Spring 2024 Newsletter

Letter from Chairman Lopez, AMLT Board President

Dear Friends, 

Today is the Spring Equinox, a time of balance when night and day are the same length. The equinox is a time when we experience a renewal of energy and witness the fruits of our efforts bloom. In our Spring Equinox newsletter, you will read highlights of two partnership efforts that we are proud of. I’d like to take a moment to talk about partnerships, and what they mean for our Tribe and the land trust. 

Partnerships are particularly important for our Tribe because we are a federally unrecognized Tribe and don’t have legal rights to any land within our territory. When I first was elected as Tribal Chair, the Elders came to me and said the Tribe had to find a way back to the lands and practices of our ancestors, to fulfill our obligation from Creator. The Amah Mutsun have a directive from Creator to take care of Mother Earth and all living things. That directive is absolute and so important to fulfill that we decided to do a brave and difficult thing for us, which was to form relationships with organizations that now own the land of our ancestors. How do you establish relationships with people that now own land that Creator put us here to take care of? How do we trust people that own our lands? The answer is that it’s very difficult, but we needed to have access to our territory in order to restore our Indigenous stewardship, and so we needed to trust. 

You will read articles in this newsletter about our partnerships with the Trust for Public Land and the California Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks). In these relationships, we have placed importance on building trust, often for many years before we sign a formal partnership agreement. Trust is absolutely essential to our partnerships. We are real clear when we enter a partnership that the organization will get one chance with us. If there is any crack in that trust, it will be hard to return for a second chance. We ask the organizations and ourselves to be very careful with the partnership for that reason. We have had a relationship with State Parks for a while now, and we can see that building trust takes time. Trust comes from every meeting, conversation, and shared project with shared goals. And most importantly it comes from time spent together on the land taking care of Mother Earth. When there is trust and a solid foundation, written agreements such as Memoranda of Understanding and cultural conservation easements help formalize these agreements so our partnerships can withstand the test of time and changes such as staff turnover. It’s hard, and it's a lot of work. But we always want to remember we have to try to find ways to establish trust.

The relationship with State Parks, the Bureau of Land Management, and others, has enabled us access to lands in our territories and also get grants that support our work there. The land that State Parks owns includes many of our sacred sites and places of ceremony. These are sites where mothers gave birth to their babies, where our ancestors held rites of passage and coming of age ceremonies, and where our people hunted, fished, and stewarded the land. When we are able to return to those lands, it allows us to continue the work that our ancestors did there. We can return fire to our territories, grow patches of plant resources big enough for the Tribe to gather and use, and conduct research to continue learning the ways of our ancestors. It is important that we are able to return to our lands in perpetuity. 

Now with our partnership with the Trust for Public Land, we have the opportunity to strengthen our capacity for land acquisition, to help ensure that our Tribe can return to these lands on more than a temporary basis. We’re trying to build a foundation to continue to steward and manage these lands until the last sunrise. Together with these trusted partners, we can ensure a secure future where the Tribe is able to fulfill our obligation to Creator. 

sareemi (With my prayers),

Valentin Lopez

Chair, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band

President, Amah Mutsun Land Trust  

Read more about our newest partnership with Trust for Public Land, and on our long-standing relationship with State Parks. Our newsletter also includes an interview with Esak Ordoñez, which features work with other Tribes and agencies around cultural burning, and an article by AMLT consultant Annie Taylor that highlights our partnerships with researchers and academic institutions.