03/31/24 - PaulStar, Corrina Gould
Makes you such a threat? We choose the right to be who we are. We know the difference between the reality of freedom and the illusion of freedom. There's a way to live with Earth and a way not to live with Earth. We choose the way of Earth. It's about power.
Anne Keala Kelly:Aloha kakou e koumoumai. Heartfelt greetings and welcome. This is First Voices Radio coming to you this week from the illegally occupied Hawaiian Kingdom known to most as Hawaii. I'm Anne Keala Kelly sitting in for your host, Tiokasin Ghosthorse. For your generosity as always and for being here.
Anne Keala Kelly:This is all native hosted, all native produced First Voices Radio, now in its 32nd year of broadcasting. Our First Voices Radio producer is the magnificent Liz Hill. I wanna welcome the more than one 110 community, public, and commercial radio stations that broadcast First Forces Radio across the US, Canada, and in Germany. And thank all of you who monitor this program online and around our mother, the Earth. Now as Tiokasin would say, let's count coup.
Anne Keala Kelly:Our first guest this week is Paul Starr. He is a Cree recording artist from Quebec and is joining us to talk about his new album, bring it all together, and some of the challenges he has faced and the role of music in his own life. Paul Starr, welcome to First Voices Radio.
PaulStar:Hi.
Anne Keala Kelly:So how long have you been a recording artist?
PaulStar:Well, I started becoming interested in recording, like, 20 years ago. You know, I started working with, you know, cassettes, you know, the the like, one of my friends, you know, had the like, a cassette recording, I guess, a multitrack recording, device. Mhmm. And, you know, that's when I was, like, really interested. You know, like, I start playing guitar at the the age of 10.
PaulStar:And, like, every year, I learned a new new instrument.
Anne Keala Kelly:Oh, wow. Since you were 10, how many instruments do you play?
PaulStar:I play guitar, bass, piano synthesizers, drums. Then I picked up, ukulele.
Anne Keala Kelly:We call it ukulele.
PaulStar:Ukulele?
Anne Keala Kelly:Yes. It's uku. Ukulele.
PaulStar:Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I started playing that, just a couple of years ago.
Anne Keala Kelly:Mhmm. Are you Mhmm. In terms of your music on, that is recorded and that's out there for people to listen to and hopefully to purchase, How many of the instruments are played by you in the recordings?
PaulStar:All of them.
Anne Keala Kelly:All of them? You're doing all of the music?
PaulStar:Yes.
Anne Keala Kelly:This is amazing. Of course, you can't do that when you're performing live. Right?
PaulStar:Yeah.
Anne Keala Kelly:So what do you do when you're performing live?
PaulStar:Sometimes I would use, I use my laptop, you know, that I have, like, a instrumental tracks, you know, so I just mute my my vocals, you know, in the recording, and I just, do that and, like, when I'm singing live.
Anne Keala Kelly:Wow. That's fascinating. Well, tell me a little bit about in terms of your own upbringing because I noticed in the lyrics in your songs, like, one of the songs low
PaulStar:Mhmm.
Anne Keala Kelly:Is about depression. Right? It's about being down low. And and I'm wondering, like, in terms of your community, where you come from, you know, are these some of the struggles in your community, people dealing with depression and and other things that come along with that? Or can you give give us a sense of just your background and why you would be why would you write a song like that?
PaulStar:I guess, you know, growing up, you know, there was always struggles, you know, and, I would always see, you know, in the communities, you know, like drugs and alcohol, you know, just the kids, you know, would always bully at the young age. You know? Like like, I was bullied a lot, you know, growing up. You know? Even in high school, I was still bullied.
PaulStar:Yeah. So music has always, you know, helped me. And, like, as a teenager, you know, I'd always experienced, like, some, like, depression or anxiety. But then, you know, music was the only, you know, how I would express myself, you know, really. Knees thinking about what people see in me.
PaulStar:I'm begging the Lord, please, can you hear me? Can you refill all my energy? Maybe I Yeah. But, but this like, luckily, this year, you know, hasn't it's it's been great. You know?
PaulStar:Like, like, I didn't feel any, like, any sort of, depression or
Anne Keala Kelly:Mhmm.
PaulStar:It's
Anne Keala Kelly:Is it because is it because your musical career is taking off now with the with the new album or just, you know, is it just part of just growing up and growing away from certain things? Like, share some of that with us if you can.
PaulStar:Yeah. I think, you know, like, I could come from, like, relationships, you know, breakups. Mhmm. Oh, I I did experience those. Mhmm.
PaulStar:My last relationship, you know, was was hard for me and, you know, I guess I guess, you know, music was the the only thing that, really helped me, you know, going going through it.
Anne Keala Kelly:Mhmm. Well, the entire genre of rock and roll is about falling in love and breaking up for that, for, you know, so many songs, right, about love?
PaulStar:Mhmm.
Anne Keala Kelly:I mean, you're doing the you're in the right genre. Yeah. Well, in culturally speaking, were you raised in a kind of traditional cultural way? Or and and and if so, what was that in terms of how that influenced you musically or creatively?
PaulStar:Well, I think in growing up, you know, you know, I would always, well, I'm from, like, 2 different communities. You know, my my dad's from Sesame, and my mom's from the other community called, Waskaikanesh. They're, like, like, 7 hours, 8 hours away from each other. Yeah. I would always visit my, grandparents, you know, when my, late grandfather, you know, still alive.
PaulStar:And I would always bring my guitar with me whenever I wherever I go. But I would always, you know, go hunting with my uncles and grandparents.
Anne Keala Kelly:Mhmm.
PaulStar:Yeah. So, like, at that time, you know, I didn't really under understand, you know, like, indigenous music and because I was always singing, in English. Mhmm. And I guess just pop culture is kinda, like, influenced that.
Anne Keala Kelly:Mhmm.
PaulStar:And now today, you know, I can write songs about, you know, growing up in the community, you know, go hunting, you know, talk about keeping the language. Yeah. It's just just everything. You know? You know, as an artist, you know, I I need to embrace, my culture.
Anne Keala Kelly:Well, I mean, are you inspired to embrace it, or do you feel more like responsibility?
PaulStar:Well, I mean, like, I think it's important to, like like, keeping the language and, you know, encourage, the young generation to, you know, keep the the language and, you know, keep practicing their culture and traditions. I think what's happening now is because, you know, the, like, all the technology is, I mean, the young generation, you know, I just feel like, we're losing our language a little bit more. Kinda sad to see that that the youth today, you know, only speak English and instead of, their language.
Speaker 5:Do you
Anne Keala Kelly:think it's just because they're only speaking in English or they're inundated through the technology?
PaulStar:I mean, I do see a few things. You know? I think preschool board is trying to, I mean, they're they're trying to bring, the learning experience, you know, to the youth, like, different parts of Canada. Like, they they they have, increased syllabics to learn how like, to understand that the language.
Anne Keala Kelly:Do you think to use care? That's really what I wanted.
PaulStar:I think, like, TikTok, you know, is, like, a big influence. You know? The young, the young children, you know, instead of learning the the language, you know, they they they learn, English first before they they're able to speak their language.
Anne Keala Kelly:Mhmm. Yeah. So everything is in English. Colonization is alive and well. I mean, it seems to me like younger generations have to deal with a lot more cultural influence from the outside than even 50 or a 100 years ago because of the technology?
PaulStar:Like, there's a lot of things that the that's new in the tech world, you know, and there's AI, you know. But I think for me, you know, like, I use I use a little little bit of that, you know, on on my music, but, but I use use my my own creativity, you know, that I've gained over the years.
Anne Keala Kelly:Right. It's just a tool for you.
PaulStar:Yeah.
Anne Keala Kelly:Who are your musical influences?
PaulStar:I'll start I'll start with, Guns Narnos' you know, Slash was always, you know, my main influence as a, guitarist. Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi, Eddie Van Halen.
Anne Keala Kelly:Classic rock from the eighties on. Right?
PaulStar:Yeah.
Anne Keala Kelly:Well, you know, that's interesting. You know, you're you're naming these people, especially someone like Eddie Van Halen. This is one of the things your songs begin with a certain kind of driving well, not I guess not all of them, but enough of them begin with a kind of guitar moment. It used to be that songs would be kinda epic. If you think about, like, for instance, Eddie Van Halen.
Anne Keala Kelly:And what was that song that was only, like, a minute and a half? Was it called Eruption? Is that the name of it? Like, it's just that amazing wild guitar. And it's like, does anybody do that anymore?
Anne Keala Kelly:Just, like, throw down?
PaulStar:Yeah. I don't I don't know. I just do my own thing. You know? I just, play what I hear.
Anne Keala Kelly:Where can people find your music?
PaulStar:They can find me on the, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube. You know, just just type in, Paul Starr. They can, easily find my music.
Anne Keala Kelly:Paul Starr, thank you so much for taking the time to visit us at First Voices Radio today, and I'm sure we'll have you back on in the future.
PaulStar:Alright. Thank you so much.
Anne Keala Kelly:We heard 2 songs from Paul Starr. The first one, low, was released as a single, and the second song, Rain, is from his new album, Bring It All Together. Now before we move into the second part of this week's show, I wanna play the song by Rebel Wise entitled Land Back. Some of the lyrics are in Olone, and because our next guest is Olone and still lives in her people's homeland, I thought we should have a listen. Plus, it's a great song.
PaulStar:Remember that food that we used to grow, in names in the language that we used to know. Indigenous stewards of the natural.
Speaker 5:Quality of health. Everybody benefits from going native seeds. Every ecosystem dives in diversity. Native voices rise up to come back. Give us back to the land that we heal
Narrator:When they get smart, they humble themselves and they realize the destruction that they've caused. Maybe unintentionally, the mining, the dams, the pipelines has a cumulative effect and that effect is devastating. And by returning the land to the people who were chosen by creator to steward those lands in our own way, we can reestablish the guidelines so we can reincorporate safety measures, so we can develop codes to protect these waters. It's not just about returning the land, it's much more than that. And then our future will be secured.
Anne Keala Kelly:Before I welcome Corinna to the show, I wanna say 2 things. Corrina Gould has been a lifelong advocate for protecting the sacred, repatriation, and acknowledgment of the sovereign rights of indigenous peoples. And as part of a coalition of activists, she has been one of the leaders in the fight to return at least some of what has been stolen from the Ohlone people, whose traditional territory for many 1000 of years is now known as the San Francisco Bay Area. But recently, they have met with success with regard to securing at least one area of a desecrated shell mount in Berkeley, and Carina is here today to tell us about that. Aloha, Corrina.
Anne Keala Kelly:Welcome to First Voices Radio.
Corrina Gould:I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Anne Keala Kelly:Wow. But so much has been happening in your part of Turtle Island and just spiritually, culturally, politically, economically. Start with telling us what's significant about these the shell mounts?
Corrina Gould:Well, thank you for asking that. I think up until about 30 years ago when we started doing work on shell mount protection, nobody knew what they were unless you were an archaeologist. An archaeologist in the Bay Area made kind of made it a niche in archaeology to destroy our sacred sites. These are burial sites of our ancestors, and I know that you understand, Kanaka understand what it means to have development happening in your territory and having, them destroy our burial sites of our ancestors that have been there for 1000 of years. Well, these are Shell Mounds.
Corrina Gould:Our people lived along the, along the coast of the bay where freshwater met saltwater. They were not just our burial sites, but village sites. And they are older than the pyramids of Egypt. They are 1000 of years old. They were the first places that our ancestors, buried in this particular way.
Corrina Gould:And there, some of them reach over 3 stories high when before they were destroyed, and the largest one was over 3 football fields in diameter.
Anne Keala Kelly:In terms of the destruction of these mounds, approximately when did that begin and for what was the I mean, we know it's about colonization. It's about settlement, but, specifically, what was the project, if you can tell us?
Corrina Gould:So there was a guy named Nelson in 1909. He worked for UC Berkeley, And he realized over 100 years ago that the shell mounds were going to be destroyed because of development in the Bay Area. And he created a map that actually, allowed us to find in my lifetime where these shell mounds were. There were over 4 and 25 shellmouths that ring the Bay Area over a 100 years ago that he was able to map. The one that we were working on most recently was the West Berkeley Shell Mount on 19 104th Street on 4th and University in Berkeley, California.
Corrina Gould:That is the oldest one, on the coast of on the coast of the bay that our ancestors lived at. And so the village was much larger than the 2.2 acres that we were able to free recently. It was blocked and blocked around, and there was multiple shell mounds at that site. You can imagine the shell mounds that was over 20 feet high and can imagine that on these fishing villages all along the bay, at night, there would be fires lit up, so we can imagine that there's no electricity. Yeah.
Corrina Gould:These were points of references as people could see across the village sites on the other side of the bay, that these were places that that we practice ceremony and, third, our ancestors. And they were fishing villages. You know? The interesting thing is is that today in Western society, we bury our ancestors sometimes miles away from where they were living in these cemeteries that are, you know, green and manicured. But ancestors were with our people,
Anne Keala Kelly:you know.
Corrina Gould:All over the world, indigenous people, buried their ancestors right where they were. They were a part of the continuing living legacy of people that have been there for 1000 of years.
Anne Keala Kelly:And we kept them nearby with us.
Corrina Gould:Yeah. They were there with us.
Anne Keala Kelly:Yeah. And part of it, I think, culturally I mean, I don't mean to cut you off, but, I mean, I'm just culturally, you know, looking now that we we're in the 21st century and we're 100 of years into a colonial erasure of first peoples. And looking back and watching even now because it's in real time, People like to think of our removal as, like, some past tense thing, and it's still ongoing. And one of the things in addition to obviously desecrating our burials is, the removal of us because we kept them near us or we knew their secret places where they were to protect them from the desecration or from anybody desecrating them. So but that's that's a good thing to remind the audience of.
Anne Keala Kelly:There's, like, this wasn't now when people die, they go to a designated cemetery somewhere and buy something and put their if they can even afford that. Right?
Corrina Gould:Right.
Anne Keala Kelly:And they enter their loved ones there. Whereas native peoples, we kept them nearby and we always knew where they were.
Corrina Gould:Yeah. Yeah. And I I I think that that's, that's really important to to begin to think about that that that, it was important to have our ancestors there. They were a part of our daily life, you know, and it was important to have their memory that was still there. And so, these shell mounds, I guess, the other part of your question was when did this all start to happen?
Corrina Gould:And I would say that we went through 3 waves of genocide here in California, the first starting with the mission system. And there was 21 missions that were Catholic missions that were set up along the coast of California from San Diego to a little bit past San Francisco. And those missions, when they came here, preaching Catholicism, took the sacred. That was the first thing they did. They took the sacred from the indigenous people.
Corrina Gould:And the second thing they did was they took the power away from women's leadership and began to, violate women and children in ways that have never been seen in our territories. And then, you know, this the raping and the, and the taking of the land and, you know, that's the colon you know, the process of colonization, right, and how it really, correlates with, the violence of women and women's bodies. And we still see that today. Like you were saying, this isn't something that was passed. We're looking at this in real time.
Corrina Gould:But then, you know, the Spanish, lost their hold on this land, and they were, Mexico won its independence and huge pieces of land were given away to soldiers that were in the Mexican and Spanish war. And, our ancestors were let free from these missions after 99 years, but they were free to go where because then their land had been given away to someone else and these ranches were created. And, so in the Bay Area, in California, this part of California, you'll hear names that are quite common, like Peralta, Vallejo, Bernal. These were all people that had been given huge pieces of land, and the disappearance of our people, really began to happen around that time when those ranchers were not writing about native people. And soon after that, Mexico and America had a war, Mexico lost that war, and, the state of California was created and created the first laws of extermination on California meter people, they were not creating laws of treaty anymore.
Corrina Gould:But it was because of the gold rush that they were trying to get rid of all the Indian and their responsibility to native people. And so they spent $1,400,000 hunting down native people, $5 a head and 25 cents a year. And what I always say is that, you know, not everybody coming to California could actually find gold, but they could find Indians and hunt them down and sell the children in town, as indentured slaves or, I mean, as slaves. You know? $300 for a little girl, $180 for a boy.
Corrina Gould:And so it became an economy of the, the of California, killing and selling native people.
Anne Keala Kelly:You know, one of the things that's so important about what you're saying is that specifically when it comes to California, people are, I mean, people are ignorant about all of Indian country, all of indigenous world, so that's there's that. But specifically when it comes to California and it's such a large region that we call California. And, people are it's it's almost unbearable, the level of denial and ignorance about this not that distant past history of what has been done to the first peoples of that place. Everything you just said, I would bet you 99.999999% of the people who either go to California or want to go to California don't have a clue about this horrific history of genocide just there, just in that place? How many different native tribes are in just California?
Anne Keala Kelly:There's a 107 different tribes that
Corrina Gould:are federally recognized and another 58 or so that are not federally recognized. So there's a 107
Anne Keala Kelly:in California fed federal tribes. Okay.
Corrina Gould:Mhmm.
Anne Keala Kelly:Now are those 58 recognized by the state and not the federal, or they're just recognized by other natives?
Corrina Gould:No. Federally recognized tribes are are
Anne Keala Kelly:I know a number of states have that. So those 58 tribes, so that's just other natives recognizing these are these nations, these tribes.
Corrina Gould:Yeah. And and there's a particular, commission called the Native American Heritage Commission. It's, located in the capital of the state, Sacramento, that keeps a list of people that can prove their lineage, to a particular region and then gives them, the legal capacity to speak on behalf of our burial site and landscape. And so even though it's not state recognition, there is a process to get on the this list so that you can consult with developers and cities and counties, and other local agencies about your sacred sites.
Anne Keala Kelly:So is that a good thing?
Corrina Gould:Like It is because it allowed us to to actually speak up on behalf of the West Berkeley Chalmers. Our tribe had fought against you know, the elders did not wanna get on this list for many years even though we were doing sacred site protection work, for many years. They didn't wanna get on this list because we were always against the development that was destroying our site. But when it came to the West Berkeley Shell Mound, they realized that the only way to enter to speak on behalf of the Shell Mail or to eventually intervene on this lawsuit against the developer, that we had to be on that list. And so, we got we worked with our our legal team and got on the list, so that we could legally have a say in our sacred site.
Anne Keala Kelly:This is interesting because this this return of this land that we're about to get into, this is in Berkeley. And I know you're aware of the issues with UC Berkeley with regard to them being very slow about repatriation. So what is your sense of, like, your people and the and the connection with that institution?
Corrina Gould:I think, you know, the that I think we are trying to move forward with it. You know, there's always this issue with, NAGPRA, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, and the federal, government, CalMac for us that was supposed to help California native people have their ancestor remain returned in a faster, we were hoping, way. As it turns out, there's a lot of confusion about do institutions like UC Berkeley follow NAGPRA, or do they follow Cal NAGPRA, and how do they intersect with each other? And so we're still going through that whole learning curve. So we always go it feels like we're going 1 step forward and 2 steps back all the time.
Corrina Gould:I've had lots of conversations with the Hearst Museum and with, the chancellor at UC Berkeley about the return of our ancestors. Our tribe has put in a claim for our ancestral remains, to be returned. And, and it's a lot because they made a niche in tearing down our shell mail. UC Berkeley's hold overnight about 9,000 of our ancestral remains alone. Just ours.
Corrina Gould:And they hold, you know, thousands of others and hundreds of thousands of our funerary items, along with them. So it's difficult. It's a difficult process. You know, it was about, 6 6 or 7 years ago that I had been, you know, for many years talking about UC Berkeley holding our ancestral remains, but I had never gone to see them. And I had an opportunity 1 year to go, we did an opening for Indigenous Peoples' Day, and a student was there and said, oh, I could actually take you if you wanna go.
Corrina Gould:So, you know, about a handful of us went up there to to pray with them, and it was, the most horrific thing that I had ever seen. There was in a basement building. There was huge huge, what are they called? Huge doors that were there. And the students were excited to see us and ask which ones we wanted to see.
Corrina Gould:And they opened multiple doors for us. And inside behind those doors were rats and rats of our ancestral names. And, yeah, it took me it took me a long time to recover from that, but it it also instilled in me the necessity of knowing, that this prayer that we've been doing for decades, and our, you know, and our elders before us that they had to be returned, that how horrific it is for an institution to believe that they can hold on to our ancestral remains and continue to do studies on them to act as if there's no connection to living descendants today, and then drag their heels on returning. And, and I'm hoping that there's movement. UC Berkeley just hired, tribal liaison, not for Hearst Museum and the return of, ancestors, but to really begin to work within all of the parts of the institution to talk about how do we, how do we how are we working together, to, consult in meaningful ways.
Corrina Gould:And, you know, that just happened a few months ago, and I'm I'm hoping that that's a step in the right direction.
Anne Keala Kelly:It absolutely is. And I, you know, thank you for sharing that story about your experience of, seeing what's happened with your ancestors' remains. And I do believe that there is a really important shift taking place right now, not just you know, what we're talking about with regard to remains and NAGPRA, but also let's get to it. And correct me if I'm wrong, this is the largest giving back of land to native people in California, which has happened with you folks.
Corrina Gould:Well, I can't say that. Okay.
Anne Keala Kelly:I because that's how it's being reported out there.
Corrina Gould:Yeah. I know. And I was like, and I was in Utah, when these things broke out and I wasn't really talking to, reporters. But this is the probably the largest urban sacred site that I know of that has been returned to indigenous hands. Yurok Tribe just got 125, acres returned up in Northern California
PaulStar:a few
Corrina Gould:days ago. You know? So I I can't say that.
Anne Keala Kelly:You know? Right. So it's really an urban it's an urban area thing. It's It is a large area. Okay.
Anne Keala Kelly:So so walk us through the past couple of weeks because this is an incredible story, which, first of all, it began how many decades
Corrina Gould:ago? 2 decades ago, at least a little over 2 decades ago, Stephanie Manning, had the site designated as a historic land in the city of Berkeley. And so it's a well known and well documented area. It was on Nelson map in 190 9. There have been multiple archaeological digs and and, ex, studies on the site.
Corrina Gould:And and so it's a well known site. It's a 2.2 acres of land that looks like a parking lot today. It sits across the street from Spangers Park, Fishgrotto, which was a landmark itself in the city of Berkeley. People from, you know, for, over a 100 years would go and eat there and bring their families there. But this land had been virtually untouched for all of that time.
Corrina Gould:A part of this huge fourth Street, our, shopping destination. People from all over the Bay Area go to fourth Street before the shopping. And the site had been virtually left untouched. The Spangers owned the land, and, at some point, they worked with the developer, Rugen l, and, they were able to be talked into giving half of that land away so that a development could go on top of. And that's when we got called in, and they started they were underway at the zoning commission, 6 years ago.
Corrina Gould:No. 8 years ago. Sorry. 8 years ago. And we started showing up at zoning commission meetings to to explain to them about why this was an important site, why there couldn't be development on there, why it was necessary for them to uphold the historic landmark site.
Corrina Gould:And so we were able to get, hundreds of people into the zoning board meeting, keeping them up, until 2 AM sometime. When the draft environmental impact report came out, we had over 1800 people that wrote letters on behalf of preserving and protecting the shell now. The developers had 3. Towards the end of that, time, the developers kinda just gave up and said, you know, they were losing in public, comments, and, it wasn't looking like it was going well. We also went to landmark commission meetings and did the same thing.
Corrina Gould:And we created our own vision for that piece of plan that they, recreated shell mount that would also be a cultural center inside and opening up Strawberry Creek where it had originally run across that land and to recreate a dance harbor for us to have ceremony and a place that would really talk about the culture of, and the history, but also the resiliency that we're still here. And so it's the dream that we, that people understood that this could be something every 4th grader in the Bay Area has to learn about our ancestors, but there's no place, no designated spot in the Bay Area that actually talks about Ohlone people. That's the generic term, Ohlone. And the witness would be wonderful for 4th graders and visitors from the other places to come and to find out about the first people who not only work here but are still here. We went through, the developer decided to take advantage of a new law called SB 35 in California.
Corrina Gould:It's a permitting law that allows developers to skip the California Environmental Quality Act and go straight into permitting so long as half of the housing is affordable. She switched up her entire, project plan that it's going to be big box shop screen and condominiums, and now she was changing it to affordable housing. An affordable housing in the Bay Area, and I'm sure Hawaii is probably close to it, but it's $80,000 a year for a family of 4. And I was like, wow. As a single mom raising 3 kids, I've never and still have not made $80,000 a year.
Corrina Gould:Right. And so, that affordable, I'm sorry, that's not affordable in my mind. But that's what they were, that's what is affordable in the state of California. So, the state the city of Berkeley said no to this zoning, to this permitting process twice, and then they were sued by the developer, and the tribe intervened on that lawsuit and we actually won in lower courts and the judge likened it to many ruined sites all over the world. And then it went into appeals court during COVID.
Corrina Gould:And while we were in court on Zoom, the owner, Dana Ellsworth, put up a 6 foot fence with barbed wire around the entire site, disallowing us for the first time in history having access to our sacred place. And, even though it was during COVID and even though, we had to we developed a way to have only a certain amount of people show up fully masked, standing 6 feet apart, with candles that lit up that shell mount. And we invited people to come and to put up tokens of love, to embrace that shell mount. And so there were prayers and signs and ribbons and flowers. And then the the developer spent money having them taken down, thrown in and then, we were blessed with the Saguarte Land Trust, who is a nonprofit that myself and Janella LaRose started in 2015, in order to bring back, our ancestors, really.
Corrina Gould:It had been about fighting for these ancestors to come home. But then we realized that we had no land. We Ohlone people, LeSean people own no land. If UC Berkeley was to give us 9,000 ancestors, where were we gonna put that? So the prayer had been to bring back land into indigenous hands so that we could do that.
Corrina Gould:We had become homeless in our own homes. So we decided to use the land trust as a tool to bring back land, to reengage people with land again, indigenous people, and then to bring back people in the Bay Area that live here and work here and play here to remind them of their responsibility and reciprocity to the land that is taking care of them, the water that's taking care of them and their families, the air, and how do we work together in collaboration to ensure that the next 7th generation have what they need. And then we were blessed a few years ago. Quietly, we kept it because we knew that we might possibly have to buy the cell mount back, but we were gifted, 20, $20,000,000. I it blows my mind that these ancestors that we have pray been praying to took us on this journey
PaulStar:Mhmm.
Corrina Gould:Of so many intersections of people that you couldn't even imagine would be involved. But that this foundation decided that they wanted to give to me and to me in our language means a gift, a way for us to figure out how to maybe buy this land back. When it came down to a global settlement on March 8th, we had to find that. So we put out on March 4th that we had, been gifted this money of $20,000,000. And by March 8th, I needed to raise another $5,000.
Corrina Gould:The city of Berkeley went into settlement, talked with the developer. How do we raise 5 $1,000,000 in a week? And we were able to the 11th hour foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation gave us 2.9, and the other 2.1 came from, Jacobs Pitzer, who was a brother of the woman who started the Cataly Foundation. And we were able to raise that money. The city of Berkeley put in $1,500,000 and we put in an extra, $500,000.
Corrina Gould:So we bought back our sacred land. We would not have been able to buy it back if the city of Berkeley had not been, willing to be partners with us in all of this court cases, and had not been a willing partner to do the settlement. But we had to we bought back our sacred land. And I think it was a journey of thousands of people that came before COVID and prayed there. People from all walks of life came over the years and prayed there with us.
Corrina Gould:So it's, it's not just been, you know, the funding, but it's been the energy of the Bay Area of Muslims and Christians and, Jewish people praying together as well. It's changed, how we look at this world in the Bay Area and bringing people together for one cause to understand the necessity of the sacred.
Anne Keala Kelly:-It's a model, I think, and, Corinna, we're running out of time. Where can people find information?
Corrina Gould:Please go to sigoratelantra.org. It's sogoreat e hyphenlantra and also shellmound.org, which will give you a whole history of this particular shell mount and the vision that we have for it going forward.
Anne Keala Kelly:Karina Gold, Mahalo Nui for being on First Voices Radio. We'll have you back on the show again soon, hopefully, to, get some updates on your progress.
Corrina Gould:Thank you so much.
Anne Keala Kelly:You've been listening to First Voices Radio. I am Ann Kayla Kelly sharing this time with you in the ethers Well, Tioka's and ghost horse is out there among them. Happy springtime. And in the words of John Lennon and Yoko Ona, war is over if you want it, which is another way of saying peace, like war, is a choice. It's been an honor to spend this sacred time with you.
Anne Keala Kelly:Until next time, be righteous.
