How a planned Sacramento Native American Heritage Center will ‘tell the real story’

Growing up, Larry Myers was surrounded by people who thought Native Americans were extinct. That they were wiped out after the 19th century and had completely vanished.

But Myers, who is a citizen of the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, one of the 109 federally recognized tribes in California, is living proof that they’re wrong.

“I’m around here, and so are my cousins, and brothers and sisters,” Myers said. “The general people, when they ran into an Indian, they would be surprised that (we are) still alive.”

Myers now serves as the chairperson for the California Indian Heritage Center Foundation and is a part of an initiate to keep Native identity alive. It’s through the creation of the California Indian Heritage Center in Sacramento.

The project is set to replace the State Indian Museum, a 4,300 square foot museum located next to Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park in Midtown. The California Indian Heritage Center is set to be a larger museum with an amphitheater and an outdoor gathering space located on 43 acres on the riverfront in West Sacramento.

The project first had its start in 2007. But due to budgetary issues with the state, it took a pause until 2018 when the Heritage Center received funding for construction.

The museum project plans to open in 2030.

For Natives by Natives

The center is currently in its planning stages, said Jennifer Cabrera the State Parks’ project manager for the California Indian Heritage Center.

The center’s task force is conducting outreach to tribal communities across the state. Cabrera said the task force has gathered more than 7,000 informational pieces from 35 different outreach events and surveys. They’ve also done did 75 video interviews with California Native American tribes and 13 tribal hosted events.

Cabrera said outreach is ongoing. A report on the task force’s findings will later be released to the public.

“The center is for Natives, Native-run, Native-designed,” said Cabrera. “That’s really the goal of the project is to be for California Native Americans.”

Myers said the center is crucial for all Californians.

“I think it is vital for the citizens of California to really understand and know what happened, because there’s really no voice for our people statewide,” Myers said.

The museum portion of the project will include federally recognized and non-federally recognized tribes in California, Myers said. The project will also spotlight Native communities that moved to California during the relocation era in the 1950s. Alongside telling the history of Native people, the center would like to serve as a a living facility for Native artists to showcase their art, basket weaving or paintings.

The center has been described as a project built by Native people for Native people. The California Indian Heritage Center’s task force is Native-led, with tribal chairpersons and other Native community leaders, Myers said.

Myers described the center as a hub for Native communities across California and in Sacramento. In Sacramento county alone, Native Americans make up 1% of the population. It’s an isolating experience being Native in spaces where no one is like you. This is where the center plans to be a place “to just be” for Native people, without those feelings of not fitting in, Myers said.

“You’re different. Everyone else is different. You don’t feel quite right. You’re kind of alert to where you are and who’s looking at you,” he said. “(But the center) will be a place where there will be other Indian people. You’ll feel comfortable and you’ll feel at home.”

Acknowledging Sacramento’s Native history

The California Indian Heritage Center isn’t the only Sacramento landmark acknowledging Native history. The state recently approved proposed changes to Sutter’s Fort. The updates are aimed at reflecting a more “inclusive, complex and accurate history of Sutter’s Fort’s role in the colonization of California,” by highlighting Native perspectives.

The fort, which was an economic center for the earliest European colonizers in California, was built and supported by the exploited labor of Native people from the region, according to the park’s website.

In a document laying out the proposed changes, officials from the Capital District of the state Department of Parks and Recreation said the fort would become a “laboratory of learning” that addresses this topic of exploitation and oppression of Native people in California, through changes to content, interpretation and administration at the fort, among other areas.

Native community members, including Calvin Hedrick, who is Mountain Maidu, said in a state parks and recreation commission meeting last week that the changes are “more than (he’s) seen in my lifetime.”

“When we’re looking at this history, we want to make sure that from this generation on, our students … are being taught a real and accurate history,” said Hedrick, who also serves as the director of the 5th Direction, a tribal youth program.

For the Heritage Center, the goal is to recognize the identity of California tribes, Myers said, to not just show artifacts or depictions of Native people as a thing of the past, but to show that Native people are still here.

“We need to have the real people tell the real story,” Myers said.