Land Acknowledgment
The University of California Berkeley is located on the unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone.
I live in Oakland, and I work and learn in Berkeley. Both cities sit in the territory of Huichin, part of the stolen land of the Chochenyo Ohlone, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County.
As a resident of the Bay Area, I have benefited and continue to benefit from the seizure and occupation of this land. This is where I learn, earn, and play. This is where I have become an adult. I believe it is essential to recognize and honor the histories of our homes and relationships, including when those histories are violent and oppressive, because the past is never dead; in fact, it’s never even truly past.
I value community, diversity, mutuality, and relationship, and so I have a responsibility to make visible the university’s relationships, past and present, with Native peoples. By offering this land acknowledgement, I affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold the University of California Berkeley and the cities of Oakland and Berkeley more accountable to the needs - material, spiritual, and relational - of American Indian and Indigenous peoples. This land acknowledgment is not passive permission for the university’s occupation of this land.
One material way to acknowledge our history and support Indigenous communities in the Bay Area is through the Shuumi Land Tax, a voluntary annual financial contribution that non-Indigenous people living on traditional Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone territory make to support the critical work of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. I encourage you to contribute in order to return, in a very small and insufficient but nonetheless worthy way, what was never yours to begin with.
For more information and entry points into considering the legacy of your home, explore:
And don’t stop there. Visit the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s webpage, which details the diversity of Indigenous peoples in the Bay, the history of missionization and Hispanic military empire, and the lineages that persist today. Check out mak-'amham, the work of a pair of Ohlone people that aims to celebrate, revitalize, and decolonize Ohlone culture through food. Fight for the protection of sacred lands. Demand the repatriation/rematriation of Indigenous remains from museums and archives to their descendants. Know what’s happening right now in our neighborhoods. Learn how our universities were financed and continue to benefit from the seizure of Indigenous land.
I am still learning (and will be forever learning) the history of Indigenous peoples, genocide, displacement, and survivance in the Bay Area. I’m also still working to understand how any land acknowledgment that I offer can serve Indigenous communities and challenge settler colonialism, not merely in the abstract but actually specifically and personally. So far, I’ve learned that it’s important for a land acknowledgment to be sincere, well-researched, action-oriented, and imbued with both the past and the present. I’m wary of how this acknowledgment can be performative, and I continue to question my motivations and methods. Here’s one resource I’m using as a guide.
Thank you to the University of California Berkeley Multicultural Community Center, Dr. Debbie Reese, and the On Being Project for the inspiration and language infusing this post.
