Corina Gould is a descendant of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. Her uncle John Guzman, Jr. and aunt Reyna Guzman Cerda and their respective families are enrolled with the Tribe, and have been enrolled in the Tribe since 1995. Their tribal enrollment numbers 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 494, 501, 511, 512, and 513. Since the 1990s Ms. Gould has chosen not to enroll in the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, so that she can maintain her independence and confuse individuals and foundations by presenting herself as the Chairwoman of the so-called “Confederated Villages of Lisjan” which never existed prior to 2018.

Her behavior is unethical, and it defrauds the Ohlone people.

It was not until 2018, that Ms. Gould created her organization claiming to be the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. The meaning of the word Lisjan is not fully understood by California linguists. In 2009, the renowned anthropologists and ethnohistorians Randall Milliken, Lawrence Shoup, and Beverly Ortiz, were contracted by the National Park Service’s Golden Gare National Recreation Area to research and publish information on how the various surviving Ohlone tribal groups and unaffiliated individuals with Ohlone ancestry were connected to the San Francisco Presidio, as well as their respective regions. The title of this comprehensive ethnographic and ethnohistoric analysis is Ohlone/Costanoan Indians of the San Francisco Peninsula and their Neighbors, Yesterday and Today. Nowhere in this very comprehensive study is Corina Gould or any of her various organizations mentioned, even though she had the opportunity to contribute.

Prior to December 13, 2005, Ms. Gould did not even know her genealogy before she requested it from former Muwekma Tribal Chairwoman Rosemary Cambra. Our Tribe’s ethnohistorian, Alan Leventhal, then provided her a comprehensive report of her genealogy going back to her ancestors’ origins and pre-conquest. Upon being informed of her genealogy, she chose not to enroll and later decided to start presenting herself as her own tribe.

For years she has made the assertion that she is not part of Muwekma because she “comes from a different village.” This is nonsensical since her lineages are enrolled in Muwekma.

On this fraudulent premise she has convinced Regan Pritzker’s Kataly Foundation into providing her “Sogorea Te Land Trust” with more than $20 million to purchase a sacred burial site in Oakland that does not belong to her – all under the moniker of “rematriation.” But that’s not rematriation. It’s a well-orchestrated theft of Ohlone Land and a sacred site from the Muwekma Ohlone People.

Gould is able to propagate her scheme with funding from well-meaning entities who do not have a clue about the aboriginal and legal history of the three historic previously federally recognized Ohlone/Costanoan tribes: Verona Band of Alameda County [Muwekma Ohlone]; San Juan Bautista Band of San Benito County [Amah-Mutsun]; and Monterey Band of Monterey County [Esselen Nation].

Gould’s behavior is unethical. She continues to push manufactured fiction on her organizations’ websites and makes irresponsible claims to land that doesn’t belong to her – even producing maps that attempt to erase Muwekma, and divide our aboriginal territory among similarly illegitimate “pop-up tribes”.

The Confederated Villages of Lisjan (which she also refers to as the “Lisjan Nation”) is a recently constituted fiction with no history prior to 2018. It is not a historic tribe or a sovereign nation in any legal or anthropological definition of a Native American Tribe. The Confederated Villages of Lisjan is an organization of indigenous and non-Native activists who are not Ohlone (with the exception of Ms. Gould). They are activists from other parts of the country. They do not have shared lineages and they are not kin to one another. They have no government, constitution, or history.

The Confederated Villages of Lisjan is a pure political fiction designed to enrich Gould.

Gould has been so brazen and unashamed of her behavior that she is actively promoting a “Shuumi Land Tax” to dupe well-meaning people who live on Ohlone land into believing that they are donating to the Ohlone people. They are not. They are only enriching a single Ohlone woman.

Other well-meaning progressive organizations then wear the Shuumi Land Tax like an armor that absolves them of doing the hard work of reconciliation, examining the settler-colonial mindset, or acknowledging how their actions can lead to more settler-colonial violence, albeit unintentionally.

Indigenous sovereignty isn’t a brand that can be bought and sold. It’s not a moniker that activists can fraudulently thrust upon themselves without any historic continuity.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe does not recognize Ms. Gould’s claim to be a Chairwoman of a tribal nation, nor do we acknowledge the legitimacy of the recently created Confederated Villages of Lisjan. Nor should anyone else.

Muwekma is the only legitimate, sovereign, and previously federally recognized Ohlone tribe. Our sovereignty has been acknowledged by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The BIA has issued a determination of our tribe being unambiguously previously federally recognized and never terminated by an act of Congress. The federal courts have affirmed that Muwekma is the successor to the Verona band of Alameda County, and that our members are directly descendant from that previously recognized and never terminated tribe. Our tribe was first recognized by the federal government in 1906, and several times subsequently.

We outright condemn the behavior of Corina Gould, who is a non-enrolled Muwekma Ohlone Indian.