Ohlone Fire Returns to the East Bay Hills Cafe Ohlone's founders are reviving Indigenous stewardship on ancestral lands.

Adapted from "Ohlone Fire Returns to the East Bay Hills" by Momo Chang, originally published by Bay Nature. Reprinted with permission.

On the June morning of the cultural burn, it was a fair 70 degrees in Concord, with a friendly five miles per hour of wind. From where we gathered on the sprawling Cal State University East Bay campus, we had a view of Mount Diablo and the rolling grass-and-oak-covered hills. In the valley below, Galindo Creek bubbled. Rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle waited to be filled.

The short list of guests included East Bay Ohlone tribal members, academics from Cal State, UC Berkeley and others interested in land restoration. People chatted in small groups, nibbling on pastries and mandarin oranges.

Just to our left was a parked red fire truck, emblazoned with the "Cal Fire" logo. Members of the Contra Costa Fire Department and the day's "burn boss," Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit Battalion Chief Alex Mikesell, stood by. Their job was to prevent the cultural fire we had all come to witness from burning more than the intended one acre of grassland at Cal State. Earlier that morning, they had determined the conditions were safe-planned fires get canceled all the time because of too much wind, heat, or dry air. This burn had been called off twice in the last two years.

Cultural fire can cultivate food, medicine, and fibers and improve soil and plant health. The practice has been integral to Indigenous cultures throughout California, but was outlawed in 1850. In recent years, the state has embraced it, though it has rarely occurred in the East Bay Hills. Attendees were there to support the return of cultural fire and all the change it promises.

At roughly 10:30 a.m., Vincent Medina, a Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone whose ancestors have lived in the East Bay since well before the arrival of Spanish missionaries, spoke to us, visitors. He wore a bright yellow fireproof jacket and, with Mikesell next to him, said, "Let us see good fire on the land." 

Then he and his partner, Louis Trevino, who is also Ohlone, asked tribal members to join them for a private ceremony, while the rest of us stayed back, watching from a short distance.

The cultural fire burned an acre of grassland in minutes and then extinguished itself. (Chrissy Bisi)

For several decades, Indigenous communities have openly revived their culture in the Bay Area, and recently opportunities for land stewardship have also returned. In the East Bay, at least three distinct tribal groups have separate efforts and methods for stewarding land. Among them is the Sogorea Te' Land Trust, a nonprofit that owns and cares for about 60 acres in Oakland, Berkeley, Castro Valley, and Richmond, through a variety of partnerships. A second group, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, started the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation in 2021.

The third and oldest East Bay tribal entity, the Ohlone Indian Tribe, was established in 1971 by surviving members of the Verona Band of Alameda County. Vincent Medina is now president of this tribe, but he first stepped into the public eye with Trevino in 2018 when they founded the first-ever Ohlone-run cafe. They launched the cafe on an outdoor patio at University Press Books, then moved and opened 'ottoytak, a sit-down outdoor Ohlone-inspired restaurant and educational space on the UC Berkeley campus; 'ottoytak is currently on hiatus during campus construction.

The pair also opened 'ammatka Cafe at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley earlier this year. Its menu includes an Ohlone salad made mainly from native plants including watercress, sorrel, blackberries, gooseberries, dried California strawberries, and roasted California hazelnuts, seasoned with an elderberry vinaigrette and East Bay salts. They also serve duck, black walnut brownies, and other "Ohlone-forward" dishes. They grow and collect black sage tea in an outdoor nature lab at the Lawrence Hall of Science, where many native plants are identified in Chochenyo. 

But Medina and Trevino have long set their sights on more than restaurants. For them, food has always been for their families and an invitation to the public to learn about Ohlone culture, but they also wanted a place to practice Indigenous methods for tending land. They wanted to revive the techniques their family members remembered, like soil aeration and digging, coppicing, and cultural burns. "In order to access these traditional foods, we have to have healthy land that's being restored," Medina says. 

And so they launched the mak-warép Ohlone Land Conservancy in 2024; mak-warép means "our land" in Chochenyo. The pair partnered with the Cal State Concord campus and UC Berkeley's Russell Research Station on Indigenous restoration projects that span about 100 and 300 acres, respectively. They held their first cultural burn at the Cal State site in 2024. Since then, the studies and experiments have started to flow in. 

In the days before the Concord campus burn in June, Medina and others scattered chick lupine (Lupinus microcarpus) seeds in two plots to see whether the fire's heat would crack open the legume seeds and increase the soil's nitrogen. Lupines help pull nitrogen from the air, fertilizing the soil. "We will soon see more data of what the lupine seeds add to the soil," Medina says.

Cal State assistant professor Ruth Tinnacher and her team have been studying the chemical composition of post-fire soil and ash. Their studies of the old-growth oak trees at the cultural burn site found no signs of stress following the 2024 cultural burn. 

"These burns offer the opportunity to demonstrate the effect of low-intensity fire on the restoration of California open space with invasive European grasses, thistles, and wild mustard," says Kate Shade, an associate professor at Cal State whose students helped clear invasive weeds from the CSU plot after both burns. 

Just next to the cultural burn site, the tuuštak Ecocultural Garden grows food, including stone fruit and persimmon trees, which Medina explains were adopted into Ohlone people's diets during the Mission San José days. Once the orchard matures, they hope to share the bounty by creating a free-food pantry for neighbors. "We want to act as a resource for those who might have food insecurity," Medina says.

The garden also provides pollinators with plants like milkweed and wildflowers. Still in the works are an outdoor classroom space, plant beds, paths, and more, all with a heavily Ohlone aesthetic, Medina said. Shade, who helped secure an EPA grant for the project, says one goal is to "restore Ohlone foodways and food sovereignty on open space at the Concord Center." 

In his flame-resistant shirt, a yellow hard hat, and gloves, Medina held a pitch stick made of pine resin, leaned down, and began to ignite small fires. The flames quickly engulfed the low-lying dry, brittle grasses. The earth turned from straw-colored to black ash, smoke billowing. A distinct crackling noise permeated the air, the sound of small steam pockets exploding in the vegetation. Medina invited the group to come closer to the fire. Just as quickly as it ignited, the burn extinguished itself within 15 minutes. The fire was a success.

The group stayed for lunch, while Medina thanked their project partners and talked about the significance of the location and the burn. It was just the second cultural burn at the site in more than 60 years. Mikesell shared his insights, adding that fire officials are learning as well and eager to support more cultural burns. The intention is to burn this acre twice a year, as his Ohlone ancestors once did, Medina told the crowd. Fire is a way of giving back to the land." 

Medina describes other traditional land tending techniques. Seasonal coppicing - done in conjunction with cultural burns-naturally regenerates plant life by intentionally cutting a shrub or tree to its base. For example, a willow or California rose can be trimmed without harming the plant, encouraging new growth instead. Another old method involves lightly piercing the soil with manzanita sticks to aerate it after a cultural burn. 

"These are all traditional ways of tending to the plants that work," Medina says.

A few weeks after the burn in Concord, Medina was still in good spirits. He, Trevino, and Mary Ladd (of We Wai Kai First Nation), the land conservancy's development and special projects director, led me on a tour of the Russell Research Station lands in Lafayette, which are surrounded by planted redwoods used for forestry research. Medina's ancestors once lived in the area and were among the first generation of Ohlone forced into Mission Dolores. 

Restoring the land means first clearing overgrowth from portions of the 300 acres in preparation for cultural burns. This work kicks off a project funded by a nearly half-million-dollar grant from the California Natural Resources Agency in coordination with the California Transportation Commission, awarded earlier this year to restore ancestral lands using traditional Ohlone practices. The land conservation is partnering with UC Berkeley's forestry department and Cal Fire to remove the overgrowth and invasive

On one plot, Cal Fire helped install a large biochar kiln intended to convert the overgrowth into charcoal that can improve soil health.

Medina said Ohlone elders described this area as once supporting wildflowers with colors so intense that "when you would look too long, you'd have to avert your eyes." To achieve that "dreamscape," the team plans to broadcast wildflower seeds here widely. "We want it to be such an intense saturation of color to transport people to the landscape as it was before."

In other parts of the Russell Research Station, the goal is to create a series of gardens connected by walking paths over two acres. One will grow basketry materials, including basket sedge, gray willow, redbud, and bracken fern. It's getting harder for many of California's Native Americans to find basketmaking plants. Cultural burns clear dry brush and encourage the growth of younger plants that are more pliable and better quality for basket weaving.

Next to the basketry garden will be a medicinal garden, with plants such as black sage, yerba buena, yarrow, and stinging nettle. Another area will grow Ohlone foods like native berries, hazelnuts, watercress, sorrel, bracken fern fiddleheads, and California strawberries, some of which will eventually be served at Medina and Trevino's restaurants. Finally, a pollinator garden will support ceanothus, hummingbird sage, pink currant, and milkweed, all native California plants. 

Medina pointed to a clearing in the forest. A covey of quails suddenly took flight into the tall trees as we approached. "Louis's favorite birds," Medina said. This is where the land conservancy envisions elders and other Ohlone tribal members gathering, enjoying hammocks and seating made from redwood. Medina, Trevino, and Ladd pause a moment to take in what the future might hold.

Contra Costa County Fire monitored the site for the next two days, dousing hot spots with water. (Chrissy Bisi)

For East Bay Ohlone people, the upcoming year has important significance: 2027 marks 100 years since the federal government stripped Medina's direct ancestors-his great-grandmother's generation, the Verona Band of Alameda County on the Sunol Rancheria-of their land. In April 2025, Medina's elders made him president of the Ohlone Indian Tribe, which was established in June 1971 by members of the Verona Band. They created it, Medina said, to preserve and promote Ohlone culture and protect the Ohlone Indian Cemetery near Mission San José, which the Tribe holds title to.

As that centennial approaches, the land conservancy is fundraising $15 million to purchase and restore up to 100 acres of ancestral land. "This is a large vision of restoring a large tract of land that we directly have the title to, and creating restored garden spaces and culinary spaces," Medina says.

The vision includes a tule house for dining, a tearoom filled with native plants for teaching local ecology and tea gathering, and a redwood casita that represents the rancheria period from the 1850s to 1927. If successful, it would mean more cultural burns, more land restored, more seeds planted, more food for people, all with an eye toward growth and restoring the land for future generations. "We want to have these plants that are really full of all this story that's connected to place right here," Medina said.

To learn more about mak-warép Ohlone Land Conservancy and their efforts to steward land with traditional ecological knowledge, while partnering with UC and Cal State researchers, visit Ohloneland.com

Clarification: Changes have been made to this article to clarify that there are at least three distinct tribal groups in the East Bay. The mak-warép Ohlone Land Conservancy, or the Ohlone Indian Tribe, is not associated with STLT or Muwekma.