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“How can we respectfully live, work, and walk on Ohlone land?”

At a recent presentation about her work on protecting sacred Indigenous sites in the East Bay, Corrina Gould faced a lot of seemingly impossible questions. She had presented the local history — from the 10,000 year long native perspective — to a packed room of Bay Area newcomers trying to come to terms with the fact that their current lives directly build on three waves of genocide: The Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone living in the ancient village of Huichin were displaced, enslaved, and killed in turn by Spanish missions, Mexican ranchos, and the American invasion. And the current escalation of gentrification-driven evictions in what is now called Oakland could well go down in history as a fourth wave of displacements, if not genocide. However, despite having been denied federal recognition, the Ohlone tribes and Indigenous organizations — in coalition with racial justice organizers such as SURJ Bay Area — are gaining traction in advocating for historic preservation, Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice in the Bay Area: