Years later, Ohlone Indians return home to Bay Area

33rd San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival June 3; 11 & 12; 18 & 19; 24, 25 & 26; and July 1, 2 & 3

New Programs, Events & Locations

They’re Both Coming Home!

Join us Sunday, November 7th

They’re Both Coming Home!

Join us Sunday, November 7th

as San Francisco celebrates Veterans Day.

The Ohlone Tribe returns to San Francisco to join the Veterans for Peace Contingent in the Veterans Day Parade.

The Parade staging area: on Howard St. near 3rd St at 10:30am.

The Parade starts: 11:00am and ends at Civic Center around 1:00pm.

After the parade everyone is requested to join us for ceremony at 1:30pm at the Memorial Grove, the grassy area between the Opera House and the Veterans Bldg. This year, Chief Tony Cerda presents the Congress of American Indians’ “Warriors Medal of Valor” to the American Legion Posts in San Francisco from the Ohlone Nation.

A wreath in the shape of that medal will be placed on the octagon and a ceremony of dance, songs and prayers will bring us together. The Veterans and the Ohlone are returning home to a sacred site.

San Francisco is an Ohlone place of origin and the Memorial Grove is the site where soil from the Battlefields of World Wars I, II and Vietnam are buried. This is the first year of a four-year ceremony to celebrate their homecoming.  We hope the Kiowa Gourd Clan will join us with their prayers and ceremony for the Warriors.

The SF Arts Commission has chosen an artist to design a memorial for the site with a ribbon cutting ceremony planned for 2013. We are supporting the Ohlone tribe to return for the next 4 years to conduct this ceremony for the Veterans. Joining us will be the Family of Reuben Paul Santos, for their 1st year memorial ceremony as they cope with his loss, after he took his life six years after returning from Iraq.

The Cherokee Society of the Greater Bay Area and the Black Native Americans Association will provide a Pot Luck food sharing after the ceremony in the Veterans Building Rm 223 on the 2nd floor north side of the Building.

CONTACT: 415-335-5257

POST UPDATE: Photos from the Event, by Catherine Herrera from her Galleries. Read her report, also.

Photos by Catherine Herrera - http://catherineherrera.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

The Ohlone Return: Inclusion in SF and Yosemite Slough by The Ohlone Profiles Project.

30-minute document of an Ohlone Sunrise Healing ceremony for Yosemite Slough on the day that the SF Board of Supervisors voted on Hunters Point Redevelopment and Ohlone inclusion. Public testimony in front of the Board of SF Supervisors. Video production by [...]]]>

The Ohlone Return: Inclusion in SF and Yosemite Slough by The Ohlone Profiles Project.

30-minute document of an Ohlone Sunrise Healing ceremony for Yosemite Slough on the day that the SF Board of Supervisors voted on Hunters Point Redevelopment and Ohlone inclusion. Public testimony in front of the Board of SF Supervisors. Video production by pollinatethis!

As the recognition process continues to leave the realm [...]]]> After the Resolution passed unanimously yesterday, the press conference received a staffer from Supervisor Eric Mar’s office, who offered to help in the next steps of implementing the resolution’s intent: inclusion in the planning process. She suggested help with drafting language for “ordinances” and other legislative action.

As the recognition process continues to leave the realm of symbolic and enters the reality of law, more and more Ohlone decendants are seeking out their heritage, embracing it and learning the culture that comes with it.

Eventually, there is a personal confrontation with the history of genocide and mass murder, the anger and despair that comes over that and the dangerous nuclear waste polluting their sacred sites where Lennar Corp actually wants to build housing, all of which is difficult for any human to come to terms with and choose a path of healing, reconciliation and active reformation for future generations.

Conscious choice is key. One can remain inactive around the issues of Native American justice, or one can step forward and participate, whether they are Native or not. For most Ohlone, there’s not much of a choice: it’s participate or disappear and never exist… or exist as something other than Ohlone.

The Ohlone Profiles Project remains an effort for artists, cultural workers and, as seen yesterday, politicians to support and embrace the necessity to strengthen and uphold San Francisco’s positive legacy as Sanctuary City and birthplace of the UN Charter. Artistic forms of communicating culture are just one element of the work. This week’s success at the local, legislative level is another.

At a place known as an EPA Superfund cleanup site where the Navy dumped toxic, toxic waste and ran nuclear tests in a building that’s still standing radioactive… a corporation wants to build housing with a plan that the San Francisco government approved… all in a place that long before was home to Native tribes who still live today, and have not forgotten their ancestors and legacy. Despite the fact that the Navy never cleaned it up, dumped it on SF, which sold it to Lennar Corp for $1, which still hasn’t cleaned it up and is banking on the forgetfulness of a defeated justice-seeking population including environmental scientists public video testimony against the Lennar’s development plan… despite all of this, it is still all of our responsibility today to find justice and to create and live in a just, sacred and sustainable world.

-Rupert, Supporter

Look at the nice photos taken by Chronicle photographer at the sunrise ceremony

Schedule Tuesday, 6am, Yosemite Slough Sunrise Ceremony (public, TV welcome) Tuesday 2pm: board of supervisors [...]]]> Tomorrow, the Ohlone Profiles Project joins with the Costanoan Rumen Carmel Tribe of Ohlone to continue the Ohlone Renewal effort in hearing and seeing the SF Board of Supervisors call for more inclusion of Native peoples in City Planning.

Schedule
Tuesday, 6am, Yosemite Slough Sunrise Ceremony (public, TV welcome)
Tuesday 2pm: board of supervisors meeting including testimony about the resolution
Tuesday 4pm City Hall, Room 278, Press Conference with Chairman Tony Cerda and members
of Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe (CRCT), Chairwomen Ann Marie Sayers, and others

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The native Californian Ohlone tribe continues its return to its homeland of San Francisco and will likely get the support of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in a vote on Tuesday, August 10 (tomorrow). A resolution introduced by Supervisor Maxwell on Aug 3rd, urges the Mayor, Planning Department and the Redevelopment Agency to include the Ohlone in the planning process. The purpose is to bring Ohlone into the cultural life of San Francisco, a life from which one of the Ohlone tribes who is organizing the events tomorrow, have been exiled since 1834.

Tomorrow begins for the Ohlone with a public sunrise ceremony at 6am, and includes testifying at the Supervisors’ meeting about 2:30 in the afternoon. The tribe will hold a press conference after the meeting, about 4pm, in City Hall (Room 278). The 6am sunrise ceremony will occur at Yosemite Slough, accessed at the end of Carroll Road in Candlestick Point State Park (see attached map). Television and photojournalists are invited to attend.

The park has the potential to host a circular, outdoor ceremonial arbor for Ohlone and public use. If it were restored the Slough could become a precious salt marsh ecosystem that helps heal the Bay, according to State publicity about the park.

Of highest priority for the Ohlone community is preventing any desecration of their native burial, village and ceremonial sites, the Ohlone ancestors. “What often happens is the builders start driving pylons into the ground at some project site, discover some bones and artifacts, and say ‘oh, sorry’ and offer a monument as as an apology,” says Neil MacLean of the Ohlone Profiles Project. “This resolution aims to prevent that from happening.” The supervisors are urging a full and meaningful inclusion of Ohlone in the development of Hunter’s Point.

READ COMPLETE Press Release

Examples of inclusion and autonomy with Tony’s tribe are non-stop.

The first event this morning was the spiritual advisor, Robert John Knapp, talking about the power of gentleness and introducing the young people and those in regalia, blessing them, and then having everyone of the children and the people in regalia [...]]]>

Examples of inclusion and autonomy with Tony’s tribe are non-stop.

The first event this morning was the spiritual advisor, Robert John Knapp, talking about the power of gentleness and introducing the young people and those in regalia, blessing them, and then having everyone of the children and the people in regalia greet everyone else who is here, because friendship is the base for everything else.” he said.

While that’s happening, more people, friends are showing up. .

“I can make the words but I can’t give the thanks:” that is how Robert begins the opening prayer.

“Some people say this is social, a pow wow, not ceremonially sacred, but it is. Because our creator told us two things: the first is that we must give thanks. There is never enough of giving thanks.

The second instruction is the most sacred, that we must enjoy life. And so in that kind of way, that is why we are here. To enjoy life as well as for healing and many other things.

It doesn’t say, if you get time, no , it says you must enjoy life.”

Everything I do is a prayer. “

I can say the words, but you have to give the thanks.”

Just be thankful, don’t be the judge. “

Robert opens with his resolution to the question I asked earlier. He begins the opening prayer saying we ask you to listen,, I was taught to say this prayer, and then you can carry it forward in your own way. “

So often, all the native people are asking for from settler society is that we listen, we listen and then we go forward not controlled by them, but with their teaching in our thoughts.

so that’s my first listening to Robert.

Neil

I’m at Tony Cerda Park in Pomona, the guest of Tony, the Chair of the Costanona Rumsen Carmel Tribe, who, at 72, is getting more and more support and

acknowledgment: both here in Pomona, [...]]]>

I’m at Tony Cerda Park in Pomona, the guest of Tony, the Chair of the Costanona Rumsen Carmel Tribe, who, at 72, is getting more and more support and

acknowledgment: both here in Pomona, where the tribe relocated over a century ago, and is an exciting leader that Mary Jean and I have been profiling as part of the Ohlone Profiles Project and supporting to come to San Francisco.

We have been working on getting him and his tribe up for the last few years.

When I first met Tony, four years ago, I was working at New College and had a center there and some support for Native American programming, including support for recognizing Ohlone as the original people of San Francisco. I tried to get Tony and the dancers to come to New College on Valencia street, but I learned that he was bigger than I could support. He comes with forty dancers and singers, and with so many other supporters, the college didn’t even have parking let alone enough performance space to welcome Tony.

When I learned that is when I thought to began the Ohlone Profiles to get support from the arts commission and to find organizations in the community that would give their resources to welcome Ohlone and receive the original people’s blessing.

I’m usually too involved in organizing the events, such as the Coit Tower Projection, or last weeks opening ceremony for the Eco classroom at Heron’s Head, to do the writing and blogging the way it deserves to be done. This weekend, I’m down at an event Tony has organized, I’m free to write and think and reflect. What a gift that is.

We just heard the Mayor of Pomona, saying the best thing they ever did with this park was to name it after Tony Cerda. “Now is a really big day for the park, he said. A little thing now turned into a huge, multi-ethnic, and Ohlone sponsored and organized, day of tribal events with hundreds of people.

As usual, though there are lots of things happening on the surface, there is also a back story in my head and writing allows me to go into it a bit.

The issue, the conversation, is about how to remain authentic, while still being flexible and relevant. About that I am learning most from Tony and the other Ohlone Mary Jean and I are working to bring forward. It seems to me that there are different traditions or ways of carrying ancient culture forward. Tony and Ann Marie and some of the other Ohlone that we are fortunate to be working with are so flexible and welcoming. The settler religious movement calls this ecumenical. Edward Said points out that culture is actually adaptation, its being smart about learning from others. Yet, there is also a role for remembering and honoring the past and the teachings that elders can share.

We are about to bring everyone into the ceremony. I’ve got to go be part of it.

Neil