National Native American Heritage Month 2023

Native American Heritage Month celebrates the rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and history and acknowledges the important contributions of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the United States. We encourage you to show your UCSF PRIDE by sharing your Indigenous/Native American heritage with your colleagues and friends. Here are a few ways you can share.

Change your social media and Zoom profile picture to reflect your Native American/ Indigenous Heritage
On Zoom use a virtual background showing your Indigenous/Native American Heritage (Bonus if the photo is one your took yourself)
Add "Native American Heritage Month" and/or an image showing your Indigenous/Native American Heritage to your Email Signature

Native American Heritage Month Virtual Backgrounds

Download any of these virtual backgrounds and add them to your Zoom by following these steps:

In the Zoom.us desktop client, go to 'Settings' as noted above and select 'Visual Background'.
Using the (+) icon, upload your new background.

NAHM Flyer

A Proclamation on National Native American Heritage Month, 2023

Fact Sheets and Infographics

Native American Factsheet

Legal Basics - Native American Law

Native Youth at Risk for Sex Trafficking

Historical Events Timeline

UCSF EVENTS

Land Acknowledgement of UCSF

Learn how to lead a Land Acknowledgement & how that is only the first step in being in solidarity with Indigenous peoples. Our Indigenous community + campus partners curated resources for learning and way to support local rematriation efforts here.

Multicultural Resource Center - Native American Heritage Month

Native Health Elective American Indian Physician Panel (Virtual)

Thursday, November 2nd, 2023 | 12:10-1:00 PM
Virtual

Please join the Native Health Elective, Association of Native American Medical Students (ANAMS), and the Native American Heritage Month Planning Committee 2023 at UCSF for this collaborative event to welcome you all for a virtual panel in honor of Native American Heritage Month 2023!

Registration

NAHM Lecture with Dr. Lori Alvord (Virtual)

Monday, Nov. 13th | 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm, Zoom

Please the Multicultural Resource Center, the Association of Native American Medical Students, the Native American Health Alliance and the Native American Heritage Month Planning Committee 2023 at UCSF for this collaborative event to welcome you all for a virtual webinar given by Dr. Lori Alvord, the first female Navajo surgeon and author of the Scalpel and the Silver Bear, in honor of Native American Heritage Month 2023.

Community Dinner ft. Wahpepah Kitchen (In-Person)

Wednesday, Nov. 15th | 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm

ODO Resource Center (Parnassus)

Please join the Native American Heritage Month Planning Committee and and the Multicultural Resource Center for an in-person community dinner with catering from Wahpepah Kitchen (Oakland, CA).

BAY AREA NATIVE AMERICAN RESOURCES

The Ohlone Territories

FUN FACTS

Native Lands

This map shows you what Indigenous lands you're living on. The crowd-sourced, interactive website mapping traditional territories of Indigenous people, treaties and language has grown to become so much more. The map was created by Victor G. Temprano, a Canadian who was "born in traditional Katzie territory and raised in the Okanagan" and who began work on the project in 2015. It currently covers the USA, Canada, much of Mexico, Australia, South Africa, and expanding amounts of territory in South America.

History of the Emeryville Shellmound

The Emeryville Shellmound was a highly remarkable historic, cultural, and sacred site established by Ohlone Indians over centuries of use from 500 B.C. to approximately 1700 A.D. These people were among the earliest inhabitants of the region now known as the San Francisco Bay Area. They built their villages on the mound and buried their dead, creating, over the centuries, a sixty foot high mound with a diameter of about 350 feet. This significant site functioned holistically in both the secular and sacred realms, and as such, should not have been disturbed, but honored as a place set apart from the mundane world.

Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area

The present-day Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is comprised of all of the known surviving American Indian lineages aboriginal to the San Francisco Bay region who trace their ancestry through the Missions Dolores, Santa Clara, and San Jose; and who were also members of the historic Federally Recognized Verona Band of Alameda County. The aboriginal homeland of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe includes the following counties: San Francisco, San Mateo, most of Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, and portions of Napa, Santa Cruz, Solano and San Joaquin. This large contiguous geographical area, which historically crosscuts aboriginal linguistic and tribal boundaries, fell under the sphere of influence of the aforementioned three missions between 1776 and 1836. The missionization policies deployed by the Catholic Church and militarily supported by the Hispanic Empire, brought many distantly related, and in some cases, already inter-married tribal groups together at the missions.

Sacred Land Film Project

The Sacred Land Film Project tells inspiring stories of indigenous peoples' resistance to the destruction of their sacred sites and cultures.

Since 1984, Earth Island Institute’s Sacred Land Film Project has produced a variety of media and educational materials — films, videos, DVDs, articles, photographs, reports, school curricula materials and Web content — to deepen public understanding of sacred places, indigenous cultures and environmental justice.

Our mission is to use film, journalism and education to rekindle reverence for land, increase respect for cultural diversity, stimulate dialogue about connections between nature and culture, and help protect sacred lands and diverse spiritual practices.

Project 562

Created by Matika Wilbur, Project 562 is a multi-year national photography project dedicated to photographing over 562 federally recognized tribes in The United States resulting in an unprecedented repository of imagery and oral histories that accurately portrays contemporary Native Americans. This creative, consciousness-shifting work will be widely distributed through national curricula, artistic publications, exhibitions, and online portals.

Matika has visited members of over 300 sovereign nations throughout 40 states, from Tlingits in Alaska to the Pimas in Arizona, Pomos in California to Wampanoags on Cape Cod. Through her lens, we are able to see the diversity, vibrancy, and realness of Indian Country, and in seeing, challenge and surpass stereotypical representations and refresh the national conversation about contemporary Native America.