#12DaystoShowUp Day 1: Indigenous Resistance

As a part of SURJ Bay Area’s #12DaysToShowUp Fundraising Campaign — and our ongoing commitment to racial justice and reparations — 50% of all donations raised for SURJ are passed on to local POC-led organizations. The other 50% will be used to fund under-resourced rural SURJ chapters and to support our own work mobilizing white people in the Bay Area.

Donate to SURJ Bay Area before December 31 to help us reach our year-end fundraising goal of $20,000.
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In addition to your donation to SURJ, we encourage you to match donations directly to POC-led organizations like those we’ve featured each of the 12 Days of this campaign.

You probably grew up learning the refrain of Woody Guthrie’s famous song: “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

But for those of us who are white, this land is not our land.

Contrary to the sanitized, white-washed version of history so many of us are taught in school, in this country, we all live on land originally inhabited, honored, and cared for by Indigenous peoples. This land is their land, stolen by state-sanctioned warfare, disease, and trickery.

Indigenous survivors of this massive, continent-wide theft and genocide were forced to live on land — often outside their traditional ancestral homeland — that was considered uninhabitable and worthless, discarded by invaders who found that land suitable only for people they considered similarly worthless…and dangerous. Communities were intentionally destroyed and children stolen from families to be raised “properly” by white people.

Learning this history of racial injustice is a critical part of the work we do in SURJ Bay Area. We’re committed to shining a spotlight on this truth — and showing up for indigenous communities by supporting their efforts to reclaim their land and culture.
The Ohlone people lived in the East Bay, surviving off of the bounty of the land and the Bay, raising their children, building their communities, and honoring the earth, sky, and sea.

Today, the descendants of the Ohlone people are leading the struggle to restore this land to people from whom it was stolen. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led community organization that facilitates the return of Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship. Sogorea Te’ creates opportunities for all people living in Ohlone territory to work together to understand what it means to live on Ohlone land and reenvision the Bay Area community.

If you are a non-Indigenous person living in traditional Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone territory, here’s one way you can join SURJ Bay Area in showing up as part of the Indigenous resistance movement and help Sogorea Te’ acquire and preserve land:
Commit to paying theSogorea Te’ Shuumi Land Tax by making a voluntary, annual financial contribution based on your type of housing. For details on how to calculate and pay your annual contribution, visit: http://sogoreate-landtrust.com/shuumi-land-tax/
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Together we can educate ourselves and our Bay Area neighbors about the history of where we live, and work alongside Indigenous leaders toward a more equitable future for the people who have long called this land their land.