The Handbook of the Indians of California was published in 1925 and the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber said the Ohlone people are Extinct so far as all practical purposes are concerned.
The chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe said that the damage was done because the anthropologist wouldn't recant his declaration of extinction until the 1950s.
The Ohlone people lived on 4.3 million acres in the Bay Area. The Muwekma lost federal recognition in the 1920s. The Ohlone people were thought to have migrated there 1,500 to 1,000 years ago. The tribe has said that its presence in the region goes back further.
The Muwekma's connection to the Bay Area goes back at least 2,000 years, according to a study published in March. Researchers from several universities worked with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe to find biological continuity with the ancient people's genetic material from as far back as 2,000 years ago.
Monica Arellano is the vice chairwoman of the tribe and an author of the paper.
The paper included representatives of the tribe as co-authors and foregrounded community engagement, which was praised by an anthropologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved with the research.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission proposed a construction project at an archaeological site that was likely to have human burials. The commission reached out to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the most likely descendants of the ancient people.
The tribe brought on the Far Western Anthropological Research Group, a cultural resources consulting firm, to conduct excavations at the site. Upentak is located near the confluence of the Alameda Creek and the Arroyo de la Laguna. The village community fished in the creek and managed nearby forests and grassland with controlled burning, according to an archaeologist with Far Western.
The ancient site named Rummey Ta Ku was inhabited as early as 2,500 years ago.
The burials had to be moved because of the emotional task.
When burials were discovered, the excavators gathered under a big tree and talked through the process to make sure everyone was heard.
The Muwekma Ohlone tribal council wanted to know if the burials at the sites could help prove their ancient presence in the Bay Area, according to Alan Leventhal, the tribe's archaeologist.
Ripan Malhi, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Noah Rosenberg, a population geneticist at Stanford University, joined the project to lead the ancient DNA analysis. The tribe's council approved all the tests presented by the researchers. The council gave the researchers the go-ahead to study dental plaque for signs of inhalants such as tobacco, as well as to conduct tests to determine the genders of the buried children.
The researchers compared the genomes of the 12 people who lived at the two sites to those of other Indigenous communities in the Americas and around the world. The oldest and most recent burials shared some of the same genetic variations.
People at the two ancient sites are related to members of the Muwekma. The Muwekma has a higher proportion of this ancestry than other modern communities.
It was surprising to find this level of continuity given the many disruptions the Ohlone people experienced during Spanish occupation.
In keeping with the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty, the Muwekma will review requests for genomic data collected from the sites and tribal members, retaining power over how the data is used.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe have a new line of evidence that meshes with their oral history.
Mr. Leventhal said that the Muwekma lived on rancherias in the Bay Area until the early 1900s.
The tribe used to be called the Verona Band of Alameda County. After 1927, the tribe lost its formal federal recognition because of a decision made by a superintendent from Sacramento that the Muwekma and more than 100 other tribal bands did not need land.
The cost of living is pushing the Muwekma out of their homes.
Some of the artifacts from the excavation, as well as information about the history of the tribal language and a replica of an eagle, will soon be open to the public.
The ancient people will be reburied as close to their original graves as possible.
They were supposed to be moved to that final resting place.
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