Coast Miwok Country — Still Here

Now, I want you to look out over this lagoon and this coast and get one thing straight in your head. This is Coast Miwok country. Not was. Is. The Coast Miwok are the native people of Marin and southern Sonoma, and they are still here, living folks with families and jobs and a tribal roll, citizens of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. That's a federally recognized tribe of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo. And here's a piece worth knowing. Their recognition got taken away back in the termination years, and then Congress restored it, right at the end of the year 2000. Terminated, then set right again. So when I say still here, I mean it plain.

For a long, long time, folks have lived along this stretch by the rhythm of the seasons, moving to where the food and the weather were good — and, the way native peoples all across California did, working the land with fire to keep it healthy. And the way the old accounts tell it, they crossed these bay waters in boats bundled up out of tule reed off the marsh. Records tell of encampments over near Horseshoe Cove, back by Fort Baker, and up around Big Lagoon toward Muir Beach. I won't stand here and point to a single overlook and hand you a village name, because that's not mine to give and the ground doesn't ask for it.

What I'll tell you is that the living culture keeps on. The tribe works at bringing its language back, at protecting ancestral places, at the old plant knowledge and the basketry and the songs. That's their story to tell, and they tell it themselves, on their own terms. All I'm doing tonight is asking you to see this country the way it truly is. Old, tended, and lived in. Still here.