Shuumi Land Tax
The Shuumi Land Tax is a voluntary annual contribution that settler peoples living on indigenous land offer to support the work of the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation.
If you live in the counties of San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, or parts of Santa Cruz, Solano, Napa, or San Joaquin counties, then you’re on the aboriginal territory of the Muwekma Ohlone people.
Offering a ‘Shuumi’ (meaning gift in our Chochenyo language) represents a modest gesture toward recognizing this past, fostering reconciliation, and bolstering the Tribe’s efforts to forge a thriving tomorrow.
No financial contribution can reverse inflicted harms, restore vanished souls, or alleviate endured hardships.
Nevertheless, it marks progress within an extended journey of restoration—an accessible means, in this moment, advancing the autonomy and independence of nearby Native people.
Why offer Shuumi?
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Despite enduring centuries of savage assaults and deliberate oppression, the Ohlone have outlasted successive campaigns of extermination unleashed by Spanish troops, Mexican landowners, and the influx of American gold rush settlers. Amid these ordeals, we safeguarded our dialects, narratives, and melodies; nurtured the next generation; and preserved our cultural practices.
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Lacking federal acknowledgment, our Tribe faces ongoing exclusion from political institutions that have long preferred our erasure. What was once our homeland now ranks among the priciest property hotspots across the continent we call Turtle Island. Countless remains of our forebears still sit archived in storage crates beneath university museums at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State.
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This region carries deep layers of heritage, shaped by a resilient population that has called it home for millennia. By settling here, you're unwittingly profiting from the erasure inflicted on the Ohlone through mass extermination and the seizure of our domain. Knowledge aside, emotions notwithstanding—this reality remains unavoidable.
The frameworks of local governance, financial structures, commercial ventures, and exploitation of the environment within our world are inextricably linked to the imperial seizure of this space and the forceful uprooting of its original stewards.