On the Northern California coast, where the tall trees meet the sea, ancestors of the Coast Yuki people lie buried in an old village site above the bluffs in the U.S. state. Yet despite its cultural significance, the land has been owned by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) until very recently. A deed recorded July 6 transferred 55 hectares (136 acres) of that coastline to Kai Poma, a nonprofit founded by representatives of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, the Ancestral Descendants of Coastal Yuki and Yuki. It is the first time land held by Caltrans has been returned to Indigenous ownership, according to Kai Poma. “We always felt this was ours,” Eddie Knight, chairman of Kai Poma and historic preservation officer for Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, who is of Coastal Yuki descent, told Mongabay. “It may have been owned privately by somebody, but we still knew it was ours.” The property sits just south of the small community of Westport, California, about 187 miles (300 kilometers) north of San Francisco. Visitors know the beach here as Blues Beach, but a major village site there is called K’etim by the Coast Yuki and Pomo lineages. K’etim, according to the tribe’s traditional stories, is “where Seaweed Woman who lived at Mussel Rock met and fell in love with Coyote,” Kai Poma explained in a press release. This origin story “explains the creation of the coastline and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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