UC Berkeley’s Colonial History & Sowing the Seeds of Change

Wild tomato varietal being grown in the Indigenous Community Learning Garden in September of 2021

Over the past few years, land acknowledgements have become commonplace at UC Berkeley. You may see them in email signatures, lecture slides, and introductions to webinars. Land acknowledgments are typically a paragraph long and earnestly recognize that UC Berkeley sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin), the unceded and ancestral land of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people. However, all too often once the slide is clicked through or the next guest speaker takes the stage, the land acknowledgment, or any further information regarding Indigenous land and sovereignty, is not brought up again. 

Land acknowledgements are one way that UC Berkeley, and the UC system at large, is attempting to reconcile with its insidious role in colonialism and history of anti-Indigenous practices. Although land acknowledgements are certainly educational and deeply important in classroom settings, — they represent recognition of a group that has been profoundly dispossessed and excluded from academia — they can seem performative. These frequent statements of acknowledgement are at odds with current actions being committed by the university that continue to harm Indigenous groups and tribal leaders in the East Bay. 

Locked in metal cabinets in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology is one of the largest sets of Indigenous remains in the country. UC Berkeley possesses over 8,000 sets of human remains and over 100,000 funerary artifacts and tools that once belonged to Indigenous tribes. Discovered by archeologists and construction workers who were building dams, roads, and buildings in the 1980s, these remains were given to the University of California and what has followed is a conflict entangled in red tape between the university and tribal leaders that has ultimately kept the majority of the remains and artifacts on our campus to this day. Because it can be almost impossible, according to UC officials, to formally link artifacts to the tribe in which they belong, only 14% of remains at UC Berkeley have been culturally affiliated with a tribe. Correctly linking remains and artifacts to the tribes that request them becomes increasingly difficult when many tribes lack federal recognition, despite the fact artifacts and remains are owed to the lineal descendents by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.  

Despite the grim relationship between university officials and Indigenous people, seeds of change are being planted on the land our campus occupies that more profoundly represent Indigenous recognition and rematriation than university land acknowledgments. In summer of 2021, the Indigenous Community Learning Garden was established on the Oxford Tract and boasts an array of native plant varieties, such as Cherokee purple tomatoes and California brittlebush. The biodiversity is rich and beautiful; milkweed, a traditional plant used in basketmaking, offers a habitat for monarch butterflies. The “three sisters,” a traditional way of growing beans, squash, and corn harmoniously, represent an example of intercropping that dates back thousands of years. 

The Indigenous Community Learning Garden not only offers a space for Indigenous students to grow traditional crops and herbs, but a place to connect with one another and the land every day. Because of the sinister practices of cultural genocide, forced assimilation, and land colonization and dispossession, many Indigenous people have had their connection to their ancestors and traditional way of life weakened. The Indigenous Community Learning Garden creates a space to derive from and share knowledge on traditional food and gardening practices. It also works to reestablish foods integral to Indigenous diets and nutrition that became largely inaccessible due to land privatization and restrictions on Indigenous stewardship imposed by colonists and settlers. The severance from traditional diets and foods has resulted in high rates of diabetes and heart disease in Indigenous people, a public health issue at the crux of food justice and colonialism. 

Elizabeth Hoover, an associate professor in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management department on campus, is a faculty co-sponsor of the Indigenous Community Learning Garden and a powerful voice on campus regarding Native American food systems. In a recent webinar put on by Rausser College of Natural Resources titled “Native American Food and Seed Sovereignty,” Hoover defined Indigenous food sovereignty as “recognizing social, cultural, and economic relationships that underlie community food-sharing.” She described ongoing movements across the nation to create or restore Indigenous gardens and conserve traditional plant varieties. One local example is The Cultural Conservancy, based in Novato, that fosters Indigenous land stewardship, connections between youth and elders, language preservation, and protecting native foodways.  

On the Oxford Tract and across the unceded land we walk each day, Indigenous movements to preserve and reclaim traditional foods and practices are flourishing. Indigenous food sovereignty recognizes that the right to grow and live off of culturally appropriate foods and social autonomy are inextricably linked. Food represents not just connections to traditional diets and nutrition, but an erudite and fervent bond between ancestors and descendents that will prosper for generations to come.