Nearly a year has passed since the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin completed the first Native land return in the county’s history. On a recent rainy morning, when they gathered to consecrate their 26-acre Nicasio property, the skies cleared.
To council member Jason Deschler, the parting of the clouds was proof that the group’s return to its ancestral homeland was meant to be.
“As soon as we got a fire going, it started clearing up, and it’s just been beautiful out there ever since,” he said.
The tribal council bought the majestic parcel last summer after conducting a fundraising drive that met its $1.3 million target just hours before the purchase deadline.
At the time, council members knew the property at 1800 Old Rancheria Road was adjacent to one of the last known Coast Miwok settlements, ’Etcha Tamal. In the ensuing 10 months, as they researched the property’s history, they discovered that it might partially overlap with the historic settlement that their ancestors inhabited for centuries.
“It really appears that the footprint of the village would have extended somewhat onto their land,” said Dewey Livingston, a West Marin historian who has been working with the tribe to map the property and recently walked its perimeter with Joe Sanchez, a council elder.
The Coast Miwok—who called themselves the Huukuiko—lived in Nicasio for thousands of years, until the arrival of outsiders from Spain, Mexico and the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Their culture revolved around family and land, with elaborate ceremonies and rituals of birth, initiation, marriage and death. They had strong traditions of storytelling, singing, and crafts, especially basket weaving.
Today, the council views the Nicasio property as an ideal spot to reconnect with their traditional culture. On the rainy morning of May 4, the four tribal council members gathered to bless the land with about 100 descendants of various Miwok bands from Marin to Tuolumne. They knew the weather forecast looked iffy but were determined to gather rain or shine.
“Here we were, returning home, and nature was just kind of working with us,” said Mr. Deschler, a Coast Miwok who lives in Tuolumne. “It gave us a little shower so it wasn’t too hot, and everybody’s cars got washed off after driving up the dusty road. It worked out perfectly.”
Council member Dean Hoaglin, who lives in Santa Rosa, led a prayer, and the assembled danced and sang and had a feast, including a traditional acorn mash.
“We were re-embracing our traditional ways,” Mr. Hoaglin told the Light this week. “Our ceremony acknowledged the practices that give us so much. They connect us to the land, give us our identity, give us purpose and meaning.”
Members of the council trace their roots to two Coast Miwok tribal elders who lived in Marin and Sonoma in the late 19th century: Tom Smith and Maria Copa. Mr. Smith lived near Bodega Bay, and Ms. Copa was born in Nicasio. They were the subjects of a survey conducted by a University of California, Berkeley researcher whose extensive interviews with them are a wide-ranging compendium of Miwok wisdom and traditions. “That book has basically become our Bible,” Mr. Sanchez said.
The council members are not members of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the federally recognized tribe whose rolls include the Miwok and Pomo people. They came together four years ago after growing frustrated by the failure of Graton to rebuild the roundhouse at Kule Loklo, a replica Coast Miwok village in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Mr. Hoaglin led dances and ceremonies there for years, but the roof of the roundhouse collapsed in 2019—two weeks after his last dance—and the park and Graton have let the site sit empty ever since.
The council plans to eventually build a sweat lodge and roundhouse on the Nicasio property and resume the sort of educational programs once conducted at Kule Loklo, sharing best practices of land restoration and soil resiliency with greater Marin County.
They recently commissioned a report from a botanist who catalogued vegetation on the property, and they plan to begin undertaking efforts to remove invasive species this month.
With the support of Mr. Livingston and Louis Knecht, the archivist at Dominican University, the council has been conducting archaeological and genealogical research, hoping to link up with others whose roots trace back to ’Etcha Tamal. Making those connections can be difficult because many people have hidden their Indigenous identity to avoid discrimination, Mr. Knecht said.
“Doing this research helps fill in those gaps,” he said. “As families try to reconnect with their Indigenous roots, having this Coast Miwok presence in Nicasio is so important. It is the ultimate reminder to themselves and to everybody else who might think the Coast Miwok had vanished. The Coast Miwok are resilient, and they are pushing back against the false narrative that Indigenous people in Marin have been wiped out.”
The May 4 ceremony was an important step in reclaiming their Coast Miwok heritage, Mr. Hoaglin said.
“It was beautiful,” he said. “It was powerful. We’re continuing the legacy of the original caretakers of our land and the spiritual practices that have helped sustain our people throughout time.”