Exhibit about Ohlone tribe to open at De Anza College Oct. 23

By Khalida Sarwari

The Sayers have a saying: “When ceremony and dancing stop, so does the Earth.”

At Indian Canyon in Hollister, the only land continuously held by the Ohlone–the first inhabitants of the San Francisco and Monterey regions–ceremonies are more than just regularly held events; they’re a way of life for the indigenous people.

“We are still here and we’re not invisible, but the dominant society feels as though we are,” said Anne Marie Sayers, tribal chairwoman of the mile-long Indian Canyon. “Quite a number of people think we’re dead, but we’re still here living on this land and still having ceremonies.”

One day, it’ll be Sayers’ 29-year-old daughter, Kanyon, who’ll inherit the land and continue her tribe’s traditions, but for now the 68-year-old Anne Marie, who in addition to Ohlone also has Swedish, Irish and Mohawk roots, is still very much in charge of making sure indigenous people have a place to call their own in a landscape where they’ve historically had to fight for their survival.

“I live to honor my ancestors who lived in the canyon for 4,400 years,” Sayers said. “I can feel the ancestral spirits dancing and that is a reason for living.”

The struggle of the Ohlone people is documented in various forms, most recently in a traveling exhibit that’s due to open Oct. 23 at the California History Center on the De Anza College campus.

Titled “Ohlone Elders & Youth Speak,” the exhibit is a collection of 19 large-scale color photos of tribe members who are involved in efforts to keep their cultures alive. It was curated by Ruth Morgan, a Berkeley-based professional photographer, in collaboration with historian Janet Clinger. It is also available online in book format by the same title.

For Morgan, who also serves as executive director of Oakland-based nonprofit Community Works West, the Humans of New York-style project has been more than a dozen years in the making and is her way of giving back to a community that embraced her many years ago.

“I just think the Native people’s sort of reverence for all living things, animals, nature, is something that I think the larger culture could gain from and I think one of the biggest impressions I had, especially early on, was how invited we were and how we were embraced in being able to witness the ceremony which I just think was pretty extraordinary,” she said. “So we felt very welcomed and I think we’ve always felt incredibly welcomed in the community.”

Morgan and Clinger present multi-generational narratives that reflect the challenges the people continue to face today in protecting their burial sites, telling their side of the story that is missing from history books, addressing common stereotypes and tokenism and preserving their languages and culture in the 21st century.

“We were just fascinated with the ways in which the Ohlone people are trying to keep their culture alive while living in two worlds really, and we became really interested in that and Anne Marie suggested that we do a project around it and she’s the one who identified the people in the project,” Morgan said.

One of the youth subjects in the exhibit explained that even though the younger members of the tribe have evolved in many ways, they’re still very much connected to their ancestry.

“Unfortunately, we do have to drive in cars to get to places, and we wear makeup and get our nails and hair done,” said Desiree Munoz, 25. At the same time, she said, “we are a living and breathing tribe that’s strong in our ceremonial songs and dances, in our connection with our ancestors.”

In her photo, Munoz is depicted in her traditional regalia, consisting of a feathered headdress, her face painted with white and black dye. The photo was taken at Tony Cerda Park in Pomona, a city that’s been home to the last five generations of her family, although they’re originally from the Bay Area and Carmel region. The park was named after Munoz’s grandfather, chief of the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe, who was also featured in the exhibit.

In his portrait, Cerda is wearing a blue-green bead necklace, the only pop of color offset by a black fedora and black jacket, a serious expression on his face and faraway gaze in his eyes.

Cerda talks about every creature’s responsibility in taking care of the Earth and laments the loss of Ohlone land.

“They didn’t pay us anything for this land, and we didn’t give it to them,” he says. “How did they get it? Our right of indigenous occupancy was never honored by anybody to this day.”

If there is one thing that strikes at the core of both the younger and elder generations, the injustice of losing a territory that was rightfully theirs for thousands of years is most salient.

Munoz, a San Francisco resident who works as a park ranger for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, said her people’s lack of a land base saddens her, not only for past and present generations, but for future ones, too.

“It honestly makes me feel sad, because it’s something that we lived for and we gave up ourselves for and not knowing by inviting settlers that were coming in as peaceful beings and letting them take advantage of us,” she said.

So, she and other members of her tribe try to stay connected to their heritage in other meaningful ways. One of those is reviving her tribal language, Rumsen. She and her relatives are actively trying to learn the language through a linguistics teacher.

“We weren’t allowed to speak it, so we lost it,” she said. “The last speaker died in 1924.”

Participating in ceremonies, which usually involve feasting, singing and dancing, is another way that both the youth and elder generations keep the Ohlone tradition alive.

“Ceremony is something that is sacred to our people and it’s just a way of life and living can be a celebration where we share with different tribes to join in and pray with us,” Munoz said.

Kanyon Sayers-Roods, the daughter of Anne Marie Sayers, stays involved by attending California Native gatherings across the state or by taking on an activist role at various conferences. She resides in San Jose and is a contemporary artist and graphic designer who uses her profession as a mechanism to explore her identity.

“Having that cultural pride and trying to learn as much around my heritage is a way I can honor my ancestors as well as trying to be an advocate for cultural survival,” she said.

For the youth, it’s also about the way they dress, not just for ceremonies, but on a daily basis. Both Sayers-Roods and Munoz wear bead necklaces around their neck that they described as their medicine. In her photo taken a few years ago at a sunrise ceremony at Alcatraz, an event her mother hosts every year on Thanksgiving, Sayers-Roods is shown wearing numerous necklaces, a streak of blue in her hair, her gaze defiant and leveled directly at the camera.

“(The necklaces are) made with good intentions. Every bead is a prayer and there are times where we gift them to other people,” she said.

Tom Izu, executive director of the California History Center, had a big role in bringing the exhibit to De Anza after seeing it debut at the San Francisco Public Library a few years ago.

“I wanted to have an exhibit here about indigenous people,” he said. “They have a right to tell their own story and they want people to listen to that story. It happened here right on this land. It’s not far away; it’s not some imaginary place. That’s what I’m also hoping people really think about.”

Ultimately, said Morgan, the exhibit is an attempt at exploring truth and reconciliation in history and “the notion of whether there can be historical reconciliation for the genocide that was perpetrated against the Native Americans.”

The “Ohlone Elders & Youth Speak: Restoring a California Legacy” exhibit opens at the California History Center at De Anza College, 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino, on Oct. 23 and runs through the end of the year. The exhibit is free for viewing Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday by appointment. For more information, call 408-864-8712.

In conjunction with the exhibit, a reception featuring Sayers and Sayers-Roods will be held Oct. 28 at 1 p.m. and is free to the public. A panel discussion featuring Sayers-Roods, Gregg Castro, Munoz and her mother Carla will be held Nov. 2 at 1:30 p.m. at the Hinson Campus Center in conference rooms A and B.

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Exhibit about Ohlone tribe to open at De Anza College Oct. 23

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