Native American Heritage Month

These materials have all been selected or approved by Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and Ohlone Indian Tribe members who trace their ancestry through Mission Santa Clara, among other Bay Area missions. Non-Native SCU faculty have developed this guide for faculty, staff, students, and community members, including educators, to provide educational resources that align with the interests and commitments of the living descendants of the original inhabitants of these lands.

Learning about Native heritage also means learning about the histories of language use and its evolution over time, including communities’ preferred terms in the present. The Native people in the area that Santa Clara University now occupies were primarily Thámien speakers, but the region boasts tremendous linguistic variety, including the neighboring Chochenyo (also Chocheño or Čočenyo) from the East Bay, and speakers of other dialects and languages in the area would have understood one another. The missions brought speakers of several languages and dialects together, and also introduced the Spanish language, which is apparent in historic California Indian names and remains a part of many Native families’ heritage today.