California State Parks has announced the signing of a five-year memorandum of understanding with the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
Executed during a formal signing Oct. 16 at the future site of the California Indian Heritage Center, known as Pusúune in West Sacramento, Tribal Chairwoman Regina Cuellar and State Parks Director Armando Quintero formalized coordination and cooperation between both entities for the protection, preservation and interpretation for parks on the Tribe’s ancestral homelands.
“Our story is like many here in California,” said Shingle Springs of Miwok Indians Chairwoman Regina Cuellar. “It makes the importance of the MOU we are signing here today all the more critical to not only securing the future well-being of the ancestral lands we are engaged in stewarding and the revitalization of sacred practices, but to us as a people and our identity as a Tribe.”
The Tribe and State Parks have a history of collaboration this MOU builds upon. Among other projects, they have worked together on the new Sutter’s Fort interpretation master plan, Folsom Auburn Road Bridge Mural Project and the management of the native landscape surrounding the State Indian Museum, Folsom Lake State Recreation Area and Folsom Powerhouse State Historic Park.
“Working together, we are applying traditional native plant landscape stewardship practices and evolving the way we manage these lands well into the future,” said California State Parks Director Armando Quintero. “The integration of living cultural knowledge and practices in these publicly held lands in California illuminates the past as present and reveals California as a world of many rich cultures.”
This MOU also facilitates collaboration between the entities to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge into the protection of cultural and natural resources, collaborate on parks interpretation and art projects and partner together on cultural resource monitoring and protection. The latest collaboration involves a new interpretation for Sutter’s Fort and the Polo’ Oo Boat Launch at Black Miners Bar, a day-use area at Folsom Lake SRA.
State Parks has signed MOUs with four California Native American tribes in the last year and is in MOU discussions with nine additional tribes.
ABOVE PHOTO: Shingle Springs of Miwok Indians Chairwoman Regina Cuellar and California State Parks Director Armando Quintero sign a memorandum of understanding. California State Parks. Photo: Brian Baer
