Native American Allyship Resources
No one has a more powerful and respected voice for the land than Indigenous people speaking for their ancestral territories. We have seen this firsthand with the campaign to protect Juristac, led by the Amah Mutsun Tribe. When local tribes take the lead, it increases the chance our region will become a place where wildlife thrives and communities live in balance with nature. Green Foothills’ mission and the vision of local tribes are almost always aligned, and their advocacy carries significant weight and reaches a broader audience.
We are listening, following the lead of Indigenous partners, and taking proactive steps to help strengthen their organizations, support their goals, and expand the work we do together.
This is a resource page to accompany our blog post, 6 Actions Toward Allyship with Native Americans.
Local Tribes and Indigenous-Serving Groups that Green Foothills is Currently Working With
Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
Amah Mutsun Land Trust
Muwekma Ohlone Tribe
Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation
Calpulli Tonalehqueh
Maps
Native Land Map to local tribes
An interactive map to explore the traditional territory for North American Nations. This map does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations. To learn about definitive boundaries, contact the nations in question.
Invasion of America
“Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America’s indigenous people by treaty and executive order. The Invasion of America shows how by mapping every treaty and executive order during that period. It also contains present-day federal Indian reservations.”
NPR: Pre-Contact Full North American Tribal Nation Map
This map represents the original pre-contact homelands of the hundreds of Tribal Nations that existed across what is now Canada and the “lower 48″of the United States. Most of the names shown here are the indigenous antonyms that tribes use for themselves. In some cases where the original name was never recorded, other common names are used. Many tribes did not survive the invasion by Europeans , yet this map serves as a visual reminder of their memory. This is the first time for many of these tribes to ever have a place on a map.”
Articles
The Problem With The Ecological Indian Stereotype
“to apply…the blanket statement that [Native Americans] are “original environmentalists” is to overlook the meaning of the concept of environmentalism on the one hand, and on the other to mischaracterize Native peoples’ actual relationship to land. It creates an impossibly high standard to live up to, exposing Native peoples to dangerous policy objectives when they fail to meet those standards.”
Contemporary Ohlone History
“Surviving through two centuries of persecution and genocidal policies during the Spanish, Mexican and American eras, Ohlone people continue to inhabit their ancestral homeland, the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay areas…Although there are many valuable ways to support Ohlone people in their struggles and restorative efforts, one issue stands out as paramount: the need for land to be returned to the stewardship of Ohlone people. To this day, Ohlone people have never been compensated for the taking of their lands and the destruction of their environmental and cultural heritage.”
Bay Area Native Americans Granted Property Rights to Sacred Mountain
Wednesday night, the board of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District voted unanimously to grant local Native Americans property rights to 36 acres at Mount Umunhum, which was formerly home to the Almaden Air Force Station.
Returning Stolen Land to Native Tribes, One Lot at a Time – A quarter-acre of land in Oakland, California is about to return to Native hands, bringing a sense of place and healing to the Ohlone people.
How Indigenous People Got Some Land Back in Oakland – Oakland has become the first city in the Bay Area to return public land to a tribe that is not federally recognized.
Lying to Children About the California Missions and the Indians An article detailing the issues surrounding the current CA mission curriculum present in many schools.
Educational Materials
Sample Land Acknowledgement
Land acknowledgments recognize indigenous people as traditional stewards of this land, the historic trauma they experience, and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. Here is the land acknowledgement that Green Foothills often uses as a template for our events:
“I’d like to offer a land acknowledgement. The natural environment has been stewarded and regarded as sacred by Native American people for thousands of years. It was in relatively recent history that the landscape was colonized and they were forcibly removed from the lands they called home for thousands of years. I offer gratitude and recognition to the ancestors and descendants of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area whose land I am on, including the Chochenyo, Tamien, and Ramaytush-speaking peoples. We can all pause to acknowledge the native people whose land we are on. The next step is to learn more, particularly about how you can support Tribes directly, and then take action. You can visit their websites for more information.”
Land Tax Calculator
Consider becoming a sustaining donor to local tribes. “I base my monthly donation to the Amah Mutsun Land Trust on the Shuumi Land Tax model of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust in the East Bay,” says Nancy Vail, Founder of Pie Ranch on the San Mateo County coast.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2008
Critical Mission Studies
The history of the California Mission system is told by perpetrators and Native American voices are not heard at all. We are working to tell the truthful history of California Missions and bring it to the education system.
Redbud Resource Group: Redbud Resource Group helps improve public health outcomes for Native American communities through education, research, and community partnership.
Watch
Panel to Support Local Tribes hosted by Chabot Community College
Time Has Many Voices: The Excavation of a Muwekma Ohlone Village
Podcasts
Challenging Colonialism
Martin Rizzo-Martinez & Daniel Stonebloom. Challenging Colonialism amplifies Indigenous perspectives on issues of concern to native Californian communities. “It is our intention to create an educational resource where everyone can hear the perspectives of Indigenous peoples in their own words. It is not our intention to further colonize the narrative, or to misrepresent stories that are not our own.”
All My Relations
All My Relations, a podcast where we explore what it means to be a Native person in 2019. To be an Indigenous person is to be engaged in relationships—relationships to land and place, to a people, to non-human relatives, and to one another. All My Relations is a place to explore those relationships, and to think through Indigeneity in all its complexities.
This Land
An 1839 assassination of a Cherokee leader and a 1999 murder case – two crimes nearly two centuries apart provide the backbone to an upcoming 2019 Supreme Court decision that will determine the fate of five tribes and nearly half the land in Oklahoma.
For the Wild
We join some of the brightest thought-leaders and visionaries of our time– to uplift a multitude of perspectives, to amplify grassroot voices, and to tell stories that would otherwise disappear in mainstream media. Key topics include the struggle to protect wild nature, to promote ecological renewal and resistance and to heal from the disconnection furthered by consumer culture and human supremacy.
Books
Books by Native & Indigenous Writers: 2019 & earlier
Support Indigenous Authors
Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the teaching of plants
A Cross of Thorns THE ENSLAVEMENT OF CALIFORNIA’S INDIANS BY THE SPANISH MISSIONS
A People’s History of the United States
An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States and For Indigenous Eyes Only
Birchbark Books: A Native owned and operated bookstore that sells young adult books written by Native authors.
Heydey Books: A Bay Area-based publisher that publishes many books written by and about Native peoples.
Quiet Quail Books: California Indigenous-owned bookshop whose mission is to sell quality Indigenous authored books.
Places to Visit
Chitactac-Adams Heritage County Park in Santa Clara County is a place where school children and adult visitors alike can learn about the past and experience the beauty and the serenity that attracted the first Native Americans to this peaceful site along the banks of Uvas Creek.
Mount Umunhum/Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve is a sacred site for today’s Amah Mutsun and Muwekma tribal bands, who are the living descendants of the ancestral Ohlone tribes native to the region. Since the region’s earliest written records, this mountain has been called “Umunhum,” the root word for hummingbird in five different Ohlone languages. The spoken word sounds like the noise a hummingbird makes while hovering. There is a cultural easement on Mount Umunhum which grants the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band permanent rights to help steward the mountaintop for natural resource conservation, cultural relearning and public education in partnership with Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.
Ulistac Natural Area is the only dedicated natural open space in the City of Santa Clara. From as early as 1000 BCE until the end of the 18th century, Ohlone inhabited this site and founded the village called Ulistac. In their language, “tac” means “place,” and “Ulis” means basket. Thus, Ulistac meant “basket place,” or place where baskets are woven. The Tares Indians, a tribe who spoke the Tamien Ohlone language/dialect, lived in the area undisturbed by European influence for several centuries.
California Indian Museum & Cultural Center (CIMCC) was founded in 1996 with the purpose of educating the public about the history, culture, and contemporary life of California Indians and to honor their contributions to civilization.
Volunteer and Get Involved
Support the Amah Mutsun to Protect Juristac
Volunteer for the Amah Mutsun Garden Days
Attend a Calpulli Tonalehqueh ceremony
Think this resource page needs to be updated? Please email [email protected]. We welcome your input!
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Maps
Native Land Map to local tribes
An interactive map to explore the traditional territory for North American Nations. This map does not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any Indigenous nations. To learn about definitive boundaries, contact the nations in question.
Invasion of America
“Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America’s indigenous people by treaty and executive order. The Invasion of America shows how by mapping every treaty and executive order during that period. It also contains present-day federal Indian reservations.”
NPR: Pre-Contact Full North American Tribal Nation Map
This map represents the original pre-contact homelands of the hundreds of Tribal Nations that existed across what is now Canada and the “lower 48″of the United States. Most of the names shown here are the indigenous antonyms that tribes use for themselves. In some cases where the original name was never recorded, other common names are used. Many tribes did not survive the invasion by Europeans , yet this map serves as a visual reminder of their memory. This is the first time for many of these tribes to ever have a place on a map.”
Articles
The Problem With The Ecological Indian Stereotype
“to apply…the blanket statement that [Native Americans] are “original environmentalists” is to overlook the meaning of the concept of environmentalism on the one hand, and on the other to mischaracterize Native peoples’ actual relationship to land. It creates an impossibly high standard to live up to, exposing Native peoples to dangerous policy objectives when they fail to meet those standards.”
Contemporary Ohlone History
“Surviving through two centuries of persecution and genocidal policies during the Spanish, Mexican and American eras, Ohlone people continue to inhabit their ancestral homeland, the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay areas…Although there are many valuable ways to support Ohlone people in their struggles and restorative efforts, one issue stands out as paramount: the need for land to be returned to the stewardship of Ohlone people. To this day, Ohlone people have never been compensated for the taking of their lands and the destruction of their environmental and cultural heritage.”
Bay Area Native Americans Granted Property Rights to Sacred Mountain
Wednesday night, the board of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District voted unanimously to grant local Native Americans property rights to 36 acres at Mount Umunhum, which was formerly home to the Almaden Air Force Station.
Returning Stolen Land to Native Tribes, One Lot at a Time
A quarter-acre of land in Oakland, California is about to return to Native hands, bringing a sense of place and healing to the Ohlone people.
Educational Materials
Sample Land Acknowledgement
Land acknowledgments recognize indigenous people as traditional stewards of this land, the historic trauma they experience, and the enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. For example, below is the land acknowledgment statement at the beginning of the Bay Area Lands, People, and Economy Report from Together Bay Area:
“For thousands of years, the place now called the Bay Area has been the home of Ohlone, Miwok, Kashia, Pomo, Mishewal Wappo, Amah Mutsun, and Patwins tribes and bands. We acknowledge that for 10,000 years people lived in harmony on these lands. We recognize the impact that the arrival of and colonization by the Spanish and Americans have had on the lands and the Native peoples. We honor the Indigenous people living today as well as their ancestors, and we deeply respect their resilience and connection to the land.”
Land Tax Calculator
Consider becoming a sustaining donor to local tribes. Most of San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties are considered to be in Muwekma territory with the Amah Mutsun territory in the southern reaches of Santa Clara County and Ramaytush territory in the northern reaches of San Mateo County. “I base my monthly donation to the Amah Mutsun Land Trust on the Shuumi Land Tax model of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust in the East Bay,” says Nancy Vail, Founder of Pie Ranch on the San Mateo County coast.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007
Critical Mission Studies
The history of the California Mission system is told by perpetrators and Native American voices are not heard at all. We are working to tell the truthful history of California Missions and bring it to the education system.
Podcasts
All My Relations
All My Relations, a podcast where we explore what it means to be a Native person in 2019. To be an Indigenous person is to be engaged in relationships—relationships to land and place, to a people, to non-human relatives, and to one another. All My Relations is a place to explore those relationships, and to think through Indigeneity in all its complexities.
This Land
An 1839 assassination of a Cherokee leader and a 1999 murder case – two crimes nearly two centuries apart provide the backbone to an upcoming 2019 Supreme Court decision that will determine the fate of five tribes and nearly half the land in Oklahoma.
For the Wild
We join some of the brightest thought-leaders and visionaries of our time– to uplift a multitude of perspectives, to amplify grassroot voices, and to tell stories that would otherwise disappear in mainstream media. Key topics include the struggle to protect wild nature, to promote ecological renewal and resistance and to heal from the disconnection furthered by consumer culture and human supremacy.
Books
Books by Native & Indigenous Writers: 2019 & earlier
Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the teaching of plants
A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions
A People’s History of the United States
An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States and For Indigenous Eyes Only.
1419: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West.
Places to Visit
Chitactac-Adams Heritage County Park in Santa Clara County is a place where school children and adult visitors alike can learn about the past and experience the beauty and the serenity that attracted the first Native Americans to this peaceful site along the banks of Uvas Creek.
Think this resource page needs to be updated? Please email [email protected]. We welcome your input!