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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

  • About
    • Purpose and Vision
    • Our History
    • Staff & Board
    • Partnerships & Alliances
    • Contact Us
  • Lisjan (Ohlone)
    • Lisjan History & Territory
    • Mak Noono Tiirinikma
  • Programs
    • Cultural Revitalization
    • Himmetka: In One Place, Together
    • Mitiini Numma Youth Program
  • Rematriation
    • Land Sites
      • Lisjan, East Oakland
      • ‘Ookwe, Richmond
      • Rammay, West Oakland
      • Rinihmu Pulte’irekne, Oakland Hills
      • ‘Ištune, Oakland
      • Mugworts Cabin
    • Return Land / Land Return
    • Rematriate the Land Fund
  • Media
    • Updates
    • Resources
    • Creative Collaborations
      • Hella Feminist Exhibition
      • On Indigenous Land Field
      • Rematriate Billboard
      • RETURNS
      • Jackie Fawn Poster
      • Tule in the Sky Mural
  • Engage
    • $ Donate!
    • Make a Request
    • Get E-mail Updates
    • Land Acknowledgements
    • Other Ways to Engage
  • Pay Shuumi
    • Shuumi Land Tax
    • Institutional Shuumi Land Tax
    • Shuumi Land Tax FAQs
    • Testimonials

Return Land / Land Return

 We are founded on stolen land and Indigenous people are still here.  

If you have access to land and wealth, consider your place in the lineage of this theft and how you might contribute to its healing, how you might reimagine your relationship to the land you are on.  

From creating a cultural easement for gathering rights, offering access to a space or writing us into your will or nonprofits dissolution documents,  we are dreaming with our supporters to build many paths of radical reciprocity that are a part of rematriation and land return. 

“As long time racial justice activists, we are choosing not to perpetuate the unearned privilege of passing on our home within our White families…”

From A LETTER about the intention to will a home to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

Creative collaborations with our allies have opened up gardens to grow our food in, neighborhood projects have cultivated plants for us to make medicine with, and allies have opened their access to privatized land  allowing us to create Lisjan and build ceremonial spaces including the first Ohlone arbor in territory for more than 200 years.  But we still dont “own” land we can live on.

If you have more than you need, consider how you can shift resources towards returning land to Indigenous people.

Rematriate the Land Fund

Vick and Bernadette at Quail Creek

Rematriation Resources

Resource Guide

All land carries Indigenous knowledges and stories, and is home to Indigenous peoples. What can we do to honor this? This Resource Guide offers a variety of questions, prompts and ideas for how to engage this history a variety of questions, prompts and ideas for how to engage the history and reality of the land we are on.

Recommended Readings

Check out our in progress Recommended Reading List.

Read one of these pieces and talk to someone about it!

Start a study group with your family, friends, collective, business, coop, nonprofit. Go on walk and talks with your neighbors, organize your  community, penpal with your grandma. Talk about the land you are on and how you got here. How has your family benefitted or been impacted by legacies of colonization?  What does it mean to you to be on stolen land?   What does it mean to recognize this history? How can allies we go beyond acknowledgement? How can we rematriate?  Learn about how other communities are healing the history of the land our relationships to it. 

Questions About Home for Reflection

These are Questions About Home is an for exercise is for non-native people to learn and reflect on the history and current struggles of Indigenous people, and to begin thinking about our role in colonization and decolonization. By Qwul’sih’yah’maht, Robina Thomas (Lyackson of the Coast Salish Nation) with input from our founders Corrina Gould (Chochenyo and Johnella LaRose (Shoshone-Bannock), Nick Tilsen (Oglala-Lakota), Annie Morgan Banks and Chanelle Gallant.

Tips for Difficult Conversations

Check out these tips for talking about Settle Colonialism and other difficult conversations from Showing Up for Racial Justice Albuquerque.

Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects

This is a Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects compiled by the Indigenous Solidarity Network and representatives from Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, Real Rent Duwamish, and the Manna-hatta Fund.

Resource-Guide-for-Indigenous-Solidarity-Funding-Projects-with-linksDownload
Maps

Understand your relation to the land on which you live, work, and stand.

Native Land Map
East Bay Native Peoples Map
Bay Area Native Languages
Bay Area Tribes
Maps by East Bay Regional Park District

Black and Indigenous Reparations

Reparations Map for Black and Indigenous farmers and land projects from SoulFire Farm.


Land Returns and Rematriation Examples

Passamaquoddy Tribe, Maine (2021)

Passamaquoddy tribe reacquires island stolen more than 150 years ago

Press Herald, May 17th

Lower Sioux Indian Community To Get Ancestral Land Back (2021)

Lower Sioux Indian Community To Get Ancestral Land Back From Minnesota, MN Historical Society

CBS4 Local News Minnesota, February 4th

Lower Sioux Indian Community lands to be returned from the state, MHS

Redwood Falls Gazette, February 11th

Churches Return Land to Indigenous Groups (2020)

Churches Return Land to Indigenous Groups

Religious News Wire, December

Yale Union Art Center in Portland, OR (2020)

YALE UNION ART CENTER CEDES PROPERTY RIGHTS TO NATIVE ARTS AND CULTURES FOUNDATION
Artform, July

Penobscot Nation, Maine (2020)

More than 700 Acres of Ancestral Land Returned to Penobscot Nation

Press Herald, October

Esselen Tribe Land Return, Big Sur CA (2020)

Northern California Esselen tribe regains ancestral land after 250 years
The Guardian, July

Alma de Mujer outside Austin, Texas (2019)

Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change

Woman gives money from farm land sale back to tribe who once hunted there (2019, Kansas)
The Wichitah Eagle, February

Ute Indian Tribe, Colorado (2018)

Colorado Land Returned to the Ute Indian Tribe
Ute Indian Tribe Political Action Committee, October 30th

Ponca Land Return, Nebraska (2018)

In Historic First, Nebraska Farmer Returns Land to Ponca Tribe Along “Trail of Tears
Bold Nebraska, June

Sierra stewards listen to the trees, and a California tribe regains an ancestral land
The Sacramento Bee, June

Tuluwat returned to Wiyot Tribe in Eureka, California (2018)

Tuluwat Project
Wiyot.Us

The Coming Home Song: Wiyot People Joyous as Eureka City Council Takes Another Step Towards Returning Indian Island
Redheaded Blackbelt, December

The Wiyot Tribe’s Long Path to Renewing Indian Island
KHSU Diverse Public Radio, August

Richardson Ranch in Sonoma, CA (2017)

How This Tribe Got Their Coastal California Lands Returned
Yes Magazine, April

Sonoma Coast’s Stewarts Point becomes part of historic agreement for coastal ranch
The Press Democrat, February

Professor gives $250K to Ute Indian Tribe to compensate for great-grandparents profiting off tribal land sales
The Salt Lake Tribune, September

Return of the Sinkyone- Land & People

Return of the Sinkyone—Land&People
The Trust for Public Land, 1998

The InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness: Ten Tribes Reclaiming, Stewarding, and Restoring Ancestral Lands By Hawk Rosales
Wild.org

International

South Africa Confronts a Legacy of Apartheid
The Atlantic, May 2019

New Zealand to pay colonial compensation
Al Jazeera, May 2013

Australia Aboriginals win right to sue for colonial land loss
Al Jazeera, March 2014

Please contact us for more information

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Our work of rematriation, returning Indigenous land to Indigenous people, is only possible with your support.

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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.

Pay Shuumi

Footer

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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