The City of Oakland with Oakland-based nonprofit Sogorea Te’ Land Trust announced at a press event yesterday that approximately five acres of land in the Oakland Hills may be returned to Indigenous stewardship.
A cultural conservation easement would be granted to the Indigenous women-led nonprofit.
“This agreement will restore our access to this important area, allowing a return of our sacred relations with our ancestral lands in the hills,” Corrina Gould, tribal spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, said in a statement. “The easement allows us to begin to heal the land and heal the scars that have been created by colonization for the next generations.”
A community meeting will be held next Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at at 5:30pm where plans for the space. The public can register for the Zoom meeting here. The meeting is hosted by City Council President Pro Tem Sheng Thao, who is running for mayor.
According to Mayor Libby Schaaf’s office, the next steps are that on September 14, 2022, the City’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee and other stakeholders such as the Friends of Joaquin Miller Park will consider the project. The City Council may vote on the easement as early as November.
Momo Chang is a freelance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the Oakland Voices Co-Director. Her work focuses on healthcare, immigration, education, Asian American communities, food and culture. She is a former staff writer at the Oakland Tribune. Momo has received journalism awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for investigative reporting and the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. Her work has appeared in the East Bay Express, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, and The New York Times. Momo is primarily a print journalist who also produces audio and visual stories for documentary film and radio. She is a Senior Contributing Editor for Hyphen and formerly the Content Manager at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).
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