A parking lot in the San Francisco Bay Area that sits atop a sacred 5,700-year-old tribal shell mound has been returned to the Ohlone people by the Berkeley City Council after a settlement with the developer who owned the land.
The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to pass an ordinance granting title to the land to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a Bay Area collective led by women that works to return land to indigenous peoples and has raised the funds needed to make it happen. required funds. protocol.
“This has been a long, long-term effort, but it’s truly been worth it because what we’re doing today is righting the wrongs of the past and returning stolen land,” said Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin. The people who once lived on it.”
The nearly 1-hectare parking lot is the only undeveloped portion of the West Berkeley Middens, a three-block area designated a Berkeley Landmark in 2000.
Before Spanish colonists arrived in the area, there was a village and a huge shell mound 6 meters high and as long and wide as a football field that served as a ceremonial and burial site. The mound was built over the years from mussels, clams and oyster shells, human remains and artifacts, and also served as a lookout.
The Spanish expelled the Ohlones from their villages and forced them to work as hard labor in local missions. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Anglo settlers occupied the land and leveled the shell piles, covering Berkeley’s roadbed with shells.
“This is a very sad and shameful history,” said Berkeley City Councilwoman Sophie Hahn, who is leading the effort to return the land to Ohlone.
“This is the site of a thriving village that’s at least 5,700 years old and we still have Ohlone people among us and their connection to this site is very, very deep and very real and that’s what we honor,” she added.
The agreement with Berkeley-based Ruegg & Ellsworth LLC, which owns the parking lot, comes after a six-year legal battle that began in 2018 when the developer refused to allow it to build a 260-unit apartment building including 50 units) sued the city. % affordable housing as well as retail and parking.
The settlement came after Ruegg & Ellsworth agreed to accept $27 million to settle all outstanding claims and turn the property over to Berkeley. Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is contributing $25.5 million and Berkeley is contributing $1.5 million, officials said.
The trust plans to build a memorial park with a new shell mound and a cultural center to house some of the pottery, jewelry, baskets and other artifacts discovered over the years and housed at Phoebe A. Hearst University In the Museum of Anthropology. California, Berkeley.
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust co-founder Corrina Gould spoke before council members voted, saying their vote was the culmination of years of work by thousands of people.
The mound that once stood there was “the place where we first said goodbye to someone,” she said. “I can’t express how happy I am to be able to preserve this place forever.”
Gould, who is also the tribal chairman of the Confederated Village of Lisjan Ohlone, participated via video conference and wiped away tears after the Berkeley City Council voted to return the land.
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