Young California Native and Indigenous people must reconnect with their tribal homes

Hil•ala.

This Miwok word translates in English to “strong,” which is, in the simplest terms, the best way I can describe our California Native peoples.

As a proud member of Wilton Rancheria near Elk Grove, my youth was spent around influential tribal leaders from my own tribe, across California and the nation. At 13, I began working with the Center for Native American Youth, a think tank. As a teenager, I had the honor of working closely with lawmakers, policy advocates, and strong Native leaders to help pass laws to ban racist team mascots in California and nationwide.

From there, I joined the National Congress of American Indians and eventually found a seat on the White House youth advisory board for President Barack Obama’s initiative, Generation 7. The highest honor came when I was named as a member on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Indian Education.

I have been fortunate beyond my wildest dreams. Now a senior at Stanford University, the challenge is for me to turn this good fortune into better lives for my people.

The priority for me and all young Native people should be to reconnect directly with our tribal communities. So much has been done over hundreds of years to “assimilate” us into white culture and society that we have lost physical connection to our true homes, our native ground. Whether we live in the city or the suburbs, we must find ways to advance the cause of our people on our sovereign tribal land. We worked too hard to win this land back to ignore it now.

At Wilton Rancheria, we have dedicated resources to bettering the lives of our members through health, housing and education programs, and through family counseling and cultural initiatives. We are teaching young people to speak our native Miwok language. We are helping to overcome persistent issues of drug and alcohol abuse. This work cannot be done from afar.

As future leaders, our path forward today is to ground ourselves in our people and culture, and to allow these to shape whatever comes next. For me, I want to tell indigenous stories through an indigenous lens as a screenwriter. As a society we should have progressed beyond the need for antiquated and offensive representation of Native people. It is time that we control our own narrative and let people see our communities for what they truly are: beautiful, resilient and timeless.

Whether of Miwok, Konkow or Yuki decent, our stories are deeply rooted in the California soil. During the period of missionization, hundreds of my ancestors who lived along the Consumnes River were forcibly removed from their homes, split from their families, and taken to Mission San Jose and Mission Santa Clara where they were forced into a life of labor and made to leave their world behind.

While some slaved away during the Gold Rush for John Sutter in the Sacramento Valley, other family members to the north were dealing with similar hardship and abuse. In 1863, my Konkow and Yuki ancestors were marched along the Nome Cult Trail to the Round Valley in Covelo. Of the 461 Maidu people forced to walk 120 miles, only 277 survived.

It is estimated that, by the end of the 19th century, the number of Indigenous people in California fell from more than 300,000 to less than 25,000.

Wilton Rancheria, after surviving hundreds of years of trauma, was abolished in the 1950s as a means of forced assimilation into American society. It wasn’t until 2009 that we were re-recognized by the United States at the federal level. In just 11 years, our tribe has grown into a fully operating government, providing opportunities and resources to help our citizens thrive.

The representation of Indigenous people is still far from accurate in the media, society and education. Students are still taught a whitewashed version of the Gold Rush and missionization. California fourth-graders make scale models of missions where my ancestors were forced into slavery and killed. Children take field trips to Sutter’s Fort, where they spend the night and act like Forty Niners but are never taught about the thousands of Miwok, Nisenan and Maidu people John Sutter slaughtered.

Symbolism is important, but so is action. Our people must continue to raise our voices — whether it’s in politics, the arts, medicine, law — so that we are respected as the sovereign people we are. This is the only way to replace painful memories of colonization and murder with real progress and recognition of the Native leaders who have kept our traditions, ceremonies, and culture alive. This is our Hil•ala — our strength.

This story was originally published October 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.