Do you live in the East Bay in Northern California? If the answer is yes, you live on traditional Ohlone land. This land, like so many others across our country, has a deep history and a community of people who have lived here for thousands of years. This year for Giving Tuesday, Kiva has chosen to pay Shuumi Land Tax to acknowledge this history, contribute to its healing, and support the Ohlone community’s current work to create a vibrant future.
The Shuumi Land Tax is a voluntary annual contribution that non-Indigenous people living on the Confederated Villages of Lisjan’s territory can make to support the critical work of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.
The Shuumi Land Tax directly supports Sogorea Te’s work of rematriation, returning Indigenous land to Indigenous people, establishing a cemetery to reinter stolen Ohlone ancestral remains, and building urban gardens, community centers, and ceremonial spaces so current and future generations of Indigenous people can thrive in the Bay Area.
In the founders’ own words, “We envision a Bay Area in which Ohlone language and ceremony are an active, thriving part of the cultural landscape, where Ohlone place names and history is known and recognized and where intertribal Indigenous communities have affordable housing, social services, cultural centers and land to live, work and pray on.”
For those who don’t live on traditional Ohlone land, you can enter your address into the Native Land website or mobile app. This will direct you to the Indigenous nations who inhabit and have inhabited the land you reside on. Consider using this to donate directly to a Native Nation or to an impactful, Indigenous-led organization that is making a meaningful contribution to this community today.
As the creators of Native Land remind us, “All of us are on #NativeLand.” Remembering our land’s Indigenous ancestors and learning their authentic history, recognizing the devastation that Settler Colonialism wrought on these communities, and participating in ongoing actions that benefit Indigenous peoples are all part of our path forward to a whole and healed future that benefits all beings.
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