Council initiates Tamien Nation land acknowledgement
Indigenous tribe is traditionally and culturally affiliated with the city
The Los Gatos Town Council on Tuesday committed to create a land acknowledgement as a way to honor the Tamien Nation, an indigenous tribe affiliated with the land on which Los Gatos sits.
The land acknowledgement would be an “expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory we reside on,” and could be read at future council and committee meetings, according to a staff report.
Council voted to work with local tribe leaders and other stakeholders to draft the language of the land acknowledgement, and to work with the Los Gatos Library and New Museum Los Gatos for educational research.
“This is a very delicate topic, and hence the reason the city of San Jose has enlisted a tribal mediator to assist them,” town manager Laurel Prevetti said. “We want to approach this with the utmost respect for all parties, and so we would have to do a lot more research and really have to engage.”
Other Bay Area cities have made formal land acknowledgements, including Palo Alto, San Jose, South San Francisco and Albany. Santa Clara University, Stanford University, San Jose State University and UC Berkeley have also made similar acknowledgements. The request for Los Gatos' land acknowledgement came from the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition in April “as a way to honor and respect the indigenous people, past and present, of Los Gatos land, and specifically, the Tamien Nation.”
The Tamien Nation is traditionally and culturally affiliated with the land of Los Gatos, and identifies as the tribe most directly indigenous to Santa Clara County.
The Tamien people are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Indigenous people who settled in the Santa Clara Valley in the 1700s and are collectively are known as the Tamien Nation.
Town staff reached out to Tamien Nation tribal chairwoman Quirina Luna Geary and tribal cultural resource officer Johnathan Costillas to provide input on the proposed language, but councilmembers agreed to take a more collaborative approach in drafting the language of the acknowledgement going forward.
Some proposed ways of incorporating the acknowledgement into city operations include reading it at council and committee meetings and at town events, and posting the acknowledgement and additional information on the town's website.
“We can't undo these wrongs, but we can do better. And this should start right now, with a simple yet powerful gesture of adopting a land acknowledgement,” Kylie Clark, member of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition said. “I want to emphasize that for this acknowledgement to be meaningful, authentic and effective, it must be accompanied by action. Adopting a land acknowledgement is a crucial first step in what I really hope will be long-term and deliberate work.”
Staff will work with stakeholders to create the land acknowledgement and later present it to town council for final approval.
“I realize some of the comments made were words are not as important as actions, but I also think words matter a lot,” Councilmember Maria Ristow said. “So I want to make sure we don't approve a land acknowledgement that is… not representative of who may have lived here.”