Indigenous Populations in the Bay Area 

It is critical to recognize the Bay Area’s Indigenous populations, past and present. Despite the atrocities of colonization and genocide, Native communities persist today and are active in efforts to preserve and revive the culture. According to the U.S. Census, the Indigenous population in the Bay Area is 18,500 strong and is projected to grow over the next few decades.

The Ohlone are the predominant Indigenous group of the Bay Area, including the Chochenyo and the Karkin in East Bay, the Ramaytush in San Francisco, the Yokuts in South Bay and Central Valley, and the Muwekma tribe throughout the region. Other Indigenous groups include the Graton Rancheria community (Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo), Kashaya, Patwin, and Mishewal Wappo in the North Bay, and the Bay Miwok in the East Bay. The arrival of Spanish explorers and missionaries in the late 1700s was the first major threat to Ohlone existence and culture as a result of forced cultural and religious assimilation, exposure to European diseases, and harsh and unsanitary living conditions. When California became part of the Union in 1850, after the Mexican-American War, the state government sanctioned the mass genocide of Indigenous populations by local militia in the wake of the Gold Rush. By 1852, there were less than 1,000 Ohlone remaining, a 90 percent loss in their pre-colonial era population. By the 1880s, the Bay Area Ohlone population was dramatically reduced.
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The latter half of the 20th century saw many different tribes from across the country coming to the Bay Area as one of the several relocation sites where the U.S. government promised, and failed to delivery on, training, housing, and jobs as part of the Indian Relocation Act. The Bay Area has since become one of the largest populations of Intertribal Indians in the country with people coming from communities in the Southwest, Great Plains, and Eastern Woodlands areas. Now, California is home to close to 200 tribes with only 109 of them recognized by the U.S. federal government. The displacement of Native Americans from their reservations into the region led to the creation of the oldest urban Indian community center, Intertribal Friendship House which provided a community for Indigenous people to seek each other out and access social services. Intertribal Friendship continues to exist today in Oakland.
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​American Indian Politics and the American Political System (2018) novel by David Wilkins and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark

freed from all Federal supervision and control and from all disabilities and limitations specially applicable to Indians. Between 1945 and 1960 the government processed 109 cases of termination “affecting a minimum of 1,362,155 acres and 11,466 individuals.”

Along with the termination resolution, Congress, just a few days later, also enacted Public Law 280, which conferred upon five states (California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Wisconsin) full criminal and some civil jurisdiction over Indian reservations (with certain reservations being exempted) and consented to the assumption of such jurisdiction by any other state. 

The final part of the termination policy trilogy was relocation, a federal policy aimed at the relocation of Indians from rural and reservation areas to designated urban “relocation centers.” In 1956 alone, the federal government spent $1 million to relocate more than 12,500 Indians to cities. The relocation policy was a coercive attempt to destroy Tribal communalism.