Photo courtesy of Theresa Harlan
Across the United States, Indigenous communities are calling for sweeping revisions to stories commonly told as “history”—stories that, even today, neglect and erase Indigenous peoples and serve as justification for continued ownership of stolen Indigenous lands. This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their ancestral home in Northern California and one woman’s mission to bring the living history of her family back to the land. Throughout this series, Theresa Harlan chronicles the story of her family’s displacement from their homestead on a cove in Tomales Bay and shares her grassroots efforts to involve the wider community in protecting both the history and the future of this place.
As she tells her family’s story, Theresa makes a powerful claim: remembering and retelling inclusive histories has the power to create a more just future. In this series we ask: Who gets to define history? In what ways is it our responsibility to ensure that a shared history is an accurate and just representation of the places we call home?
Listen to the Audio Series
In Episode One, Theresa Harlan shares the story of her Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their homestead on a cove in Tomales Bay.
Episode Two traces thousands of years of Indigenous presence and history and asks: Who gets to define history?
In this final episode, Theresa Harlan continues her grassroots efforts to protect the last standing structures on Tomales Bay built by Coast Miwoks.
Coming Home to the Cove was produced by Emergence Magazine
Emergence Magazine is an online and print publication exploring ecology, culture, and spirituality.