of Oakland
00:16:42.420now where I live, or Huchin, which covers six Bay Area cities, many people don't know that Ohlone
00:16:49.280people exist. It's really been the last 25 years of us really pushing the envelope, standing up0.98
00:16:56.620for sacred sites to talk about the connection of land and people and human beings. But it also had
00:17:03.360started this conversation about the doctrine of discovery and the doctrine of discovery was what
00:17:09.340allowed European countries to not only settle on indigenous lands and to to try to take those over
00:17:16.480but it also created this way for people to create slavery and so there's the connection between
00:17:23.240African people coming to indigenous lands and indigenous people also being slaughtered and
00:17:29.260being enslaved in our territories the doctrine of discovery basically says that we as people brown
00:17:35.260and dark people were only only had half souls and because we only had half souls it was that it was
00:17:42.320okay to take the land either by conversion or by sword and so that doctrine of discovery allowed0.81
00:17:51.660for the colonization of the world, really, and enslavement of African people. And so those0.99
00:17:58.720conversations begin to happen in earnest. During 2015, at least in my lifetime, I remember that
00:18:04.480being a pivotal point of talking about that. Even us going to Catholic churches and talking
00:18:10.580to nuns that were setting up these talks, these dialogues about Junipero Serra, having conversations
00:18:17.860in community settings there were many people that were upset to hear the truth of history
00:18:24.060but we did decide at that point those that were organizing around this no sainthood for sarah that
00:18:30.320we would always speak the truth to history and even though people get upset i think that that's
00:18:36.060the problem is that we get these ideas that grew up in the bay area or in california at least the
00:18:42.640history here and most fourth graders are grew up making sugar cube missions and talking about
00:18:50.400what wonderful things that the spanish church brought to the native people here and not really
00:18:58.500examining the destruction that happened not only to the people but to the lands by the animals that
00:19:05.160they brought here by moving the waterways by covering them up by you know all of the different
00:19:12.340things that happened on the lands are not talked about in our history books. Today, as we're
00:19:18.540looking at Black Lives Matter movement right now, we're at this pivotal point in history where we
00:19:23.820need to begin to really speak the truth about what happened on these lands and to further examine0.91
00:19:30.500how it is that this country that was built on the stolen lands of people and the stolen bodies of
00:19:37.300others needs to come correct in a way, needs to really talk about the histories. What I find when
00:19:45.140I talk about these histories with young people is that when I'm talking about fourth and fifth
00:19:49.520graders, they understand that slavery is not a good thing and they understand justice in that
00:19:56.100kind of way. They're at that point in their development, their mental development about
00:20:00.980right and wrong justices. It's the adults that get uncomfortable when we talk about it.
00:20:07.300The adults that want to hold on to this idea of romanticism, of the Spanish bringing all of these great things to the indigenous people to my, you know, to my ancestors and not talk about the horrific things that that happened as a result of them coming to the lands and taking them.
00:20:25.360You know, what we talk about when we're talking about stolen lands from people, we're not talking about a past. We're talking about currently stolen lands, that their lands are continuously being stolen from indigenous people.
00:20:37.700While we were in sitting place, the Wampanoag people had their territory taken from them by, you know, by this country. We talk about not that long ago, Ruth Ginsburg wrote a document disallowing Native people from receiving a lake and some land back using the doctrine of discovery.
00:21:01.200We talk about us continuously when we were in 2011 in Vallejo, California, what is our village site of Segorite, when we went and took that space over for 109 days, that land was a ceremonial place.
00:21:18.420It was a village site. It was a burial site and still the land being taken and not disallowing us from having ceremonies there or disallowing us from being on our own territories without having permits from park districts and disallowing us from having our ability to gather foods in our territorial places.
00:21:43.820So the taking of land is not something that's in the past. It continues to happen today.
00:21:49.800The reason that it's important also for us to start having these conversations about the truth in history, what happened is that we cannot write what has been wrong.0.91
00:21:58.720We cannot, you know, if we do not examine how things happened here, we can just go back a few, not that long ago and look at what Germany has done.
00:22:09.260And Germany has taken responsibility to the genocide of Jewish people by telling the truth to that history, the horrific truth of what happened in those gas chambers, the horrific truth of what happened during that era of Nazism that was happening then.
00:22:27.160Not that the Nazism has gone away, but to also to acknowledge that this horrific genocide happened.0.52
00:22:34.240We don't talk about the genocide of Indian people in this country.
00:22:38.040We don't talk about the genocide of African people and the taking of their language and their traditional belief systems and bringing them to a land that they didn't know and making them, having them be enslaved.
00:22:55.620And so we don't talk about those things because people, I think, are afraid to touch the pain.
00:23:00.300And I think that what today is asking us to do is to touch that pain, to open it wide.
00:23:05.320And then from there we have to heal. We have to bring it back to the rematriation of land. It's important that indigenous people have land, have access to their land, to be given back the land that was stolen from them, to acknowledge that this land, this new country, it's a very young country, has done horrific things and they owe both indigenous people and African American people a huge debt.
00:23:33.180And so unless we begin to talk about those, have those conversations about it, unless we're very honest about it, we're not going to move forward.
00:28:19.280And I really resonate with this idea of the Shaumi land tax and the obligation of those
00:28:27.360who are living and profiting off living off these lands to be responsible to take care of the land
00:28:35.940and the First Nations folks who are also taking care of it still today. So I really appreciate
00:28:42.360all the labor that you and others have put into this. And I think that's what's wonderful about
00:28:48.760the taxi, the Duwamish rant, and there's a real Manhattan that's joined in New York. We just had1.00
00:28:55.180a conversation with another tribe uh in washington dc yesterday and we're hoping that people pick
00:29:03.640this up in all the different uh tribal areas that people have a responsibility but sometimes our
00:29:10.740our uh folks that live in our territories don't know how to engage you know how do how do i you
00:29:18.880know, I know that I should be doing something, but I don't know what I can do. This actually1.00
00:29:26.060gives folks a real concrete way of actually giving back and helping the traditional people
00:29:31.920of that territory do the work that they need to do in order to bring back the language songs and
00:29:37.940ceremonies, but to take care of our relatives when they come from out of the area. And not just
00:29:43.980the Ohlone people, and I always say this because we have a responsibility for everybody that now
00:29:48.780lives in our territory. How do we then do that? In a traditional way, everyone that lived in the
00:29:55.020territory would give something so that we're all taken care of. And so this is a way of traditionally
00:30:01.400doing this as well. It's a traditional thought process. It's like we are all trying to live in
00:30:07.240reciprocal manner and so our job is to take care of folks here how do we do that as good hosts if
00:30:14.280we don't have good guests also participating in the reciprocal relationship and so um i think that
00:30:21.300that's what shumi does it helps us to have a reciprocal relationship on this territory
00:30:26.440not to um close an eye a blind eye to indigenous people still being here but how do we live as
00:30:35.120good guests and come in a good way. Absolutely. Well, I'd like to now ask about using private
00:30:44.100land trust as a tool for indigenous sovereignty, and how they're an example of conservation
00:30:49.740existing outside of the industrial or traditional environmentalist framework. As paradoxical as
00:30:56.520that might sound. So how do indigenous land trust subvert or repurpose the very colonial history of0.72
00:31:04.960land conservation? And additionally, why are they especially important for non-federally
00:31:10.880recognized tribes? Yeah. Okay. So really the only way for us to get land in, um, back in our
00:31:19.760territory was to create a land trust. And really we didn't know what a land trust was when we first
00:31:24.780started out. It wasn't in our purview for a lot of different reasons. Indigenous people don't
00:31:31.120Generally, think of land trust, I think, you know, land for federally recognized tribe is put into trust by the United States government.
00:31:39.680So that's what reservations are. The land is put in trust so that they that the reservations can exist for non federally recognized tribes.
00:31:49.340And really, I think that people should know that missionized Indians in California from the bottom, from San Diego all the way up to Sonoma, are not federally recognized along the coast of California.
00:32:02.520And so that means multiple tribes are landless Indians.
00:32:06.560You're landless even in your own territory.0.93
00:32:09.600And so the land trust, it was a beautiful thing.
00:32:15.260My ancestors are so amazing that they give us these gifts of meeting people and putting us in contact with those that have that are supposed to bring us these ideas or or knowledges that we didn't have before.
00:32:29.540And Beth Rose Middleton, who is a professor at UC Davis, became a good friend and ally of ours.
00:32:35.480And she wrote her dissertation at UC Berkeley called Trust in the Land.
00:32:39.040And it was about Native Land Trust. And Native Land Trust had just begun not that long before we started doing, before we did the takeover in 2011. And it was really about bringing land back in different kinds of ways.
00:32:53.840We had federally recognized tribes that were buying back land. They had casinos that were buying back their sacred sites so that they could have access to them again and that they could take care of that land in different kinds of ways.
00:33:09.580We had non-federally recognized tribes that were only had an acre of their land that they
00:33:16.500had a long-term lease on so that they could do ceremony and they could do education on
00:33:34.660And they were mostly, mostly guys, indigenous men that were at the meeting. And I was like, you know, one of the only women that were there. And that's when I met my friend, our friend, June Lankard.
00:33:52.740um and I was at that meeting back in 2011 and uh and I asked him a question you know he and I
00:34:01.840um hit it off he told me about his story of uh saving uh the land uh after the Exxon Valdez spill
00:34:09.880and uh as we were having lunch I just asked him I was like I noticed that there's a lot of men here
00:34:16.440is this a boys club that's what I asked him and he laughed and he you know and he said yeah
00:34:22.560It really is, you know, not only here in indigenous land trusts, but also other land trusts.
00:34:30.460You know, there's thousands of land trusts across the country.
00:34:34.180People are trying to preserve land for animals or landscapes or different kinds of things.
00:34:40.640And what I really found out about other land trusts, non-indigenous land trusts, is that for a lot of them, they're about putting up these big old fences with no trespassing signs.
00:34:52.560to save a particular area from being touched or destroyed.
00:34:57.300But Indigenous land trusts are really about reengaging people back into the land,
00:35:02.860barely touching the land and really working with the land
00:35:06.580and bringing medicines and ceremony and stuff back
00:35:09.980and really trying to not only Indigenous people,
00:35:13.060but really bringing everybody along with us.
00:35:15.420And what does that look like for us to reengage with the land in a different kind of a way?
00:35:20.920And so I really appreciate this being a tool, a mechanism for us to be able to do that, especially for us that are non-federally recognized, that want to have access to land for ceremony, for reburial, for a way for us to grow our traditional foods again, for us to have places for us to just be.
00:35:48.400and I think that that's different than a park you know it's really talking about what does it look
00:35:54.780like to be on sovereign indigenous land in the middle of a city and it what it really means is
00:36:01.240that indigenous people are leading what's happening on that land are leading the ceremonial places are
00:36:07.280really re-engaging and our tribal territory our tribal people back into a way of of living
00:36:14.740in a more reciprocal manner, really bringing people onto the land to learn about language.
00:36:20.720And I think that people are hungry for it, not just our people, other people that are
00:36:26.620living in our territories now, that they understand this relationship that they're
00:36:31.640wanting to engage in a different kind of way. I think when we live in cities and urban places,
00:36:37.180we forget that we are still a part of the the circle of creation that we are always trying
00:36:45.000to run away to the mountains or run away to the ocean to run away to the to nature we forget that
00:36:52.860we are part of nature that we are supposed to be in that circle as well human beings having land
00:37:00.620in these places indigenous people taking land through these uh these tools of uh land trust
00:37:08.660right now allows us to engage again allows other people to engage in this idea that we are still a
00:37:15.680part of this circle of creation how do we get ourselves back into balance again so that we
00:37:22.860don't feel as we are a part of a part but part of and so I think that that's what's important
00:37:31.980about having urban indigenous land trust is that we don't have to feel like we have to go
00:37:37.740outside somewhere so we can remember that we are still a part of something.
00:37:43.740Well talking about land trust I'm thinking about how there is also a conversation to be had on
00:37:49.420trust or perhaps mistrust and the harsh reality that so many settler environmentalists don't
00:37:56.940trust indigenous people to hold full title to land they would much rather see land preserved
00:38:02.540in the hands of large-scale non-profits so i'm curious to hear how you have navigated this
00:38:08.800environment as well as the logistics of indigenous land trust how do you see checks and balances
00:38:14.780operating? And how can we foster integrity in conservation and land restoration work
00:38:20.620amidst a world that continues to peddle scarcity, greed, and extraction?
00:38:26.440That's a great question about the mistrust of Indigenous people of their own lands. It's this
00:38:33.280paternalistic ideology that settler colonialism has brought that we don't know how to take care
00:38:40.160of our own territories yeah not looking back 15 000 plus years of indigenous people taking care of
00:38:47.000their territories um and having an abundance uh before anybody else got here you know i think it's0.76
00:38:55.840a it's a huge ego uh trip you know as well um to think that they know what's best for us still
00:39:03.480it really does come down to this paternalistic idea of us as being inferior and so I think using
00:39:12.780the land trust as a tool to get it into our own hands is is great and then I think it's this
00:39:18.960settler colonial ideology that buying and selling land is the right thing to do you know when there
00:39:26.120was definitely no idea on our territory and in or indigenous territory across Turtle Island
00:39:33.020about the buying and selling and piecemealing and extraction of our native territories.0.64
00:39:40.540And that's a very new idea that came to our lands.
00:39:45.420And really in California, only a very new idea that only came a couple of hundred years ago.
00:39:50.480And so I think it's possible for us, you know,
00:39:53.420when we talked earlier in the conversation about truth-telling,
00:39:57.120I think it's important for us to sit down with these,
00:39:59.780are friends that want to be friends of the earth, to also understand that they need to be friends
00:40:05.920of the indigenous people. Many times throughout recent history, we've seen Sierra Club and other
00:40:14.160large organizations that have not been so willing to have indigenous people talking about the
00:40:22.340importance of land and really stepping forward to be those people that speak on behalf of our
00:40:28.700traditional territories. And I think it's important that we begin to listen. You know,
00:40:32.940we talked about this movement right now with the solar colonial statues going down. And we talked
00:40:39.080about the importance of telling truth to history right now. I think it's important right now also
00:40:45.620as we're going, we're moving as a human race towards this catastrophe of climate blowing up
00:40:53.320right now that we need to be able to listen to the indigenous people of this land because
00:40:57.640there are original hidden instructions on how we are supposed to be and in order for us to
00:41:04.680bring that into balance we need to listen to indigenous leadership around what those stories
00:41:12.520were for thousands of years we as indigenous people knew how to live on this land and so how
00:41:19.440is that not important to listen to right now as we're moving forward in this place where
00:41:24.160these catastrophes are happening all over the world and one of the catastrophes is COVID you
00:41:30.780know we we need to listen to this what COVID is telling us right now the horrific disease that's
00:41:37.620happening to us and but while we've been sitting in place you know I kind of feel like mother earth
00:41:43.340kind of put us in a sit time as human beings to kind of learn something to look at what happened
00:41:49.300while we were sitting for a very short amount of time was that the air clean cleared up that the
00:41:54.660water started to become restored that the animals that originally lived in territory in places where
00:42:00.660cities now are came back and so it's important for us to look at what's happening in the environment
00:42:08.700and how we have had a huge impact on that as human beings
00:48:12.440and learning how to use them again.0.99
00:48:15.320It's the women that are doing that0.99
00:48:17.240and are bringing our brothers and our uncles0.99
00:48:19.480and our fathers and grandpas along with us
00:48:21.660to remember those songs that go with them,
00:48:24.500to remember how we're supposed to be on this land together.
00:48:28.200And so it's important for all of us to know,
00:48:30.680it's just right now that the women1.00
00:48:33.240have a different way of being on the land0.63
00:48:35.200And that we have to look towards that way of being on the land in a softer way, in a way that we have a reciprocity to the lands, to remember our, not just our original teachings, but our responsibilities.
00:48:49.920You know, that's why we work with Chief Helene Siska of the Winnemont Wintu about bringing the salmon back home, her salmon that are in New Zealand, out to Aurora.
00:49:00.640how do we bring them back because we have a responsibility as salmon people as well
00:49:05.720to sing to those salmon as they come home to sing to them as they go out to the ocean
00:49:10.280they could the waters uh flow from mount shasta to the sacramento and down to our delta
00:49:16.460out to the bay you know it's the same waters that are that we share and so singing those
00:49:23.640salmon home and singing them back out to the ocean it's a responsibility because they feed
00:49:29.840us, they feed the lands, they take care of us. And so remember what those responsibilities are.
00:49:37.860And it's difficult when you're in an office all day long to remember that, oh, I have a
00:49:43.400responsibility to go sing to those salmon. I have a responsibility not to flush my medication
00:49:48.680down the toilet. I have a responsibility to say thank you to the water because I need it in order
00:49:55.700to live. And so it's really simple things that we have to remind ourselves to teach not just
00:50:02.960ourselves again, but to teach everybody else. Beautiful. Thank you. And in preparing for our
00:50:10.640conversation, I came across the history of shell mounds, which are sacred funerary mounds that
00:50:18.320were across Ohlone territory prior to mass development. And within this story, you've also
00:50:24.260spoken about how in 1909, Nels Nelson, an archaeologist, mapped the remaining shell mounds,
00:50:31.580leaving a record of where these ancestors were buried, which really led me to think about the
00:50:36.340importance of our actions today. Now, Nels Nelson didn't stop development, and he was certainly a
00:50:42.680part of the very society responsible for destroying these burial sites. But small acts can help future0.94
00:50:49.020generations subvert cultural amnesia and serve as a conduit for remembrance. So I wonder if you'd
00:50:55.560be willing to share the ongoing importance of preserving and protecting these shell mounds,
00:51:00.620as well as your wish for how folks can meaningfully contribute to the restoring of the land,
00:51:06.980even through small acts. That's a great question. You know, Nelson, I believe that my ancestors
00:51:15.100put particular people, gave them particular jobs, and they did them.
00:51:18.820Way before I was born, even before my mom was born, that Nelson created this map.
00:52:03.580after I talked about the genocide that happened
00:52:07.300three consecutive times in our territory,
00:52:10.100It gave us a map to really remember the ancestors so that they could remember us.
00:52:17.160And I really, truly believe that's what happened when we did the shell mound walks between 2005 and 2008,
00:52:24.540that we walked these shell mounds for four years, praying at the places that they had been.
00:52:32.860And we know from experience that these shell mounds,
00:52:36.220even though they're covered by railroad tracks and bars and apartment buildings and schools and
00:52:41.380parking lots that underneath them still remains our sacred places and still remain many of our
00:52:48.880ancestors buried and so it's our responsibility to go to those places and to pray at them
00:52:55.540and to acknowledge that our ancestors were there just like we had done for thousands and thousands
00:53:01.120of years. The one shell mound, you know, we, in 1999, we tried to stop the development of the
00:53:09.320Bay Street Mall. And the Bay Street Mall is built on top of one of the largest of the 425 shell
00:53:16.700mounds that circled the Bay Area. It was a brownfield before the city of Emeryville decided
00:53:22.820to put a mall on it. And we asked then if they would just clean up the brownfield and allow it
00:53:28.700to be open space to talk about the history but also the resiliency of the Ohlone people and
00:53:34.180instead they put a shell mound there and decided to create a little representation for thousands
00:53:41.120of years. So of course we ask people to come out every year on the day after Thanksgiving and
00:53:46.360participate in a ceremony and a sign waving and information giving that we've done for
00:53:52.780now 20 years. But we also are protecting and preserving the West Berkeley Shell Mound,
00:53:58.940the oldest shell mound in the Bay Area. It's on 4th and University, and it lies underneath
00:54:05.200a parking lot. And for the last four years, we have done interfaith ceremonies there,
00:54:11.160prayer there. We have invited people from all over the world that have come and prayed with us and
00:54:15.980stood with us. And it's really the allies and accomplices that have showed up at meetings and
00:54:21.720have sent in letters of support and have really done beautiful artwork on the land and have really
00:54:29.700supported the work of the Ohlone people in preserving this sacred site from being developed
00:54:34.580upon. And now I know people's eyes might see a parking lot, but for us, this is part of our
00:54:40.120cosmology. It's a place where our ancestors first lived along the bay, right along Strawberry Creek.
00:54:46.520There were more than one shell mound that had been there. It was a place of ceremony. It was where we had song and where we sent our ancestors to what is now called Alcatraz and had ceremony on these lands before they took off through what we call the Western Gate, where our ancestors go to the next journey, where is now the Golden Gate Bridge.
00:55:08.540And so this particular sacred site that we've been fighting to preserve and protect, we won a lawsuit that we joined in with the city of Berkeley against the developers in December.
00:55:20.480but of course the developers are taking it back to court and so we're continuing to fight that
00:55:26.440and so you know during COVID we have not been able to meet there as much but we did have an
00:55:34.240interfaith prayer service there a few weeks back that we was on Facebook live and I think folks
00:55:40.960can still access that if they'd like to but also shellmound.org talks about the history of the
00:55:47.280plays allows people to donate to our legal fund because this is a legal battle. Our sacred sites
00:55:54.480and ancestral burial places are not covered by federal or state laws so that they don't get
00:56:00.740destroyed. Newer ceremonies, you know, places where my mom and my dad are buried right now,
00:56:07.360where we would never think about putting, you know, Dunkin' Donuts on or anything,
00:56:12.160but not so much about our ancient burial sites and so really encourage people to go there look
00:56:18.880to help us to to continue to fight to save this place we have a concept there what we would like
00:56:25.220to do if that we ever get a willing cellar we would like to recreate a shell mound there where
00:56:31.800we could talk about it we would like to put an arbor there we'd like to open up strawberry creek
00:56:35.960where it originally went across that land so that people can see the water so many of our waterways
00:56:41.700are underneath the cement and streets and nobody sees the beauty of that water. And we forget.
00:56:49.380And so, you know, that's what I would encourage people to do about the shell mound.0.99
00:56:55.620Well, at this time, we feel how so many are trying to break away from this culture that
00:57:01.040has forced our hand into domination, propelling us to the end through exploitation of people and
00:57:07.620land. And as we come to a close, I'd like to ask how you see us moving into this space where
00:57:14.700the desire for ending our ongoing consumption and exploitation exists in tandem with profound
00:57:22.120affirmations of indigenous sovereignty and liberation for all. What is your vision for
00:57:27.520land restoration? And what are the tools that you see are necessary to resist anything that
00:57:33.220disrupts the healing sanctity and rhythm of life i think we just need to stop as human beings you
00:57:43.580know i you know i always go back when i talk to you know my kids i talk to other people i was like
00:57:49.400you know you can go into a store and you can see i don't know hundreds of uh little plastic say
00:57:55.840say they're little plastic chairs for kids right you can see hundreds of them stacked up and you
00:58:00.360can go and then imagine that multiplied throughout the country and like 50 stores in every city has
00:58:09.080the same thing why do we need all of that why why is there this need of this i think we need to
00:58:15.500think about living together in smaller places um really talking about going back to almost like a
00:58:23.280village-like living, where everything that you need is within walking or biking distance.
00:58:30.260You have your schools, you have food available, that you have doctors that are living there,
00:58:36.320that we live in a smaller, we have to go back into making a smaller footprint,
00:58:41.440that we have everything available here. We need to get away from this idea of consumption and
00:58:47.580capitalism and go back to a way where we're sharing with each other. This idea of, I think
00:58:53.660people are beginning to come up with this idea, even within the cities, if they have trees that
00:58:59.080have plums on them and somebody else has lemons on them, that maybe we can exchange stuff that we
00:59:03.840need, that there's enough food that we don't have to think that we need everything out there. We
00:59:09.800really need to stop producing stuff that's not necessary. We really need to produce only the
00:59:15.800things that we need in order to survive. We need to produce music and art. We need to have joy and
00:59:21.920ceremony. We need to have, we need to stop thinking that, you know, one of the things that COVID
00:59:27.020has really taught me as well is that all of these meetings that we thought were necessary
00:59:32.460are not as necessary as we thought they were. You know, all of the time that we spent running to
00:59:39.320this place and that place was not necessary. It's taught us that we need to spend more time
00:59:44.540with our families because we yearn to spend time with our families that we've not been able to
00:59:49.200touch and hold it reminds us of what is really possible in this world again is that we don't
00:59:55.520need to work for somebody we need to work for the collective better of all of us that we need to
01:00:01.420clean up our waterways and that we we need to ask for permission and we asked we need to ask for
01:00:07.020forgiveness we need to say we're sorry that we've destroyed all of that was given to us to take care
01:00:13.800and that we can make it better we know that we have the technology right now to actually reverse
01:00:20.300some of these things to open up the creeks to clean them up we have enough hands to actually
01:00:26.020put in the the plant life that's going to actually clear the waters again we have a we have we don't
01:00:31.920need oil we need to leave it in the ground we need to figure out a different way of being on this
01:00:37.440earth with less things and i think that that's it was we don't need the things we need each other
01:00:43.360We need to be back and in right relationships with each other and for everything else that
01:00:58.380And it's crazy that we have to think in this kind of a way, but it's in order for human
01:01:02.920beings, I guess, to wrap their minds around it again, but to make water and mountains
01:01:07.920have personhood, to give land a personhood so that we can begin to think that they have the
01:01:14.440same rights as us, right? Water is alive and we need it in order to survive. So give it the right
01:01:21.780to do what it's supposed to do. And so this is necessary that corporations in this country have
01:01:29.500personhood. That is beyond why would we do something like that? When we need to give the
01:01:36.160land and the water and the mountains and the trees and the fish their own rights to sovereignty
01:01:42.560so that we can come back in right relationship I think that that's what we need to do in order
01:01:48.780for us to survive in order for our grandchildren to survive we need to come back and if that's
01:01:55.100the way we need to do it then I think that that then we should use that tool to do it
01:02:00.400Wow, Karina, that was just, I don't have words. Thank you so much for all that you have said
01:02:11.360in this last response and the entire conversation. Thank you so much for your time. And I want to
01:02:19.100encourage any of our listeners who live in Ohlone territory to look into paying the shi'umi tax.
01:02:24.980And Karina, I'd like to ask you if there is anything else that you'd like to share or request from our listeners in this moment.
01:02:32.060Yeah, I thank you, Ayana, for this wonderful conversation today. I ask people, wherever they're listening from, to work with the Indigenous peoples on whose land they are, to realize that where they're living has thousands of years of history, of language, of song, of ceremony, to find out how they could help to give back land to Indigenous people, to work towards a working relation of reciprocity while we're on their territory.
01:03:02.060to figure out how best to, for all of us in order to survive is to go back and to remember how to
01:03:10.040live in a better way and grow food, grow medicine, share food, and not think of food as a commodity,
01:03:20.020but it's something that every living person and being should have access to. And I think that,
01:03:25.560you know, as we go forward together in this world, that we walk on her a little
01:03:32.160more gently. Thank you, Ayanna, so much.
01:03:41.340Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast. The music you heard today
01:03:46.640was by Shana Gladstone and Amo Amo. For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem,
01:03:52.720Francesca Glasfell and Melanie Younger.