Getting Ready Together
Our Himmetka program develops community resiliency centers to prepare for natural and human-made emergencies and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Since the first piece of Huchiun was returned to Indigenous hands in 2017, we have seen fires, power outages, visible climate change, a pandemic and the fallout of social inequality increasingly impacting our urban Indigneous communities.
In response, Sogorea Te’ has created our first Himmetka, a culturally based emergency response hub. Named with the Chochenyo word for “in one place, together,” our Lisjan Himmetka includes a ceremonial space, food and medicine gardens, water catchment, filtration, and storage, first-aid supplies, tools, and a seed saving library. Based on rematriated land in deep East Oakland, and with three more planned throughout the East Bay, these hubs will provide essential, culturally relevant, resilience and survival support in some of the most marginalized parts of our city.
