“Today the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and the City of Oakland announced plans to return approximately five acres of land owned by the City to Indigenous stewardship.”
The Oakland City Council will hold hearings to consider conveying the site, known as Sequoia Point, to the non-profit, women-led, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Nation, an East Bay Ohlone tribe, through the creation of a cultural conservation easement. The City would grant the cultural conservation easement in perpetuity to the Land Trust, allowing the Land Trust to immediately use the land for natural resource restoration, cultural practices, public education, and to plan for additional future uses.”
“What started out with a casual conversation between Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and tribal Chairperson Corrina Gould in 2017, has grown into a partnership between the City and the Land Trust to begin to address the historic harms of Oakland’s founding. Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people have inhabited Oakland and parts of the East Bay for thousands of years. They were forcibly removed from their land with the arrival of Europeans and descendants of Europeans beginning in the 18th Century.”
“‘I am committed to returning land to Indigenous stewardship, to offer some redress for past injustices to Native people,’ said Mayor Schaaf, ‘I hope the work we are doing in Oakland with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust can serve as a model for other cities working to return Indigenous land to the Indigenous community we stole it from.'”