Designed with Indigenous values of environmental justice and land stewardship, The Village San Francisco, a new cultural center being developed in the Mission District, will reclaim and rebuild a crucial community for urban Native people, who are gravely underserved and hidden within the Bay Area.
Raised in the Mission District of San Francisco, filmmaker Peter Bratt and his siblings identify as “movement children” grounded in the urban Indigenous community. As a child, Bratt joined his Peruvian Indigenous mother in the occupation of 1969 Alcatraz protest–during which one hundred Indigenous people occupied Alcatraz Island for nineteen months.
Photo of Bratt’s family in his childhood home in San Francisco, June 1969. (From left: Benjamin (5), Peter (6), Eldy (32), Veruschka (1 month), Georgia (4), Nadya (7)). Courtesy of Benjamin Bratt.
“There used to be an American Indian Center when I was growing up. We would spend our summers there, after-school programming. It was really a kind of a unifying force in the community. We haven’t had an American Indian Center in a long time, decades.”
This, however, is about to change. Now a board member for The Friendship House Association of American Indians, Bratt is working with an inter-tribal coalition to develop the Mission District’s newest Indigenous cultural and social services center: The Village San Francisco.
The Village, according to Bratt, will be a place “where we can not only get social services, but where we can come together as a cultural community” like he did as a “movement” child.
The six-story, 46,400 square foot cultural hub–which is planned to begin construction in 2023 and be completed by 2025–will be the largest urban community space for American Indians in the United States. Despite a long history of forced relocation, the inter-tribal community in the Bay Area will finally have a home rooted in Indigenous principles of responsible stewardship and climate justice.
The traditional stewards of the Bay Area, the Ohlone people, have undergone a tumultuous and violent history dating back to the eighteenth century during the Mission Era. During the especially oppressive history of Mission Dolores, the Ohlone people were converted into “gente de razon” or “people of reason” and missions were used as forced labor and concentration camps. Today, the Ohlone people are still fighting for federal recognition, which would entitle them to federal benefits for tribal sovereignty, including funding to pursue environmental protection of their ancestral land.
“The white man's philosophy (kill the indian, save the man) stressed the killing of everything we were inside until all that was left was a shell without a spirit. Our rights as a sovereign people to choose our own path have historically been ignored. Our culture, traditions, language, belief systems, and even our children were stolen from us. All these attacks on our sovereignty were because the lands we inhabited were too valuable,” remarks Muwekma Ohlone Chairwoman, Charlene Nijmeh.
Systemic anti-Indigenous racism continued through the 1953 Congress House Concurrent Resolution 108–one of many federal termination and relocation policies–which forced Indigenous Americans off their reservations and into ten designated cities, including San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland. Without land of their own, many Indigenous people in the 1950s settled into the poorer neighborhoods of the Bay Area, including the Mission District. Once dubbed the “Red Ghettos,” the Mission District recently became the heart of the newly formed American Indian Cultural District which will soon house The Village.
The Village “is a response to tribal communities being forced to relocate in San Francisco, without support, because of government politics in the ’50s and the continuing years of economic inequalities which pressed people to relocate for work,” emphasized Abby Abinati, chief judge of the Yurok Nation and President of the Friendship House Board.
Decades of government-led relocating and exclusionary housing left Indigenous communities vulnerable to environmental racism which perpetuates health, social, and economic inequities. For instance, poor air quality in Richmond, where more than 80% residents are people of color, causes children to have roughly twice the rate of asthma as their neighbors. Similarly, marginalized communities on the shorelines of the Bay Area are suffering from increased contact with toxic and radioactive waste that is mobilized by sea level and groundwater rise. As these disparities worsen with climate change, urban Indigenous people continue to be a hidden and gravely underserved population in the Bay Area.
Guided by Indigenous principles of responsible stewardship, sustainability, and climate justice, the Village offers the first steps toward environmental equity for urban Native Americans. Inspired by Barcelona’s Superblock model, the Friendship House and their coalition of partners envision a green space in the heart of San Francisco. Through a variety of features, the building’s inherently green design promotes regenerative and sustainable relationships within its urban environment.
The Village San Francisco’s Sustainability and Resiliency Diagram (above) and Imagery (below). Courtesy of The Village Media Kit.
Dr. Rupa Marya, co-founder and director of social impact and operations at Top Leaf Farms–a farmer-led design team and key partner of the Friendship House–remarks “It’s really an exciting moment to be able to envision a living space in the middle of a city that’s actually a healing space. So many of our living spaces create isolation for people, which makes it very hard to connect not only with each other, but with ourselves and the natural world around us.”
The crown jewel of The Village’s design is a 4,000 square foot rooftop sustainable farm space that supports native plants and animals. Urban agriculture–the practice of cultivating and distributing food in cities–offers multiple benefits: reduced heat island effect, local healthy food, community building, healthier living, reduced food distribution impacts, and local jobs.
“We want our community, our elders and youth, to be able to touch the earth, put their hands in the soil and experience the miracle of planting a seed and watching it grow," says Bratt.
Indigenous communities are one of the least likely groups to have access to green spaces. Communities of color are three times more likely than white communities to live in nature deprived areas. "This lack of access to nature has negative consequences on mental and physical health" wrote Friendship House in a press release. For instance, children who spend time in nature are proven to experience improved health and cognitive functions, strong motor coordination, reduced stress, and enhanced social skills.
The Village’s rooftop farm will allow Indigenous people to restore their deep relationship to the land by cultivating traditional foods and medicines and embodying the Indigenous concept of “food as medicine.” “The foods we eat speak to our bodies and minds. Spiritually, the food we eat can ground us to Mother Earth. They can also connect us to our ancestors,” writes We R Native, an Indigenous healing organization.
In addition to having a rooftop farm, The Village SF will be a “living building” with a low carbon footprint, according to its construction plans. For example, most of the exterior will be constructed from sustainably sourced timber that is designed to survive earthquakes and fires. Solar panels, which will be integrated into the south-facing wall and the roof, will feed the all-electric building and on-site battery.
Similarly, The Village will have a layered exterior that maximizes daylight and cross ventilation–a cooling method that relies on wind to force cool exterior air into the building. The floor-to-ceiling windows will further be protected by a lattice of natural terracotta fins, or porous clay, that modulate wind and direct sunlight.
These layers are intentionally designed to replicate Indigenous building and basket weaving practices. Through these green, culturally-relevant designs, The Village will offer “holistic and culturally appropriate support while walking softer on Mother Earth and contributing next-level solutions to the growing Indigenous urban agriculture movement,” says Intertribal Agriculture Council member Keir Johnson of the Osage Nation.
The Village will also collect and store rainwater through rainwater gardens and porous surfaces which will allow overflow from the roof to percolate back into the ground. In addition to reducing municipal stormwater loads, the collected rainwater will irrigate native plants in the rooftop garden and provide recycled water for other building uses. This design drew inspiration from the Ohlone people, who thrived sustainably for thousands of years on the rainwater that fed Mission Creek.
Through its inherently green design, The Village aims to restore cultural connection to the Ohlone people and other Indigenous communities, which have tragically faced unjust oppression for hundreds of years. As earning federal recognition for tribal sovereignty proves difficult, similar grassroots efforts to re-indigenize cities are occurring throughout the United States, including Albuquerque, New Mexico and Seattle, Washington. By centering Indigenous voices throughout the entire design process, The Village will reclaim and rebuild a community for the Bay Area’s Native people that is rooted in Indigenous practices and tied to ancestral values.
As Bratt highlights, “many of our ceremonies and cultural practices—including our deep ties to the land, plants and traditional foods—were deliberately and systematically disrupted. So we’re also trying to mend a relationship that has been broken and is in need of some nurturing, love and repair."
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Previously a lowly physics major, Celia Tandon is now entering the exciting field of journalism as an earth systems MA coterm. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, they are interested in exploring the intersections of abolition and climate justice. Outside of the classroom, Celia enjoys drawing, gardening, and scrolling through twitter.
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