A 2022 Reflection
Our First Year to
Re-Indigenize Tamal-liwa
As we close 2022, we are in a place of immense gratitude to all who participated and contributed to our work to “restore, protect and reclaim” our ancestral home at Felix Cove on Tamal-liwa (Tomales Bay). At a Fall 2021 “friends and family” gathering at Felix Cove, we announced the creation of the Alliance for Felix Cove to amplify our call to address the neglected state of our family home at Point Reyes National Seashore. We started 2022 by establishing our Strawberry Leadership Circle with amazing Indigenous women leaders: Ámate Pérez, Corrina Gould, Josephine Talamantez, Kim Tercero, Peggy Berryhill, Tedde Simon and Tory Canby. Our work is guided by principles of generosity, reciprocity, respect, responsibility, relationship and gratitude.
The Alliance for Felix Cove activated our mission and vision through community building and telling our story of Támal-ko past, present, and future. We are shifting the narrative of Point Reyes National Seashore by reasserting Támal-ko stories that challenge the dominant colonial settler ranching history and through our journey we are answering the call of our ancestors to end the erasure of their existence.
Telling our Story
Our storytelling began January 2022 with the release of our three-part audio story “Coming Home to the Cove” produced by Emergence Magazine and directed by Adam Lofton. Our story continued to be shared through op-eds in the Marin Independent Journal and the LA Times. We were featured in the Bohemian/Pacific Sun, the Point Reyes Light, and most recently High Country News. We reached an even wider audience through radio stories and interviews by KGUA, KQED, KWMR, KPFA, KPOO, and KALW.
On October 2nd, we held a sold-out in-person and live streamed panel discussion at the Point Reyes Station Dance Palace Community Center that highlighted Támal-ko histories and legacies. Our audience gathered to hear a history mostly held in the memories of Támal-ko descendants - a history not told by the National Park.
“We do the work so that future generations will know the resilient legacy of past generations and continue the Indigenous cultural and ecological practices of Támal-ko people, people of Tamal-liwa (Tomales Bay).”
- Theresa Harlan
Reuniting our Relatives
In early Spring, we kicked off our initiative to bring back Indigenous relatives to Tamal-liwa as our Coast Miwok/Támal-ko family and ancestors once traveled and fished daily on their home waters. With an all volunteer team, we built a 16-ft tule canoe from tule we harvested at Stafford Lake Park and skills learned from multiple workshops guided by Redbird Willie, traditional ecological knowledge practitioner, artist, and regalia maker. Redbird clarified for us, he was not teaching us to build a tule canoe, he was helping us cultivate a community.
Our tule canoe, the Tamal-liwa, represents not only the community we nurtured, she represents our “relative” to whom we welcomed back to Tamal-liwa on the shores of Felix Cove on October 30th. She is the relative we brought home, surrounded by Felix Family members and our greater community of relatives to greet her. We can safely say it is likely that this was the first time in 300 years a Felix family-community-built tule canoe touched the shores of Felix Cove. The significance of her return is the beginning of bringing justice to our Támal-ko family torn from our ancestral home. It is the beginning of the healing of cultural and intergenerational trauma to reconnect our bodies and spirit to practices and knowledge of our ancestors.
Once reunited with her ancestral home, we launched her at Marin County McNear Beach Park into the San Francisco Bay. With our Hawaiian relatives singing canoe songs, nearly 200 people of Indigenous family, elders, and youth, along with allies and partners cheered with happy tears, as she confidently carried her people on the water. We are in gratitude to our partners the Museum of the American Indian, Novato, and Blue Waters Kayaking and our funders The Cultural Conservancy, the Marin Community Foundation, Hispanic Access Foundation, and individual contributors. We are deeply appreciative of Marin County Parks for providing access to Stafford Lake Park and McNears Beach Park and to Point Reyes National Seashore for access to Felix Cove.
Looking to the Future
Our beautiful journey continues on as our family and community grows, as we begin creating an Indigenous Youth Kayak and Navigation Program at Tamal-liwa with our partner Blue Waters Kayaking, and our Indigenous relatives of Bay Area organizations. We are on the cusp of making our first hires, an Associate Director and Program Coordinator that will further our mission and increase our impact.
Our existence and movement to rematriate Felix Family homelands was not predicted by colonial settler forces– reliant on the erasure of our Támal-ko existence. We are in gratitude to you for joining and supporting our journey to re-Indigenize Tamal-liwa and make a new history for Felix Cove at Point Reyes National Seashore. Wali ka molis!