00:01:47.220Well, there are so many threads of your work that I'm yearning to delve deeply into, but to begin, I'd like to honor Ohlone territory as a place of tremendous abundance.
00:01:59.340Prior to development and resource extraction, Ohlone territory was filled with oak savannas, ancient bison, fertile salmon runs, and roaming grasslands.
00:02:08.940And I'd love if you could share with us the historical ecology of this territory and how that memory shapes what Sigourate envisions for Ohlone land and indigenous stewardship.
00:02:19.380well thank you so much i you know i i grew up here in an urban setting in my traditional territory
00:02:27.260and i look at the land i think in a different way and i think that i really started looking
00:02:33.320at the land in a different way when we started doing the walks to the shell mounds in the bay
00:02:38.800area and most folks don't even know what shell mounds are or i think that we have done a great
00:02:45.240job in the last 20 years explaining that to people that these historic monuments of our ancestors
00:02:51.660these burial sites and village sites that were along the coast where freshwater met saltwater
00:02:57.280and to imagine the bay area in a different kind of way you know thousands of people from all
00:03:03.240different walks of life come to the bay area different languages different cultures and which
00:03:08.320makes the bay area a really vibrant place in terms of cultures right now but underneath all of those
00:03:14.240cultures and the buildings lie the ancestral remains of my ancestors because of development
00:03:21.080most of them have been destroyed and when you look at the bay area i love the way you talked
00:03:26.400about the abundance and i was in a in a conversation with a nephew a few years back
00:03:32.260and he talked about how the songs of our ancestors were always these songs of abundance
00:03:38.060different from different from other tribes that come from different places maybe people that had
00:03:45.380harsher winters that were their songs some of their songs may be about please help us through
00:03:51.920this harsh time in the bay area if we imagine that this place has only been touched over the
00:03:59.560last 250 years so it's really a small time in history that that we see anything in the bay area
00:04:06.440These buildings have been here very, very short time. Other people being on these lands for a very short time. And so if we can imagine the different waterways in the Bay Area, probably, you know, anywhere between 30 and 50 different streams and creeks that used to run through here, fresh water was abundant.
00:04:25.600So I like to think if we can imagine the Bay Area in a different way.
00:04:30.000Today, we see hundreds of thousands of people here.
00:04:33.820And we see thousands of people without homes.
00:04:38.120And 250 years ago, it was not even a concept, hunger or people without a home.
00:04:44.540And there was enough fresh water here.
00:04:47.220So every creek in the Bay Area you could drink out of.
00:04:50.100And so I can imagine that my ancestors lived in this paradise, you know, not that long ago. But I also imagine that today as we're looking at climate justice, at climate catastrophe happening, that it would not take that much for us to reverse this.
00:05:06.980there was acorns here that were in abundance but also seeds and the vast amount of planes
00:05:15.780that were filled with grasses and wildflowers that we would use the seeds to eat a lot of
00:05:22.320and so there was there's just so much that was here in the bay area and the landscape
00:05:27.560has changed in a short period of time but i imagine that if we went back to a way of living
00:05:35.480closer to the land, that the land can still hold us and sustain us in a way that we would not see
00:05:42.340homelessness, we would not see hunger in the Bay Area. But I think that human beings have gotten
00:05:47.920away from having a connection to the land. And that's really why we're in the place that we're
00:05:53.540in today. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love to imagine through you, what the place of your
00:06:02.120ancestors was and that it's still there. It's still underneath the buildings, like you were
00:06:07.500saying. And yeah, it's a really beautiful vision to think that it could come back. And I believe
00:06:13.460that as well. Well, now the Segorite Land Trust is the first urban indigenous-led land trust in
00:06:20.680the country. And I'd really like to focus on indigenous land reclamation in urbanized areas
00:06:26.840like the Bay Area, where for the past two centuries, the land has been developed beyond
00:06:31.720ancestral recognition. And this development is expected to continue amidst ongoing speculative
00:06:38.000investing and as people continue to migrate into the Bay Area. So can you talk about land
00:06:43.540reclamation in context to living in a city and the power this reclamation holds for tribes like
00:06:49.560your own who are simultaneously on ancestral and urbanized territory? How are cultural life ways
00:06:56.200still ever present amongst the cityscape? That's a great question. And I like that,
00:07:02.540the word of reclamation. And we use the word rematriation, right? And I really love that
00:07:09.720because we're not only the first urban indigenous land trust, we're the first indigenous women-led
00:07:15.900land trust. And I think it's important that it's women that are leading the forefront of
00:07:22.060bringing back our historical, our lands back to a way of being. I think it is really important
00:07:30.020that we talk about what does rematriation mean, because it really is a part of where
00:07:35.440we're trying to use, trying to go with the Segorite Land Trust. And the Segorite Land
00:07:41.120Trust was really created because we're a non-federally recognized tribe. And we had
00:07:47.660I've been doing work in the Bay Area for years about bringing our ancestral remains out of the universities and institutions and putting them back into the land.
00:07:57.760But as non-federally recognized tribe, we have no land base.
00:08:03.580But it's important for us to also talk about that this is an intertribal women-led land trust.
00:08:08.700And the reason is because of the policies of the United States government of forced relocation into cities that we decided that we're working with women that have been here for three and four generations now that have been moved into urban settings and needed places where they are able to have ceremony, able to be in touch with the land and grow traditional foods and to have medicines available.
00:08:33.820grandchildren that have not ever been back home to their own territories and what does it mean for us
00:08:40.680as the indigenous people of this land to take care of the guests in our territory but rematriation
00:08:47.580is really about maintaining and passing on to every new generation the languages ceremonies
00:08:54.480customs and laws of our people and maintaining the sacred ties to our ancestral lands and keeping
00:09:00.720with the original instructions given to us by the creator.
00:09:18.980and the chattel slavery that happened within those missions.
00:09:23.400And then when the new Mexican government happened,
00:09:26.840And our tribal people were also enslaved by them and then by the United States government.
00:09:33.700So when we look at that whole thing and the disruption of family ties with each other and the loss of land and the loss of our ceremonial ways,
00:09:43.820it really is Sigoura Teh's job and work to rematriate the way I talked about is to bring back those ceremonial songs, the languages, the ceremonial places.
00:09:56.840and we've been blessed to receive the first quarter acre of our territory back to us a few
00:10:04.660years ago and working with people that are now in our lands and the reason is so interesting that
00:10:11.560this is all tied to other indigenous places the reason that land came back to us besides doing
00:10:18.380the hard work of doing the education was that people began to hear that there is something
00:10:24.500that's more meaningful when people are doing work. People were moved by the work of our relatives
00:10:32.060at Standing Rock. And people from all over the world went to Standing Rock and helped to stand
00:10:37.820for the water. And when folks from the Bay Area did that, these young people that run Planting
00:10:44.720Justice had two acres of land on our territory, and they were running an organic nursery there.
00:10:52.000and they but what they did was they were so moved by the work that was happening at Standing Rock
00:10:57.420they actually went to the elders there and asked what they should do when they came home
00:11:02.380and the elders told them that they should work with the First Nation peoples on whose land
00:11:07.420they're on and they really took it to heart and they set up a meeting with Janela LaRose and
00:11:12.820myself and Janela is the co-founder of both Indian People Organizing for Change and the
00:11:18.320Seguritay Land Trust. And we've been doing work together for over two decades. They offered us
00:11:23.480this quarter acre of land on the two acre piece of property they were using to give it back to us,
00:11:28.920to create a cultural easement so that we could have land back. And the way these ancestors are
00:11:35.900amaze me because this piece of land sits along the Lashon Creek where our tribe is named for.
00:11:43.320And 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,
00:12:12.400But 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.
00:12:38.100This 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.
00:12:54.060What does it mean to be a guest on indigenous people's land? What does it mean for us to have
00:13:00.500a reciprocity with the land again? How do we be good guests and good hosts while we're taking
00:13:06.440care of this land? And what does that mean together to dream of being on this territory?
00:13:12.840It seems like even more recently over the spring and summer, we've seen a tremendous amount of
00:13:20.300movement that is causing settlers to begin examining their relationship to place and i'm
00:13:26.180thinking specifically about the mass removal of statues depicting incredibly genocidal and
00:13:31.780oppressive figures but i've also seen how this momentum has been really challenging for others
00:13:38.180because of the dominant telling of history and it's led me to think about our attachment to
00:13:43.360histories that diminish settler shame and how as long as we remain attached collective ignorance
00:13:49.900will grow. So I'd like to ask you about how reconnecting with the land through Indigenous
00:13:55.720led stewardship requires all of us to talk about the distortion of land. How is it necessary that0.96
00:14:02.580in order to meaningfully participate in land restoration, we need to congruently relearn
00:14:08.360history? That's a great question. You know, a couple weeks ago, the statue of Junipero Serra
00:14:15.960was taken down in Golden Gate Park and in 2015 we led a movement around No Sainthood for Sarah0.58
00:14:25.820and the Catholic Church decided to make this horrific genocidal maniac a saint and you know0.82
00:14:35.920we liken him to Hitler you know because of the genocide that happened because he brought the0.84
00:14:44.440Catholic Church and his ideologies from Europe to our territories. And that was the beginning0.97
00:14:50.360of the end of our ceremonies and our sacred places and our languages and songs. And so for
00:14:58.800many California Native people, it was a very big time of mourning when this happened. And the crazy
00:15:05.780thing that we really learned while we were doing this, and this took place all over the country
00:15:11.960around Junipero Serra becoming a saint within the Catholic Church, it really began the conversations
00:15:17.800of what does it mean to have this sainthood, but also what does it mean to really look back
00:15:25.500in history and find out how did this all begin? And I think that within the, in the United States
00:15:32.500at least, we do a very poor job at telling the history of, from the indigenous people's point
00:15:39.940of view. And it does a really good job of what I call paper genocide of our people. Our people1.00
00:15:47.140are talked about in fourth grade about how we used to live and never talk about the current
00:15:52.940situation. So it's always about an Indian in the past, almost this romantic idea of indigeneity a
00:16:01.240long time ago and of a primitive people, but never talked about in a present form. And so it's what
00:16:08.320I call, again, paper genocide, we're thought about as we're extinct. Even within the city of Oakland
00:16:14.920now where I live, or Huchin, which covers six Bay Area cities, many people don't know that Ohlone
00:16:21.780people exist. It's really been the last 25 years of us really pushing the envelope, standing up0.98
00:16:29.120for sacred sites to talk about the connection of land and people and human beings. But it also had
00:16:35.860started this conversation about the doctrine of discovery and the doctrine of discovery was what
00:16:41.840allowed European countries to not only settle on indigenous lands and to to try to take those over
00:16:48.980but it also created this way for people to create slavery and so there's the connection between
00:16:55.740African people coming to indigenous lands and indigenous people also being slaughtered and
00:17:01.760being enslaved in our territories the doctrine of discovery basically says that we as people brown
00:17:07.760and dark people were only only had half souls and because we only had half souls it was that it was
00:17:14.820okay to take the land either by conversion or by sword and so that doctrine of discovery allowed0.81
00:17:24.160for the colonization of the world, really, and enslavement of African people. And so those0.99
00:17:31.220conversations begin to happen in earnest. During 2015, at least in my lifetime, I remember that
00:17:36.980being a pivotal point of talking about that. Even us going to Catholic churches and talking
00:17:43.080to nuns that were setting up these talks, these dialogues about Junipero Serra, having conversations
00:17:50.360in community settings there were many people that were upset to hear the truth of history
00:17:56.560but we did decide at that point those that were organizing around this no sainthood for sarah that
00:18:02.820we would always speak the truth to history and even though people get upset i think that that's
00:18:08.560the problem is that we get these ideas that grew up in the bay area or in california at least the
00:18:15.140history here and most fourth graders are grew up making sugar cube missions and talking about
00:18:22.900what wonderful things that the spanish church brought to the native people here and not really
00:18:31.000examining the destruction that happened not only to the people but to the lands by the animals that
00:18:37.660they brought here by moving the waterways by covering them up by you know all of the different
00:18:44.840things that happened on the lands are not talked about in our history books. Today, as we're
00:18:51.040looking at Black Lives Matter movement right now, we're at this pivotal point in history where we
00:18:56.320need to begin to really speak the truth about what happened on these lands and to further examine0.91
00:19:03.000how it is that this country that was built on the stolen lands of people and the stolen bodies of
00:19:09.800others needs to come correct in a way, needs to really talk about the histories. What I find when
00:19:17.640I talk about these histories with young people is that when I'm talking about fourth and fifth
00:19:22.020graders, they understand that slavery is not a good thing and they understand justice in that
00:19:28.600kind of way. They're at that point in their development, their mental development about
00:19:33.480right and wrong justices. It's the adults that get uncomfortable when we talk about it.
00:19:39.800The adults that want to hold on to this idea of romanticism, of the Spanish bringing all of these great things to 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.
00:19:57.860You 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.
00:20:10.200While 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.
00:20:33.700We talk about us continuously when we were in 2011 in Vallejo, California, what we what is our village site of Segorite when we went and took that space over for 109 days.
00:20:48.060That land that was a ceremonial place, it 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.
00:21:16.320So the taking of land is not something that's in the past. It continues to happen today.
00:21:22.300The 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
00:21:30.780We 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.
00:21:41.760And 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.
00:21:59.680Not that the Nazism has gone away, but to also to acknowledge that this horrific genocide happened.0.52
00:22:06.740We don't talk about the genocide of Indian people in this country.
00:22:10.540We 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.
00:22:28.140And so we don't talk about those things because people, I think, are afraid to touch the pain.
00:22:32.800And I think that what today is asking us to do is to touch that pain, to open it wide.
00:22:37.820And 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.
00:22:58.840And they owe both indigenous people and African-American people a huge debt.
00:23:05.940And 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.0.68
00:23:58.840I think many of our listeners will really resonate with your approach to settler responsibility
00:24:28.000and reciprocity, in that even for those of us who already care deeply about the land,
00:24:33.660we still also have a responsibility to the ancestors who tended the land and present-day
00:24:39.780descendants. So with this preface, I'd like to talk about the growing number of organizations
00:24:45.480and offerings that encourage settlers and occupants to pay a land tax, like real rent,
00:24:52.360Duwamish, and of course, Segorite's Shumi land tax. What does the Shumi land tax do? And why is
00:24:59.800it important to frame it as a tax or rent rather than a donation? That's a great question. I want
00:25:06.900to say that we first started out to Shumi tax in about 2016, I believe. And we got this idea from
00:25:15.380the YDOT people who are in Northern California and they had received an island back and needed0.59
00:25:23.960and didn't have any way to restore it back to its healthy self and they needed to clean it up
00:25:29.720and so they started this tax idea. We asked permission if we could use it here in the Bay
00:25:36.080Area and I actually worked with allies and accomplices to put this together. It was something
00:25:41.040that was brought to us and said maybe we should try this out here in the Bay Area and so we did
00:25:48.260there was an ally who now works for me or actually he should be he's probably an accomplice
00:25:54.240Ariel Lucky and his dad created the platform on our website that we actually just put out
00:26:02.120um one one year a few years ago and i think it was 2016 um just by word of mouth that we were
00:26:11.500going to open this up as shuumi tax and shuumi in the chochenyo language from our territory means
00:26:18.720a gift uh and we couldn't figure out if we we didn't really like the word tax um and we were
00:26:25.920trying to figure out a different word to use and we still have not come up with one um because taxing
00:26:31.600you know has this negative connotation and people hate the word tax and what that means
00:26:37.920but it's kind of stuck for for whatever reason that people understand that there's an obligation
00:26:45.540when we hear the word tax there's an obligation right and so we ask people to if they live or
00:26:53.680work or benefit from living or on our territory that that they do this honorary tax and the tax
00:27:02.100really what it does helps to pay for the work that we're doing to rematriate land in our territory
00:27:07.820to build the central ceremonial places to help us to create these people are now calling resiliency
00:27:18.000hubs are these places, what we call Hemetka, a place where we all gather, a place where
00:27:24.460when things are not so good, either man-made or natural disasters, that we have places
00:27:31.680where we could help the communities that are around us to making sure that they have
00:27:36.980necessary first aid and water and things available to them.
00:27:42.680And so another way of taking care of our communities is by creating these places.
00:27:49.060Yeah, there's so much there. And I really resonate with this idea of the Shaumi land tax and the obligation of those who are living and profiting off living off these lands to be responsible to take care of the land and the First Nations folks who are also taking care of it still today.0.56
00:28:13.320So I really appreciate all the labor that you and others have put into this.0.71
00:28:18.840And I think that what's wonderful about the attacks, either Duwamish ran and there's a real Manhattan that's joined in New York.0.83
00:28:27.100We just had a conversation with another tribe in Washington, D.C. yesterday.0.91
00:28:34.180And we're hoping that people pick this up in all the different tribal areas, that people have a responsibility.
00:28:41.400But sometimes our folks that live in our territories don't know how to engage.
00:28:49.180You know, how do I, you know, I know that I should be doing something, but I don't know what I can do.
00:28:57.540This actually gives folks a real concrete way of actually giving back and helping the traditional people of that territory do the work that they need to do in order to bring back the language songs and ceremonies.
00:29:11.040But to take care of our relatives when they come from out of the area, not just the Ohlone people.
00:29:17.860And I always say this because we have a responsibility for everybody that now lives in our territory.
00:30:12.780Well, I'd like to now ask about using private land trust as a tool for indigenous sovereignty and how they're an example of conservation existing outside of the industrial or traditional environmentalist framework.
00:30:29.840So how do Indigenous land trusts subvert or repurpose the very colonial history of land conservation? And additionally, why are they especially important for non-federally recognized tribes?
00:30:44.440yeah okay so really the only way for us to get land in um back in our territory was to create
00:30:53.380a land trust and really we didn't know what a land trust was when we first started out
00:30:58.040it wasn't in our purview for a lot of different reasons indigenous people don't generally um
00:31:04.840think of land trust i think you know land for federally recognized tribe is put into trust by
00:31:10.920the United States government. So that's what reservations are. The land is put in trust so
00:31:16.200that the reservations can exist for non-federally recognized tribes. And really, I think that people
00:31:23.340should know that missionized Indians in California from the bottom, from San Diego all the way up to
00:31:29.300Sonoma, are not federally recognized along the coast of California. And so that means multiple
00:31:37.060tribes are landless indians you're landless even in your own territory and so the land trust um
00:31:44.880it was a beautiful thing that it was a it was a gift i think my ancestors are so amazing that
00:31:50.980they give us these gifts of meeting people and putting us in contact with those that have uh
00:31:57.000that are supposed to bring us these ideas or or knowledges that we didn't have before and beth
00:32:02.380Rose Middleton, who is a professor at UC Davis, became a good friend and ally of ours. And she
00:32:08.380wrote her dissertation at UC Berkeley called Trust in the Land. And it was about Native Land Trust.
00:32:14.260And Native Land Trust had just begun not that long before we started doing, before we did the
00:32:20.180takeover in 2011. And it was really about bringing land back in different kinds of ways. We had
00:32:27.260federally recognized tribes that were buying back land. They had casinos that were buying back
00:32:32.380their sacred sites so that they could have they could have access to them again and that they
00:32:38.940could take care of that land in different kinds of ways we had non-federally recognized tribes that
00:32:44.880were only had an acre of their land that they had a long-term lease on so that they could do
00:32:51.440ceremony and they could do education on it and so really it was because I was brought to a meeting
00:32:57.980after that uh after the occupation in 2011 uh beth rose invited me to a meeting of indigenous
00:33:05.080land trust that i found out about them um and they were mostly um mostly guys indigenous men
00:33:13.220that were uh at the meeting and i was like the you know one of the only women that were there
00:33:20.460and that's when I met my friend our friend June uh Lankert um and I was at that meeting
00:33:28.120back in 2011 and uh and I asked him a question you know he and I um hit it off he told me about
00:33:36.360his story of uh saving uh the land uh after the Exxon Valdez spill and uh as we were having lunch
00:33:45.320i just asked him i was like i noticed that there's a lot of men here is this a boys club that's what
00:33:50.740i asked him and he laughed and he you know and he said yeah it really is you know not only uh here
00:33:59.040in indigenous land trusts but also other land trusts you know there's thousands of land trusts
00:34:04.840across the country people are trying to preserve land for uh animals or or landscapes or different
00:34:12.520kind of things. And what I really found out about other land trusts, non-Indigenous land trusts,
00:34:17.880is that for a lot of them, they're about putting up these big old fences with no trespassing sign0.50
00:34:24.720to save a particular area from being touched or destroyed. But Indigenous land trusts are really
00:34:32.020about reengaging people back into the land, barely touching the land and really working with the land
00:34:39.080and bringing medicines and ceremony and stuff back
00:34:42.480and really trying to, not only indigenous people,
00:34:45.560but really bringing everybody along with us.
00:34:54.440And so I really appreciate this being a tool,
00:34:58.240a mechanism for us to be able to do that,
00:35:01.860especially for us that are non-federally recognized
00:35:05.860that want to have access to land for ceremony, for reburial, for a way for us to grow our
00:35:15.780traditional foods again, for us to have places for us to just be. And I think that that's
00:35:22.640different than a park. It's really talking about what does it look like to be on sovereign
00:35:28.380indigenous land in the middle of a city? And what it really means is that indigenous people
00:35:34.880are leading what's happening on that land, are leading the ceremonial places, are really reengaging
00:35:41.520our tribal people back into a way of living in a more reciprocal manner, really bringing people
00:35:51.140onto the land to learn about language. And I think that people are hungry for it, not just
00:35:56.720our people. Other people that are living in our territories now, that they understand this
00:36:02.820relationship that they're wanting to engage in a different kind of way i think when we live in
00:36:08.380cities and urban places we forget that we are still a part of the the circle of creation that
00:36:16.500we are always trying to run away to the mountains or run away to the ocean to run away to the to
00:36:23.540nature we forget that we are part of nature that we are supposed to be in that circle as well
00:36:30.200Human beings having land in these places, Indigenous people taking land through these tools of land trust right now allows us to engage again, allows other people to engage in this idea that we are still a part of this circle of creation.
00:36:49.540How do we get ourselves back into balance? And so that we don't feel as we are a part of a part, but part of. And so I think that that's what's important about having urban indigenous land trust is that we don't have to feel like we have to go outside somewhere till we can remember that we are still a part of something.
00:37:15.220Well, talking about land trust, I'm thinking about how there is also a conversation to be had on trust, or perhaps mistrust, and the harsh reality that so many settler environmentalists don't trust Indigenous people to hold full title to land.
00:37:32.620They would much rather see land preserved in the hands of large-scale nonprofits.
00:37:37.860So I'm curious to hear how you have navigated this environment, as well as the logistics of Indigenous land trust.
00:37:45.220How do you see checks and balances operating and how can we foster integrity in conservation and land restoration work amidst a world that continues to peddle scarcity, greed and extraction?
00:37:58.880That's a great question about about the mistrust of indigenous people of their own lands.
00:38:05.200It's this paternalistic ideology that settler colonialism has brought that we don't know how to take care of our own territories.
00:38:13.840Yeah. Not looking back 15,000 plus years of indigenous people taking care of their territories and having an abundance before anybody else got here.
00:38:26.820You know, I think it's a it's a huge ego trip, you know, as well to think that they know what's best for us still.
00:38:36.320It really does come down to this paternalistic idea of us as being inferior.
00:38:42.400And so I think using the land trust as a tool to get it into our own hands is great.0.64
00:38:50.120And then I think it's this settler colonial ideology that buying and selling land is the right thing to do.
00:38:56.840You know, when there was definitely no idea on our territory and in or indigenous territory across Turtle Island about the buying and selling and piece milling and extraction of of our native territories.
00:39:12.520And that's a that's a very new idea that came to our lands.
00:39:17.900And really in California, only a very new idea that only came a couple hundred years ago.
00:39:22.200And so I think it's possible for us, you know, when we talked earlier in the conversation about truth-telling, I think it's important for us to sit down with these, our friends that want to be friends of the earth, to also understand that they need to be friends of the Indigenous people.
00:39:39.620Many times throughout recent history, we've seen Sierra Club and other large organizations that have not been so willing to have Indigenous people talking about the importance of land and really stepping forward to be those people that speak on behalf of our traditional territories.
00:40:02.380And I think it's important that we begin to listen. You know, we talked about this movement right now with the solar colonial statues going down and we talked about the importance of telling truth to history right now.
00:40:16.140I think it's important right now also as we're going, we're moving as a human race towards this catastrophe of climate blowing up right now that we need to be able to listen to the Indigenous people of this land because there are original hidden instructions on how we are supposed to be.
00:40:35.420And in order for us to bring that into balance, we need to listen to Indigenous leadership around what those stories were.
00:40:45.520For thousands of years, we as Indigenous people knew how to live on this land.
00:40:51.360And so how is that not important to listen to right now as we're moving forward in this place where these catastrophes are happening all over the world?
00:41:02.620You know, we need to listen to this, what COVID is telling us right now, the horrific disease that's happening to us.
00:41:11.180And but while we've been sitting in place, you know, I kind of feel like Mother Earth kind of put us in a sit time as human beings to kind of learn something.
00:41:20.320To look at what happened while we were sitting for a very short amount of time was that the air cleaned cleared up, that the waters started to become restored,
00:41:28.880that the animals that originally lived in places where cities now are came back.
00:41:35.600And so it's important for us to look at what's happening in the environment
00:41:41.180and how we have had a huge impact on that as human beings.
00:43:20.140Historically, I think many of us know what has happened
00:43:23.180when patriarchal heteronormative men hold land,
00:43:26.560But perhaps you can share with us how the land is calling back a different kind of energy, one that possesses knowledges of care that extend prior to dominant patriarchal modalities.
00:43:38.380Yeah, I think that that's why Janelle and I really decided to do a women-led land trust, because we looked at what's happened since men have been in charge of land and the extraction of land, the buying and selling, because what has happened to our lands has also happened to women's bodies.
00:43:59.740And so there's a real correlation that when settler colonialism happened, when people came to indigenous lands, they first destroyed the sacred and then they stole and raped the women and took the land as they're taken.
00:44:15.100And so it's a deep wound that has also affected men.
00:44:20.520And so we need to bring this back into balance.
00:44:23.700And we are told in ceremony through our medicine people, not just California medicine people,
00:44:29.080but medicine people from all over the world, now is the time for women to stand in their
00:44:35.020And I think we need to figure out what that means.
00:44:38.200And so when we start talking about the rematriation of land, it's really about what is our responsibility
00:44:44.900and our relationship to land as women as indigenous women we are given particular songs
00:44:51.900for medicine for the waters and so those songs and those medicines have not been woken up in a long
00:45:00.740time and in order for us to make a change and create in this creation this further creation
00:45:08.560that we need to stand in those places of taking care of it's our responsibility as women right we
00:45:15.240give we give life and so in our in our thoughts it's like okay we bring life into this world but
00:45:22.060it's also women and two spirits uh folks that responsibility for helping people to leave this
00:45:29.440world you know what i mean it's the ceremonies that go with your next journey to the next world
00:45:36.460it's our responsibilities of knowing how to care for um for our elders and um to take care of
00:45:45.720medicines to sing to the waters because we uh we also hold water all of human beings all of
00:45:54.040creation holds water in their body women hold water in their body in a different kind of way
00:45:58.920when they're able to give birth or when they're pregnant they hold their children in their own
00:46:03.800water and so to have these water songs is important to remember that this so our creation
00:46:11.860it's really about remembering what what our original teachings was and to remind our our
00:46:17.840male counterparts what is their responsibility as well to come into a balance so it's not about
00:46:26.060leaving men behind it's about remembering what our responsibilities are what are all of our
00:46:33.000original teachings are, whether you're male or female or neither, that we all had our own
00:46:41.000original teachings of how we were supposed to be in this world. We have to go backwards in order
00:46:46.060to go forward. And that's what I really want to do when we talk about the land, when we talk about
00:46:52.220our ceremonies, when we talk about living in reciprocity. It's really about going back so
00:46:57.820that we can go forward in a good kind of in a good way to remember how our what we were originally
00:47:03.940taught and everyone has original teachings sometimes we forgot because of moving around
00:47:10.180the world because we're far from our own homelands because we can't go back home because there's many
00:47:16.160people that can't go back home but it's then our responsibility to learn what is your responsibility
00:47:21.500then on someone else's homeland and how do we look to women's leadership currently I'm finding
00:47:27.660that there are more women that are doing land trust, more indigenous women that are doing land
00:47:32.440trust for those same reasons, as we're bringing up our children and our grandchildren, as we're
00:47:37.480nurturing the songs and the ceremonies to come back, as we're bringing back the medicines of
00:47:43.160our traditional territories and learning how to use them again. It's the women that are doing that
00:47:49.740and are bringing our brothers and our uncles and our fathers and grandpas along with us
00:47:54.160to remember those songs that go with them, to remember how we're supposed to be on this land
00:47:59.520together. And so it's important for all of us to know. It's just right now that the women have a
00:48:06.220different way of being on the land and that we have to look towards that way of being on the
00:48:11.040land in a softer way, in a way that we have a reciprocity to the lands, to remember not just
00:48:19.300our original teachings, but our responsibilities. You know, that's why we work with Chief Helene
00:48:24.840Sisko of the Winnomentwintu about bringing the salmon back home, her salmon that are in New
00:48:31.900Zealand, out to Aurora. How do we bring them back? Because we have a responsibility as salmon people
00:48:37.640as well to sing to those salmon as they come home, to sing to them as they go out to the ocean.
00:48:42.760They could, the waters flow from Mount Shasta to the Sacramento and down to our Delta out to the bay. You know, it's the same waters that are, that we share. And so singing those salmon home and singing them back out to the ocean, it's a responsibility because they feed us, they feed the lands, they, they take care of us.
00:49:06.520And so remember what those responsibilities are. And it's difficult when you're in an office all day long to remember that, oh, I have a responsibility to go sing to those salmon. I have a responsibility not to flush my medication down the toilet.
00:49:22.760I have a responsibility to say thank you to the water because I need it in order to live.
00:49:29.540And so it's really simple things that we have to remind ourselves to teach, not just ourselves again, but to teach everybody else.
00:49:40.080and in preparing for our conversation i came across the history of shell mounds which are
00:49:48.300sacred funerary mounds that were across ohlone territory prior to mass development
00:49:53.920and within this story you've also spoken about how in 1909 nels nelson an archaeologist mapped
00:50:02.500the remaining shell mounds leaving a record of where these ancestors were buried which really
00:50:07.640led me to think about the importance of our actions today. Now, Nels Nelson didn't stop
00:50:12.840development, and he was certainly a part of the very society responsible for destroying these0.93
00:50:18.260burial sites. But small acts can help future generations subvert cultural amnesia and serve0.61
00:50:24.760as a conduit for remembrance. So I wonder if you'd be willing to share the ongoing importance of
00:50:30.560preserving and protecting these shell mounds, as well as your wish for how folks can meaningfully
00:50:36.200contribute to the restoring of the land, even through small acts?
00:50:42.780That's a great question. You know, Nelson Nelson, I believe that my ancestors put particular people,
00:50:49.320gave them particular jobs, and they did them. Way before I was born, even before my mom was born,
00:50:53.880that Nelson Nelson created this map. And why would he do that? Who cares if a bunch of shell
00:50:58.580mounds were being destroyed, a bunch of Indian burial sites were being destroyed. But for some
00:51:04.200reason he knew that they were really important. And there was mass development happening in 1909
00:51:09.360around the Bay Area. And he knew that these were funerary places and he thought they were
00:51:16.680important enough to map them. And so he found on his original map 425 of them that rang the Bay
00:51:23.860Area. And it gives us a footprint of where our ancestors were. He didn't have to. The development
00:51:29.180was going to happen it did happen anyway but he put this map together and it allowed us to have
00:51:36.060after i talked about the genocide that happened three consecutive times in our territory it gave
00:51:43.200us a map to really remember the ancestors so that they could remember us and i really truly believe
00:51:51.140that's what happened when we did the shell mount walks between 2005 and 2008 that we walk these
00:51:58.060shell mounds for four years, praying at the places that they had been. And we know from
00:52:06.600experience that these shell mounds, even though they're covered by railroad tracks and bars and
00:52:11.640apartment buildings and schools and parking lots, that underneath them still remains our sacred
00:52:18.640places and still remain many of our ancestors buried. And so it's our responsibility to go to
00:52:25.880those places and to pray at them and to acknowledge that our ancestors were there just like we had
00:52:32.200done for thousands and thousands of years the one shell mound you know we in 1999 we tried to stop
00:52:40.680the development of the bay street mall and the bay street mall is built on top of one of the largest
00:52:47.460of the 425 shell mounds that that circled the bay area it was a brownfield before the city of
00:52:54.580Emeryville decided to put a mall on it. And we asked then if they would just clean up the brownfield
00:53:00.420and allow it to be open space to talk about the history, but also the resiliency of the Ohlone
00:53:05.640people. And instead they put a shell mound there and decided to create a little representation
00:53:12.440for thousands of years. So of course we asked people to come out every year on the day after
00:53:17.940Thanksgiving and participate in a ceremony and a sign waving and information giving that we've done
00:53:24.960for now 20 years. But we also are protecting and preserving the West Berkeley Shell Mound,
00:53:31.440the oldest shell mound in the Bay Area. It's on 4th and University, and it lies underneath
00:53:37.680a parking lot. And for the last four years, we have done interfaith ceremonies there, prayer there.
00:53:44.360We have invited people from all over the world that have come and prayed with us and stood with us.
00:53:49.860And it's really the allies and accomplices that have showed up at meetings and have sent in letters of support and have really done beautiful artwork on the land and have really supported the work of the Ohlone people in preserving this sacred site from being developed upon.
00:54:07.460And now I know people's eyes might see a parking lot, but for us, this is part of our cosmology.
00:54:13.340It's a place where our ancestors first lived along the bay, right along Strawberry Creek.
00:54:19.260There were more than one shell mound that had been there.
00:54:24.200It was where we had song and where we sent our ancestors to what is now called Alcatraz
00:54:30.420and had ceremony on these lands before they took off through what we call the Western Gate,
00:54:36.640where our ancestors go to the next journey, where is now the Golden Gate Bridge.
00:54:41.040And 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.
00:54:53.360But of course, the developers are taking it back to court. And so we're continuing to fight that.
00:54:58.920And so, you know, during COVID, we have not been able to meet there as much, but we did have an interfaith prayer service there a few weeks back that we was on Facebook Live.
00:55:12.320And I think folks can still access that if they'd like to.
00:55:16.040But also shellmound.org talks about the history of the plays, allows people to donate to our legal fund because this is a legal battle.
00:55:25.340Our sacred sites and ancestral burial places are not covered by federal or state laws so that they don't get destroyed.
00:55:34.640Newer ceremonies, you know, places where my mom and my dad are buried right now, we would never think about putting, you know, Dunkin' Donuts on or anything.
00:55:45.140But not so much about our ancient burial sites.
00:55:48.220And so really encourage people to go there and look to help us to continue to fight to save this place.
00:55:55.840We have a concept there of what we would like to do if we ever get a willing seller.
00:56:01.160We would like to recreate a shell mound there where we could talk about it.