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The Sogorea Te Land Trust

The Sogorea Te Land Trust

An urban Indigenous women-led land trust that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people

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Queer Projects on Indigenous Land

June 23, 2022 by Inés Ixierda

Resharing this amazing emergent conversation “Queer Projects on Indigenous Land” and related resources for Pride month!

How do we create liberatory spaces on stolen Indigenous land?

Where do queering and decolonizing and unsettling land intersect and support each other and miss or collide?

How are queer led land projects and intentional spaces navigating collective approaches to healing historic harms, land access, landback, and rematriation?

These are some of the questions a loose network of queer spaces, and intentional land project organizers are beginning to ask ourselves. You are invited to our emerging conversation.

Hosted by Sogorea Te’ Land Trust as part of our ongoing online political education, art and community learning engagements.

Participants:

Inés Ixierda & Vick Montaño
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

Deseree Fontenot & Hasmik Geghamyan
Mugworts Queer Cabin

Sacha Marini
Fancyland

Layel Camargo
Shelterwood Collective

Jasmine & Loma Unsettling the Klamath River

Queer Project on Indigenous Land Resources

  • Sogorea Te’s Recommended Readings A developing list of reading recommendations
  • Sogorea Te’s Rematriation Resource Guide An intro to some rematriation resources
  • How To Rematriate the Land Radical Real Estate webinar with Sustainable Economies Law Center
  • Unsettling Questions A planning, reflection and accountability tool for land return and rematriation
  • Unsettling Minnesota/ Unsettling Ourselves  A project and collection of readings around unsettling.
  • Unsettling America Decolonization in Theory & Practice readings and resources
  • Unsettling the Klamath River  Resources from a group of settlers, living on the Klamath and Salmon Rivers
  • Turtle Island Indigenous Reparations and Land Rematriation Support Collectively created, crowd sourced land reparations document and tracking list
  • Encountering Queerness/ Encontrando Lo Cuir Spanish + English piece reflecting on queerness and complex encounters on Indigenous land at the Zapatista Encuentro for Women in Struggle, from Corazones Diasporicos
lo_cuir_finalDownload

How do we create liberatory spaces on stolen Indigenous land?   

Notes from our participants

  • Center Indigenous leadership
  • Name it, engage it, reckon with it
  • Always assume structural inequality and privilege will replicate itself unless we intervene
  • Learn about, connect and be real about the histories of the places we are, our own lineages, our current relationship to stolen Indigenous land.
  • Make an action plan for your part in shifting the settler colonial present. Don’t fall into saviorism, apathy, guilt, or shame
  • Move towards queer settler accountability 
  • Create justice frameworks and expectations for spaces and projects you create that support liberatory experience for impacted peoples like orientation naming of indigenous place and people, settler colonialism,  basic communication expectations, offer orientation information about white privilege, racism, inequality
  • Reflect, get feedback, adjust, reorient, change, grown evolve, transform
  • You cant create liberation for some people without liberation for all people

How are queer-led land projects and intentional spaces navigating collective approaches to healing historic harms, land access, landback, and rematriation?

  • Creating deep reciprocal relationships with the places we are and its original people
  • Supporting local Indigenous led struggles, efforts, activists and organizers, People of Color communities
  • Disrupting hetero-patriachal structures like nuclear family and generational wealth to redistribute land and resources  peoples impacted by historic harms 
  • Leveraging privilege to dismantle privilege 
  • Leveraging  generational wealth to dismantle generational wealth 
  • Restoring ecologies and the environment where we are with Indigenous leadership
  • Supporting local Indigenous led struggles, efforts, activists and organizers
  • Talking to our families, our neighbors, our work,  our collaborators about privilege, history, the land we are on, historic harm, unsettling, creating something different for the future 
  • Creating cultural easements for tribal access and rights to lands that last in perpetuity
  • Creating trusts with Indigenous people and tribes that shift land ownership benefits like equity to Indigenous people  
  • Supporting efforts to return public and city controlled  “surplus” lands back to tribes 
  • Supporting Initiatives to return state and federal land to tribes
  • Supporting  Indigenous land, water, air, and sacred sites protectors 
  • Rematriating land, sharing land, returning land, unsettling land, giving back land

Contribute 

If you would like to contribute to the pilot Queer and two spirit, Indigenous, Black and People of Color artist and activist residency at Mugworts Queer Cabin you can donate here.

Rematriate the Land!

If you would like to contribute to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust’s Rematriate the Land Fund you can donate here.

Connect

info ( at ) rematriatetheland.org

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The Shuumi Land Tax is a voluntary annual contribution that non-Indigenous people living on traditional Lisjan Ohlone territory make to support the critical work of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

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Pawnee eagle corn harvest at Heron Shadows with @c Pawnee eagle corn harvest at Heron Shadows with @culturalconservancy 🌽. 

📷Bernadette 

[a glorious spread of purple to white colored Indigenous corn harvest] 

#pawneeeaglecorn #ancestralfoods #maiz #projectprocess #sogoreatelandtrust #urbanindigenous #womenled #Rematriation
Rinihmu Pulte'irekne 🌳 "The long term vision f Rinihmu Pulte'irekne 🌳

"The long term vision for Rinihmu is to restore the land and recreate a thriving, beautiful, ceremonial gathering place where Indigenous people and their guests can come together, and share cultural information, celebrations, and ceremony.” 

[ID: a group of Indigenous women and two spirit people working under a huge old Oak tree]

#Indigenousvisions #Rinihmu #sequoiapoint #oaklandhills #landback #landreturn #rematriation #regeneration
Summers End! Seasons change is a great time to re Summers End!

Seasons change is a great time to reflect on all the amazing things that took place. 

Thank you to our land team for keeping up with the hot summer days, to all the artists and creators we have been working with, everyone who has contributed to the efforts off screen, and the Indigenous women who are holding this community down! Summer would not have been as fun as it has without them. 

As Fall approaches we are planning our next wave of the Mitiini Numma youth program, the land is getting ready to rest, and we are getting ready for exciting projects to come. Stay tuned!

Reel by Namixtulu.

Video Id:

[ Clip 1- Blue and purple intro image with the Sogorea Te’ logo, top center reads “Sogorea Te’ Summer recap.” Clip 2- Mitiini Numma Youth Program with images of the youth in the land and at Run 4 Salmon and a video of the youth planting seeds. Clip 3- Seed Rematriation with Bernadette- the seed queen, with a video of tobacco seeds being harvested and a picture of seed balls being made. Clip 4- Run 4 Salmon video and picture of folks out on the water, and a picture of the youth holding up flags at the closing ceremony. Clip 5- Tabling events, Images of our stand set up at Red Market and a video clip of printmaking. Clip 6 (last clip) -  a video of the garden growth in Lisjan and another video of the Pinnantak Site, and a picture of a turkey perched up on a metal fence.] 

#summersend #equinox #Fall #sogoreatelandtrust #urbanindigenous #womenled  #landback #landreturn #rematriation
Over 250 Years of Resistance and Still Here Calif Over 250 Years of Resistance and Still Here

California Native Day is a day of recognition of over 250 years of ongoing colonialism, remembrance of those passed, and celebration of our communities today.

In Lisjan territory and much of the Bay Area and California, the colonization of this land began with the reign of terror inflicted by Spanish soldiers and missionaries in the late 17th century, who sought to convert all Indigenous people into Catholic subjects of Spain and steal their land. The Missions were plantations, built by slave labor and sustained through brutal physical violence and extractive land practices. The Spanish brought deadly diseases, invasive species and Christian ideology based on human dominion of the natural world with devastating consequences for the Lisjan people and all living beings they shared the land with.

Today, we continue to inhabit our ancestral homelands, fight for our sacred sites and revitalize our cultural practices.

Graphic by @tamitnicill 

[ID: Images of California Native dancer among the stars, with words “Over 250 Years of Resistance And Still Here”] 

#californiaindianday #californianativeamericanday #honoringourancestors
The sounds of a Tobacco seed harvest along with th The sounds of a Tobacco seed harvest along with the 880 freeway. Hopi Tobacco was one of the first plants we tended to in 2018. The upcoming year we grew a few hundred and shared with our Native community.  Folks came to Deep East Oakland to swoop up a few for their gardens all over the Bay Area. 
Tobacco is a cultural significant plant for many tribes all over Turtle Island and it continues to be aside from it being one of the first capitalized plant by settlers. 
#SeedRematriation #UrbanRez #UrbanNatives #throwback
Digital camera flicks from our youth in Mitiini Nu Digital camera flicks from our youth in Mitiini Numma ☀️

Youth learned photography skills this past summer and got to use cameras to document our time together and progress of the land. These are from a day at Pinnantak 🐝

ID: (1) Close up shot in the greenery, behind some plants is a youths hands holding a black digital camera. (2) Picture of ladybug poppies in the garden, flowers are red with black dots. (3) Close up photo of yellow flowers in the garden, there are garden beds in the background. 

📸: Mitiini Numma youth 

#mitiininumma #youthprogram #sogoreatelandtrust #picturesontheland #joinus #applicationsopen
Every Seed is the Past. Every Seed is the Future Every Seed is the Past. 

Every Seed is the Future.

Saving seeds connects us  to everything that came before and everything yet to come. 

[ID: a woman in shades of purple is reaching up to collect seeds from a tall sunflower, all around her is California Chia in bloom, there are some green plants, blue butterflies and a pink to purple gradient in the sky.  the text reads Every Seed is the Past.  Every Seed is the Future.]

#ancestralpractice #seedsaving #Nativeseeds #summersend #projectprocess #sogoreatelandtrust #urbanindigenous #womenled #landtrust #landback #landreturn #rematriation
Youth on the land 🌱 Photos from our Summer Mit Youth on the land 🌱 
Photos from our Summer Mitiini Numma program at Pinnantak. ☀️ 

Come grow the truth with us this fall in our wave 3 cohort starting this October! Fill out our interest form, link in bio ✨

ID: (1) Three youth participants planting in a native plant garden. Surrounded by green and kneeling on the soil. (2) Youth participant watering the native plants. (3) Two participants walking around garden, one next to a garden bed, and one next to a plum tree. 

#MitiiniNumma #growthetruth #sogoreatelandtrust #youthleaders #afterschoolprogram
🪶Women Warriors 🪶 Chief Caleen Sisk, (Winne 🪶Women Warriors 🪶

Chief Caleen Sisk, (Winnemem Wintu), Tribal Spokesperson Corrina Gould, (Lisjan Ohlone) and Kumu  Pua Case (Kanaka Maoli)  at the closing ceremony for Run for Salmon this summer. 

Through their respective and collective work, they protect their ancestral Sacred sites: the McCloud River in Northern California,  the West Berkeley Shellmound located in the Bay Area, California and  Hawaiʻi’s Mauna Kea. These Indigenous women leaders are culture bearers in Indigenous-led movements that center Indigenous knowledge and protocols, land rematriation, and Indigenous cultural practices. Through their work they build and inspire intergenerational, multi-racial, local, and global movements to protect the Sacred in their various homelands. 

Thank you for your work.

#tbt #womenwarriors #Indigenouswomenrising #run4salmon #sogoreatelandtrust #protectthesacred
“As we reclaim our land in this urban area, it’s important to understand that we are doing that work as Indigenous people from many tribes, working together to create healing on this land.”

-Corrina Gould, Lisjan tribal chairperson, Co-Founder/Director of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

[ID: a deep blue background sprinkled with stars, a  silhouette of a cityscape, and the above text in white.]

#manytribes #sogoreatelandtrust #urbanindigenous #womenled  #landback #landreturn #rematriation #BayArea #indigenousland
Amaranth, Huaútli, Quihuicha 💜 Indigenous gra Amaranth, Huaútli, Quihuicha 💜

Indigenous grains once outlawed by colonizers, now growing on rematriated land in East Oakland. 

ID: a slow motion reel of two brown hands processing deep burgundy colored amaranth with seeds cascading an abundance. 

#ancestralfoods #outlawgrain #process #sogoreatelandtrust #urbanindigenous #womenled #landtrust #rematriatetheland
“Do you think in 100 years they’ll refer to th “Do you think in 100 years they’ll refer to this as “the time right before California became uninhabitable?”

Oh sh*t

No. 

Because the US is going to cede the land to Indigenous Stewardship. 

Speaking it into existence.”

🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

… 

Three years ago today wildfire smoke darkened the daylight to an dusk in the Bay Area and beyond. 

Since then many of our relatives have continued to suffer fallout from environmental crisis and many continue to work towards another world. 

It’s not too late to rematriate! Speak it, deed it, build it, plant it, nurture it, grow it into being. 

Pics are from 9/11/20, 1pm, Oakland. 

Text thread Repost from  @stephgervacio . 

#climatechaos #stillonlyoneplanet  #rematriatetheland #returntheland #cedetheland #unsettle #landback #indigenousstewardshipnow
We invite BIPOC youth ages 13-18 in Huchiun to joi We invite BIPOC youth ages 13-18 in Huchiun to join us for Mitiini Numma Wave 3 starting this fall! 🍂
Join us as we combine youth leadership, community, liberation, and ecological knowledge on rematriated land! Program will be held after school starting early October, limited spots available. 
Fill out our interest form by September 21st via this link https://forms.gle/En8xH313WYhBQdNS9 also available in our bio! ✨

#joinus #mitiininumma #youthprogram #rematriatedland #growthetruth
The very first elderberry harvest at ‘Ookwe Park The very first elderberry harvest at ‘Ookwe Park in so called Richmond in 2021
From the land / For the land 🌿 Freshly bundled From the land / For the land 🌿

Freshly bundled white sage from Rammay Garden, West Oakland, Ohlone land. 

ID: a small stack of White sage bundles wrapped with red thread with sage in the background.

#rammay #medicinegarden #fromtheland #fortheland #sogoreatelandtrust
Shuumi means gift. Shuumi is a voluntary land ta Shuumi means gift. 

Shuumi is a voluntary land tax that non-indigenous residents living on the confederated villages of Lisjan Nation pay that contributes to the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. 

The Land Tax supports cultivating urban gardens, building community centers and sacred arbors, purchasing and managing land, engaging in public education and advocacy, and developing community resilience. 

For more faqs on the Shuumi Land tax visit the Sogorea Te’ website and click the Pay Shuumi tab. 

Design by media fellow Namixtulu. 

ID:
[Blue color bordering an image with a ladybug on some leaves. On top of the image is written out “On Indigenous Land Pay Shuumi” in black and redish-orange] 

#onindigenousland #shuumi #voluntarytax #honortax #sogoreatelandtrust
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