Northern California Somatic Experiencing Professional Association

Land and Somatic Lineage Acknowledgement

NorCal SEPA encompasses the 48 northern counties of California.  We acknowledge that what we call “Northern California” is the occupied territory of over 100 tribes and has been stewarded by Indigenous people for millenia.  Those of us in the Bay Area, for instance, are living on unceded Ohlone territory.

We acknowledge our white settler privilege and that the lands covered by NorCal SEPA were taken through violence and injustice, beginning with the brutal Mission system during the Spanish colonial period.  Further,  genocide was sanctioned by California governors and funded by the state legislature when California became a state. Laws and policies sought to erase Indigenous peoples altogether. Many of the individuals for whom prominent institutions in California are named participated in or supported this genocide. These policies intended to permanently remove Indigenous communities from their ancestral lands, force their assimilation, and erase their culture and identity. Within the 20 years after gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, 80% of California’s indigenous population was gone.

Nonetheless, the first peoples of California are still present, and their connections to the land and water endure. We recognize that tribal communities and preservation of traditional ways of life depend on secure and permanent territories and the right of self-determination.

We further acknowledge that modern-day somatic approaches and trainings, including Somatic Experiencing, owe a debt of gratitude to the traditional and indigenous healers world-wide, whose practices have been studied, absorbed, and monetized without recognition or payment. This is an enduring reflection of colonization.  Many of us make our living through applying techniques based in these traditions, and are grateful to the ancestors for the opportunity to support ourselves by accessing this wisdom.  We recognize that certain individuals are credited, given respect, and make money from teaching programs they have developed, the lineage of which is connected to ancestors, some  lost to conscious memory, and to living persons who heal people around the world without the same level of acknowledgement or compensation.

As an all-white board, we are committed to a process of humility, awareness and learning about our privilege, and the needs of the community, in order to avoid perpetuation of harm already perpetrated against Black, Indigenous, people of color.  NorCal SEPA is in early formative stages, and our goal is to pass the torch to a diverse board to replace us.  We do not know how these acknowledgements can become more than just words, but we intend this statement to set the initial conditions for a process that will result in concrete efforts.  Our objective is for NorCal SEPA to sustain all members of the Northern California SE community, so that we may in turn support the community at large, which will continue to be so very much in need of this transformative trauma-healing work, due to racial violence, oppression, and natural disasters amplified by climate change.  We want NorCal SEPA to contribute to the dismantling of systems and structures that perpetuate white supremacy and to be a force for liberation. We need your help and participation to accomplish this vision.  

We encourage donations to the following organizations:

https://shellmound.org/donate/ for the protection of the West Berkeley Shellmound, the first human settlement on the shore of San Francisco Bay, established 5,000 years ago by ancestors of today’s Ohlone people.  Today, it is threatened with destruction by a proposed retail and housing development.

https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/ The Sogorea Te' Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.
https://www.firstnations.org/california-tribal-fund/ First Nations Development Institute improves economic conditions for Native Americans through direct financial grants, technical assistance & training, and advocacy & policy.

We also encourage looking up the land you live on and looking into and contributing the peoples of that land:

www.native-land.ca Put in your zipcode