During my first year as a grad student last year at UC Berkeley, my journalism class met for a mandatory week of "Boot Camp" before the school year began. On the second day, a professor gave a land acknowledgment, reading from a piece of paper about the unceded ancestral lands of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people – a territory known as xučyun (Huichin). But like so many of these acknowledgments, there was an understatement as to why this particular community, the Ohlone, were displaced to begin with – a backstory with relevance that has only intensified at Berkeley as institutions worldwide confront legacy colonization and white supremacy. 

A few years earlier in 2019 as a Berkeley undergrad, headlines began swirling around an audit of the university’s anthropology collection of some 495,000 Indigenous artifacts, and more gruesomely, of Indigenous remains – the largest collection of its kind in the United States.  The California State Auditor, Elaine M. Howle made it clear, these were items that fell under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which legally mandates their return to the Indigenous Peoples of whom they belong.  But there was one bureaucratic catch, a big one: "federal recognition".  Only Native nations that are “recognized” by the United States have the requisite sovereign status for entitlement to the return of their ancestors’ remains under NAGPRA.  This loaded concept has worked to Berkeley’s benefit. Today, roughly two-thirds of UC Berkeley’s Indigenous collections are cataloged as “culturally unidentifiable” – the bones and holy objects that fail to draw a link to one of today’s 574 federally-recognized tribes.  When the audit was released, it revealed that only about 20% of the university’s collection had been repatriated under NAGPRA compared to UCLA and UC Davis which had returned or was in the process of returning about 90% of their collections to tribes.  “We find Berkeley's approach to be overly cautious,” said Howle, adding that the university failed to give tribal oral history and tradition the same weight as scientific evidence. 

Comparative analysis of the University of California's NAGPRA repatriation inventories as of 2019 which ranks Berkeley's 496,500 Indigenous artifacts against UCLA and UC Davis, including a note that the UC Davis collection was in the process of returning roughly 40,500 items to an area tribe while will see that they have repatriated approximately 89 percent of its NAGPRA inventory.  California State Auditor Report, NAGPRA, 2019-047

No one understands the burdens of Berkeley’s bureaucracy regarding federal recognition more than the Muwekma Ohlone, the Indigenous Peoples who live at the heart of the university’s official land acknowledgment.  Since 1989, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Council has petitioned the federal government for recognition status, arguing that its 500 members are today’s surviving descendants who are aboriginal to the San Francisco Bay region.  Ironically, UC Berkeley is a huge reason why the Ohlone people are fighting against notions that they are “extinct.”  The university’s leading anthropologist at the turn of the 20th century, Alfred Kroeber, relied on Muwekma items in his growing collection to pronounce the Ohlone victims of genocide – those who have all but disappeared.  The label stuck, but DNA analysis could help reverse this misconception once and for all.

Earlier this year, a new study found a genetic link between 2,000-year-old skeletons found in California and today’s Muwekma descendants.  “Despite a large period of time, they share a distinctive ancestry,” wrote the researchers, reaffirming that the Muwekma Ohlone have deep ties to the Bay Area that are flourishing, even today.  It could set the stage for another ironic twist at UC Berkeley, forcing the school to accept Muwekma continuity, which could ultimately lead to the return of their relative's bones. 

This was an issue I knew I wanted to consider writing about when I began my internship with Indigenously – to unpack the contradictions that often live at the heart of institutional reckoning with racism. While my studies have met a progressive curriculum, in the backdrop, there has seemingly been more to learn than what my education was teaching me. Since my time on campus, I can count at least four halls that have been renamed, including Kroeber Hall whose name was removed after attention was drawn to the anthropologist's massive Indigenous collection, but also to the fact that he held captive on campus a Yahi man known as Ishi.  Described in the press as the “last wild Indian,”  Ishi was on display like a caged animal at the zoo. When he died in 1916 of tuberculosis his body was autopsied at the university, going against his Yahi tradition. 

At a celebration of the first official Indigenous Peoples' Day in San Francisco in October 2018, members of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe stand alongside Mayor London Breed, Board of Supervisors president Malia Cohen, and Board of Supervisors member Vallie Brown. Pax Ahimsa Gethen

Ms. Carmen suggests that people must remain vigilant. “We have to hold the line,” she said – a line that has been crossed one too many times in colonial history. ♠️

ESSENTIAL LINKS

• The one-hour film about Alfred Kroeber's obsession with the Yahi man he called "Ishi" is worth a watch.  Produced by Jed Riffee and Pamela Roberts, and written by Anne Makepeace, Ishi: The Last Yahi  is an early '90s gem that was confronting America's colonial legacy long before today's racial reckoning. 
• Here's the 2020 State of California Auditor's report on the University of California's NAGPRA track record.
• And here's the DNA study about the Muwekma.

@PBS

“Truth telling can be so hard sometimes. I admire your perseverance

and authenticity. Thanks for continuing to uncover real stories about real people and their places.”