Help Protect a Native American Sacred Site

Are you interested in helping SF Bay Area Indigenous people preserve their sacred land? The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band’s sacred ground of Juristac, at the southern end of the Santa Cruz Mountains west of Gilroy, is threatened by a proposed open pit sand and gravel mine. This also endangers the rich ecosystems the tribe’s stewardship has protected throughout its history.

How you can help:

Please join the First Unitarian Church of San Jose and Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church of Hayward and 50+ other organizations in supporting the Amah Mutsun.

This isn’t just another good cause. This is about religious freedom, and respect; about overcoming the effects of centuries of settler colonialism by being in solidarity with Indigenous people to protect their sacred sites and to practice their religions in their ancestral way. It responds to the call issued at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in June 2020 in the Action of Immediate Witness to Address 400 Years of White Supremacist Colonialism. Native American spirituality has been devalued since Europeans arrived. In the 1800s Congress ignored the 1st Amendment and passed a law making it illegal for Native Americans to practice their religions, and that wasn’t repealed until the 1970s. Indigenous religions are still considered “less than” by the dominant US culture, and their sacred sites get desecrated with impunity by commercial interests. We are asking your help stop one of those desecrations.

For more information see the Protect Juristac website or the Juristac Resource Guide, or contact Colleen Cabot (colleencabot@earthlink.net, 408-914-0362) or Beth Ogilvie (beth@betho.us, 510-363-0612). Thank you!