Butano State Park

As Native American Heritage Month draws to a close, we want to acknowledge the Amah Mutsun Native Stewardship Corps and their work co-managing ancestral lands with California State Parks today. The Native Stewardship Corps of young adult tribal members learn and perform traditional land management techniques and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, such as using fire to promote biodiversity and reduce fuel loads that contribute to catastrophic wildfires. Native Californians mana...ged their lands with fire successfully for thousands of years prior to European colonization, creating one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Since June 2018, the Native Stewards have worked with State Parks to form and implement a co-management plan in Año Nuevo by using traditional land management practices to reshape the landscape to more resemble what it looked like historically, when it had been managed by the Quiroste tribe. These changes are increasing the plant and animal populations that the Indigenous ancestors managed for food, medicine, and tools and that today’s tribal members continue to use for cultural practices. As California State Parks and other land agencies reevaluate their fire management policies in the wake of devastating wildfires like the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, we are grateful that the Amah Mutsun Native Stewards continue to preserve and share their ancestors’ ecological knowledge. www.amahmutsunlandtrust.org #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #NAHM

As we continue celebrating Native American Heritage Month, this week we want to spotlight a very important person in our local history. Maria Ascensión Solórsano (1855-1930) is an ancestor of members of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (comprised of tribal families with historic ties to Missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista). She was a healer, collector of tribal lore and traditions, and the last fluent speaker of the Mutsun language. Ethnographer John Peabody Harrington recor...ded many of her stories and the Mutsun language over the last years of her life. The Amah Mutsun are now drawing on her stories and teachings to re-learn the Mutsun language and to introduce her wisdom to a new generation of tribal members. Without Ascencion’s dedicated efforts to preserving Amah Mutsun culture, much tribal knowledge would have been lost. The Amah Mutsun revere her memory as a guiding force during a critical time in their history. To recognize her social contributions, she was inducted into the Gilroy Hall of Fame in 1995 and Ascención Solóranso Middle School in Gilroy was named in her honor in 2003. To learn more about the Amah Mutsun and their history, visit www.amahmutsun.org. #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #NAHM

Happy Native American Heritage Month! This week, we’re zooming into the map of California to learn about tribes in the greater San Francisco Bay-Monterey Bay area. California was home to many different Native tribes, with their own unique languages and cultures. Our local area is especially diverse. You may have heard the Ohlone historically lived in this area, but did you know the Ohlone are not one tribe? The people known as Ohlone today were historically comprised of 50 di...stinct tribes who spoke 8 different languages. This map, created in 2019 by our district's State Parks historian in collaboration with Ed Ketchum, Amah Mutsun tribal historian, shows estimates of the historic territories of the many local Ohlone tribes. Do any of their names look familiar? Some of them have become local place names, like Aptos and Sayanta (Zayante). #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #NAHM

November is Native American Heritage Month, and we begin our commemoration of the month by sharing the Digital Atlas of California Native Americans. This Digital Atlas is an online tool to help students and the public visualize California before, during and after European occupation. This web app displays a collection of map layers related to the history and cultural heritage of Native Americans in California, including cultural regions, historical lakes and wetlands, traditi...onally-used natural resources, trade relations, and more. It also includes layers that show the tragic side of this history, including the disruption and loss of lands experienced by Native Californians. Many of our Santa Cruz and San Mateo area State Parks are located on traditional Ohlone land can you see whose ancestral lands you are living on, and learn about their histories? Check the atlas to find out!: www.nahc.ca.gov/cp See more

No matter what your Halloween plans are for this season, California State Parks has you covered! Join interpreters around the state for ghoulish crafts, spooky pumpkin carving and live campfire program. These programs will be livestreamed on California State Parks Facebook page.

We appreciate that many kindhearted people are concerned about how the #CZULightningFire has affected wildlife. We want to reassure everyone that Nature is resilient and fire is a natural part of California’s forests. The animals that live there have a number of ways to escape from fire and to survive the changes in their habitat, so they do not need human handouts. In fact, leaving food or water out for wildlife can hurt them in several ways. It can encourage animals to gath...er in groups, making it easier for diseases to spread. Availability of human food could reduce an animal’s ability to survive in the wild when that food source disappears. And in some cases, human food can favor predators at the expense of sensitive wildlife species. Please keep in mind that within California State Parks, leaving out food or water for wildlife is not allowed, even after a wildfire. Closure orders are in effect for Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Butano State Park, and the Fall Creek portion of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park until further notice due to wildfire damage. Help support their natural recoverystay out of the burn areas and #keepwildlifewild!