The Sogorea Te Land Trust

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

Inés Ixierda

Bay Area nonprofit returns 43 acres to female-led Indigenous land trust!

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“A female-led trust working to return East Bay land to Indigenous stewardship one parcel at a time has received its largest property yet — 43 acres in the hills above Oakland, land trust officials said…..

The property is the largest piece of land to date to be returned to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, said its creative director, Inés Ixierda. Since 2015, the nonprofit has collaborated with local organizations, institutions and city officials to secure East Bay land through rematriation — a process it describes as restoring “sacred relationships between Indigenous people and our ancestral land, honoring our matrilineal societies, and in opposition to patriarchal violence and dynamics.” At these sites, the land trust holds ceremonies and they harvest fruits, vegetables and native plants, such as sage and soap root”

Read the full article here!

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Call for Proposals: Detours Decolonial Guide

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Detours: A Decolonial Guide to the Indigenous Bay Area is a co-edited volume in the Detours series of decolonial guidebooks at Duke University Press.

Photo is the Tule in the Sky Mural  by Cece Carpio with the Berkeley Skyline and Bay. 

Spanning the stolen, ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories of numerous Indigenous peoples, Northern California’s Bay Area is a place with deeply layered associations, entangled dispossessions, and possible futures. From Coast Miwok territories in the north to the Ramaytush Ohlone territory of Yelamu (San Francisco); from Lisjan Ohlone land in the East Bay to Amah Mutsun land in the south, Indigenous peoples have been rooted here sice time immemorial, surviving waves of colonialism and genocide from Spanish missions to the present U.S. occupation. As with other collections in the Detours series, this multidisciplinary collection will include several genres, including mapping/cartography, written and visual narratives of place, essays, visual art, tour itineraries, and other forms of media and cultural production. 

The Bay Area is a deeply layered place; simultaneosly a site of settler colonial, imperial, and racial/techno-capitalist dispossession and one rich with Indigenous presence and a long history of anti-colonial movements. It has long been home to large urban Indian communities, …

Indigenous Land Return Announcement by Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Movement Generation!

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PRESS RELEASE

Berkeley, Calif. (June 21, 2023) — Today,  Movement Generation and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust announced that they have partnered to return 43 acres of land to Indigenous care, in the unceded Bay Miwok territory of the San Francisco East Bay Area. MG and Sogorea Te’ liberated the land title from the speculative real estate market, with Sogorea Te’ now holding the deed. The organizations have created long-term agreements together for care of the land.

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led nonprofit that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. For more than 20 years, its founders have been organizing to protect Indigenous lands in the Bay Area, where Ohlone people have lived for thousands of years and now Indigenous peoples of many nations call home.

“Returning land to Indigenous care is healing for us and healing for the land,” says Corrina Gould, co-founder of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and tribal chairperson of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. “Working together with Movement Generation to create visions and commitments into the next generations allows us to reimagine relationships to this land and multiply the possibilities of our work.” 

The nonprofit collective …

Indigenous Land Return as Climate Justice

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Image Credit: cottonbro studio on pexels.com

“Land rematriation is the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. The term, more commonly known as “land back,” acknowledges how colonization contributed to the theft and plunder of Indigenous land and communities—and has grown into an effort to help reclaim stolen lands.”

Check out this article about our work, Indigenous Land Return as Climate Justice by Iris Crawford in NnonProfit News.…

This Land Has Returned to Indigenous Hands!

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After five years of conversation and collaboration, Mugworts land and cabins have officially been returned to the stewardship of the Indigenous women led Sogorea Te’ Land Trust! 

Mugworts started as a healing and wealth redistribution project, establishing a sliding scale, Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous and People of Color (QTBIPOC)  centered retreat space to support social justice movement building.  This project was created with the intention of moving it out of speculative land ownership into collective care of a land trust. Our members were connected  to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust through years of community collaboration and worked in partnership to establish agreements,  share space, and shape our collective priorities.

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women led community organization returning land to Indigenous hands in the greater Bay Area. The project and land  is located in the ancestral territory of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the Kashia Pomo.  As an Indigenous led organization based in Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation territory, Sogorea Te’  engaged protocol by reaching out to both tribal groups to share our collaboration in their territory and extend an invitation for participation in the project if …