- This is my people's history.

- This is my people's history.

This is where we belong.

This is our home.

- You know, none of us created the system, but we're having to repair it.

- When I go to certain ceremonies and stuff, it's still me.

I'm still the same person.

I don't become a different person when I attend those things.

- If we talk about America 250, I think one of the things that we have to acknowledge is that it was not successful in exterminating Indian people.

- [Narrator] Long before California was a state or the United States a nation, indigenous peoples lived here.

As America approaches 250 years, their story is not past tense.

It is living memory, living work, and a living future.

(uplifting orchestral music) - [Announcer 1] This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

- Well it's a complicated question.

You know, growing up, I was adopted.

And I'm so old that back in 1952 when I was born, they would always put the race of the parents on.

When you were born or died, they did the race.

And for father, it, my mother was listed as Caucasian.

And you know, for, she was a 16-year-old girl.

And for father, it just said unknown and non-white.

Because again, you know.

And then the narrative said that he was likely Mexican.

And in those days, the notion was that if you, American Indians were those people who lived on the plains with pinto horses and chased buffaloes.

There were no California Indians.

They, you know, they died with the missions.

And so, and many of us have Latin last names, as my father, my Indian father, did.

So, many of us were listed as Mexican.

Sometimes we were listed as Black.

Sometimes, depending on the color of our skin, we might get listed as white.

But seldom, unless you're in an enrolled tribe with a rancheria, and we weren't, my folks weren't, you got lost in the shuffle.

We were basically unknown and non-whites.

We were just all poor and the kids from the wrong side of the tracks.

A couple of the older Indian people always took me aside.

When you're adopted and don't know where you belong, you either shut everything out or open everything up to try to figure out where you live, where you can fit in.

So I would listen to the stories.

(light uplifting music) More than anything else, what drew me to do all that I've done for my people, my dad's people, is my understanding before I even knew I was Indian.

Of the trauma, of poverty, and all of that kind of thing due to colonization.

And so it, you know, I remember I went to Mabel McKay and I was so proud.

I said, "Look, my dad's Indian."

And Mabel, who was full blood, the last speaking her language, looked at the picture and all she said is, "Oh gee, he's cute."

She wasn't impressed at all.

And she said to me, "Whatever's happened to you," she said, "You're always going to be your experience."

You know, growing up and seeing poverty firsthand, seeing the deprivation, seeing the consequences of poverty and deprivation due to historical trauma, I think that gave me a sensitivity.

I think maybe that's why I wanted to go into teaching and writing before I even knew that I had Indian blood.

- Learning tradition or learning culture is not something for me that I haven't always just known.

When your family speaks their language or, you know, you grow up in your traditional places, you're around your traditional food, you do your traditional practices.

But the one thing that was, you know, ongoing is my grandmother spoke the language.

My aunties spoke their language.

They ate traditional foods.

You know, my family comes from a generation of amazing basket weavers.

- I think fourth grade.

A lot of people frequently have a project.

It's called The Mission Project.

A lot of people, they have to create 3D models or write papers about the mission systems that happened in California.

In the beginning of the year, it's my first school year being in Sonoma County.

And my mom had a meeting with my teacher.

I didn't even know that.

I found out about this years later.

But she had had a conversation with my teacher and told her, "Mia's not going to participate in this project."

She explained to me that, you know, that's our family history.

And in the way that it's taught in school, it was taught to basically celebrate that, celebrate the assimilation.

But that was what led to the genocide of our people.

And it was not something to be celebrated.

And she didn't want me to be miseducated, and she didn't want me to partake in miseducating other people.

- The first piece of legislation that they enacted in the state of California in 1850 was the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which legalized Indian slavery, and it was predicated on what General Vallejo, who was defeated by the Americans.

It was him who went and told the first governor how- what to do with the Indians, how to enslave us.

It was a bit more because they also then added, amended what Vallejo was doing by saying that with the consent of a parent, you could take any of the kids you want.

- Right.

- So simply they would kill the parent and take the kids.

- Right.

- Also, paid vigilante groups continued into the 60s even though there was the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that established the rancherias and reservations.

There was still federal monies coming in to kill us.

- Yeah, I mean, I think that, to me, is always an interesting argument when people try to say that it wasn't systematic or that it wasn't like a structured annihilation.

When you look at the historical records, it's really evident that, you know, leadership, you know, were in charge of that.

- Even still in my time in elementary school, our social studies books still using the word savages.

I think a lot of the part of true history and me knowing true history came more from my mom and my grandpa than school, but.

Okay, Grandpa.

How do you feel, like, through this time that you've been able to pass things down?

- One thing that it's hard to understand about people that grew up my age is there was a lot of infighting amongst families.

We were really super lucky because our mom was really strong and a lot of people were afraid of her.

- [Narrator] For each generation, history arrived differently through erasure, through family, through what grade school refused to say.

But it arrived.

- When the white man came and they took the leaders away, they took away all the people that helped control that negative life in our tribes.

Because in our way of life, you never shunned anybody.

If somebody was negative or a bad person, you would put them in the center of the tribe.

And that way you, everybody keeps an eye on them.

- Yeah.

Right now, there's classes where we talk about Native influences in sport or mascots that depict Native Americans.

It's the responsibility to choose to speak up in those classes, but also a responsibility to be able to find my own identity.

In the position that I'm in, it's a privilege.

It's an honor to be a descendant of my ancestors who worked so hard for me to even be able to go to university today.

- 'Cause I work as a tribal monitor, right?

I look for artifacts and historical items and anything of cultural, you know, 'cause I've been going through a lot of heartache over there.

- Yeah.

- Because the rich people, they just want you to move the bodies out.

- I think that people don't understand that it really does equate to a cultural violation to have to take somebody's ancestors from their resting spot.

And people want to justify having to do that because they have a house or, you know, they have a need, and it overrides the ancestral connection to place.

You know, we do get frustrated and angry about that.

The law doesn't always protect the things that we think are sacred or the things that, you know, should be protected.

Those, I call them modern day human rights violations.

- You know, here, our relative has been in that ground, in Mother Earth, wrapped in Mother Earth's arms for thousands of years.

And they want me to move it like it's nothing.

- They don't understand.

- They don't understand it at all.

They don't understand why I get so angry.

-Yeah.

(light uplifting music) - I grew up in the Ukiah Valley on a small rancheria.

My mom's people are Nomlaki, they're Yuki.

I was enrolled in her tribe, which is Round Valley Indian Tribes, which is in Covelo, California, and grew up on a rancheria that, you know, my ancestors purchased.

Several families came together and purchased the land, and we've tended the land.

It's, you know, on a traditional site, but it's also near other traditional places, other traditional village sites.

But it really is a, it became a shared community because at the time that's, you know, that's what contact brought to, you know, our village system, is, you know, you really have to come together.

That was us coming together.

(light uplifting music) - We're together as a tribe.

- Exactly.

- We were, for 40 years since we were illegally terminated, we were spread out.

When we came together at your great Aunt Rita Elgin's house after that first day, we brought our family albums together.

And there were pictures of each other's ancestors in those albums.

- Yeah.

- And I said, "We're a family, we're a tribe."

But we'd, which is what the federal government wanted us just to become unknown and non-white, spread out and disconnected.

- Yeah, right.

Yeah.

- And the biggest thing was, I think, for the people to have a tribe to be connected once again- - Yeah.

- And stay connected via the tribe.

- Yeah, I think it's something that has become very apparent in my generation, that feeling of wanting to belong and that feeling, that earning, like, urge to find belonging.

And then, you know, some people, they don't have that.

And some, like, tribes who they aren't fairly recognized, they struggle to find that feeling of belonging where they go and to bring their tribes together.

You know, people are so mixed now.

And like, I'm half Mexican.

And you have these struggles with identity throughout time.

And a lot of people do still have, like, the struggles of not feeling Mexican enough, not feeling Native enough and stuff, but still knowing that there's still this home that I do belong in and that I can return to.

That if I'm struggling so much that I can have these conversations I need.

- [Narrator] For generations, Native people in California were told to disappear, from the land, from the record, from the American story itself.

But they endured.

And for young people like Mia, identity is not only inheritance.

It's an act of remembrance and of defiance.

- I don't look like the stereotypical Native American that a lot of non-Natives think of.

And that's okay.

Like, that's my identity.

It's something that I choose to identify with.

It's a community too.

There's a whole community everywhere.

And especially in LA County where I live and where I go to school, there's so many Native Americans.

And it's a family, and it's, I think I also associate a lot with the survival story.

I do a speech every year about the California genocide at my university and about the gold rush.

And I know some people, they don't want to hear that.

They, so, you know, there's government officials who have doubled down and said that Native Americans don't belong here at all.

You can't be teaching these things without the honest history of everything.

So the California genocide is when all of those people came to California.

There was bounties on our heads.

They were killing everybody, women, children.

You know, there was a lot of unspeakable things that are crazy to think about.

But that all happened and it was very real.

And it wasn't that long ago.

- And our ancestors went through that, despite all.

For the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, there's 1,552 or something enrolled citizens right now.

All of us trace our ancestry back to 1 of 14 survivors, all of whom are women.

All of whom are wives or concubines of the Spanish Mexican or early Mexicans or Americans.

And imagine that and that history and that decimation, and yet we're sitting here talking.

And I can remember- - Yeah.

- Your great-grandmother's mother, your great-great-grandmother on her front porch.

And I can remember the- hearing the language and just the way you read certain things going on around here with the crickets and all that.

I read it certain ways based on my experience.

But you know, I listen to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead, and I don't really want to go around in a loincloth, and I don't think anybody else wants me to either.

So, you know, we're complicated, nuanced human beings with a unique and wonderful history that informs a lot the way we see the world.

- You know, the best news ever, I guess, is that we survived- - With a voice.

- Yeah, yeah.

- To talk about that survival.

- Right, today.

- And that survival.

- Today.

- Today.

Yeah.

- Feeling, you know, the success of and the honor, really, of being part of those 14 survivors, a descendant of those.

- Yeah, I mean, I think the vision, the long-term goal, is always to get, you know, not just you, but like, yeah, your brother and more, you know, community members, tribal citizens involved, and, you know, trying to create different pathways to learning.

- Language would be the first step.

Like, understanding language is a pretty big step forward in understanding culture and reconnecting with everything.

- It kind of makes me sad because I see your pride in the young people, how they're so, you know, so happy that you have all of this.

But I just wish, you know, it's kind of a trick that, gosh, now that we have a little more freedom and ability to have agency about who we are.

- Right.

- Those who had no agency, who could have taught us everything, are gone.

- Yeah.

That's one of the reasons why my grandpa went on this long journey of traveling to different Native communities where they did still have their traditions.

They shared things with him so that he could share it with, like, the rest of us in the hopes that then the young people will have dreams that will remind us of the ways that we used to do things in our tradition.

- And that's sort of where, I guess, sometimes where I feel like these are things that are living.

It's just whether or not you're paying attention.

(waves crashing) - I think every time I come here, it feels emotional, 'cause this is where my people were.

This is where they came to.

I like being here because it's one of the few places where I feel like I'm standing in the same place that they used to.

So much has changed, and we can't experience this in the same way.

But even though we're not here traditionally, and we don't have the same practices, it has the same feeling of happiness.

When I'm on the sand, you feel the strong connection.

You feel the relatives around you and the spirits who are connected to you through generations of history.

- You come and look at how old these trees are.

And see the scars?

- Right.

- [Greg] Those are from fires.

- Yeah.

- We always believed if you did something, hurt somebody, an animal or something, it would immediately come back on you.

The next day, your mother or child would drop dead.

Somebody would have a heart attack.

Now the ethnographers said they were cultures predicated on fear and black magic.

No, we were cultures predicated on profound respect.

We were constantly reminded we weren't the center of the universe.

And every time we acted as if we were, we'd pay for it.

- We have an incantation here.

- What's that?

- This is an incantation right here.

- [Greg] Do you think there's a body there?

- No.

- I definitely feel connected to the place where I grew up.

It does give you a sense of being grounded and rooted.

- I think there was a village or a couple villages nearby with certainly easy walking distance.

- [Buffy] Oh yeah, yeah.

That's why I'm like- - It's busy here.

- [Buffy] We know where the bigger places are.

- Yeah.

And I'm pretty close to them, right?

- Yes.

You're very close - You know, the landscape for us was a Bible.

It was a sacred text.

And so an outcropping of rocks or a stream or something always had a story associated with it.

And it's how we knew who we were.

Of course with colonization and the transformation of the landscape, it was like burning our Bible, our sacred texts.

We have a few pages left.

But part of my goal as writing, and speaking is to re-story the landscape.

Restoring the landscape now has to include Filipinos, Mexicans, all kinds of folks.

Thoroughbred horses and dairy cows, that's all part of the history now of this landscape.

So what do we learn from it?

We're all here now.

That's an original.

You should see that.

Chinese folks use that.

That's what would be about 170 years old.

Some of my cousins say, you know, all this.

They talk down white people and white people this, and, I said, "Okay, so what?

You're going to cut me in half?"

'Cause they say, "White people should go back to Europe."

And you know, there's so many grasses and animals and things here that aren't indigenous, that weren't here, but they're here now.

And all of us have to reconcile how we're going to, how is it, I believe it is possible to recreate a world that can sustain and support all of us.

- We need to struggle for that so that children can pray for that unity of Mother Earth, not just one race or one color.

- Yeah, for everybody.

- For everybody.

Because how can we say we're for human beings- - Yeah, yeah.

- If we exclude a human being?

Everybody comes from a tribe.

- Yeah.

- Everybody.

So we need to work that angle of bringing the tribes together, you know?

- Like reconnecting everybody- - To their own homeland.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause we made it through a genocide, and their people did two or three, you know, when the Romans came.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So.

That's been helping me see things in a better way.

- Yeah.

- It's a bit complicated to say "yes," or "no, there's no meaning in, you know, the Declaration of Independence," because there is.

Only because, you know, our life and liberty was attached to it as Indian people, whether you liked it or not.

They accepted that.

So to not embrace it or at least acknowledge it is almost like being unappreciative of the work that your ancestors did to protect this land.

- You know, today with everything going on, it's hard to say that you're proud to be a US citizen or that you're proud of this government and where it is.

It can be a really big challenge.

- It is a big deal.

And as an American, I want to respect that.

But those 250 years must be nuanced with the actual history and how this nation was created by theft and bloodshed.

But you know, I think we all need to be, love us and cherish the ancestors who got us here.

And the biggest thing is to keep the memory alive.

Even if it wasn't the experience, but the memory.

'Cause that can inform us going forward- - Yeah.

- And inform your children, your children.

It will keep us going forward.

- And I think, you know, some of the things that in our work that we try to do is get, you know, the next generation really prepared to take on that responsibility.

- Anybody can choose to live this red road, which is really not all Native people do, but it's that path of being a good relative, being in a good way when you're giving back to people.

Some people it's making sacrifices in the form of not drinking, not doing drugs.

That's something anybody can do.

It's just supported by then the traditional lives that we have brought through generations from our own families.

- [Narrator] California's story did not begin with statehood, and its future depends on how fully its first stories are honored.

- So this is the edge of creation.

And then mainly that area over there is where they would gather the seaweed.

So much part of our life.

It's so beautiful.

And we're all victims of circumstance.

- Yeah.

(waves crashing) (uplifting music) - With all the people it takes to make us, do you think about it?

Millions of people that lived way before us.

- We're part of such little bits- - Yeah.

- Of so much more.

- We're a sliver and tiny.

- Yeah.

(light uplifting music) (uplifting orchestral music) It was awesome.

It was really nice to get to have such an in-depth conversation with them.

I've never been able to talk to either of them in that way.

And it's not often that I get to talk to people in their positions.

So I really enjoyed it.

It was awesome.

It felt really productive, and I learned a lot from them.

- [Announcer 2] You can visit our website for more information and additional resources.

(soft dramatic music) It is all at Generations250.org.

- [Announcer 1] This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

(orchestral music) (upbeat music)