Johnella LaRose is an American grassroots organizer based in the San Francisco Bay Area who advocates for Indigenous communities and the preservation and restitution of Indigenous lands. LaRose identifies with the Shoshone Bannock and the unrecognized Carrizo tribe. Alongside fellow Indigenous rights' activist Corrina Gould, LaRose is a co-founder of Indian People Organizing for Change (IPOC), [1] a San Francisco Bay Area-based organization working to protect and raise awareness about the region’s sacred shellmounds, and the Sogorea Te Land Trust, [2] an urban land trust working to restore Indigenous stewardship of occupied Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands in the East Bay Area.
LaRose was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised on a reservation in Utah. Born to a military family, LaRose travelled frequently in her youth, and graduated from high school in Portland, Oregon, before eventually returning to California. [3] In the late 1970s, she became involved in the Red Power Movement, and lived at the American Indian Movement Freedom and Survival School in Oakland. During this time, she joined the organizing efforts for the Longest Walk. [4] She is a graduate of Mills College with a degree in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology. [5]
In 1998, LaRose began working with Corrina Gould to found Indian People Organizing for Change (IPOC), an activist group working to preserve and bring attention to the shellmounds of the Bay Area, such as the West Berkeley Shellmound and the Emeryville Shellmound, the latter of which was demolished and paved over, despite workers uncovering human remains during the excavation. [6] [4] IPOC's many organizing efforts throughout the years have included Peace Walks that simultaneously trace the sacred ancestral sites and protest against their destruction by urban redevelopment [7] and design proposals for the Shellmound heritage sites that present inclusive, historically respectful alternatives to condominium developments being planned at these sites. [8]
The Sogorea Te Land Trust was co-founded in 2012 by LaRose. [9]
Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The resident population was 12,905 as of 2020. Its proximity to San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the University of California, Berkeley, and Silicon Valley has been a catalyst for recent economic growth.
The Ohlone, formerly known as Costanoans, are a Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley. At that time they spoke a variety of related languages. The Ohlone languages make up a sub-family of the Utian language family. Older proposals place Utian within the Penutian language phylum, while newer proposals group it as Yok-Utian.
The Bay Miwok are a cultural and linguistic group of Miwok, a Native American people in Northern California who live in Contra Costa County. They joined the Franciscan mission system during the early nineteenth century, suffered a devastating population decline, and lost their language as they intermarried with other native California ethnic groups and learned the Spanish language.
Coyote Hills Regional Park is a regional park encompassing nearly 978 acres of land and administered by the East Bay Regional Park District. The park, which was dedicated to public use in 1967, is located in Fremont, California, US, on the southeast shore of the San Francisco Bay. The Coyote Hills themselves are a small range of hills at the edge of the bay; though not reaching any great height, they afford tremendous views of the bay, three of the trans-bay bridges, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, the Peninsula Range of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Mount Tamalpais. In addition to the hills themselves, the park encloses a substantial area of wetlands.
The Emeryville Shellmound, in Emeryville, California, is a sacred burial site of the Ohlone people, a once-massive archaeological shell midden deposit. It was one of a complex of five or six mounds along the mouth of the perennial Temescal Creek, on the east shore of San Francisco Bay between Oakland and Berkeley. It was the largest of the over 425 shellmounds that surrounded San Francisco Bay. The site of the Shellmound is now a California Historical Landmark (#335).
San Bruno Mountain is a fault-block horst in northern San Mateo County, California. Rising to a quarter-mile high peak directly out of San Francisco Bay, it also includes a smaller ridge in San Francisco. Viewed from downtown San Francisco, the mountain occupies the southern horizon. It is surrounded as well by the cities of Brisbane, Colma, Daly City, and South San Francisco, and has an important role in the history and life of these communities.
Temescal Creek is one of the principal watercourses in the city of Oakland, California, United States.
The Awaswas, also known as the Santa Cruz people, were a group of the Indigenous peoples of California in North America, with subgroups historically numbering about 600 to 1,400. Academic research suggests that their ancestors had lived within the Santa Cruz Mountains region for approximately 12,000 years. The Awaswas maintained regular trade networks with regional cultures before the Spanish colonists began settling in the area from the 18th century.
The Tamien people are one of eight linguistic divisions of the Ohlone (Costanoan) people groups of Native Americans who live in Northern California. The Tamien traditionally lived throughout the Santa Clara Valley. The use of the name Tamien is on record as early as 1777; it comes from the Ohlone name for the location of the first Mission Santa Clara on the Guadalupe River. Father Pena mentioned in a letter to Junipero Serra that the area around the mission was called Thamien by the native people. The missionary fathers erected the mission on January 17, 1777, at the native village of So-co-is-u-ka.
The Chochenyo are one of the divisions of the Indigenous Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Northern California. The Chochenyo reside on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, primarily in what is now Alameda County, and also Contra Costa County, from the Berkeley Hills inland to the western Diablo Range.
Bay Street Emeryville is a large mixed-use development in Emeryville, California which currently has 65 stores, ten restaurants, a sixteen-screen movie theater, 230 room hotel, and 400 residential units with 1,000 residents.
The Ramaytush language is one of the eight Ohlone languages, historically spoken by the Ramaytush people who were indigenous to California. Historically, the Ramaytush inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean in the area which is now San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. Ramaytush is a dialect or language within the Ohlone branch of the Utian family. The term Ramaytush was first applied to it during the 1970s, and is derived from the term rammay-tuš "people from the west". It is extinct, but efforts are being taken to revive it.
The Rumsen are one of eight groups of the Ohlone, an indigenous people of California. Their historical territory included coastal and inland areas within what is now Monterey County, California, including the Monterey Peninsula.
The Karkin people are one of eight Ohlone peoples, indigenous peoples of California.
The history of Oakland, a city in the county of Alameda, California, can be traced back to the founding of a settlement by Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, and Andrew Moon in the 19th century. The area now known as Oakland had seen human occupation for thousands of years, but significant growth in the settlements that are now incorporated into the city did not occur until the Industrial Revolution. Oakland was first incorporated as a town in 1852.
Rancho Las Camaritas was an Alta California land grant, a square of 300 Mexican varas on each side; varas being one pace, in this case 2.75 feet to José de Jesús Noé on January 21, 1840, by Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. Millions of acres of California land was given at no charge to men between 1784 and 1846 by the Spanish (1784–1810) or Mexican governments (1819–1846) mostly for military service to raise cattle on. About 300 of the 800 Land grants were sizable varying from a few thousand to 1.5 million acres – see List of ranchos of California for the larger grants. Following the Mexican–American War, the land grants were challenged with most of them falling into American hands. Only one land grant has remained undeveloped. The ownership of Las Camaritas was disputed in court by the U.S. government from 1856 until 1882 due to conflicting documentation presented by its American owner Ferdinand Vassault after a string of sales initiated by Jose Noe sometime between 1842 and 1846.
The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an urban land trust founded in 2012 with the goals of returning traditionally Chochenyo and Karkin lands in the San Francisco Bay Area to Indigenous stewardship and cultivating more active, reciprocal relationships with the land. The land trust inspired the work of the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy in the Los Angeles region of Southern California.
Vincent Medina is an Indigenous rights, Indigenous language, and food activist from California. He co-founded Cafe Ohlone, an Ohlone restaurant in Berkeley, California which serves Indigenous cuisine made with Native ingredients sourced from the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas. As of 2019 he was serving on the Muwekma council, and he is Capitán, or cultural leader, of the ‘Itmay Cultural Association.
Corrina Gould is a spokeswoman and Tribal Chair of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone, a non-profit organization. She identifies as a Chochenyo and a Karkin Ohlone woman and is a long-time activist who works to protect, preserve, and reclaim ancestral lands of the Ohlone peoples. The Ohlone people live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and Gould's organization, specifically, is located in the East Bay, in regions now occupied by Oakland, Berkeley, and beyond.
The West Berkeley Shellmound, in West Berkeley, California, sits at the site of the earliest known habitation in the San Francisco Bay Area, a village of the Ohlone people on the banks of Strawberry Creek. The shellmound, or midden, was used for both burials and ceremonial purposes, and was a repository for shells, ritual objects, and ceremonial items. It is listed as a Berkeley Landmark. Part of the site was paved in the twentieth century and for many years was a restaurant parking lot. In the 21st century, the lot was acquired by a developer, but development plans were stalled by the City of Berkeley and local Native American activists. In 2024 an agreement was reached for the land to be returned to the Ohlone, facilitated by a gift to the Sogorea Te' Land Trust, which will pay the majority of the acquisition cost, with the city paying the remainder. An artificial mound covered with vegetation and housing an educational and memorial center is planned.
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