The Past, Present, and Future of Athenian’s Land

Very few students are aware of how much natural space Athenian has on its campus. The school’s land holdings total 75 acres, but central campus takes up only 23. The Tim Holm Trail and other trails that sit at high point on campus showcase the vast amount of undeveloped acreage. But what plans does Athenian have for its undeveloped land? 

The answer to Athenian’s future may lie in its past. This year’s convocation represented the first ever Land Acknowledgement Athenian issued since its founding. The school recognized that the land it occupies was once lived on by the Bay Miwok-speaking Tatcan tribe. As part of this acknowledgment, Athenian vowed to work towards correcting the injustices set in motion by colonists when they seized indigenous peoples’ land hundreds of years ago. However, there haven’t been any apparent changes that seem to serve this goal. 

Keith Powell, the school’s Chief Operating Officer, explained why development will not begin in the foreseeable future. “There’s lots of things in terms of wanting to think about the environment and thinking about water usage, noise, and lighting. All these things that the neighbors are concerned about,” Powell said, “And we usually have to go through an approval process that requires community input and community approval in order to build. When we did the project where we replaced the Main Hall, we probably reached the limit of the patience and support that people would have for us building more.”

While it is possible to push the boundaries set by the local community, Athenian would first have to consider the demand for changes that might utilize more of its land. Powell said that Athenian is satisfied with its current student population of ~540 and has capped class sizes for five years. It is safe to assume the school will not be needing to expand campus spaces any time soon. 

But the question still remains: what might the school eventually do with its land? It may seem like a natural solution to return the land to indigenous people, but Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice(DEIS), Sanjev deSilva, explains why this will probably not become a reality.

“I think it’s less about ‘give us our land back because it was taken from us’ and more about ‘where are we now in 2022, what has happened, and what can we do moving forward that will repair some of these relationships,’” deSilva said.

The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an organization led by people indigenous to this region that facilitates land return, cultural revitalization, and public education about indigenous traditions. While Sogorea Te’s website does profess its vision to be an organization that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to indigenous people, deSilva expresses that such a goal may be far in the future. 

“What they’re working on is more about education around the history and the legacy of the land and getting us to reimagine things,”deSilva said. “To reimagine the way we think about things like real estate, territory, things like this, ownership of land. Getting us to understand the different perspective that’s out there, and that’s the indigenous perspective.”

There are many ways to begin to right the injustices committed upon Indigenous people. Athenian is considering a seed bank program and an exchange program of sorts between indigenous tribes and Athenian students. Additionally, collaboration with Sogorea Te’ on an upcoming garden lab project seems like a likely possibility. 

Whitney Hofacker is the head of this initiative, which aims to build different agricultural projects around the campus for students to tend to and benefit from. Though no details have been decided, this could be a natural partnership–indigenous people could lead cultural revitalization via the opportunity to work on their ancestral lands; students could learn about indigenous culture and the products of the garden could flourish.

Another step that Athenian has recently considered is paying the Shuumi Land Tax. This is a voluntary donation that could be made to begin to repay for occupying stolen land. The Land Tax would go toward cultural revitalization for impacted groups and public education. But it seems that the best way to collaborate with Sogorea Te—to begin to correct the injustices of the past and improve the school’s relationship with them—could be through taking their guidance in cultivating and gardening Athenian’s vast amount of natural land. Theoretically, it could be a perfect relationship, allowing Athenian to retain the ‘green space’ so important to its mission and community while letting native tribes access land to perform traditional cultivation techniques that are so important to cultural revitalization. 

Corrina Gould, Co-Founder/Director of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust emphasized how important being able to interact with ancestral land is for native tribes: ​​“Sogorea Te’ Land Trust makes it possible for us to relearn our traditional methods of taking care of the land. We can begin bringing back some of our traditional foods, like acorns. With that comes ways of taking care of the land, such as prescribed burning. Burning also helps to bring back some of the native plants that were here before, so that we can bring back the basket weaving, we can bring back the medicines that were always here, we can begin to teach ourselves how it is that we are supposed to live on this land again.”

Even though Athenian has no plans to expand onto its undeveloped lands for the near future, that does not mean it cannot put the land to use in other ways–it could be used for the extremely important task of repairing the relationship between Athenian and indigenous tribes.