Stories

An interview with the English Department’s Dr. Amy Lueck and student and Ohlone tribal member, Isabella Gomez, about their work together on putting together the Ohlone camp last summer and their thoughts on what our community can do to boost the presence of conversations/events surrounding indigeneity and social justice.

Interview by Júlia von Gersdorff '25

Almost a year after the inaugural SCU Muwekma Ohlone campout was held in the summer of 2023, Isabella Gomez ‘27 and Associate Professor Amy Lueck reflect on their experiences and talk about what our community can and should do to boost the presence of conversations/events surrounding indigeneity and social justice.

Could you both speak a little bit about the process of planning, attending, and reflecting on the Ohlone camp? What was most rewarding about the process, and what, in retrospect, would you have hoped to have been different?

Lueck: The planning took a full year, and there were definitely times we weren't sure we could pull it off. It was a lot of work and we were pretty much making it up as we went, having never planned an event of this scale. We had to identify vendors and Native experts to present, hire chaperones and SCU student workers, make plans for housing and meals and schedule visits to all of the offices across campus that we wanted the youth to experience. But it was important to us that we see it through, to prove it was feasible, because we knew that it would never be easy, that we'd never have "enough" funding, that it would never be the "right time" and that we just needed to do what we could to start somewhere. It was so rewarding to have simply made it work to bring the youth together on their homelands to meet one another, some of them meeting relatives for the first time ever. There was a lot I wish had gone smoother, but it was an auspicious beginning for what I hope will be a lasting program connecting youth to culture well into the future.

Gomez: When me and Amy [Lueck] first began planning the campout, I was still in high school. So while I was spending time writing grants and doing research for the Ohlone campout, I was also spending time filling out college and scholarship applications, in addition to my role as a youth ambassador for the Muwekma Ohlone tribe. However, the balance between these different roles motivated me since I knew I had the perspective needed to create a campout that best suited Ohlone youth. When applying for grants, I found it important to stress the significance of cultivating an Ohlone campout. I wrote about how our tribe used to plan cultural campouts in the late 90s/early 2000s, but we had to sacrifice the campouts in order to focus on different pressing issues such as repatriation of ancestral remains and our fight for reaffirmation. As someone who didn’t get to experience the original cultural campouts, I wanted to provide this experience for our youth in the present day. This is also why it was vital for me to ingrain our Ohlone history in the camp programming for our youth. This included creating an ethnohistory presentation that talked about tribal lineages, tribal language, our fight for reaffirmation, and more. It was also important for our youth to learn about the history of missionization, especially considering that the campout took place on a former mission site, Mission Santa Clara de Asis. We planned for our youth to take a tour of the different historical sites on campus, and we also planned for our youth to visit the mission records room at our school’s library. Watching our youth engage with the mission records was a full circle experience for me, because it made me reflect on the emotions I felt when I first went into the mission records room myself. The mission records room, and Santa Clara University as a whole, are on land with deeply rooted Ohlone history. While some of this history is ridden with plight, the campout has shown that fostering a space for our Ohlone community is vital, as it strengthens Ohlone communities in the present day. Our Ohlone youth are our future, which is why I found it extremely rewarding to plan a cultural campout for them.

The most rewarding part of the process was watching fellow Ohlone youth engage and learn with each other in our ancestral homeland. This is because some of our people are unable to live in the Bay Area, our ancestral homeland, due to issues of gentrification and high living costs. Knowing this, it made me extremely happy to know that I was able to take part in a project that brought together Ohlone youth that lived both in and out of the Bay Area for the campout. This was also really important considering that we engaged with each other at an institution that has historically plighted us. However, the campout served as a way to not let this history bind us to the past, and instead bring forth ways that allow Ohlone people to thrive in the present.

What was most exciting and/or challenging about creating and synthesizing the Reclamation: Resilience of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and Reclamation: Aboriginal Ancestral Homeland of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe exhibits at the de Saisset Museum? Did any conversations at the exhibit opening surprise you and/or stick with you?

Lueck: It was an honor to be asked by the de Saisset Museum to be included in connection to the Reclamation exhibit from NUMU. It allowed us to bring the story of resilience and revitalization home for the SCU community, to illuminate the specific role of this campus both in the legacies of colonialism and the opportunities for reconciliation. I think the aspect of this exhibit that will be most meaningful to me has yet to happen: the return of the youth to the campus for the cultural camp again this summer, when they can go to the museum to see their own work and experiences of the camp represented there. It has really sparked an interest for me in structuring more opportunities for reflection and planning of how they would want their own experiences represented in the future--to bring that public-facing piece into the camp programming itself and ask: what would you want the broader community to know about your experience at this camp? What would you want to share? What can others learn from you?

Gomez: The most exciting part about creating and synthesizing the two exhibits at the de Saisset museum was the fact that I was continuing the legacy of work that other tribal members have done with different museums in the Bay Area. Growing up, I would watch my mom and aunt provide different materials and information about our tribe for different museums. Because I got to see the work that it took to synthesize museum exhibitions, I also learned to appreciate this work as well. This is why contributing to the museum was so special to me, alongside the fact that the different work displayed in the museum is personal to me and my community as well. For example, my sister made the walnut and staves game that is interactive at the museum. When I saw it displayed at the museum, it made me really happy since I saw firsthand the work my sister put in to make these games. It also was really special to see the display featuring the abalone necklaces our youth made at the cultural campout. Abalone necklaces are a significant aspect of our cultural regalia, so watching it be displayed with respect was fulfilling.

At the exhibition, conversations that stuck with me were how some people didn’t know that much about Ohlone history. However, these same people also explained that the de Saisset museum helped them become more educated about Ohlone history. Hearing this stuck with me since it made me understand that the exhibition has helped further our communities’ understanding of my people’s history both in the past and present day. Hearing these conversations also made me reflect on how extremely grateful I am to be able to contribute to the de Saisset Museum exhibition.

Isabella Gomez with her mom, Gloria E. Arellano-Gomez, former Council Member and Secretary for the Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Council.

As a community that hopes to cultivate justice, accountability, and honesty, how can we continue to center conversations on campus around championing indigenous voices and telling the true history of our campus so that students and faculty are informed and take an active part in learning Ohlone history? (e.g. required CORE class, faculty workshops, updating the script for school tours for prospective students, etc.)

Lueck: There are so many ways to continue this work. We should do every one of the things you suggest, and more. It should be the responsibility of every student, faculty, and staff member to know the history of the lands we live and work on, and to actively contribute to the work and sharing of resources in acknowledgment of our ongoing presence on Ohlone lands.

Gomez: Our school community can continue to center conversations on campus that champion indigenous voices by addressing indigenous history through the perspectives of indigenous people. Many times, people not only frame Ohlone history, but native history as a whole as something from the past. This disregards the current communities of indigenous people that continue to live in the present day. This also disregards the historical struggles that seep into the present. Requiring CORE classes on Ohlone history to students would help shift away from this perspective of Ohlone people only being something from the past. It would also inform students about the history of this land and our school. Our school has over 7,000 burials of California natives on campus, yet this is something that many people are oblivious to. By teaching all students about Ohlone history, it would not only make them less oblivious to the Ohlone history on our campus, but it would also help them understand how our Ohlone community deals with these historical issues in the present.

Dr. Lueck– I understand that you have some related projects in the works – how does your work with the Ohlone camp and exhibit connect to and/or inform those other projects, and how do they influence each other? Where have you gotten support (financial, institutional, etc) for your work with Ohlone tribe on the camp, exhibit, etc, and where would you like to see more support from?

Lueck: All of these projects are deeply intertwined with one another. Materials from the camp came into the de Saisset’s Reclamation exhibit, of course, and may also come into the Thamien Ohlone AR Tour that will debut at the Powwow in May. A related project planting Native plants at the Forge Garden, funded by the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Initiative, will support camp programming by helping Ohlone youth learn about cultivation and harvesting practices, while also supporting the development of an AR tour stop at that site and additional resources accessible via QR codes for public visitors to learn more about Native plants and uses. Ohlone youth at the camp will use and learn from the AR tour, the native plants, and other digital Ohlone heritage projects as part of the next camp experience. Their practices there will be preserved and included in a future AR tour stop about the camp itself, and they will have discussions about how else they want to share their experiences with public audiences. Youth from the camp are working with faculty and students on the development team to learn about AR technologies and digital storytelling, and will contribute to the youth camp tour stop and others. Two course offerings next year will involve SCU students in the curation and digital storytelling work related to these projects and the camp. Hopefully, other course offerings and projects will emerge from there. You see the pattern here. We want all of these projects to intertwine and amplify other facets of this work, integrating it across as many campus units as possible, because we believe this work should be ingrained in the university's work and identity on that foundational level.

We have received generous support, both financial and otherwise, from colleagues and leadership in the College, as well as from units like Inclusive Excellence, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Mission and Ministry, Enrollment Management, School of Engineering, and de Saisset, as well as being welcomed into spaces such as the WAVE+Imaginarium lab, Archives and Special Collections, Maker Lab, the Forge, and others. This spirit of generosity and welcoming to the Ohlone youth is really meaningful. Of course, we could always use more, particularly to financially support these programs and projects, and the tremendous labor that Ohlone community members and SCU faculty, staff, and students put into them. Having sustained support is necessary so we can focus on the actual work of creating meaningful projects and opportunities for the community instead of dedicating so much energy to the fundraising and grant writing piece. Making opportunities like the summer camp reliable for the tribal community into the future, giving the younger generations something they can confidently look forward to participating in someday, is our big goal. We invite interested students to reach out to me to get involved.

Isabella– what are your next steps as a university student, as an Ohlone tribal member, as a philosophy major, and just in general, as a 19-year old? What passions fuel you?

Gomez: My next steps are centered around me utilizing my education to give back to my Ohlone community. While being a student at Santa Clara University has allowed me to coordinate community projects such as the cultural campout, I also plan on using my education to help me get into law school. I have aspirations of becoming a lawyer specializing in Environmental and American Indian law. I’ve always admired how our tribal leadership has used their careers to help our tribe, and this has inspired me to use a law degree to continue their legacy.