Indigenous people rejoice after Berkeley votes to return Native land

SAN FRANCISCO — Ohlone people and others rejoiced last week over the return of sacred Native land dating back thousands of years, saying the move rights a historic wrong and restores the people who were first on land now called Berkeley, California, to their rightful place in history.

The 2.2-acre parking lot is the only undeveloped portion of the shellmound in West Berkeley, where ancestors of today’s Ohlone people established the first human settlement on the shores of the San Francisco Bay 5,700 years ago.

Berkeley’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt an ordinance giving the title of the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a San Francisco Bay Area collective led by women that works to return land to Indigenous people. The collective raised most of the money needed to reach the agreement with developers who own the land.

“We want to be a place for global Indigenous leadership to come and gather in solidarity,” said Melissa Nelson, chair of the board of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, at a celebratory news conference Wednesday. “We want to educate, we want to restore and we want to heal.”

The crowd cheered as speakers talked of a movement to restore other lands.

The site — a three-block area Berkeley designated as a landmark in 2000 — will be home to Native medicines and foods, an oasis for pollinators and wildlife, and a place for youth to learn about their heritage, including ancient dances and ceremonies.

“The site will be home to education, prayer and preservation, and will outlast every one of us today to continue telling the story of the Ohlone people,” Mayor Jesse Arreguín said, adding that their history is “marked not by adversity, but more importantly, by their unwavering resilience as a community.”

Before Spanish colonizers arrived in the region, the area held a village and a massive shellmound with a height of 20 feet and the length and width of a football field that was a ceremonial and burial site. Built over years with mussel, clam and oyster shells, human remains, and artifacts, the shellmound also served as a lookout.