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The University of California (UC) is circulating its first-ever systemwide framework governing tribal access, co-stewardship, and land-use agreements across 80,000 acres of UC-managed land. The framework was developed by UC Tribal Lands Workgroup, composed entirely of UC staff with no Tribal government representatives, and Tribal advisory bodies were only invited to review the document after it was drafted. Faculty senate divisions and systemwide committees have until May 19 to submit feedback, with the Academic Council taking up the report in its May 27 meeting. UC-affiliated Native advisory councils are also being consulted. But the tribes whose ancestral homelands include UC Berkeley –– among them, the Muwekma Ohlone, who’ve been fighting for federal recognition since 1927 –– do not appear to have been asked.

Though the framework applies systemwide, the document’s only visual example is a map of UC Berkeley land holdings overlaid with Indigenous territorial boundaries identifying Ohlone and Karkin territory. Berkeley is only named twice in the document’s text, yet its land anchors the document’s central illustration. The Tribes whose ancestral territory that map documents were not among those consulted in its development.

Some California Native leaders say the omission of the Tribes is not an oversight. It reflects a structural problem baked into the framework itself. Native Nations are sovereign nations, and as the U.S. established itself, these Nations agreed in Indian treaties to nation-to-nation relations, not nation-to-state or nation-to-private corporation relations on matters of Tribal governance. “Tribes are not decision makers in governance structures,” said Morningstar Gali, organizer with the International Indian Treaty Council and member of the Ajumawi band of the Pit River Tribe.

Katherine Florey, a federal Indian law scholar at UC Davis, said the elision stood out. “Unrecognized Tribes are not mentioned; they are sort of implicitly excluded,” she said. “California has a lot of Tribes that are not federally recognized, and that’s because of our own history and ways in which Tribes were mistreated by California politicians. I do think that’s a really striking omission.”

While UC says the framework is not limited to federally or state-recognized tribes, the draft proposal does not appear to lay out a clearly defined consultation mechanism for Tribes that are neither federally nor state-recognized. The framework identifies, as an opportunity for the framework’s implementation, a map of UC Berkeley land –– an area exclusively comprising unrecognized Tribes. The framework also retains UC approval authority over activities, including prescribed and cultural burns for wildfire management, which the university says require heightened safety review and legal compliance.

Native Survival Depends on Protecting Both Tribal and US Citizenship Rights

The framework also governs reburial agreements: the process by which ancestral remains and cultural items held by UC are returned to Tribal communities. According to Monica Arellano, former vice chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, between 9,000 and 12,000 Muwekma Ohlone ancestors are currently held across UC and Bay Area institutions. “I know with a large number of ancestors that are still there that need to go home,” she said. Under the framework as written, the Tribe most directly affiliated with those remains has no clearly defined pathway to participate in decisions about their return.

The framework also governs reburial agreements: the process by which ancestral remains and cultural items held by UC are returned to Tribal communities.

The framework also governs reburial agreements: the process by which ancestral remains and cultural items held by UC are returned to Tribal communities.

UC Berkeley reported 11,900 Tribal remains to the federal government, but has only made 60 percent of those available for return through the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA. Rosemary Cambra, former Muwekma Ohlone Tribal chairwoman, said of NAGPRA returns: “There has been a very quiet underground silence of trafficking of human bodies.”

Asked whether land return is within the scope of the co-stewardship relationship, a UC spokesperson declined to answer, instead restating that the report was developed “primarily to guide UC leaders and staff in engaging in respectful, collaborative, and intentional Tribal consultation.”

No Path to Create One

Three groups descended from the Verona Band of Ohlone –– the East Bay Tribal community federally recognized between 1906 and 1927 –– claim the East Bay as their ancestral territory today: The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the Ohlone Indian Tribe, and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. Arellano says she was not contacted to consult on the UC framework. Andy Galvan of the Ohlone Indian Tribe and Corrina Gould of Sagora Te Land Trust, who represent the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, did not respond to requests for comment on any framework-related contact. East Bay Tribes have yet to be mentioned as having been engaged or meaningfully consulted from the agreement’s birth........

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