We are born to the mountain of Tuyuštak. Our waterway is the Lisjan waterway, and we have been here since the beginning of time. Tuyuštak is in the center of our tribal territory, a place of creation for thousands of years, prior to colonization.
Our Mountain is so sacred that we believe that only the most powerful medicine people were allowed on the very top. Since colonization, our beautiful Tuyuštak has been renamed, Mount Diablo. For thousands of years our mountain went from being this most sacred place, to a place of the devil. Today, thousands of people from all walks of life find themselves at the very top of our most sacred place.
Our ancestors lived in reciprocity with the lands and waters for thousands and thousands of years, creating Shellmounds and fishing villages along the bay. Our ancestors lived in small villages, each village was its own tribal entity, with leaders and medicine people, artists, singers, dancers, weavers, house builders, fishers, and navigators. Our ancestors were voyagers on the Bay and in our waterways, using tule canoes. We lived in houses that were made of tule, and we had round houses and arbors in which we had ceremonies. We traded with people from neighboring Tribes and from far away. We had salt, fish and shellfish, baskets and skins. Trading with those that had obsidian and other materials that were needed or wanted. Our lifeways were dictated by the seasons and ceremony.
At each of these village sites along the Bay, Our ancestors created Shellmounds, places of cemeteries for ancestors, and like other people around the world we buried our ancestors in our villages, not far away, but right where we lived every day. Over thousands of years, Shellmounds grew to be large monuments of our ancestors, a place where we would light fires and could see the village sites across the Bay and could send messages and use them as points of reference while on the water. Our Ancestors had ceremonies for those that passed away, for the change of the seasons and marking important events. Women were the leaders of our round houses and ceremonies, while both men and women were head people and the spokespersons for the tribe. We had great healers that knew plant medicines, and we had commerce using shell beads. We created baskets that were so tightly woven that they could hold water and could cook inside of them, baskets to hold our babies, our berries, our acorns and for gifts. Living like this for thousands of years in a place of abundance where there was no concept with hunger or homelessness.
When Europeans came to our shores, they brought with them Nightmares that still haunt us today. These nightmares came with the Spanish missions and Junipero Serra. Junipero Serra created the first nine of 21 missions in the state of California. And two of these nine missions, our ancestors were enslaved at. Our ancestors were enslaved at Mission Dolores in San Francisco and Mission San Jose in Fremont CA. Our ancestors built those first missions and adobe structures. Once they were baptized they became the property of the Spanish church. For 99 years they lived in these places that starved them and brought diseases and rape, murder, beatings and depression. Many of our ancestors did not survive. Taking away our languages, our sacred places, our traditional ways of life and enforcing upon us a way of living that our ancestors never imagined.
