San Jose Ohlone tribe fights for recognition amid generations of oppression and decline

FOR MANY AMERICANS, Thanksgiving is a holiday for gathering around the table with loved ones for a delicious meal, oftentimes with a parade or football on the television. But for the country’s Native American population, it is often a reminder of a dark history — land theft, ethnic cleansing and a continued denial of their existence to this day.

The pain for Indigenous tribes in Santa Clara County is generational, dating back hundreds of years. The county’s Muwekma Ohlone people, once a population of 30,000, now number at about 600. The 64 million acres they once inhabited locally was violently ripped from them — they received less than $1,000 from the government to make up for it, despite promises to give land back. They are ancestral to San Francisco, San Mateo, most of Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and portions of Napa, Santa Cruz, Solano and San Joaquin counties.