Native stewards in the restoration of our local food systems

Imagine a time when people walked on foot across the hills of Marin and Sonoma, when they found protein in freshwater creeks teeming with salmon and along rocky shores rife with mussels, clams, abalone and oysters. Imagine these people each fall, as they gathered around oak trees in ceremony, collecting acorns to prepare for winter sustenance, and as they hunted deer and elk in open meadows or collected berries along the edges of these meadows.

For 10,000 years, the First People of Marin and Sonoma, the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo, lived off of these lands. Archeologists have discovered evidence of 600 Coast Miwok villages and hundreds of Southern Pomo villages in the North Bay. Before European contact, an estimated 20,000 indigenous people lived in this region.

Today, the growers and producers of West Marin and Sonoma have earned recognition as international leaders in regenerative and climate-friendly practices. Part of what these growers and producers have done to earn this mantle is to eschew the quick fixes and chemical inputs of corporate agriculture, and to look back to the people who live carefully with local ecologies, who dance with nature rather than dominate it.

Today, several indigenous organizations and individuals are teaching the rest of us about the way Native Americans lived, in the North Bay and in the Americas at large, and are reintroducing the practices of land management and cultivation that allowed their ancestors to nurture the ecologies that fed them.

HERON SHADOW

Cultivating Traditional Plants and Medicinals

On a warm fall morning, a breeze moves quietly across the Heron Shadow land in Sebastopol. Redbird Willie, ecologist and educator; Amythest Faria, farm manager; and Heaven Estrada, development and community evaluations manager of the Cultural Conservancy (the parent organization of Heron Shadow), meander quietly beneath towering—as in gigantic—stalks of corn. They gaze upwards admiring the plants with what might be described as a combination of appreciation and wonderment. These stalks are Olotón, a uniquely robust corn that thrives in the cloud forests of Mexico.

Faria points out massive aerial roots supporting the height and weight of the giant plants, and a sticky mucus dripping from the stalks. The mucus absorbs nitrogen from the air, allowing the corn to “self-fertilize” so it can thrive without nitrogen inputs (otherwise known as fertilizer).

“It is doing well here,” says Faria of the corn, a varietal from the Mixe indigenous community of the mountains of eastern Oaxaca. “It is so fun to see what each cob looks like when we harvest. Some are yellow, some have more sunset or orange-ish colored cobs … many have a tint of red.”

According to Redbird Willie, who has Pomo Paiute, Wintu and Wailaki ancestry, cultivating the corn in the Heron Shadow soil has been a learning process. “Some traditional information has been passed on to us, but also we are learning as we go,” he says. He goes on to describe the reintroduction of native cultural and agricultural practices as part of decolonization, and as a process that involves “a lot of relearning and figuring things out all over again.”

In 2019 the Cultural Conservancy, a Native-led Bay Area organization with a mission “to protect and restore Indigenous cultures, empowering them in the direct application of traditional knowledge and practices on their ancestral lands,” was able to purchase 7.6 acres outside of Sebastopol, on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo Peoples of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. Six years later, Heron Shadow has become an indigenous biocultural oasis, a place to nourish native foodways and medicinal plants, to grow and distribute healthy food to Native American communities and to provide a haven for Indigenous cultural and agricultural gatherings.

For two years, Willie, Faria and others from the intertribal community that tends Heron Shadow cleared the property of debris, slowly gaining an understanding of the land. “When it comes to land-tending, permaculture was taken from indigenous practices,” says Faria. “First we sit with the land, and let the land teach us through the seasons … where the wind moves, where the sun comes up.”

Over time the community built a greenhouse and nursery, refurbished the main house and the barn and began to cultivate a portion of the acreage. It was a gradual process during which they came to understand where they would restore California natives and where they would grow traditional indigenous varieties of crops such as chile, corn, beans and squash. Among the traditional medicinal herbs and plants grown at Heron Shadow, are skullcap, chamomile, passionflower, burdock root, bergamot, plantain, hibiscus and elderberry as well as indigo, hibiscus and amaranth, plants used for natural dye.

Through partnerships with Sonoma County Indian Health, the American Indian Child Resource Center, the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center, the Intertribal Friendship House and Wapapa Kitchen in Oakland, the cultivated fields at Heron Shadow provide boxes of produce and medicinals for Native American people around the Bay Area. Much of this produce starts as seed from the Native Seed Library, which reconnects Native community members with their ancestral seeds, including Chilhuacle Negro chiles, Seneca White Corn, Cherokee Georgia Candy Roaster Squash, Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers, Zuni Gold Beans, and many other sacred varieties.

Built into the Cultural Conservancy and Heron Shadow mission to revitalize plant species used by Native Americans and endangered heirloom seeds, is the preservation of cultural knowledge—the stories, songs, recipes and planting practices that sustain traditional foodways. In the words of Willie: “Instead of community-supported agriculture (CSA), I call what we do ASC: agriculture-supported community.”

JENNA COUGHLIN

Grazing for Ecological Health

The universe seemed to gently guide Jenna Coughlin back to her family’s ancestral homelands on the shores of Tomales Bay. The young shepherd, proprietor of Shepherds of the Coast, who grew up in Corte Madera and was educated in Santa Cruz and San Diego, knew she had Native American ancestry, but did not know specifically that her great-grandmother was part of a Coast Miwok tribelet that lived in Marshall. Slowly and surely, Coughlin made life choices that brought her to live and work on the land in the region. Now she spends her days shepherding 200 sheep and 20 goats on farms, ranches, vineyards and private properties in the North Bay, demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between ecology and agriculture that is part of her heritage.

When Coughlin attended UC Santa Cruz to study history she found herself drawn to the Agroecology Center, where she began to understand the idea of sustainable and regenerative agriculture. After receiving a certificate degree in Sustainable Agriculture in San Diego, she interned on a winery in the town of Ramona, and learned the role of sheep in management of weeds. She also worked on the 1.5-acre demonstration farm and orchard at City College of San Diego and deepened her understanding of regenerative agriculture.

When she moved back to Marin, she apprenticed at Toluma Farms, a 160-acre goat and sheep dairy in the town of Tomales, learning all aspects of dairy farming and cheesemaking, and eventually taking the mantle of head cheesemaker. She loved the work, but was drawn back to working directly with animals and ecologies, so she pivoted, entered the Grazing School of the West and also enrolled in an intensive program called New Cowgirl Camp for women entering land and animal management. In 2024 she established her own business, Shepherds of the Coast, using sheep and goats to clear brush, manage vegetation, prevent fire and improve pastures.

After she had moved to West Marin, she learned that her great grandmother had grown up on the land that is now Cypress Grove Audubon Canyon Ranch, one of the properties where she now grazes her herd.

“My grandmother was taken away from the area. We didn’t know. This was not spoken about and we suppressed that knowledge. My aunt discovered all of this when she looked into our genealogy,” says Coughlin, who now spends her days shepherding on the very hills and shores her ancestors dwelled upon. “Something interesting to me is that I now get a certain amount of attention because I am Native American. In the past you did not speak of it. It is an interesting shift and I have a special opportunity to embrace my heritage.”

For thousands of years before Europeans arrived, local indigenous tribes would use a practice of low-intensity fires, sometimes called “cultural burns,” which stimulated plant growth and created fire-resistant ecologies. The new growth in burned landscapes attracted large ruminant herds that came through to graze in the open meadows established by fire. Native tribes understood that these animals grazing on the new growth offers several benefits: The meadows provide a food source for protein as well as attracting herds for easy hunting; native grass species thrive, and, in some cases, are stimulated by grazing; manure from grazing animals fertilizes the soil; grazing breaks the crust of soil, making it easy for water to penetrate the soil.

Coughlin was able to establish her business by working with what she calls a “web, like the ecological webs we see in nature” of farmers and ranchers in the local West Marin and Sonoma community who support each other and have supported her. The sheep she manages are owned by Guido Frosini’s True Grass Farms in Tomales. Coughlin contracts with Frosini—she grazes his 200 sheep and eventually Frosini sells the sheep for meat.

Coughlin is also working in collaboration with Fire Forward, a “good fire”–based project of All Hands Ecology, the nonprofit that serves as land steward on preserves spanning 5,000 acres across Marin and Sonoma counties including the Cypress Grove Audubon Canyon Ranch. The collaborators are looking at how a regular application of prescribed burns and grazing affects the land.

“Sheep are a Spanish animal, a colonial species, but I use these animals with an indigenous lens,” says Coughlin. “At the Audubon Canyon property, we will graze that area, and then burn again next year. We’re just excited about this process of grazing and burning, and excited to see what happens.”

CUAUHTEMOC VILLA

Reintroducing Biochar to Local Agriculture

In 2024, LiDAR technology revealed a network of “lost cities” in the Amazon basin—sophisticated municipalities, complete with agriculture, housing, roads, ceremonial platforms and a central plaza. These cities, built up to 5,000 years ago, were thought to house between 10,000 and 100,000 people, but there were questions about how the Amazon could sustain such large populations as thin sandy soil in certain parts of the Amazon would make it difficult to grow sufficient food.

That is where another discovery, made in the 1960s, comes in. Pits, 10 to 15 feet deep, of Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE), also known as terra preta and rich in organic matter and nutrients, are scattered throughout the Amazon basin. These patches of dark earth reveal an ancient understanding of the use of burning biomass to make a simplified carbon source, what we now call biochar, says Cuautemoc Villa, a Native American soil educator who recently moved to Oregon but returns to his home in the Bay Area regularly to hold seminars on building soil health, including ancient biochar techniques. Villa and Raymond Baltar, the director of the Sonoma Biochar Initiative, a project of the Sonoma Ecology Center, have worked both together and independently to educate winegrowers, farmers, the Forest Service, conservation groups and tribes about reintroducing this ancient technique and explaining the multiple benefits.

Villa recalls that 15 years ago when Baltar first held a seminar entitled “Using Fire to Benefit the Earth” for a large group of North Bay farmers, the idea was to introduce biochar to the community. At that time, Villa says, the practice seemed “too woo-woo” for many of the farmers and the talk was met with blank stares, if not disdain. Some attendees even got up and left the seminar. “The mood was, ‘Why are you wasting our time?’” adds Villa. That is, until an older, well-respected farmer stood up and said, “We used to do this all the time. Who ever told us it was a good idea to stop doing this?” He was referring to the practice of digging pits and burning plant debris to create biochar and fortify the soil.

Villa began working with Baltar and has continued to educate anyone interested in improving soil, up and down the West Coast. Baltar and the Sonoma Biochar Initiative are working with vineyards across the region and educating anyone and everyone who has an interest in cultivation and conservation. Biochar is made through a process of pyrolysis, which is heating organic material in a low-oxygen environment. The process burns off volatile compounds and leaves behind just the “skeleton,” in Villa’s words, of the biomass, which is primarily carbon. Soil needs carbon. The complex structure of carbon is very similar to the shape of a beehive, says Villa, and the nooks and crannies of that structure is home for beneficial microorganisms, nematodes, water, and nutrients. Also, carbon aids water retention; by introducing 5–15% biochar into soil, growers might see water use cut by up to 50%.

The North Bay wine and cannabis industries have been especially proactive in adopting biochar practices, and Baltar and the Sonoma Biochar Initiative are currently working with Pacific Biochar on a long-term field study at Oasis Vineyards in Monterey, California. According to Baltar, the field trial began in 2016, is funded by the California Department of Water Resources and led by Sonoma Ecology Center along with UC Riverside, Monterey Pacific Inc. and Pacific Biochar. The study looks at the results of compost and biochar and a combination of biochar and compost. After eight years collecting data, covering six harvest seasons, harvest yields were increased by an average of more than 30% in vineyards where biochar and compost were applied together. The biochar and compost application had a positive return on investment by the second harvest, and by the sixth harvest provided $11,432, $15,689 and $17,607 additional revenue per acre where biochar, compost, and biochar plus compost were applied, respectively.

Villa says he is grateful to be able to reintroduce growers to this widely accessible, affordable and environmentally sound approach to soil enhancement that comes from his own culture. “In Indigenous culture they did cultural burns, what we now call conservation burns. For them, they waited to light the fire until they knew the wind would blow a certain direction, and that the rain would fall soon after. And, for instance, you might start a fire upwind of berry bushes, with the wind blowing that direction so that the smoke, or ‘wood vinegar’ which has nutrients, would nourish the berry plants,” says Villa, who is of Taino, Aztec and Mayan ancestry. “It is all so beautiful,” he adds. “And it is lifegiving for me to be able to understand that my people were scientists.”

THERESA HARLAN

Harvesting from the Ocean and Bay

In the 1930s and ’40s, when Theresa Harlan’s mother Elizabeth was a girl living along the shores of Tomales Bay, she and her siblings took clams with their tortillas and beans to school for lunch, which, Harlan says, marked them as different from the ranch kids of the Point Reyes Peninsula. A Tamalko indigenous woman born in 1925, Elizabeth Harlan (nee Campigli) grew up on the shores of Tomales Bay, which was known to the Tamalko as Tamál-Húye or Coast Point. The Tamalko are the indigenous people of Tomales Bay, a “tribelet” of the Coast Miwok, the region’s First People, who, for 600 generations, inhabited a large swath of land stretching from Bodega Bay down to the Marin Headlands in Southern Marin. Elizabeth Harlan grew up north of Heart’s Desire beach on the Point Reyes Peninsula in a cove known as Felix Cove (now marked on Point Reyes National Seashore maps as Laird’s Landing), but her family was evicted from the area in a court battle with ranchers in the 1950s.

Theresa Harlan, Elizabeth’s daughter, grew up in Napa where Elizabeth settled when she married and left Felix Cove. The family visited Tomales Bay regularly and Theresa heard the stories of her ancestors’ lives in the cove. Now Theresa is the founder and director of the Alliance for Felix Cove, which advocates for the protection and restoration of the only remaining 19th-century Tamalko-built home in the Point Reyes National Seashore. The Alliance aims to re-indigenize the ancestral homelands of the Felix Family—the last Tomalko family to live on the western shores of Tomales Bay.

“We want to create a living history center at Felix Cove, so all people can learn how our family lived off the land and managed the land for the common good and how, for 10,000 years, our people lived on the coastline, managing to live through colonization by Spain, Mexico and the United States,” says Harlan.

Members of the Felix family.

ELIZABETH CAMPIGLI HARLAN PHOTO ARCHIVE

Harlan’s mother Elizabeth and her grandmother, Bertha Felix Campigli, who was born at the cove in 1882 to Joseph and Paulina Felix, both of Tamál ancestry, lived the way their ancestors lived for eons along the Tamál-Húye seashore before the first Europeans arrived. Bertha Campigli spoke the native language Tamal, says Harlan. Her grandmother’s generation knew the local native plants to use for medicinal teas, the best places for collecting berries and for fishing, clamming and harvesting abalone.

In a 2013 report by the Department of Anthropological Studies at Sonoma State University on the impact of climate change on archeological sites in the Point Reyes National Seashore, archeologist Suzanne Stewart describes the life of the Tamalko, who lived on plants, shellfish and game harvested from Tomales Bay, Drakes Estuary and Abbotts Lagoon. Researchers from Sonoma State documented four large villages and more than 100 archeological sites in the area. “By about 10,000 years ago, California’s Paleo-Coast peoples were traveling in seaworthy boats, using fishhooks and other fishing tackle, hunting marine mammals and sea birds, weaving cordage and basketry from sea grass, and making shell beads for ornamental use and exchange with interior peoples,” Stewart writes, describing what has been discovered about the Coast Miwok people. “Marine foods were particularly important: surf and bay fish, bullhead, steelhead and salmon were captured, and shellfish, including mussels and clams, were gathered from rocks and beaches.”

“My mom’s generation still knew how to live sustainably,” says Harlan. “If you left her for two days with a knife and fishing line, she would be fine, because how they lived was off the grid. She would fish for perch, collect abalone at Pierce Point, clams at Felix Cove or across the bay at Marshall Beach. My mother always said they were pocket poor but food rich.”

Now, although the park system has still not recognized the homes at Felix Cove as an official heritage site, the Alliance for Felix Cove continues to gather and educate “without a brick-andmortar location,” says Harlan. “We hold workshops to honor and celebrate Tamalko language, ceremonial practices, knowledge of plant science for food and medicine, and we educate the next generation to carry our traditional ways into the future.”