Tag: community

Homeland Return

Homeland Return Newsletter

Today we officially launch our “Homeland Return” campaign, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reestablish a landbase for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe. The Tribe has a time-limited opportunity to purchase 232 acres located on a historic Nisenan Village site called Yulića near Nevada City.

We urgently need you – our allies, our community – to help us take the next BIG step and purchase Yulića, our original and next “new” homeland. 

It is an extraordinary dream to reclaim one of our historic villages, revive our Tribal kinship and ceremony, provide much needed Elder housing, and renew our relationship with the land. This is the FIRST TIME the Nisenan will have a home in our own homelands since the illegal sale of the Rancheria in 1964. 

Our wellbeing is inextricably tied to the land. Like fish and water, our people cannot successfully live — and cannot recover from the impacts of historical and generational trauma, poverty, and near erasure of identity and culture — without land for us to call home. 

Our fundraising goal is $2.4 million and includes the purchase price, government mandated improvements, and an operating endowment. Phase 1 fundraising: $1.5 million must be raised by April 4, 2024.

This is the Tribe’s best opportunity to reestablish a homeland in *more than half a century*, and we need your help to make it happen

★ HOW TO HELP ★

  • Share this news far and wide and tune-in over the next 66 days to keep learning and sharing about the progress of our campaign. *We ask you to share our posts at least 5 times over the course of the campaign.*  
  • Donate!
    • Visit the GoFundMe 
    • Mail a check payable to CHIRP (memo line: “Homeland Return”) to CHIRP, P.O. Box 2624, Nevada City, CA 9595
    • Contact CHIRP: info@chirpca.org, 530-237-0707

Returning to this land is a dream we barely dare dream. It is a big ask and there is little time but we have hope because of the ever-growing understanding and allyship about Native Land Back and because of the healing promise of this vision for All of us.  

To learn more about CHIRP and the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan, please visit us:

Homeland Return Newsletter

Decolonizing Quakers Steering Committee

If you use Facebook or Instagram, please like, comment, and share there.

With hope and gratitude for your consideration, Alyssa Nelson & the Decolonizing Quakers Steering Committee

Previous articles about the LANDBACK to the Nisenan Tribe
Conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples
LANDBACK by Friends

LANDBACK by Friends

[What follows is more information related to my latest post, Conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples.]

Yulića –the land also currently known as Woolman at Sierra Friends Center— is in the north-central Sierra Nevada of California, epicenter of the California Gold Rush and California Genocide. 

It has most recently been home of the former John Woolman School, Woolman Semester, and Camp Woolman through the work of the College Park Friends Educational Association which purchased the land in 1962. The land is being sold to the Nisenan tribe through the Tribe’s non-profit organization, California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP). 

From the Tribe’s nonprofit, CHIRP, on January 29, 2024:

“Today we officially launch our “Homeland Return” campaign, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reestablish a landbase for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe. The Tribe has a time-limited opportunity to purchase 232 acres located on a historic Nisenan Village site called Yulića near Nevada City [in California]…. Returning to this land is a dream we barely dare dream. It is a big ask and there is little time but we have hope because of the ever growing understanding and allyship about Native Land Back and because of the healing promise of this vision for All of us.”

The Decolonizing Quakers Steering Committee enthusiastically encourages all Friends, our meetings and Churches, our Friends organizations, and friends of Friends to participate in this historic opportunity to return Yulića: 232 acres of Nisenan homeland in what is now called California that has been stewarded by Friends as “Woolman” since 1962.

More info at the GoFundMe page that was set up and run by CHIRP
https://www.gofundme.com/f/homeland-fund-initiative

The immediate goal is to raise $1.5 million by April 4th, and a total of $2.4 million. 
This total includes purchase price, government-mandated improvements, and an operating endowment.

Background: Members of the Decolonizing Quakers Steering Committee have been lending support to the process for the last 3 1/2  years and waiting for the moment to make good on our assertion that Quakers across the continent and beyond would be willing to step up and help raise the needed funds when the time came, this being one concrete act of reparations and rematriation. And that time is now!

Over the years, we heard again and again that people had profound experiences on the land, the land seemed to be sacred.  Woolman programs were experienced as healing and transformational and part of creating that healing was the land itself.  So, when it became apparent that we couldn’t keep going, the question became, “What is this moment asking of us? Is it possible to create healing from this moment of loss?”  

We remembered that CHIRP had approached us in 2020 before the Jones fire about buying the land.  (You may remember that in the summer of 2020 we had started having conversations about selling the land with Quakers and other potential “friendly buyers.”).  As we sat with this idea and learned more about CHIRP and the Nisenan story we became convinced that CHIRP stewardship of the land we call Woolman would continue educational programming but more importantly it was a step toward the deep transformational healing that needs to be done for all of humanity.  While Quakers may not have specifically harmed the Nisenan people, we are beneficiaries of a brutal history that nearly eliminated the First Peoples of this state.  Seeking to ethically transition this land back to CHIRP is a small step on a long path needed for being in right relationship with each other.  We believe that the land we call Woolman will continue to be sacred, healing and transformational under the stewardship of the descendants of the first people who lived and worked here.

 Woolman at Sierra Friends Center

The organizations involved received help from The Center for Ethical Land Transitions through the process to arrive at a purchase agreement. 

This land transfer is supported by the Indigenous Concerns Subcommittee of Pacific Yearly Meeting and many f/Friends, alums, staff, volunteers, and board members.

While many would have liked to have seen the land freely returned instead of sold back, the Quaker organization holding title to the land is not in an immediate financial state to be able to do so and also make good on its responsibilities. The next best thing is that Friends Everywhere now have a chance to support this land transfer directly through contributions both to the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe’s nonprofit (CHIRP) and to Woolman at Sierra Friends Center.

LandBack by Friends: an opportunity to participate in the historic transferring of Yulića/”Woolman” land back to the Nisenan Tribe

Conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples

Quaker Paula Palmer has been working on her ministry related to Friends and Indigenous Peoples for many years. You can find out about her work on the Friends Peace Teams site, Toward Right Relationship with Indigenous Peoples. https://friendspeaceteams.org/trr/

Indian Boarding Schools

You can read her foundational article published by Friends Journal in 2016 here: Quaker Indian Boarding Schools, Facing our History and Ourselves. This discusses another area of concern related to Quaker relationships with Indigenous peoples.

I’m grateful I had the opportunity to get to know Paula when she came to the Midwest to talk about and lead workshops related to the forced assimilation of native children.

Land Return

Yesterday I received this email from her.

Friends, I spoke about this at today’s QIBS meeting but want to pass the information on to all of you. The Sierra Friends Center property in the northern California mountains (home of the former Woolman School) is being sold to the Nisenan tribe, through their non-profit organization California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP). The sale is supported by the Indigenous Concerns subcommittee of Pacific Yearly Meeting and by many California Friends. However a letter by a Berkeley Friend criticizing this sale was published in Western Friend online. Please read the letter and the information on the Sierra Friends Center site and the announcement below. Please consider whether you would like to write a letter to Western Friend supporting the sale as a conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples.

Paula Palmer
https://www.woolman.org/

Letter of Dismay

Dear Friends,

I am a graduate of the first class of John Woolman School in Nevada City, CA, and have held the campus and its environment close to my heart and soul for sixty-odd years.

I have just sent the following letter of dismay to all of the nonprofits that I mention in it, plus to many parts of many yearly meetings, plus to Western Friend.

This letter was written in response to the sale of the property that was once John Woolman School – currently 188 acres with 9 buildings – which is being sold to a nonprofit representing the Nisenan people, who are indigenous to the land in question. The Quaker board that represents Woolman in this sale has not been up front with the larger Quaker community about the extent of the property’s debts, nor about the fair market value of the property, which I speculate could be $4 million or more. The board has suggested that the property might be sold to the Nisenan for $1.3 million.

Here is my letter of dismay, which I have distributed widely:

This is the link to that letter: https://westernfriend.org/news/letter-of-dismay/

I find this detailed letter to be helpful in itemizing the objections some Quakers have about returning land to Indigenous peoples. I say “some” Quakers because I don’t know how many Friends object to this idea of land return.

I realize using the phrase “land return” implies the land was taken from Indigenous people. This is complicated by the concept of “property” and land ownership as viewed by most non-native people. It doesn’t mean taking back private property. It is about returning public lands to the stewardship of native peoples.

It is also about broken treaties, treaties that acknowledged native people’s rights to land.

Broken Treaties With Native American Tribes: Timeline. From 1778 to 1871, the United States signed some 368 treaties with various Indigenous people across the North American continent by Sarah Pruitt, History.com, July 12, 2023

Please consider whether you would like to write a letter to Western Friend supporting the sale as a conscious act of land return to Indigenous peoples.

Paula Palmer