East Bay Yesterday

“Contrary to popular belief, most Native American people in the United States live in urban areas and not reservations.” Those words are from “Refusing Settler Domesticity: Native Women’s Labor and Resistance in the Bay Area Outing Program,” a new book by historian Caitlin Keliiaa. Caitlin grew up in Hayward and her family is part of what she describes as the Bay Area’s large, thriving, and diverse Urban Indian population. Just to be clear, Caitlin isn’t Ohlone. She’s not a descendant of the Indigenous tribes who’ve lived in the Bay Area for millennia. Like many Urban Indians, her family has only been here for a few generations – and her new book helps answer the question of how they, and many other Native families, got here. The book is important, because as Caitlin explained: “A lot of people think about Indian relocation in the 1950s as the moment when Native people come to the Bay, but actually they were here decades prior.” Listen to the episode now to hear about a mostly forgotten chapter of Bay Area