The wind blew hard and fast on top of a large hill in Dillon Beach, which looked out from the town to Tomales Point and the Pacific Ocean.
The hillsides looked dry and drab. Sunlight shone off the long lines of waves heading to shore, and the wind was chilly on the hill. Thursday, Oct. 17 was a momentous day. It was a celebration of the return of 466 acres of Marin ranchlands and an estuary to the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the federally recognized tribe of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok people.
This site, just north of Dillon Beach above the small Oceana Drive community, was first purchased by the Western Rivers Conservancy, a land conservation group whose purpose is to preserve and care for rivers and watersheds across the western United States. After purchasing it from the previous owners, Saint Antony Monastery, Western Rivers Conservancy “conveyed” or officially returned the land to its Indigenous caretakers.
Many elected officials attended the celebration, including Lieutenant Gov. Elani Kulamakis, Congressman Jared Huffman and Marin County District 4 Supervisor Dennis Rodoni.
“We’re good at piecing together these conservation puzzles, the financing, the funding, the negotiating, the deal, the closing, all that boring stuff,” said Nelson Matthews, interim president of Western Rivers Conservancy. “But we quickly realized that the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria were the perfect stewards for caring for this land and its fragile creatures in perpetuity.”
This is part of Western Rivers Conservancy’s greater work in helping return much of the land they acquire to Indigenous people, contributing to what is often called the Land Back Movement.
Much of the land is a long, sprawling, grassy hillside that looks out to the Pacific Ocean. This land had been working ranchlands for decades before the monastery purchased it in 1999. The heavy use of the land, along with the ending of prescribed burning practices common in the area before the Spanish arrived, led to the land being destroyed, as Greg Sarris, chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, put it.
“Remember, the landscape was our Bible,” said Sarris. “But the landscape was destroyed. Basically, you’re destroying our sacred text. But we have shards of it left, and now we can get some of that text back.”
The site will not be open to the public except for by special permission, overseen by the tribe.
Now that the land is in the hands of its Indigenous stewards, the tribe aims to continue improving the landscape and the wildlife that lives and thrives on it.
Walking down to the Estereo de San Antonio, one can see small patches of Pampas grass. These highly invasive species are hard to remove from the land, not to mention the many non-native species of grass that cover so many California hillsides.
Western Rivers Conservancy’s original interest in the location was Stemple Creek, a small stream that meanders through ranch and farmlands west of Petaluma, and the estuary where it meets the sea, Estero de San Antonio. In this estuary, many species live, most notably the endangered Myrtle’s silverspot butterfly, a small fish called a tidewater goby and the threatened California red-legged frog.
“We want to enhance more of the natural grasses, perhaps plant a lot of the bunch grasses and those kinds of things,” said Sarris at the site. “But certainly to grow a lot of the flowers that the [Myrtle’s silverspot] butterflies feed on, and to protect the estero as well.”
The Myrtle’s silverspot butterfly is a small butterfly with orange-toned wings and black patterns. It lives primarily in coastal regions of California and has been listed as endangered since 1992. The butterfly feeds on a breed of a small but common flower called the western dog violet. This purple flower is already very successful in the estero, making this site a critical habitat for the endangered butterfly species.
Further up the estuary, where it is mostly freshwater, there are plenty of California red-legged frogs, which have been listed as threatened in the state since 1996.
But perhaps this land is most critical for the life of the endangered tidewater goby, a fish that measures at most the size of one’s thumb. These tiny creatures live directly in estuaries where fresh and salt waters mix across the West Coast. Since they cannot survive very long periods in highly salty waters, this estuary is a unique piece of land to preserve for their sake.
A small sandy beach banks this marshy area before turning into a little stream. Since this inlet is so small, during high and low tides, the transition between salty and freshwater takes longer, greatly helping the little tidewater goby survive the intense changes in the water’s makeup.
All of these species are notable factors for the Graton Rancheria tribe, whose aims are to care for them and to restore the land in the ways they can for future generations and animals alike. As Sarris said at Tomales town hall, people’s histories, whether Indigenous to the area or not, are a part of this land’s story.
“All of us are part of this story now, and once again, we can create a future where we use our knowledge together for something that will remain for those who come after us,” Sarris noted.
However, the history of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people in this area is essential to recognize.
Before the Spanish arrived in the area, some 20,000 people were living here. Some died of disease or were killed by the Spanish. Many were used as slaves to build missions across the region. They were immediately subjugated by the Spanish, who started by outlawing controlled burns, something that had been a common practice in the area for an uncountable amount of generations. This lack of fire completely altered the landscape.
“Remember, what happened here was ecocide and genocide in equal measures. They went hand in hand. We were destroyed here in so many ways,” Sarris said.
However, this return of land, along with their joint stewardship for Point Reyes National Seashore with the Department of the Interior in 2021, has provided the tribe with the opportunity to care for the land in ways they have been unable to for generations.
“This [return of land] has allowed them to reclaim their cultural heritage and work towards preservation of language, culture, tradition and their connections to land, to place. It is important not to just recognize that shared history, but to act to change the ways things have been done,” said Supervisor Rodoni in last week’s speech at town hall.
“The Land Back movement is about justice, restoration and healing,” Rodoni noted. “It’s a path to returning stolen land to the Indigenous communities from whom it was taken. This land we stand on today, like so much across the county, was never ceded, and we’re part of the movement that seeks to right those wrongs.”
