A 12-Foot Ohlone Sculpture and a Basket-Weaving Garden: Fruitvale's Peralta Hacienda Unveils 'Indigenous Voices'

Just in time for Indigenous Peoples' Day on Monday, a Fruitvale park has finished remaking itself around the people who lived on its land long before anyone else. Peralta Hacienda Historical Park held a grand opening on Saturday for "Indigenous Voices," a permanent exhibition that runs across the whole six-acre site and centers the history and present-day life of the Ohlone people of the East Bay.

What's there

The centerpiece sits in the creek area: a 12-foot sculpture called SII, the Chochenyo word for water, designed by Walter Hood of Oakland's Hood Design Studio with input from Ohlone leaders, Oakland North reported. Corrina Gould, spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan, wrote a poem for the piece about language and belonging.

Rumsen Ohlone artist and basket weaver Linda Yamane created the Kaknú Story Path, a set of outdoor panels telling the story of a peregrine falcon's battle with an underworld figure. She also helped launch an Ohlone Basketry Garden, planted with help from teens in the park's Water Keepers program, that grows willow, sedge and bracken fern, the plants used to weave baskets. "There can be no baskets without the plants," Yamane says on the park's website.

Other pieces include a 100-foot mural bench by EastSide Arts Alliance artists that reproduces weavings and textiles Fruitvale residents brought from their own cultures, from Mayan Mam and Mien to Khmer and Kente cloth; a mosaic by Susanne Takehara based on Yamane's beaded ear ornaments; a graphic novel by Roberto Gonzalez about Native workers on the Peralta rancho; and a short film by Rick Tejada-Flores, "Who Did the Work?", about the people who built and kept up the ranch.

Why it took years

The park says the exhibition grew out of a three-year project shaped by Ohlone artists, historians and community members, while curator Holly Alonso told Oakland North she had been putting it together for five years. Tejada-Flores told the outlet he made sure Ohlone people reviewed his scripts before moving forward.

The land was once the center of the Peraltas' 45,000-acre cattle ranch, granted by the Spanish governor, but Native people had lived there for 15,000 years before the family arrived, according to the park.

How to go

The park is at 2465 34th Ave. in Oakland. The outdoor exhibition is open from sunrise to sunset, and the Peralta House Museum, which has a new permanent gallery on Ohlone history and Ohlone games for all ages, is open noon to 4 p.m. on weekdays. The grand opening was free; check the park's website for any holiday hours before you go.