s01e02 The Matter of Shellmounds: Preserving Sacred Sites

Challenging Colonialism

This episode examines the San Francisco Bay Area mounded monuments known today as the Shellmounds. These sacred sites have long histories stretching back thousands of years, but are under threat by ongoing development projects. This episode explores the history and significance of these monuments, as well as the Indigenous-led fight to protect them.

Challenging Colonialism in California is produced by Martin Rizzo-Martinez, Historian, & Daniel Stonebloom, a Public School Administrator. It is not our intention to further colonize the narrative, or to misrepresent stories that are not our own. It is our intention to create an educational resource where everyone can hear the perspectives of Indigenous peoples in their own words. Please leave your feedback, suggestions, reviews, ideas for future episodes, and more at the episode page. And please share and promote the podcast in your networks.

Our next episode will focus on the negative environmental and cultural impact of dams, and the Indigenous led movement to remove them.

Interviewees for s01e02:

Corrina Gould, Chair of Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone

Johnella LaRose (Shoshone Bannock and Carrizo Tribes)

Dr. Tsim Schneider (Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria)

Dr. Abel Gomez

Stephanie Manning

Perry Matlock

Mark Hylkema

Toby McLeod

Credits:

Audio engineering and editing by Daniel Stonebloom

All interviews conducted and recorded by Martin Rizzo-Martinez

Ambient sounds recorded by Ariel Stonebloom

Music written and recorded by Hilson Parker and G. Gonzales

Follow us on Twitter: @ChalColonialPod

This podcast produced with support from the California State Parks Foundation: https://www.calparks.org/

For further reading and to get involved, see the following:

Shellmound: Ohlone Heritage Site & Sacred Grounds organization website:

https://shellmound.org/

Indian People Organizing for Change (IPOC) “Shellmound Walk” website:

http://ipocshellmoundwalk.homestead.com/

Sogorea Te Land Trust: Sogorea Te' Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people:

https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/

Sacred Land Films & Blog:

https://sacredland.org/

“Buried” - Animated short on shellmounds:

https://www.injunuity.org/#!/show/1

Tsim Schneider’s book, Archaeology of Refuge and Recourse: Coast Miwok Resilience and Indigenous Hinterlands in Colonial California:

https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-archaeology-of-refuge-and-recourse

Tsim Schneider’s dissertation on shell mounds, Placing Refuge: Shell Mounds and the Archaeology of Colonial Encounters in the San Francisco Bay Area, California

https://escholarship.org/content/qt605189z7/qt605189z7noSplash52b17d7207bfc76d1e4929c6151195a1.pdf