Dear Menlo Park,
My name is Aarav Iyer and I am an intern at the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. We write to you deeply concerned about the federal government’s continued political erasure of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and other wrongly unrecognized indigenous communities across the United States. Your government organization sits atop a portion of the Muwekma Ohlone homeland here in California. Muwekma is the only tribe in the United States to have received a determination from the Bureau of Indian Affairs as being “previously unambiguously recognized” but remains excluded from the Bureau’s official list of recognized tribes.
The facts are clear and corrective action is required. To reiterate the facts:
* The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe was previously federally recognized as the Verona Band of Alameda County, and it was never terminated by an act of Congress. One-hundred-percent of the tribe’s current members are direct descendants of that previously recognized tribe.
* A federal district court judge in the Northern District of California found that the tribe retains its sovereign immunity despite not being on the BIA’s list.
* A seven-year genomic study conducted by Stanford University and the University of Illinois conclusively links each member of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Council and its eleven core lineages to a 2,500 year old burial site in San Francisco.
* The Tribe is composed of all of the known surviving American Indian lineages aboriginal to the San Francisco Bay region who trace our ancestry through the Missions Dolores, Santa Clara, and San Jose.
* An enormous body of genealogical and anthropological records conclude that the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is aboriginal to several Bay Area counties including: Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, and portions of Napa, Santa Cruz, Solano, and San Joaquin.
We are asking to meet with Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh to discuss a Resolution of Support. This justice has been too long delayed. A draft legislation has also been attached.
Respectfully,
Aarav Iyer
