The Land Beneath the Bay
Ten thousand years of Ohlone presence, a recognition the United States never lawfully ended, and the campaign to come home — every claim carries its evidence tier, with the Muwekma Atlas as the deep record.
Years on this land
10,000+
documented archaeology around the Bay
Enrolled members
~600
documented descendants of the Verona Band
Acres held today
0
no land base in their ancestral territory
Re-petition window
2030
the federal door open until February 2030
Ten thousand years, in twelve moments
From the first peoples of the Bay to the re-petition window open until 2030 — the through-line the 2022 Stanford genomics study made unbreakable.
First peoples of the Bay
Human presence around San Francisco Bay reaches back at least ten thousand years; the Presidio's own archaeology records 5,000–10,000 years of use across 450+ documented sites.
The world begins at Tuyshtak
Ohlone and Bay Miwok creation narratives place the world's origin on the twin peaks of Mount Diablo — Tuyshtak — where the First People were made after the flood waters receded.
Shellmounds rise around the Bay
The oldest strata of the West Berkeley Shellmound are roughly five thousand years old — older than the pyramids — first of 425+ mounds mapped around the Bay: burial grounds, ceremonial platforms, village monuments.
The genomic through-line
People buried at Bay Area sites nearly two thousand years ago were shown by a 2022 Stanford/PNAS study to be genetically continuous with living Muwekma Ohlone members.
The Yelamu villages
Petlenuc near the future Presidio, with Sitlintac and Chutchui by Mission Creek, anchored a Ramaytush Ohlone tribelet tied by trade and marriage to some fifty Ohlone polities around the Bay.
Colonization reaches the Bay
Portolá's expedition sights the Bay in 1769; the Presidio and Mission Dolores follow in 1776, opening the forty-year unraveling of Bay Area tribal society that scholars call the time of little choice.
The Verona Band, federally recognized
The ancestors of today's Muwekma are officially designated the Verona Band of Alameda County — a recognition Congress never terminated.
Dropped, not dissolved
A federal agent's report simply stops dealing with the Verona Band. No act of Congress ended the relationship; the tribe continued while the paperwork went silent.
Petition #111
Muwekma petitions for restored recognition in 1995 and receives a positive preliminary finding in 1996 — then a denial in 2002, even as the government concedes the tribe descends from the never-terminated Verona Band.
Muwekma v. Salazar
The D.C. Circuit affirms the denial, holding that previously recognized tribes can 'fade away' — the ruling the tribe has contested ever since.
The Stanford genomics study
Published in PNAS: living Muwekma members are genetically continuous with ancestors buried around the Bay for two millennia — the strongest new evidence in the recognition record.
The re-petition window
A January 2025 federal rule allows denied petitioners to seek re-petition until February 2030. The tribe also petitions for a Presidio land base, invoking the Secretary's authority to proclaim new reservations.
The recognition fight, live
Petition #111 was denied in 2002 even as the government conceded the tribe's descent from the never-terminated Verona Band. These are the current signals.
Quarterly lobbying filings watched
The public record shows whether the tribe's federal advocacy continued into the anniversary quarter — disclosures are the campaign's heartbeat.
The lobbying target is Interior
Disclosed filings name the Interior Department and 'tribal recognition' — recognition first, land second.
The Presidio's 250th anniversary
A quarter-millennium since the Presidio's founding on Yelamu land — the campaign's most visible date on the calendar.
The Presidio is Yelamu land
Under the former Army post: village sites, shell middens, a freshwater spring with millennia of habitation. The Presidio's own archaeology documents it.
Petlenuc
documentedYelamu village near the northern Presidio
El Polín Spring
documentedFreshwater spring with thousands of years of Ohlone habitation
Tennessee Hollow
documentedWatershed with documented shell midden deposits
Officers' Club dig
documentedOhlone artifacts beneath San Francisco's oldest building
Lobos Creek
documentedWestern creek drainage with Yelamu village evidence
Sitlintac & Chutchui
documentedPrincipal Yelamu villages near Mission Creek
A language coming home
Chochenyo — the Muwekma Ohlone language — is being reawakened from wax cylinders, field notebooks, and community teaching. The Muwekma Atlas language workspace indexes nearly two thousand dictionary entries and over a hundred archival recordings across eight documented Ohlone varieties, with the tribal language community as the authority over spelling, pronunciation, and use.
documentedThe history is the reason. The programs are the response.
A voluntary land tax turns acknowledgment into standing support — direct to the tribe, no platform fee.