Ever since the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe lost federal recognition in 1964, it has been unable to directly own any part of its ancestral lands.
That’s the fate of many unrecognized tribes since they don’t have the legal rights that recognized tribes do — including the ability to directly own land. For the NCR Tribe, whose ancestral lands lie in the Sierra Nevada foothills, that’s led to a scattered membership that lacks a place to congregate.
As efforts to gain federal recognition have stalled, the Tribe has sought other ways to manage their ancestral lands. These efforts included creating the California Heritage Indigenous Research Project, or CHIRP, in 2014. The nonprofit allows tribal members to run programs and fundraise. It’s also central to the Tribe’s latest effort to purchase a part of its ancestral homeland.
Late last year, tribal leadership began discussions with Woolman, a nonprofit with a history of providing Quaker education, to purchase its 232-acre parcel in the Sierra foothills. It’s located at the site of a historic Nisenan village site called Yulića. The Tribe, through CHIRP, has spent the last couple months fundraising in hopes of amassing the $1.5 million needed to cover the purchase and other associated fees.
The Tribe has until May 10, the date that escrow on the parcel of land closes, to make that goal. And with donations to their GoFundMe just recently surpassing a million dollars, members of the Tribe are feeling hopeful.
CapRadio spoke with Shelly Covert, a spokesperson for the NCR Tribe who also runs CHIRP. She explained what this purchase would mean for tribal members and why — if their fundraising efforts are successful — this land would be a gamechanger for the Tribe’s future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Interview highlights
Has the Tribe attempted to make a purchase like this before?
This will be our second land venture, I suppose you could say. We have 32 acres on Deer Creek that we got through a grant like five or six years ago. Unfortunately, it's the site of the old Champion-Providence Mine, so it's contaminated. The Deer Creek land that we have is really made for the Deer Creek Tribute Trail to go through. That was part of the mandated funding for that land.
This land that we're talking about today is completely different. It really is to hold the tribe itself.
When did you find out this land was available for purchase?
We actually had the conversation with Woolman, and they're a Quaker organization. They had the first Quaker high school this side of the Mississippi River.
I first got involved with them just coming in as a tribal person, doing some environmental programs with their schools, doing some hands-on learning out on the land out there. They were going to sell [the land] before, about three or four years ago. We started the conversation then, because a large component of the Quaker community is talking about right relations with Indigenous people. Quaker folks ran Indian boarding schools like some of the other churches and faiths did, and they're trying to reconcile that today with themselves and how they can be back in relationship with Indigenous people. Land rematriation is one of the pieces that they're very interested in.
And then they had a fire out there, and then they decided not to sell after the fire. So at that time, I said, if you ever do sell, would you please give the Tribe first option to buy? It was received well.
So fast forward to late last winter, we started getting communications that they were considering selling the land and they reached out to us first, which I thought was incredibly respectful and admirable.
They are on a very short timeline. They have debt that they're incurring right now, and so they said that they would love to give us the land if they could, but they have debt that they have to pay. So they have a purchase price, which is what we're trying to raise right now. It was a three-month window to raise $1.5 million. And I'm just the ever optimist.
So you went for it. It’s been about two months of fundraising at this point and — I just checked — you’ve surpassed $1 million. How does that feel?
Oh, that's crazy. You know, I don't look too often because I get really excited.
We've been getting checks from different Quaker friends from Honolulu, New York, New Hampshire, San Diego. It's really spreading in the Quaker community and people are donating to show their support. It just feels like we're really being seen.
We’re all in at this point, still trying to raise this last push to get the rest of that $1.5 million, but also feeling a little bit of confidence where we can start looking at phase two, and that's the longer-term visioning and planning. The elders were talking the other day — because we've had all these architects show up talking about landscape planning — and they were wondering if they could work with the architects to design their own little elder studios. That's where it gets exciting.
Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribal Chairman Richard Johnson pictured on the Yulića land.Courtesy of the California Heritage Indigenous Research Project
What have conversations about the Tribe one day owning land looked like in the past?
Just for myself, doing the work that I've done within the tribal community over the last 20 years — I’ve polled the Tribe. I ask them continuously about places. Like, what do you know about that place? What are the stories? It’s just my curiosity since I was little.
And so, talking to the elders before my grandmother died [and] my mom's oldest sister, Bertie died, we had a lot of conversations over all the years. What they have said is we need to be together.
It’s just recently that tribal people could get permits and permissions to go in and gather on national forest land or state park land. Before that time, they would still go gather, but they were criminals in that moment.
And there's never been a place where they can do cultural gatherings and not be on show for people around. Our Deer Creek land is like that. It's public land. There's literally a trail going through it. People can't just get away and be by themselves without people going by. That can be very uncomfortable in ceremonial moments.
The entirety of my grandma's generation is gone now. And now it's [my] mom's generation — I was talking to one of my cousins the other day and they said, there's like five of her generation left and I started getting nervous and I'm like, Oh my God, hurry up, hurry up.
They are our cultural resource. We use that word today to talk about grinding stones or to talk about plants, but I see my mama now and she's 79. She used to be this warrior, her whole life dedicated to this kind of work. And she's old now, and [she’s] saying: We just need to be together — those are the moments when you can see the culture the most clearly.
I just want to get these things happening before we lose that other layer of elders because I think they should be able to die with just some kind of progress, you know?
Now, you’re close to this being a reality. What do you envision for your future, if CHIRP is able to make the purchase?
I see this as being our first step to feel just a tiny bit of safety and just a moment of breathing room. It's like my mom not learning [the] Nisenan language because grandpa went to boarding school and he was terrified to teach his girls anything that was going to put them in danger.
And one day [I was with] my daughter. We were taking language lessons. My mom was saying, Rena, that's my daughter, how do you say squirrel again? And Rena’s going, “ċambaw.” And everybody yells in my house, “ċambaw!” And mom goes, “come bat?” “No, ċambaw, grandma!” And my daughter's teaching my mom a Nisenan word.
How many moments like that, the little kids teaching whoever something — cause they know maybe more than the generation above them. That moment is what I'm looking for.
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