|
By: Allen Murphy When I was growing up in Oakland, Berkeley, and Vallejo, I never really thought about what was beneath me. The ground was just the ground; sidewalks, dirt lots, places we hung out. Nobody ever talked about whose land it was or what came before the cities. It wasn’t until later, when I learned about Corrina Gould and the Ohlone people, that I started realizing how much history was right there the whole time, hidden under everything I thought I already knew. Gould is a Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone woman from Huichin, which most people today call Oakland. She leads the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and helped create the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust to bring pieces of that land back into Indigenous care. What made me want to highlight this incredible woman the most is her fight to protect the West Berkeley Shellmound; a sacred Ohlone site that was once full of life and history but got paved over and treated like it didn’t matter.
I have a personal connection to this because my life began on these lands. Born in Berkeley and growing up six miles away from the 2011 sit-in at Glen Cove (Sogorea Te’), a sacred village site in Vallejo, and yet I had no idea the depth of what was being held there. Gould was part of that occupation, which lasted 109 days. That makes her work feel close to me; it’s tied to the same neighborhoods and memories I grew up with; the same land I always just called home. Her story is about ancestral knowledge and cultural continuity: how the Ohlone languages (Chochenyo, Karkin), the shellmounds, the marshes, the songs; they didn’t vanish, they were suppressed. Gould’s activism revives those, claiming them back not just symbolically but materially: land return, cultural practice, community rebuilding. That means her advocacy is deeply tied to land, water, and climate justice. The shellmounds were placed at estuaries, creeks, marshlands; they held ancestral remains, they held ecological wisdom of tides and seasons. She safeguards that knowledge and fights for rights and sovereignty; these are Indigenous rights in action, restoring governance of land, not simply being recognized by colonial state systems. Academically, her work inspires me to question what “justice” really is in environmental science. Growing up in the Bay, I’ve seen how people treat climate change like it’s something far away. Corrina’s story reminds me it’s right here — in the land, the water, and the history we walk on. But Gould frames it locally: the Bay Area, the shellmound beneath the parking lot, the people still insisting the land still holds life and rights. It forces me to rethink frameworks of stewardship: not only how humans manage nature, but how human and non-human relationships, ancestral knowledge, place-based cultural continuity, and Indigenous governance must shape our approach. Her focus on rematriation, on women-led land trust, on returning land under Indigenous stewardship—it shows energy, water, climate, land issues are inherently justice issues. Writing this reflection brought together everything I care about; where I’m from, what I’m studying, and what it means to actually protect the places we call home. Corrina Gould’s work opened my eyes to what true environmental leadership looks like. She fights for land that most people don’t even realize is sacred, like the West Berkeley Shellmound, where she’s spent years pushing back against development and educating others about its history. What I respect about her is how she leads with both spirit and strategy. She once said that rematriation isn’t just about giving land back; it’s about “restoring our relationship with it.” That idea made an impression on me. She lives her values every day, whether she’s holding ceremony, teaching youth about the Chochenyo language, or negotiating land trust agreements in the city. She never separates who she is from what she does. Her work shows that climate justice, land justice, and cultural survival all connect and how you can’t fight for one without fighting for the other. It evoked thought about my own role in that balance; how I move through the world, how I treat the land I live on, and how I can use what I learn to support people like her who are already leading the way. I pay more attention now to what’s around me, what came before me and the responsibilities this moment holds. References
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
RSS Feed
© 2026 Earth Daughters. All Rights Reserved.
Earth Daughters is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Earth Daughters is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.