| | Published October 23rd, 2024
| Lafayette continues efforts to acknowledge Native Americans
| | | By Elaine Borden Chandler |  | | Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone) gives a presentation on Sogorea Te' Land Trust to the Lafayette City Council. Image courtesy City of Lafayette |
Lafayette recently celebrated Indigenous Peoples' Day, a three-day holiday that celebrates Native American peoples and their cultures. Lafayette has taken steps over the years to try to collaborate with the Native American people of the East Bay and acknowledge their histories, most recently by arranging a presentation on the Sorogea Te' Land Trust.
Since time immemorial, the Saklan tribe of the Bay Miwok community, as well as the Ohlone tribe, lived in what is today the city of Lafayette. Saklan territory covered not only most of Lafayette but also Moraga, Orinda, Walnut Creek, and Briones Regional Park. Starting with the first forced migration of the Bay Miwok to Mission San Francisco in 1794, the Saklan people's land was taken from them.
However, the Saklan people resisted colonization then and now, and many live in the East Bay to this day. According to Louis Trevino (Rumsen Ohlone), today the Saklan are officially part of the Ohlone tribe and have been together with the Ohlone since before Mission times due to their extensive intermarriage and trade. Many are engaged in efforts such as Chochenyo language revitalization and the Land Back movement.
In 2020, the City of Lafayette stopped referring to the federal holiday in October as Columbus Day and started to officially call it Indigenous Peoples' Day. Three years later, the City Council accepted the recommendation of a specially formed task force that Lafayette adopt a land acknowledgement to the Bay Miwok developed in consultation with Marge Grow-Eppard (Calaveras Miwok/Tuolumne Me-Wuk) and Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone).
The Land Acknowledgement Task Force also recommended six additional actions, one of which was to invite someone to speak on Indigenous land management and history at a City Council meeting. Corrina Gould spoke in her capacity as Director of Sogorea Te' Land Trust and tribal spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan at the Sept. 9 meeting.
The Sogorea Te' Land Trust is a nonprofit led by Indigenous women living in the Bay Area, particularly Ohlone women, that seeks to return stewardship, rights, or ownership of land to Indigenous people. "There was no place that we had, that we owned collectively or even singly," said Gould in her presentation. "We had become virtually homeless in our own homelands."
She described to the Council how other cities and organizations have collaborated with Sogorea Te'. The nonprofit Planting Justice donated a quarter acre of land in East Oakland, Oakland gave four acres of land in the Oakland Hills, Richmond created Ookwe Park where Indigenous people have exclusive rights to grow and gather plants, Berkeley altered its signs to include that it is Ohlone territory, and Alameda started to pay shuumi, a voluntary land tax.
After the presentation, the City Council Members thanked Gould for her presentation. None of the Council Members committed to any specific actions like those she described from other cities. However, Council Member Kwok and Mayor Dawson said they looked forward to future conversations and continuing to work together.
MaryJo Cass of the Creeks Committee also stood up for a comment and, while emphasizing that she was only speaking for herself and not the Creeks Committee, stated, "I hope that we can collaborate with you more in the future."
Other potential future actions by the City of Lafayette include a historical marker about the battle between the Saklan and Spanish military in Lafayette in 1797, which has been proposed by Robert Fellows, as well as a public mural depicting Indigenous culture and educational signage on Bay Miwok, which proposed by the Land Acknowledgement Committee and accepted by the Council.
To learn more about the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, visit their website at http://muwekma.org/index.html. To see the Sogorea Te' Land Trust presentation by Corrina Gould to the Lafayette City Council, go to the "Lafayette City Council Meeting, September 9, 2024" video the City of Lafayette Youtube channel. |
| | | | | | | | | | | | |
Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA