The Struggle for Land, Reparations, and Belonging in California
December 04, 2024 at 08:09PMProperty prices in California keep going up, up, and away. Black Americans lost billions of dollars in property during the Great Migration. So California movements and legislative attempts to make reparations in land seem to make a lot of sense. But: Is property a reparation? And what about the thousands of Native Californians who were dispossessed—of their lives as well as the land—but never offered reparations? Adam Mahoney delicately unpacks the history and issues at play for Capital B.
One tribe that calls the Tahoe Basin home is the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan. The Nisenan, like all of California’s Native peoples, were decimated by the settlers’ campaigns of violence and cultural eradication. For decades after California achieved statehood in 1850, state-sponsored militias conducted deadly raids on Indigenous communities. Disease and starvation compounded the losses, and by the end of the 20th century, the state’s Indigenous population had plummeted from an estimated 150,000 to just 16,000.
“We’re still in the truth-telling phase of accepting the wanton murder and wiping out of California Native people,” said Shelly Covert, spokesperson for the tribe and the executive director of the California Heritage Indigenous Research Project. “Just like people in the Black community, we’ve been ignored and looked over, and gaslighted for generations, and offered nothing. So when you see the Black community, with a strong voice, getting land, it still stings, even if it is deserved.” The federal rights of Covert’s tribe were terminated in 1964, and even today it is not recognized by the government.
At the same time, she said, the LandBack movement and other campaigns for Native rights have benefited from the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and she would like to see supporters of LandBack and reparations coordinate their efforts more closely. After years of crowdfunding, in September, the Nisenan purchased 232 acres of their ancestral land for $2.5 million. The land, which is about 40 miles from the 40 Acre Conservation League’s property and was once owned by a Quaker school, will be developed for housing for elders and facilities to cultivate ancestral crops and traditional medicine.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/12/04/the-struggle-for-land-reparations-and-belonging-in-california/
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