Episode 4 of "Reclaiming Our Stories: Voices of Indigenous Peoples of California" Is Now Streaming

Titled “The City Is Native Land,” this episode centers on Indigenous presence, belonging, continuity, and care within urban spaces across California.

Hosted by Victorio L. Shaw (Hoopa), the episode invites listeners to reconsider cities not as neutral spaces, but as layered Indigenous homelands shaped by memory, responsibility, survival, and relationship to land.

Cindy Alvitre (Tongva) reflects on Indigenous life in Los Angeles and the ongoing realities of visibility, erasure, ancestral memory, and cultural continuity within one of the largest urban centers in the United States.

Corinna Gould (Lisjan/Ohlone) speaks about Indigenous presence in the Bay Area, sacred site protection, land rematriation, and the work of sustaining Native relationships to land and community in urban environments.

Together, they challenge dominant assumptions that Indigenous identity belongs only to the past or to rural spaces. The conversation explores how Native communities continue to practice sovereignty, ceremony, education, language work, mutual care, and cultural continuity within California cities today.

An artistic interlude creates space to pause and listen deeply before the episode turns toward questions of accountability, belonging, and future responsibility.

Throughout the episode, listeners are invited to reflect: Knowing the city you live in is Native land, how does that change the way you move, gather, or show care for that place?

Reclaiming Our Stories: Voices of Indigenous Peoples of California is made possible with support from The 11th Hour Project and Weingart Foundation.

Reclaiming Our Stories is a part of By the People: Conversations Beyond 250, a series of community-driven programs created by humanities councils in collaboration with local partners. The initiative was developed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.