Indian tribe might be given property rights

Open space district’s plan would donate easement, but taxpayer group objects

Three months after the long-anticipated public opening of Mount Umunhum, a Bay Area open space agency plans to vote Wednesday on a controversial proposal to give property rights at the scenic South Bay mountaintop to an Indian tribe based in Sacramento County.

Under the plan, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a government agency based in Los Altos that owns the mountain, would donate a conservation easement to the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. The group is made up of about 600 descendants of Ohlone Indians, who once inhabited the area south of San Jose, and now live largely in Fresno, Modesto and other Central Valley towns.

The proposal comes after an eight-year, $25 million project to convert the long-shuttered Almaden Air Force radar station into one of the Bay Area’s most scenic mountaintop parks.

The district would allow tribal members to

build a garden, hold ceremonies and maybe build a roundhouse to expand their cultural practices on top of the peak, a mountain whose name comes from the Ohlone word for hummingbird and a landmark that they say plays an important role in the tribe’s creation story.

“We want in a meaningful way to re-establish the Native Americans’ connection with that mountain,” said Steve Abbors, general manager of the open space district. “If you look at the history, it goes back for millennia. It was broken for a time. We are trying to reconnect the dots.”

But skeptics say that if the district donates a permanent property right to the publicly owned land, the agency is risking exposing taxpayers to future lawsuits, and limits on public use, along with financial liability.

The proposed agreement also bans any future changes to the Mount Umunhum’s iconic radar tower building, such as a museum to honor military veterans who served there during the Cold War, which has caused some controversy.

“Overall, the conservation easement is a good thing,” said Basim Jaber, a San Jose historian who has studied Mount Umunhum’s history for years and worked with veterans who served there. “It’s great that the tribe is going to have an opportunity to steward the land and enrich the public with their history. But I don’t see how the radar tower fits into this. It should be explicitly excluded.”

The district’s board is scheduled to vote on the proposal at 6 p.m. Wednesday at its headquarters at 330 Distel Circle in Los Altos.

Once a quiet site for cattle grazing and olive growing, from 1957 to 1980 the summit was the site of the former Almaden Air Force Station. At its peak, 120 Air Force personnel and their families lived at the station, which had homes, a gym, a swimming pool, garages and even a bowling alley. The base was part of an early warning radar system looking for Soviet bombers that could have attacked the West Coast.

The federal government sold the property to the open space district in 1986 for $260,000, and the summit remained padlocked and off limits for 31 years. Its 88 buildings became a crumbling ghost town contaminated with asbestos

and lead paint. Eventually, the district raised enough money to restore the area and demolished the buildings, although its plans to raze the five-story concrete radar tower nicknamed “the cube” failed when Santa Clara County placed the building on a list of historic sites.

Abbors said Tuesday that is was his idea to ask if the tribe, based in Galt, wanted to have a permanent legal right to the summit. He said it will help not only to restore the tribe’s culture but also to educate the general public about Native American history in the South Bay.

“The mountaintop is certainly sacred to this tribe,” said Abbors, who is retiring Dec. 29. “When they built the base to protect

us, the Air Force inadvertently desecrated it when they scraped the top of it. I don’t think that was the intent, but it happened.”

Under the proposal, the tribe would not be given title to the land, but would get permanent rights recorded on the deed to 36 acres on the top of the summit — an area that includes the radar tower, parking lot, restrooms, scenic overlook structure and road. A proposed memorandum of understanding says the tribe would be allowed to build a garden in a flat area that once was used for base housing and other buildings, and could hold up to six ceremonies a year on the peak where the public is excluded. They also could apply to the district to build a roundhouse, or traditional native building, for educational and ceremonial purposes.

Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun, said Tuesday that he sees the proposal as a wonderful opportunity.

“It’s a historic agreement,” said Lopez. “Our history shows for hundreds of years our people have been ignored and forgotten, destroyed and dominated. Our culture, our humanity, our environment and spirituality has basically been wiped out. We feel that continues today. This recognizes the historical importance and spiritual importance of Mount Umunhum, the place of our creation.”

Lopez’s ancestors were decimated after Spanish explorers began settling California in the 1700s. They ended up at Mission San Juan Bautista and Mission Santa Cruz, with many tribal members dying from disease and mistreatment. Lopez said he wants to include the public, and veterans, in most ceremonies, and has no plans to make money from the arrangement.

“It’s sacred,” he said. “Our spirituality and sacredness is not for sale. We aren’t going to make a profit off this. We aren’t going to have ceremonies and charge admission or anything like that.”

Critics note that although the proposal allows the district to do maintenance and upkeep, it also requires the district, which is funded by property taxes from Santa Clara and San Mateo county residents, to include the tribe on its insurance policy. And it allows the tribe to sue the district in the event of disagreements.

“To turn over control after the taxpayers have spent so much money just seems ridiculous,” said Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association. “Keeping it the status quo wouldn’t prevent them from doing the ceremonies they want. Why give them the control, especially since everybody else paid for it?”