Muwekma History
The Muwekma Ohlone lived near this big body of water in Northern California.
What is the San Francisco Bay?
The Muwekma Ohlone are one of over 100 tribes in this state, which is home to a large portion of federally recognized and unrecognized tribes.
What is California?
These sites, sacred to the Muwekma Ohlone, include burial grounds often located near rivers or creeks.
What are shellmounds?
This period, starting in the late 1700s, marked the forced relocation of Muwekma Ohlone peoples into Spanish missions.
What is the Mission Era?
The Muwekma Ohlone are working with this type of organization to protect and preserve sacred lands and cultural resources.
What are environmental nonprofits?
The word "Muwekma" translates to this phrase in English.
What is "The People"?
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe collaborates with other indigenous groups in the Bay Area to preserve this natural resource critical to the environment.
What is water?
This peninsula, named after a sacred animal, contains multiple sacred Ohlone sites and was an essential location for ceremonies.
What is the San Francisco Peninsula?
Colonization drastically reduced the Muwekma population, in part due to the introduction of these two factors.
What are disease and forced labor?
Muwekma efforts to revitalize their culture include programs to teach this essential skill, deeply tied to their traditions and environment.
What is language preservation?
The Muwekma Ohlone are recognized as the descendants of this group, identified in Spanish mission records in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Who are the Verona Band of Alameda County?
The current tribal government prioritizes the revival of these practices, involving traditional ecological knowledge for land management.
What is controlled burning and/or seed planting?
The Muwekma Ohlone have fought to preserve sacred shellmounds like the one in this East Bay city, which became the focus of significant environmental and cultural activism.
What is Emeryville?
Under Spanish and later American rule, the environmental balance was disrupted by the exploitation of these two natural resources.
What are water and timber?
The tribe collaborates with universities and researchers to advocate for these two related causes, central to their environmental and cultural restoration efforts.
What are land reclamation and habitat restoration?
In 2000, archaeologists from this university unearthed remains and artifacts at a pre-contact Ohlone burial site on campus, providing critical evidence of the tribe’s continuous cultural identity.
What is Stanford University
This environmental issue is a common challenge faced by tribes, including the Muwekma Ohlone, as they fight to reclaim ancestral lands.
What is urban development and/or industrial pollution?
This type of traditional ecological practice, tied to sacred land, ensures biodiversity while maintaining spiritual harmony with the land.
What is sustainable harvesting?
This year is the year the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe first started officially petitioning for federal recognition.
1990
The Muwekma Ohlone launched what nation-wide trip to fight for federal recognition?
What is the Trail of Truth?
This Superintendent illegally, unilaterally, and administratively terminated the rights of ~135 tribes, including the Muwekma Ohlone.
Who is Lafayette A. Dorrington?
The Muwekma Ohlone engage in partnerships with local governments and organizations to restore this type of ecosystem, once abundant in the Bay Area.
What are wetlands?
Restoration efforts for sacred sites often include the reintroduction of these plants, which are culturally significant to the Muwekma Ohlone.
What are native grasses and medicinal plants?
DOUBLE POINTS
What factors have led to environmental degradation in Native communities?
The Muwekma Ohlone are leaders in pushing for this policy, which recognizes the importance of returning land to indigenous stewardship as a form of climate action.
What is land back?