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Title: Indigeneity in the CA Bay Area
Author: Aragorn!, Corrina Gould
Date: Spring 2015
Language: en
Topics: native, indigenous, interview
Source: Black Seed #3

Aragorn!, Corrina Gould

Indigeneity in the CA Bay Area

Corrina Gould is a Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone woman, born and raised in

Oakland, CA- or the ancient village of Huichin. She works at a drug and

alcohol program for Native women and children, she and her close friend

Johnella LaRose started the Shellmound Walk and the yearly Shellmound

protest that happens at the Emeryville mall on Black Friday. Here, she

talks about the history of indigenous people in the bay area, the

shellmounds, and the spiritual occupation at Sogorea Te.

Aragorn! (A!): Can you talk a little about why you thought about doing

the shellmound walk, the history of shellmounds in the bay area, and

focus more on people finding them and celebrating them (instead of just

paving over them).

Corrina: Yeah, there are over 425 of them that ring the entire bay area,

wherever fresh water meets salt water; they’re these huge mounds, and

there are always burials inside of them. Folks have to have fresh water.

And our ancestors ate lots of fish, lots of clams... This is why they’re

called shellmounds, because when archeologists came from other places

they called these mounds “midden.” In Europe, midden means a dunghill or

garbage heap, right? But then they realized that they were all burial

sites. So, since they were known as midden already, people were like

“So, you just throw your ancestors in the trash?”

It’s asinine... These are all spiritual places. People were buried, and

then layers of shell would be put over them, to keep them safe of

course, because there were large animals in the bay area, you know,

grizzly bears lived here. These were places where people came together

to have ceremony, people lived on our shellmounds, they were vantage

points because people could see, and send signals to each other across

the bay. They were needed for survival.

A!: How tall were they, and was the land around them usually cleared?

C: The one in Emeryville was one of five; they fingered out (like your

hand). The one in the middle is central, and then smaller ones radiate

out around it. The one at Emeryville was three stories high. You can

imagine, that’s pretty tall. And it was three football fields in

diameter. So you can get a visual, kind of, right? That was the largest

of all of them. The oldest one was the one in Berkeley. That was around

4th Street, by Spenger’s parking lot, under the railroad tracks and

under Truitt and White hardware store, that’s the oldest according to

their carbon dating. But Strawberry Creek, which we can’t see at all, is

under there and went right into the bay.

What we found was the issue of how to talk about these things in the bay

area when one, even Ohlone people amongst Indian people, were

nonexistent really, which happened because of the relocation laws. The

Relocation Act was in the 50s and 60s, I’m not sure of the exact

date…Their rationale was to take Native people out of the reservations

because there was so much poverty, which of course was true, right? But

there also their desire to get the Indians off the reservations so that

the U.S. government could go into the reservation and use the resources

that were there.

The whole assimilation process was really building on the idea of wiping

out Native people in America. Which is why the 1978 Longest Walk

happened, because there were bills that were going through Congress that

were going to allow the US to say that American Indians no longer

existed.

A!: It’s interesting to think in these terms of... where was the

intentional genocide, and where was the unconscious motivation of

genocide. I’m comfortable using the word, because I feel like… whatever,

I don’t think it’s too harsh of a word.

C: I don’t think so either.

A!: I think a lot of people feel nervous about... ‘oh, it just

happened’.

C: Well, it’s “progress.” It’s “just how things are.” The interesting

thing is that California Indians are talking a lot about genocide right

now because Junipero Serra is about to be canonized. What does that look

like? We talk about the mass genocide of California Indians that

happened with their first colonizers. And I think that’s one thing, that

folks in the bay area don’t realize the history of where they’re at.

That was one of the main reasons that we really needed to do the

shellmound walk, because so much is invisible here. So I started talking

about even Indian people not even knowing that Ohlone people still

existed in the bay area, right? And you can’t blame them, nobody knew

that, right? And even then it was really scary for Ohlone people to come

out.

A!: And we could think of the missions as city states?

C: There were 21 of them, started in 1767 and lasted 98 years, starting

from the bottom of California to San Rafael. My ancestors were enslaved

in Mission Dolores in San Francisco, and Mission San Jose in Fremont. So

Junipero Serra started the first nine missions with one of the first

being Mission Dolores in SF. And, of course, his idea was to conquer the

Indians, to use them as slave labor, and to kill them if they didn’t

cooperate and become Catholic... to civilize, but it was really about

having free slave labor to create these missions and to look at the land

in a different way.

It’s still true that Native people look at land in a different way from

non-Native people. Folks look at land and say, “look, there’s all these

thousands of acres and the Indians aren’t using it, so they don’t need

it.” While the Indians have been tending to the land for thousands of

years, harvesting in ways that they can get their basket shoots

straight, burning stuff off so that the vegetation that they ate came

back in a good way, ways that they brought animals in to the land so

that it’s not destroyed, and how they take care of the acorns and the

fish in the area, so there was a natural process of care-taking the

land, tenuring the land.

When other people got here they said, “There’s all this land and there’s

so much rich soil,” (‘cause the natives had been tending it) “that we

could put all these orchards up.” And that ‘s exactly what happened;

they put these orchards up and kept pigs and goats and all these animals

that we know as food. And giving those foods to my ancestors made them

sick, as anybody eating food that they’re not used to will get sick, so

they got sick and died. The animals came with diseases that folks here

had never seen.

A!: If you were going to talk about the stages of genocide of California

natives, how would you do that? Was there a stage prior to the founding

of the missions? perhaps with the initial contact with whites?

C: So Native people were free to go after the missions closed, right?

And the state of Mexico was here for a while, right. What was supposed

to happen was that Native people could apply for land tracts for land

that used to be theirs. The problem was that folks were illiterate.

A!: Not to mention the traditional world view about land.

C: Right. so how would they have done it? they didn’t think about it

like that for one, and two, so they’re posting stuff up with words on

it, so what do the words mean? It means nothing, and who’s gonna tell

you that it does mean something? “Well, none of these Indians came

forward and got this land that they could’ve gotten, so...” So, Mexico

had it.

Then there was the Treaty of Guadalupe, where Indians were supposed to

get land back, but that didn’t happen. Then the state of California was

created and the state of California created laws specifically for

genocide, for example a law stating basically that it was illegal to be

Indian: that any white man could take you to a court of law and say that

you were vagrant, and say that they would take care of your food and

your clothing for the next 40 years, if they could use you for work, and

the court would find in favor of that. They could take people’s kids

away.

This is in to the 20th century. They could take your children and say

they were orphans. And they could shoot you, as the parent, to make the

children orphans. You didn’t have any rights because you couldn’t say

anything in a court of law if you were not white. So children were taken

from their parent(s) and sold into indentured servitude. People were

hunted down because the state of California paid over a million dollars

for the scalps, heads, and ears of Native american people.

A!: This is after Mexico.

C: Yeah, after Mexico. So this is Gold Rush era. Everybody flooded into

the state, and of course there’s not enough gold to go around, but on

the weekends, there’d be these black sundays, people would get on their

horses, shoot a couple of Indians, have some money to get through so

they could continue panning for gold. So it was all of these things that

created the genocide of Natives in California.

A!: Sounds like you’re now talking about Natives who would’ve lived

closer to the Sierras, while obviously San Francisco and the bay were

already a different environment, with cities, etc. But also it is where

the missions were.

C: Right. Yeah, there weren’t missions up there, they were all on the

coast. It was still illegal to be Indian, even though you were in San

Francisco or Oakland, so people could still kill you and get a bounty...

this was the case anywhere in the state of California. They were trying

to exterminate the Indian. There was no reason to have us here; we were

an inferior race. They called us diggers, here. We were not even human.

Not even just in the state of California, in the US, Indians did not get

citizenship until 1924. So my great grandparents were not even born with

citizenship. It wasn’t until 1978 that we had our own right to religion.

So all of this forbidden stuff had to go underground. My particular

family survived all of those ways of genocide by pretending to be

Mexican. They worked on a ranch in Pleasanton, and survived. But the

interesting thing is that they all intermarried with other Ohlones and

other mission Indians who were close by.

A!: There was still some language.

C: There was still language. My great grandfather was one of the last

speakers of Chochenyo language. This crazy... JP Harrington, and he was

absolutely nuts. (I think the ancestors had something to do with it.)

But he went... not just California languages but all these languages in

Mexico, he’d seen all these languages disappearing and he just went and

wrote notes and had people talking to wax cylinders and recorded them

and got all of this information and that’s how we’re bringing our

language back. Because he did that with my great grandfather. It’s

really amazing that those things happened. Nels Nelson, who worked in

Berkeley in 1909 knew then, over a hundred years ago, that all these

shellmounds were going to be desecrated or removed, and he made a map of

them, over a hundred years ago, and that’s what we used for the

shellmound walks. It’s not just Ohlone people who were invisibilized,

all Native people were invisibilized in the bay area for a while, even

after Alcatraz and stuff. They kind of went away, you know?

A!: Yeah. And the problem with Alcatraz is that it’s sensationalism:

it’s not “Natives exist in daily life” it’s “Natives exist in a circus.”

C: Right. I agree with that. So we decided that was important after

Emeryville was such a debacle...

A!: That mall that opened in 2003?

C: 2002, I think. We decided to protest it. So we protest it every

year...

So we walked all the shellmounds that we could find, superimposing our

bay area map on Nels Nelson’s map and trying to figure out roadways and

reading old newspapers that had stories about when ancestors were pulled

out.We just figured out where they were, and we stopped and prayed at

these places that were under buildings, under railway tracks, under

bars, under schools, under all this stuff. And one of our main reasons

was that if we didn’t recognize the ancestors from this land, we

couldn’t do the work to be recognized. People work for recognition in

different ways...

A!: For the audience, you’re talking about federal recognition of your

tribe, and the complicated process, and the value of that recognition,

pro and con.

C: Right. There are folks that work on federal recognition and I think

it’s a farce. It was set up in a way that has never been for Indians or

about Indians, it’s about preventing us from being recognized.

A!: It’s about genocide. Why don’t you talk about Sogorea Te. Since

you’re talking about the end of the chapter of the walks, and there were

a bunch of other things too...

C: In 2011, after twelve and a half years,t we’ve been going and helping

Wounded Knee, SPIRIT, that’s the group that worked to get the city of

Vallejo and the Vallejo Restoration District not to build a park there.

It’s 15 acres of open land on the Carquinez Strait. It’s the last 15

acres right there in Vallejo that’s open land, and folks have been going

to city council meetings--the city council is actually separate from

their park district; their park district holds a lease on the land and

are the caretakers.

So, we had to go through their board, and their board was super racist,

and didn’t want to hear anything about holding on to that piece of land

and leaving it as open space. There was an old abandoned house that was

on top of it before, it would be overgrown all the time, there was a

little creek that ran through it, and fishermen would fish there

regularly, and people walked their dogs there. It was just open space

and no one basically went there and there was a big huge housing

development that was butted right up against it and actually a lot of

the cremations had been removed when the built that development, and put

onto Sogorea Te space, right? So, twelve and a half years going to board

meetings, impact report meetings, having letter writing campaigns, all

of that to have them say “we’re gonna do it anyway.” At that time the

city of Vallejo was going bankrupt, people can look that up. So, they

decided in all their wisdom to give the Greater Vallejo Park District

$40,000 in free permitting to go ahead with the park.

We decided there was nothing else we could do. On April 14, 2011, we

called folks up to go up there and hold it down. We figured we’d be

there for a weekend, we ended up being there 109 days. We set up camp,

we set up a sacred fire first of all. That was the first thing we did.

And Fred Short was the one who put that together for us, he got the

sacred fire going, and it stayed burning for 109 days. That was one of

the biggest fights.

A!: So I’ve heard you speak about this as prefiguring the Occupy moment,

especially as figuring out how a big pile of people shares a small space

that is not where they normally live, so can you talk about some of the

decision making, and some of the ways it mirrored and didn’t mirror

Occupy, which happened later that same year.

C: Yeah, we actually came and welcomed Occupy that first day [in

Oakland]. Sogorea Te, for a lot of the people who were there, was a

spiritual awakening, and also caused a lot of post traumatic stress. I

think at some point we need to get all together, because there’s pieces

of the experience that are missing somewhere. I forget a lot of stuff.

But, there was a group of eight of us, four Native and four non-native

people, that got together to figure out things like how we were going to

deal with the media, how we were going to do messaging, how we were

going to deal with the police when they got there, who the security was

gonna be, who was gonna be in charge of food, etc.

Each of us took our own place, but as we noticed people coming in to the

land, the one thing that was centralized was the sacred fire and people

who had never been there were greeted (by security or people there from

the beginning) to tell them that when they walked in there they were

walking on sacred land, and to come in a respectful way, and that if

they wanted to stay there they could. And then they were told that we

didn’t care what religion they were, but whatever they believed in, to

say a prayer to whatever it was, and to put tobacco on that fire to help

to keep this strength. The fire was a central place for having

conversations with the entire group that lived there at the time, it

helped focus us when the police came, everyone gathered around (children

and women inside, men outside, security outside of that)... it was the

central place we would meet when anything happened.

It was our place of spirituality, we would stand there in the morning

and pray before we ate breakfast to welcome in our ancestors. There were

ceremonies there; people from all over California, different tribes,

people from the Pacific, came and brought ceremony there. It became an

ongoing spiritual ceremony, we knew that there was something else

besides us. So it took a lot of ego out of stuff, by doing it that way.

Also we kept the space. There was no cussing when you were around the

fire. No alcohol or drugs of any kind on the premises at any time. It

was set up that way and everyone was in agreement about it.

People ask us how we kept it together, and it was because everyone had

the same mind set; we were there to hold down this land for these

ancestors, and that’s what our lifework was and we didn’t have time for

that other stuff. So everyone found a place within there. Some people

were good at cooking, some people were good at cleaning up trash, some

people were good at watching people’s kids, some people were good at

going and making copies so that we could flyer. Everyone had something

they could do that would help the community.

A!: So that’s the strength. What were the weaknesses, compared to, in

the context of, Occupy.

C: I think those were the strengths of Sogorea Te and the weaknesses of

Occupy. I think that there’s some amazing things that happened at

Occupy... I think the leadership was lacking in a way.

A!: Helps to have a specific mission.

C: Yeah. that helps. I don’t know. I traveled to different occupies, and

some of them were just a group of folks hanging out in front of a post

office. Some of them were big like Oakland. It was different. I think

because... maybe it was because of how Sogorea Te was positioned.

I think the idea of occupy was great. the idea of people coming together

and learning how to live together again is an amazing idea and it has to

happen again. I think if I was to build up an Occupy in Oakland, not

nationwide but in Oakland, then I would ensure that there was

representation of all people, in the leadership, and that was not true

of the Occupy in Oakland. There was a lot of education, but people were

still stuck in their ideas of how things should be.

Sometimes in leadership folks have to make unpopular decisions, and

stick by their guns, and sometimes they need to step back and let

someone else shine for a while. And I think that is what happened at

Sogorea Te. When you’re doing something that is so big, you’re not on

all the time, you just can’t do it, so allowing yourself to back up and

let someone else take the face, for a while? is good to do. It allows

other people’s ideas and inventions to come in and you can see different

things happen.

A!: So you’re using the word “leadership,” which is very loaded word for

anarchists. Can you talk about it in a way that we can understand what

you mean? A leader is not a boss, or a ruler?

C: No, not at all. Although sometimes people in those positions need to

make harsh decisions. Let me back this up a little bit. I don’t know

what Occupy had in place to make sure that everyone stayed safe and

people were asked to leave. In the time we were at Sogorea Te, we asked

four people to leave. It came from the group of people, and then it came

to the leadership group, and then we talked to the people, and then they

usually just left, in a quiet way. It wasn’t something where people had

to be dragged out or anything like that. There were specific reasons for

it. I don’t know if that happened at Occupy. I think there were some

particular protocols that need to be in place when people are living

together like that.

That said, for me leadership is not about people appointing themselves

as the group head, but someone who follows what needs to be done. And I

think whatever community you live in, mainstream or anarchy, there are

certain people who make themselves available to regular folks, who have

ideas that get grabbed onto by other people and gone with, and I think

that’s happened with Sogorea Te. We had built relationships with folks,

“you’ve been walking with us for four years, you know the work that we

are doing here, you know what Wounded’s been doing for twelve and a half

years, we’re now calling on you to help us.” So, folks showed up, and

then folks who hadn’t met us before showed up, and folks who they knew

showed up. So it was like that.

The Native people who were in the group that invited people had been

doing the work for so long, people respected them and shared food with

them and talked with them and they made themselves available and showed

up at each others’ funerals and…we shared a life before. The non-native

people who came had been involved in some way in grass roots organizing,

and also had some kind of skill to share with folks and were willing to

take direction from the Native folks and from women. And vice versa. So

a leadership role comes from the people within, not from

self-appointment or winning a popularity contest.

A!: I just talked to a friend who is in the bay area purely to go to

school here. When he’s done with school he’s going back to the rez. He’s

Dineh. It’s a little surprising to me that he is associating with the

decolonize crowd in Oakland. Decolonize as far as I can tell is has

amorphous definition, it’s not a clear, coherent, singular kind of

thing, but it’s become weaponized before it’s become coherent. I talk

about this moment from Occupy Oakland as sort of a central moment of

this diffusion of the term decolonize. In talking to my friend last

week, it was striking to me when he said that for him decolonize is the

direct spiritual practice of reclaiming this land. Which is a very

powerful thing to say, and what I really appreciate about him is that

there was no guile. There were no political machinations in what he

said. What he said is exactly what he meant, and I almost can’t even

imagine someone in the bay area saying this and really meaning it, and

backing it up in practical terms. Because decolonize is such a political

movement, post Occupy. So maybe we can start this by talking about your

sense of decolonize prior to the confrontation in 2011 and then since.

C: So, he can say that the way he said it because he comes from a place

that is more traditional. So it’s not decolonize the way that the bay

area looks at things. Where he comes from, it makes total sense to me

that he would say that, think that, believe that. For me, I don’t think

I really thought about decolonize before the whole movement or whatever

it is. At that point, I was trying to re-acclimate myself into this

world, because when we were at Sogorea Te, when we were left there, it

left this huge void in a lot of us...

A!: Did you call it an occupation?

C: It was a spiritual occupation, yeah. We used that terminology. And it

being a spiritual occupation made it different from a political one. But

I think that--well, ok this is what I know--when people left Sogorea Te

they were devastated because they were leaving a community they had

built, a family that they created, and they were going back to this

world that doesn’t care about anything that we care about.

I went back to my kids and I didn’t know how to be a mom to them the

same way I was a mom before. I couldn’t watch tv for six months, or read

a book. I couldn’t even concentrate... so going back to work full time

was just getting through the day. I asked other people if they felt the

same thing and they said yes; it was just so difficult to get back in

our own bodies and to be in this kind of...I don’t know what it is. What

society is today. It took a long time to get back.

Then we were asked to be at the Occupy thing, and did the welcoming

folks to Occupy. Then pretty soon I started getting emails from folks

about hey, we should change the name to decolonize, and I thought “Ok, I

can jump on board with that.” So what does that mean? I started asking

people, well, what does that mean to you? Cause there were a lot of

groups, people were having teach-ins about various things including

indigenous stuff. I was asked to do one but I was not there in my mind

yet, I just couldn’t do it, but I started thinking about what does

decolonize mean, and I decided that it does mean that people need to be

educated about where they are, whose land they’re own, and to be

adjusted to that place and space in their life. To me that’s the first

part of decolonizing, is to realize you’re not from here. I don’t even

care if you’re another Indian, you’re not from here. Folks really need

to know that, that America was a creation. It’s not real. So what is

reality, and how do you go back to these things... and then it just

started to be a joke. After the whole decolonize thing happened in

Occupy and screwed up, it was like “decolonize your food,” “decolonize

your water,” you know what I mean?

If you start using a word frivolously like that, then it loses its

original meaning, and that’s what happened. And I think that happens in

the bay area a lot. That people take on the new fad, “let’s decolonize

everything...” Like, if you have white privilege then find out about

that, own up to it, and do something about it. But it’s not our job to

teach you about that.

My friend Johnella says, we can’t teach all these folks about how they

need to be in this world. Sometimes they need to figure it out

themselves. It’s kind of like teaching your kids, you know? For a while

I babied the heck out of my kids. They never knew we were poor, although

we were. But then that stunted their growth, going into young adulthood.

When people start to ask those questions, it’s because they already have

a mindset that something’s wrong in this world. If they start to think

about decolonizing, or going to rallies, or reading things about anarchy

and different theories, then their mind is already there and they need

to have conversations with people and not expect people to have all the

answers for them.

When I think about decolonize now, I think it’s about re-educating

ourselves about who we are, as human beings, and what our connection is

to specific places, and once you figure that out you have the ability to

see other human beings as other human beings, and to work together on

bigger issues. I always say yes, I have this little tiny group of

Ohlones who are left here, and we have this little tiny thing called

shellmounds that are mostly paved over, and why should anybody give a

shit about this issue when there’s global warming, all of this stuff,

right? I always ask that, why should people be interested in this?

Because what it comes down to is when we all have people we bury, those

spaces should be sacred. When you can’t respect people’s sacredness

around their burial sites, then you can’t respect a lot. That’s why I

ask people to do the work, or to join me to save these places. If we

don’t then after this generation we will be annihilated. We will only be

a street sign. [pause] Save an endangered species...me [laughs]

A!: There’s a ton of places I’m tempted to go that are so theoretical

and abstract that I don’t want to go there. One thing I do want to ask

you about (which I think was one of the strengths of Occupy) was the

idea of no demands. Have you heard of this?

C: Remind me.

A!: The concept is that as a way to fight the politicians, who of course

will try to take over any movement or any sign of life... You know,

there are always these people who predate on that sort of energy, and

usually how they leverage it, how they succeed in politicizing these

moments, is by nailing down the movement to a set of demands and they

become the spokesperson for the demands, they become the most fluent in

talking about the demands, and when they win, that becomes the tool belt

that they use to justify how necessary they are for future activity

along this issue.

So one anarchistic way of dealing with that is to no longer be a

movement or a moment to nail itself to demands like “better education,

we just want x, y, and z”. That defeated the politicians, but that

tactic also allowed Occupy to come through people’s lives, and other

than the people who were devastated by it (similar to your experience

with Segora Te), for many people Occupy just passed right through their

lives. This is sort of the criticism of it, especially when compared to

the Civil Rights Movement, we can all point to this wonderful law,

that’s you know greatly improved our lives... Civil Rights exist! And we

can use it in conversation. But for people who are not fluent in these

kinds of conversations, they didn’t come away with much from Occupy.

C: Right. I think people say the same thing about Segora Te, and we had

demands. That’s interesting. I think that people look at the world in

such a materialistic way, that they think there has to be a goal that

you can grasp onto, to come away with. That you can say “this law exists

because we did this,” or “35,000 other people didn’t get arrested

because we did this.” We stopped hunger in America, or at least Oakland,

for one day.

I think when you do something with a bigger idea behind it, you have to

be ok with saying “I got some kind of awareness, there’s some kind of

spiritual awareness now, there’s some kind of human contact that I had,

that now I’m a different person. Because of Occupy, because of Segora

Te, when I walk in this world, that walking still makes change, because

it impacts the other people in our lives, and we have to continue having

that impact on each other’s lives. Just like this guy who I visited

today, he made an impact on my life. And vice versa, and we talked about

that, just by being there and talking to each other. Children who

experienced Occupy will be able to talk about that, and there are kids

who come every year and say, “Mom, you remember when we slept here, in

the teepee... how come our tent’s not here anymore, what happened to

this place?” and we can continue to tell those stories.

A!: Is there an annual event?

C: There is an annual event, around April 14th, that’s the day we began

the occupation, so either the weekend before or after. People come from

all over the place back there, and people who weren’t there now want to

come and see what it is.

A!: Can you talk a little about how it fell apart? Because it was a

little different from Occupy, it wasn’t the cops storming in...

C: Yeah, it wasn’t the cops storming in, although we were ready for the

cops storming in at any time… but at the end of the day [the city of

Vallejo] worked with the Native American Heritage Commission and got the

area designated as a tribe that is not from that area’s land. And Yocha

Dehe, Cache Creek Casino, is the tribe that said that this was their

land. We were gonna fight that because we know it’s not their land and

we decided against that because we know that it’s my ancestral land, but

coming into it, what Yocha Dehe did was to become a partner with them,

with the city and the park district. By creating that partnership the

city and park district became owners of the land as well. So it created

the first... what’s called a cultural easement, within a city and park

district and tribal entity. The first one ever created.

So, for $35,000 (I think), they bought into this, to create this

cultural easement, and called us, telling us they were going to take

care of it, that they were basically going to follow what we wanted.

They were going to make sure that the structure was taken down in such a

way that it didn’t have any heavy machinery on it where the shellmound

was, that they weren’t going to grade the hill that had the cremations

in it, that there would be no overhead lighting or bathrooms, and that

the parking would be down to two spaces for handicapped people. There’s

hundreds of parking spaces there because we had hundreds of people on

that land for many different ceremonies, and none of them ever needed to

park on the land. They ended up creating six parking spaces, putting in

a water fountain, no overhead lighting and no bathroom, they did put

these big cement benches and tables on it and they got rid of the

housing structure but they did use heavy machinery on top of the mound

without protecting it, they did grade down the area that had the

cremations... So they got what they wanted by using other Native people.

A!: So they made a verbal agreement with you, everyone left, and then

you discovered...

C: Yes. They made a verbal agreement with us, everything was written

down, we looked at it, it basically gave us what we wanted. And it said

we had to leave the premises by July 31, which is why we left on that

day. And we figured, because it was a tribal entity, that they would do

the right thing, so we were very naïve about that, figuring that Indians

weren’t going to... So in retrospect we were like, “we could’ve done

this ourselves.” We could’ve created a land trust, and a land trust

could’ve done the exact same thing the tribal entity did, so that’s the

tool we were missing...

So yeah. I think we had to be there, so we could learn these lessons. So

for me, that’s what it is. For Occupy, that’s what it is... People who

were involved in Occupy, did the medic stuff and did the kitchen and all

of these crazy, fun, wild ideas, and brought life to themselves and

other people, th’ats what they walk away with. So, in the material

world, whatever, maybe it’s a loss. Just like Segora Te, which was a

loss to some people.

This is what I tell people, it gave us how to be a human being again.

And I think that’s the same with Occupy. People learned how to be human

beings again, and share with each other, oh my gosh, and talk to each

other.

A!: There’s a thing you brought up earlier that I would love to hear

your deeper thoughts on, which is this idea of disappearing to survive.

That is a really interesting idea, and I know that other people have

experienced this... I’m just curious about your thoughts about what that

looks like in this world, where it’s so hard for people to be visible at

all.

C: I still see it in Indian kids, ‘cause I work in the public school

district. That it’s easier to kind of mask yourself as something else,

so that you don’t get those questions asked of you. I go around to the

schools and track all the Indian kids in the Oakland Unified School

District, and sometimes I find one kid in an elementary school. He’s the

only kid, he’s in fourth grade, and they’re doing stuff on gold rush and

the missions, and he definitely does not want to be asked, “what does it

feel like to be Indian?” Even as adults we don’t want to be asked those

questions by people who...I have no idea why they would ask that. But

kids, and teachers, ask that still to this day.

In a city like Oakland, it’s easy to just kind of hide and invisibilize

yourself so you don’t have to do that. A lot of the kids who we work

with who are in afterschool programs, are mixed with African-American.

So it’s much easier to fit in with the crowd, you know? And then when

they come to us, and start talking about their traditions, and how their

family still goes back for ceremony, there is a different part of them

that lights up, and they’re able to leave the other folks behind for a

while. It’s the popular culture that really kills us, you know. I think

that’s what it is. I think it’s hiding to be whole, in some kind of way.

My ancestors hid so they wouldn’t be killed. Then they hid so they could

hold on to our songs ‘cause they were against the law until ‘78. And

they hid for their kids to have an easier life--in California it was

easier to be Mexican, even, than Indian.

It’s my generation that’s saying, ok, we don’t have to hide anymore.

It’s ok for us to come out and talk about this stuff, but even with my

kids going to elementary school with a bunch of Native kids (it was one

of the schools with the largest populations), they still had a hard time

in their classroom with their teacher. It’s the education system and

society as a whole that makes you want to hide, still.

A!: Almost impossible to change it at all unless you change the whole

damn thing.

C: Yeah. I often think that. It all needs to change. People need to

figure that out sooner than later. So, I’m thankful that my ancestors

hid in the way they did. And I’m thankful that whoever the crazy people

were in the past, wrote down stuff and left those clues so I could find

those things. I think having a voice in today’s society allows the next

generation to pop up and say, “hey! I’ve got something to offer too, and

we’re still here.” I think hiding is a good way to survive; like you

say, people do it all over the world. They hide in different kinds of

ways. I think sometimes we’re just tired of hiding.

A!: So the last question I have for you is one I brought up earlier and

you may not have any particular thoughts about it, but... it’s the idea

of what makes a good ally. Who have been people you’ve worked with who

you’ve enjoyed working with, and what do you think of the accomplice vs

ally, that is sort of the flavor of the month terminology. It’s the new

decolonize...

C: Yes, the new decolonize... [laughter] I think that... gosh it’s hard

to say.

A!: To approach it from a different direction: most of this bureaucratic

nonsense that you’re trying to do, are you mostly doing it with other

Natives or are you getting much help from people who are not native? And

what have your collaborations looked like. ‘Cause it sounds like a lot

of what you’re doing has Native people as the driving force, but I’m

sure that’s not entirely true, especially financially.

C: Well, we had a small two-year grant from a foundation to start the

land trust. We got one year of funding and don’t know if we’ll get the

second year, which is what I hate about foundation stuff. I’ve had

people who were at Segora Te with us, who provided herbal stuff,

supplies, who said that they want to be this next step, this next

journey, where we’re going with this... Because I think all folks came

away wanting that community, loving that community, wanting to be a part

of something like that. I haven’t utilized folks in a way that probably

I should. People have come to me, but I think that...for me, there

hasn’t been enough conversation to move this forward in a way that I

feel comfortable with. Part of me is afraid to do this, what is it gonna

look like, how is it gonna change my life...

A!: Are you gonna jeopardize what you have...

C: Yeah...yeah. I guess that’s it. Sometimes you get scared when you’re

trying to do those kinds of things. Folks who are my allies are the ones

who have walked with me from the beginning and haven’t left, and want to

stay and offer help and also know when to back off and let me do what I

gotta do. Who bring me information, so I can use that for the work. And

are willing to stay on the line with us. And I saw a lot of people who

were ready to do that, at Segora Te. I really have a lot of respect for

and honor those people.

Accomplices. I don’t know. I think of my friend Johnella, who has been

there and created IPOC with me, as my accomplice. She is the one that...

we dreamed this stuff together. She’s gone off to school, but is still

working on this landtrust. We live in different places, she lives out in

the country mostly and I live out here in the city still but we’re still

dreaming those ideas together, we both have that relationship with the

land, because we’re both Native, we’re both mothers and grandmothers,

and we’ve gone through all these years of work, doing this stuff and

trust each other. For me that’s what an accomplice is, somebody who I

would lay my life down for, who I trust.

So Johnella, I trusted her before, she was the one who came up with the

idea of these walks. I had no idea what a walk was like. I had no idea.

I trusted her. We sat down at that little cafe down the street with the

maps and wrote it all out, and then drove the things, and it looked

like, hey, we could drive this so easy, 18 miles, it’s nothing, right?

We could do this, no big deal [laughter], but walking every step of that

with all these people behind us, really counting on us to have food at

the end of the day, counting on a floor to sleep on. That’s an

accomplice. I appreciate the people who help me sit at the table and be

an equal, that’s an ally. That’s somebody who says, your work is bomb,

and people need to hear this, and I want you to share this with other

people... but it’s not the same as having someone who does that work

with you like that. An accomplice is more rare. I have a cousin, who

grew up with me and helped me raise my kids, she’s my accomplice in that

part of my life. I have a friend who went to all of our events, every

single thing, and was kind of like my shadow to make sure nobody messed

with me, until her health got bad, she is an accomplice, and we raised

our kids together too, so it’s like that. So I have those folks. Wounded

Knee, who has gone out of his comfort zone on all that kind of stuff and

drove all over the world, all over the country, talking to people about

Segora Te and why it’s important, he’s an accomplice. Fred, who lit the

fire, and teaches us, someone who prays with my kids in the sweat lodge.

I have lots of friends who are not native, and they do great work, and

they support us, but on the weekends I don’t see ‘em. So, there’s

different kinds of relationships.

A!: Any last thoughts?

C: I do have something. One of the things I really want to talk to

people about is coming back to the land in a way that nourishes them,

and feel whole again. I was talking to people over the weekend and they

were saying, “oh yeah, there’s parks in the bay area and stuff” and I

said, yeah, but do you know there’s kids living in the flatlands of

Oakland that never get to the hills of Oakland and never are able to see

that, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a plot of land in the middle of

east oakland bottoms that kids could go to and feel safe in and have

ceremony there. People could come and share food. Because people are so

stuck in these boxes that are apartments, that have no land attached to

them and don’t know where they come from, and don’t know where they’re

going. We need to become interdependent again, and that’s part of the

dream of the land trust, for people to become human again.