47 years ago, an injustice was committed: a Native American nation from the San Francisco Bay area was left out of the list of federally recognized tribes maintained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
There was no hearing, no act of Congress, or executive order.
Previously acknowledged by the federal government as the Verona Band of Alameda County, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe was left unrecognized and landless. All members of today’s Muwekma Ohlone descend from that Verona Band.
After decades of struggle, the Muwekma Ohlone tribe’s movement became entwined with the 2024 US Presidential election, as they set out on a ‘Trail of Truth’ journey across America that eventually culminated in an almost-deadly October standoff with Joe Biden’s feds and local law enforcement in DC.
Charlene Nijmeh, the tribal chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone, spoke exclusively with The Gateway Pundit about these troubled times, how the Native American vote swung to Donald J. Trump, and how the Muwekma Ohlone tribal nation counts on his ‘common-sense administration’ to fix this injustice.
Nijmeh told us how it all started with a certain Frisco Bay area politician: Kamala Harris, who built her political career in Muwekma Ohlone’s homelands as the Attorney General and U.S. Senator.
“She built her career here,” said the Chairwoman, “the previous tribe chair reached out to her many times to get her support on legislation, but she told him that Indian issues were ‘not her business’. The tribes are not her business. So, she wasn’t going to get involved.”
In 2023, Chairwoman Nijmeh met with Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren who told her: Sign away some of your tribal right to operate a casino, in exchange for the introduction of legislation for federal recognition. But Nijmeh declined to surrender sovereign rights that every other federally recognized tribe had.
Muwekma had long backed the ‘social justice’ Democrats, but when it was time to correct a half-a-century-old bureaucratic error, Dems led the opposition to them.
In 2024, when they saw presidential candidate Kamala in Indian country talking about ‘self-governing, protecting tribal rights, self-sovereignty issues’, they knew it was all fake promises. So, in August, they launched a journey that they called the ‘Trail of Truth’.
“And we campaigned across the Indian country about this: Kamala is no good for us. She’s going to pick and choose who she wants to work with. And it just happens to be the big corporation gaming tribes. They give her money. She was not going to represent all of Indian country. This journey was about speaking our truths, to be seen and to be heard across Indian country, and especially in DC, because they’ve been ignoring us for 45 years. They’ve been giving us lip service – telling us what we want to hear, but doing nothing or doing the opposite.”
But while Harris had no history or commitment to Indian country, someone else had!
“But Trump does. Trump has spoken out. And for example, has spoken out about restoring the federal recognition of the Lumbee tribe in North Carolina. You know, and that tribe has also been in the same fight as us to get their status restored. So, there’s hope there.”
Because the Muwekma Ohlone bashed Kamala and supported Trump, they got some backlash as their Trail of Truth traveled south to LA, Malibu, and then cut across over to Arizona – in Pee Posh Territory – from there to New Mexico, to the Pueblos.
When they got to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in the Oglala Territory, the Horse Nation Society gathered horses for their journey.
Eventually, members of other tribal nations began to join their protest caravan.
“We went over to Minnesota, we went to Red Lake, to Chicago, then to Menominee reservation in Wisconsin, the United Nation of Wisconsin, and then up through Michigan to Bay Mills. We met with the Tuscarora and Onondaga tribes; they were in full support.”
While many of these names may sound foreign and unknown, it suffices to say that 25 different nations ended up joining Muwekma Ohlone Tribe in their American Journey to the District of Columbia.
“But what changed things,” Nijmeh told the TGP, “is when we got to DC with all these tribal nations, and how we were met by Kamala’s and Biden’s administration – that just turned everything around.”
On October 1, 2024, they walked over the Arlington Bridge and through Capitol Mall all the way to the Capitol, where they camped out.
A meeting had already been arranged with BIA’s Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, Brian Newland, and Capitol Police offered an escort to the meeting.
“I said, most definitely – if they can escort us to our meeting, we would greatly appreciate that. They knew we had the horses there and we would be riding in ceremony to this meeting with our horses.
When we showed up with the horses, all the streets were blocked off – there was over 100 police officers there from all agencies. As we went to the back of the horse trailer to get the horses out, they swarmed us and said: ‘you cannot take those horses out’. We were shocked. ‘You’re going to escort us’. And they said, ‘no, you don’t have a permit’.”
As soon as the tribal members opened the trailer door, the Park police went on full attack and all hell broke loose.
“They attacked us, saying they were going to confiscate our horses, euthanize them. They were saying this to the women, children who were there to grab their horses.
We went on full protection mode. We surrounded that trailer. We were standing our ground. They attacked us, were trying to yank us off. They threw my daughter to the curb. She hurt herself. And they pushed an elder woman, her face up against the back of the trailer. Nine people were arrested in all this chaos.”
A nightmarish three-and-a-half-hour standoff ensued, because the Muwekma Ohlone weren’t going to let them take away and euthanize the horses.
Democrat Deb Haaland, Biden’s Secretary of Interior, ‘didn’t believe she was addressing sovereign nations’.
“Her response to me and our tribe was shame on us for assaulting her police and that she was not going to meet with me,” the Chairwoman recounts, “she says, ‘go to Congress. We are refusing to meet with you because of the time and resource we had to spend to contain you’. I was shocked. I sent that letter out to everybody in Indian country so they can see what Deb Haaland is all about.”
Now, with the Trump administration, the landless tribe is making another attempt at recognition, as sovereignty will allow them to stay in their 10,000-year homeland.
“We think that the Trump administration is common sense, reasonable people and they want and they will correct an injustice like they’re going to do with the Lumbee. [Trump] passed an executive order so that Burgum can find a path for recognition for the Lumbee. He can do the same thing with Muwekma.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: Forgotten by Bureaucracy, Ignored by Kamala Harris, Attacked by Biden’s Feds, California’s Muwekma Ohlone Tribe Resorts to ‘Common Sense’ Trump Administration for Recognition appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.