On Monday, the city of Lafayette unveiled two public projects to recognize local indigenous people on the land that they once occupied.

The Ohlone name for Mount Diablo was added to the town’s central boulevard — Tuyshtak, which means “dawn of time.” The Bay Miwok tribe was acknowledged with a work of public art on a new utility box at Mt. Diablo Boulevard and Lafayette Circle. It features an illustration of Saklan women, with the text of the city’s new land acknowledgement. 

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.