Presentation Spotlights Ohlone People’s Fight for Land, Culture

Castro Valley and much of the East Bay sit on land inhabited 2,000 years ago by Native peoples who never legally gave it up, according to an archeologist who has worked closely with a local tribe to regain at least some of its land and re-establish its culture.

Alan Leventhal, a retired anthropology professor from San Jose State University, told of the past and present of the Muwekma Ohlone in an online presentation Tuesday, Sept. 29, hosted by the Castro Valley branch of the Alameda County Library.

The tribe went from owning all the land in the area to owning none, helped along by three ruling countries, treaties negotiated but never signed and then hidden away, outright theft by settler families, and one big, perhaps not-so-innocent, clerical error, Leventhal said.

They are not demanding it all back, just to have some land rather than none, he said.

Currently, the tribe is trying to regain federal recognition, which it lost in 1927. A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agent, then charged with buying land for tribes that had lost theirs or had it taken, declared the tribe formerly existed but no longer did.

Leading anthropologists at the time concurred, despite some having interviewed tribal members.

For decades before that, the Verona Band of Indians of Alameda County had been a federally recognized tribe. Verona was a small community near Pleasanton that contained the estate of George and Phoebe Apperson Hearst, parents of newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. That estate became Castlewood Country Club in 1924.

Subsequent efforts to give land and other assistance to California’s Native tribes have been limited to officially recognized tribes, leaving the Muwekma out.

Yet, the Muwekma Ohlone were forced to send their children to federal boarding schools, were counted in official Indian censuses in 1910 and 1920, and have served as Muwekma Ohlone in both world wars and in conflicts since, Leventhal said.

He added that current Muwekma Ohlone members grew up with, and remember well, family members who are buried in the Ohlone Cemetery in Fremont.

Legally, said Leventhal, a native tribe once recognized can only be unrecognized by an act of Congress, not by administrative error.

The Muwekma Ohlone have been fighting for decades now to regain their federal recognition and begin the process of buying land and restoring their culture, Leventhal said.

There have been some gains, but progress has been slow, he said. In 1988, the Bureau of Indian Affairs gave their petition for recognition a ready status, meaning it could proceed. By 1999, the tribe realized that the BIA’s pace of review would take about 24 years to yield results and sued to speed up the process. The courts ordered an expedited review – which is still underway today.

Recent finds that DNA in ancient remains found near Sunol matched today’s Muwekma Ohlone leaders buttressed the tribe’s claims of continuous habitation in the area, Leventhal said. While this should help with regaining federal recognition, he said some gaming tribes have opposed it, perhaps fearing business competition should the Muwekma Ohlone regain some land.

The tribe’s fight is not about building any business empire, Leventhal said. It is about rebuilding a culture that was nearly destroyed and gaining some land on which to begin that.