To help you pronounce the word Ohlone, think of the word abalone.
Abalone is the only word in our language that comes from the Ohlone group of languages.
Ohlone is the name for a great diversity of people from around The Bay whose many languages had some similarities.
Americans and the Ohlone Shell Mounds
First and foremost, the people who were here before the Europeans are not gone. They're still living here in California. today, but they are fighting the most basic fight--to be acknowledged. "We exist!"
The many varied and independent groups of people of this area are named collectively as The Ohlone.
For thousands of years they piled up shells into mounds all around the bay. These were the only sizable structures that were left once the people had been scattered., Huge, slowly growing piles of shells, cradles for their dead.
Shellmound is a street in Emeryville now. There, the Bay Street Mall sits on top of the site that was once the largest Native American shell mound. This massive pile measured forty to sixty feet tall and four to six hundred feet in diameter. It was so big that early Americans built an amusement park around it and put a dance hall right on the top of it. Shellmound Park! Literally dancing on a burial mound.
Now people shop there. In 1999, while developing the Mall, borings of the site revealed hundreds of bodies painted in red ocher, some wearing abalone shell jewelry, accompanied by tools. The developers of the mall were forced to include a memorial on the site.* All of the major shell mounds mostly got removed by early settlers to be used as fertilizer or building materials, and eventually to make way for such things as industrial plants, and roads. Now we scrabble to remember what we've erased.
Americans and the Ohlone People
The people who built the shell mounds? After being rounded up and washed of their culture by the Spanish Mission belt, they had to deal with the Americans, who used guns and lawyers with ruthless accuracy. In 1850, in the very first session of the California State Legislature, "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" was passed.** It outlined how native children, or even native adults if declared vagrant, should be taken as slaves. Throughout the 1850's, the federal and state governments paid California citizens several million dollars for expenses incurred in raids against native villages.
Having old cultures and their shell mounds to learn from and grow with would have been a much cooler choice than the desecration that occurred. We cannot change what has happened.
This book is about us making excellent choices for our future and for our home, Earth.
Revolutionary choices that change our reality. Choices born of diversity.
All can have the prosperity to make art and song inspired by our differences and similarities.
Choices so that children celebrate under clean skies filled with birds.
Choices so that they can live among groves of redwoods, tens of thousands of years old.
Oakland filled with huge ancient Oak trees.
Oakland the Beautiful.
* Oakland Tribune, Jan 4, 2004, Cecily Burt
** Chapter 133, Cal. Stats., April 22, 1850
Abalone is the only word in our language that comes from the Ohlone group of languages.
Ohlone is the name for a great diversity of people from around The Bay whose many languages had some similarities.
Americans and the Ohlone Shell Mounds
First and foremost, the people who were here before the Europeans are not gone. They're still living here in California. today, but they are fighting the most basic fight--to be acknowledged. "We exist!"
The many varied and independent groups of people of this area are named collectively as The Ohlone.
For thousands of years they piled up shells into mounds all around the bay. These were the only sizable structures that were left once the people had been scattered., Huge, slowly growing piles of shells, cradles for their dead.
Shellmound is a street in Emeryville now. There, the Bay Street Mall sits on top of the site that was once the largest Native American shell mound. This massive pile measured forty to sixty feet tall and four to six hundred feet in diameter. It was so big that early Americans built an amusement park around it and put a dance hall right on the top of it. Shellmound Park! Literally dancing on a burial mound.
Now people shop there. In 1999, while developing the Mall, borings of the site revealed hundreds of bodies painted in red ocher, some wearing abalone shell jewelry, accompanied by tools. The developers of the mall were forced to include a memorial on the site.* All of the major shell mounds mostly got removed by early settlers to be used as fertilizer or building materials, and eventually to make way for such things as industrial plants, and roads. Now we scrabble to remember what we've erased.
Americans and the Ohlone People
The people who built the shell mounds? After being rounded up and washed of their culture by the Spanish Mission belt, they had to deal with the Americans, who used guns and lawyers with ruthless accuracy. In 1850, in the very first session of the California State Legislature, "An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians" was passed.** It outlined how native children, or even native adults if declared vagrant, should be taken as slaves. Throughout the 1850's, the federal and state governments paid California citizens several million dollars for expenses incurred in raids against native villages.
Having old cultures and their shell mounds to learn from and grow with would have been a much cooler choice than the desecration that occurred. We cannot change what has happened.
This book is about us making excellent choices for our future and for our home, Earth.
Revolutionary choices that change our reality. Choices born of diversity.
All can have the prosperity to make art and song inspired by our differences and similarities.
Choices so that children celebrate under clean skies filled with birds.
Choices so that they can live among groves of redwoods, tens of thousands of years old.
Oakland filled with huge ancient Oak trees.
Oakland the Beautiful.
* Oakland Tribune, Jan 4, 2004, Cecily Burt
** Chapter 133, Cal. Stats., April 22, 1850