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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
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How to Come Correct

March 14, 2023 by

Protocols, Guidelines, and Invitations


The work of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is made possible by the strength, resilience, leadership, and labor of Indigenous women and culture keepers

We are also supported by many allies and accomplices of different backgrounds, engaging with the vision of Indigenous women led land return and rematriation. Collectively we are all still in a world founded on the theft of the lives and land of Indigenous people. 


As a society we are really just beginning to learn how to navigate what it means to acknowledge the history of the land we are on, and build meaningful deep relationships. As we move towards transforming our relationships to the land we are on, here are some tips for how to engage with our work and more!


Prepare

A great way to prepare is to do some research before you even reach out and ask us for something! Check out our website for a ton of great resources and information, including Lisjan History, Requesting a Speaker, Rematriation Resources, Shuumi Land Tax , and STLT Updates!


Study Up!

  • Learn the history of the land you are on
  • Learn about the relationship of your own family line to stolen land
  • Find out about the issues impacting Indigenous communities today

Rematriation:

Indigenous women led work to restore sacred relationships between Indigenous people and their ancestral land. Honoring our matrilineal societies and lineage’s ways of tending to the land, in opposition of patriarchal violence.


Rematriation weaves traditional and cultural knowledge back in harmony with the land. In Lisjan territory, we envision a Bay Area in which Chochenyo language and ceremony are an active, thriving part of the cultural landscape. Check out our Rematriation page for more info!


Be A Good Guest

It’s always respectful to ask first before taking action for or in place of Indigenous people. Please note that permission may not be granted or we may advise for reflection and research.


Ask Yourself…

  • How have you benefited from stolen land?
  • What labor are you asking from Indigenous people?
  • How will this be reciprocal? What do you bring?
  • Are you prepared to do the work?

Engagements

We appreciate opportunities to engage with different communities and share our work. At the same time, many of us experience constant requests for culturally extractive information. A lot of the work we do is related to healing and historic harm, presenting the history of colonization and genocide is not easy.


Requests

Pay real honorariums, especially if you are connected to corporations and institutions.

Give us a minute to respond. We are navigating many requests and engage specific processes for decision making.


Indigenous people are not a checkbox or cultural display. Don’t consume us. Engage with us.

To request a member of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust for an event, conference, or interview please use our Inquiry Form, 3-4 weeks in advance. 


Sharing Our Work

Please share our work! Feel free to share our public social media posts, information about Shuumi Land Tax, and links to our website! Please feel free to share public information from our website for small class projects or similar unpaid educational projects. If you want to include our work in larger projects, places were presenters are being paid or in print, please reach out to our email!


Representations

Any kind of portrayal  that includes any inspiration by Indigenous people, creates a representation. If your request includes the creation of a representation please consider:

  • Who created or will create this representation? Why?
  • What power dynamics does this representation draw from, interrupt or recreate?

Avoid appropriation. Avoid extraction. Avoid tokenism. Avoid exploitation.

If your representation includes a request from Indigenous people  for information, time, energy, knowledge, and work, please see Consultations. 


Images & Documentation

Ask before using images from our website or creating representations of our work beyond educational sharing. If you are engaged in a project hoping to use or create representations, please use our inquiry form and allow time for us to engage our decision making processes.


Consultations

A consultation is a request for information, a discussion and/or feedback. This is an important and essential way to engage with Indigenous voices, perspectives and leadership. If your project includes or represents indigenous people, culture, land etc, ask for Indigenous guidance and participation in its creation.


A consultation could be an informational such guidance in development of land acknowledgements or requests for feedback on a project. Some consultations are cultural and are referred to the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation (Ohlone).

Please keep in mind there are many sensitive issues around access to Indigenous representations. Sometimes, even efforts that start with an idea of being respectful, inclusive or supportive can end up impacting Indigenous people in a way that is extractive and exploitive.


  • What is your intention with this information or representation?
  • Who will have access to the project, research, interview, etc?
  • How can you make this a more transformative interaction?

Please spend time with our questions for reflection before reaching out for a consultation. To request a consultation please use our Inquiry Form.


Boundaries

Avoid contacting people through personal social media platforms, family or in person with requests. The fastest way to get a response is our request form. Refrain from using and participating in Indigenous medicines and ceremonies that are known closed practices or not from your own lineage. Treat us as you would any other expert in their field. Allow Indigenous people to speak on behalf of their own lived experience.


Fundraisers

Hosting fundraising through your networks and communities is a great way to support our work. If you are going to host a fundraiser please make sure to send us an email first. Please use the following fundraising accountability practice: if you publicly post our name to collect money on our behalf, we request also publicly posting your donation receipts.


We appreciate fundraising support efforts and also encourage institutional allies to move beyond sales based percentage fundraisers, to give Institutional Shuumi Land Tax, to link their personal or business fundraisers directly to our website, to distribute our outreach materials, to redistribute.

Pay Shuumi! Or your local honor/land tax! Contribute to the Rematriate the Land Fund!


Land Acknowledgements

There are many different practices and protocols around land acknowledgements. Historically, there are always Indigenous traditions around ways of acknowledging and entering other peoples ancestral territories.

Today, many organizations, institutions, cities and every type of entity of all different backgrounds are beginning to practice land acknowledgement as a way to recognize a small piece of this history and present day reality.


There are many resources around land acknowledgments created by Indigenous people. Sogorea Te’s “So You Want To Do A Land Acknowledgement” resource was created as a way to navigate our own land acknowledgement collaborations. This resource is available on our website!


Land Acknowledgements are not reparations. Go beyond acknowledgement.

Indigenous people are still here. Acknowledging the original people of every land you are on is important. Please do so in a respectful way. Just “acknowledging” occupation or presence on Indigenous lands with no other relationship or action, actually recreates extraction and erasure. We encourage our allies to engage more deeply. We also always encourage “Action Steps”, to take the acknowledgement into a relationship of reciprocity and go beyond performative or extractive practices.


Do Your Part! Take Action!

For those settling in the East Bay, pay your Shuumi Land Tax! For those outside of the East Bay and interested in supporting our work, contribute to the Rematriate the Land Fund! Do you have access to land, opportunities, equipment, skills, funds? See how you can use those resources to aid the efforts of Indigenous people! If you don’t have disproportionate resources, maybe you can share something else or maybe you know someone who does.


Thank You!

Thank you for engaging with us. We appreciate you. – Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

This is a collectively created living document and may change as we develop our processes.


Download the full How to Come Correct file to share with your communities, colleagues, classes, and more!

How-to-Come-Correct-2.0-InfographicDownload

Resource & Graphics Designed and Edited by Viola LeBeau

Photos by Ines Ixierda, Eliana Hernandez, and Niko Niumeitolu

Primary Sidebar

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.

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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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