Ohlone Land: Berkeley’s First People

Welcome to the Homeland of the Huchiun, a Chochenyo Ohlone Speaking Tribe.

Ohlone are Native American people located in the Northern California Coast. A collective of around 50 separate tribes with related languages, Ohlone tribes inhabited areas from the coast of San Francisco through Monterey Bay to lower Salinas Valley. The Ohlone family of tribes have been living in the Bay Area for 10,000 years.

xučyun (Huichin) is the home territory of Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, extending from what we know today as the Berkeley hills to the San Francisco Bay, from West Oakland to El Cerrito. The territory is now composed of five Bay Area cities - all of Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, El Cerrito, and most of Oakland.

Mural: Cece Carpio & Shi Shi Madriz

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In March 1772, the arrival of a group of Spaniards at a Huchiun village on the southeast shore of today’s San Pablo Bay ushered in a time of upheaval and suffering for the people under Spanish, Mexican, and early American governance of California.

Despite this devastating history, Ohlones, within whose ancestral homelands Berkeley is located, remain present and engaged with their larger communities, as do other American Indians from throughout North America who currently reside in the greater Bay Area.

In Berkeley, their engagement has led to the establishment of several innovative place-based reminders of Ohlone presence. These include the 2019 installation of welcome signs at Berkeley’s city limits that acknowledge it as Ohlone Territory, completed with the guidance of the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and Indigenous women-led Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (STLT). In 2020, a street mural was created adjacent to City Hall that recognizes Berkeley as “Ohlone Territory."

Berkeley became the first city to recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 1992, which became a U.S. holiday in 2021. Annually, on the Saturday closest to October 12, a Powwow and Indian Market take place at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park. A decommissioned fountain at the park is currently being converted into a Turtle Island Monument to honor all Indigenous people.

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Mural: John Wehrle and Betsy Davids

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In collaboration with the Lisjan and STLT, in 2022 the Berkeley Repertory Theatre commissioned a visual land acknowledgement mural on the side of the Medak Center at 2009 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley.

Mural: Cece Carpio
Photo: Anya Hurtwits, courtesy Berkeley Repertory Theatre

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In 2024, another visual land acknowledgement mural was completed, also in collaboration with the Lisjan and STLT, at Bonar Street and University Avenue on the side of the Berkeley Unified School District building.

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Ohlone Park’s 1976 naming marked the city of Berkeley’s first formal acknowledgement of Ohlone presence. In 2024, a mural that was originally created to commemorate Ohlone culture and presence was repainted in consultation with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. (Find it at the corner of Milvia Street and Hearst Avenue at Ohlone Park.)

Mural: Jean LaMarr

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Also in 2024, after a period of advocacy and fundraising by the Lisjan, STLT, and a group of supporters, the last remaining undeveloped portion of the West Berkeley Shellmound, a more than 6,000-year-old sacred Ohlone burial ground, was freed from ever being developed. Located along Fourth Street at Hearst Avenue, near the Berkeley Transit Plaza, this Shellmound site is a place of prayer and ceremony. This includes an annual three-mile Shellmound to Shellmound Prayer Walk that begins at the West Berkeley Shellmound on the day after Thanksgiving.

TOP: Painting of three Ohlone people crossing the waters in San Francisco Bay by Louis Choris.

To learn more about Ohlone history and culture, visit ebparks.org for an Ohlone curriculum and a “Native Peoples of the East Bay Past to Present" brochure.