The City of Berkeley has agreed to return Ohlone Shellmound Village to a Native Trust.
BERKELEY, Calif. – The City of Berkeley has agreed to return the Ohlone Shellmound village property to a native trust.
City council members on Tuesday announced an agreement to buy the land, which is now a car park, and hand it over to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.
The 2. 2-acre site, at the mouth of Strawberry Creek, is the first human settlement on the shores of San Francisco Bay. This dates back 5,700 years.
“It’s been a very long effort, but it’s honestly worth it, because what we’re doing today is righting the wrongs of the afterlife and giving the stolen land back to other people who once lived there,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said, according to Fox News.
Ohlone tribal leaders say this is one of the biggest victories of the urban “land return” movement in California.
“We are taking back our land that belongs to us and I tell each and every one of them that I see every day that this land is our land,” one woman said at a news conference about the deal. “We’re still here. We never left. My circle of family members has never left Alameda County since the beginning of time. And we’re still here. “
One developer agreed to $27 million for the property. It accepted it with an investment of $25. 5 million and the city of Berkeley contributed $1. 5 million.
This is true with plans to build a park with a mound of shells and a center to display artifacts such as pottery and jewelry that have been preserved at the University of California, Berkeley, Fox News said.
The site had been used as a parking lot for Spenger’s Fish Grotto, Berkeley’s oldest dining spot when it closed in 2018 after 128 years.
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