2023 Year In Review Newsletter
As we look back on the year, we have so much to celebrate and share! Please enjoy this slideshow of photo highlights from 2023.
AMLT hosted a sussu-Tuuhis (work and experience day) for Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve in March, 2023. The theme of the day was Indigenous foods at Elkhorn Slough.
AMLT Native Steward Esak Ordonez spoke with the group at the Elkhorn Slough sussu-Tuuhis about his experiences doing native oyster restoration work in collaboration with Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve staff.
Participants at the Elkhorn Slough sussu-Tuuhis enjoyed a native foods banquet where they tasted native oysters, abalone, sand dabs, and other coastal Indigenous foods.
AMLT Native Plant Program Volunteer Team members and staff take a break during a field trip to the dune system on Año Nuevo Point, April 2023.
Blooming beds of tidy tips (Layia platyglossa), common phacelia (Phacelia distans), Choris’ popcornflower (Plagiobothrys chorisianus var. chorisianus), western thistle (Cirsium occidentale), saapah (red maids, Calandrinia menziesii), and Indian thistle (Cirsium brevistylum) at Cascade Ranch, May 2023.
Amah Mutsun Tribe Member Alexii Sigona (bottom center) and AMLT Native Steward Esak Ordoñez (bottom right) assist State Parks crews with Douglas fir pile burning at Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve, April 2023.
On June 4, 2023, AMLT participated in a prescribed burn to benefit culturally significant species at the Nyland Property in Mutsun territory, where AMLT holds a conservation easement. This burn was part of the inaugural Central Coast Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX). Tribal members offered songs and lit the fire in the ceremonial way.
On June 4, 2023, AMLT participated in a prescribed burn to benefit culturally significant species at the Nyland Property in Mutsun territory, where AMLT holds a conservation easement. This burn was part of the inaugural Central Coast Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX). Tribal members offered songs and lit the fire in the ceremonial way.
On June 4, 2023, AMLT participated in a prescribed burn to benefit culturally significant species at the Nyland Property in Mutsun territory, where AMLT holds a conservation easement. This burn was part of the inaugural Central Coast Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX). Tribal members offered songs and lit the fire in the ceremonial way.
AMLT Native Steward Interns visit Pie Ranch Amah Mutsun Native Plant Garden.
AMLT Native Steward Interns pose behind a newly installed park bench at Seacliff State Beach.
UC Santa Cruz Arboretum Director of the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program, Rick Flores, leads AMLT Native Steward Interns on an ethnobotany walk.
Tribal member and AMLT plant propagation steward Josh Higuera-Hood oversees an AMLT Native Steward Intern in examining native seeds through a microscope.
AMLT Native Steward Interns and AMLT Native Steward Esak Ordonez visit Rocks Ranch in San Benito County, CA.
The AMLT Tribal Home was the site of the 2023 AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp
This year’s theme for the AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp was ‘Central California Coast Birds’. Campers worked in teams to color their bird symbol on a flag and to learn about each bird’s key characteristics, cultural significance and Mutsun names.
Campers at the AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp enjoyed a field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where they used Mutsun-focused field guides to learn about tide-pool ecology, marine mammals, plankton, and more.
The AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp included a Native Foods dinner, with delicious tastings of chinquapin, elderberry, acorn soup, rabbit stew, seaweed, wild boar, and elderberry hazelnut bars that the kids made from scratch.
AMLT Staff Member and Tribal Member Steven Pratt teaches campers at the AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp about geology, archaeology, and cultural resources.
Campers at the 2023 Amah Mutsun Youth Stewardship Camp learning to make tule boats.
Camper at the AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp learning to make a Mutsun necklace.
AMLT Youth Stewardship Summer Camp campers proudly displaying some of their artwork.
AMLT hosted a fishing trip on the Monterey Bay for Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members in August 2023. The 30 tribal participants who attended this sussu-Tuuhis (work and experience day) caught plentiful fish to take home to their families and learned about the work of AMLT’s Coastal and Ocean Stewardship program.
AMLT hosted a fishing trip on the Monterey Bay for Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members in August 2023. The 30 tribal participants who attended this sussu-Tuuhis (work and experience day) caught plentiful fish to take home to their families and learned about the work of AMLT’s Coastal and Ocean Stewardship program.
AMLT hosted a fishing trip on the Monterey Bay for Amah Mutsun Tribal Band members in August 2023. The 30 tribal participants who attended this sussu-Tuuhis (work and experience day) caught plentiful fish to take home to their families and learned about the work of AMLT’s Coastal and Ocean Stewardship program.
Tribal members Athena Hernandez (AMLT General Counsel) and Alexii Sigona (Chair of the AMLT Lands Committee) meet with Nancy Vail from Pie Ranch to discuss shared conservation projects. Photo credit Athena Hernandez.
AMLT Native Plant Program Volunteer Team members remove a huge pile of exotic invasive bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) at Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve, August 2023.
Amah Mutsun Land Trust, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, and the Trust for Public Land signed a new partnership agreement on October 11, 2023 in front of the California State Capitola. The partnership agreement formalizes a strategic relationship between the signatories, with the intention to bring together their collective strengths, experience, history, and teachings in order to advance land conservation and Indigenous stewardship within Mustun and Awaswas territories.
Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and AMLT Board President, and Guillermo Rodriguez, California State Director for the Trust for Public Land, hold the newly signed partnership agreement on October 11, 2023.
Over 40 members of the AMLT and AMTB communities gathered in November 2023 for a strategic planning retreat. Photo credit Jolene Estimo.
Tribal Engagement Community Leaders, Hannah Moreno and Esak Ordonez adding 6 different group ideas to the master outline at the AMT strategic planning retreat in November. Photo credit Jolene Estimo.
“Weed ‘Em Out” event volunteers help remove exotic invasive blue gum eucalyptus seedlings and saplings along the riparian corridor at Cascade Creek – organized collaboratively by Pie Ranch and AMLT, November 2023.
AMLT Native Plant Program Volunteer Team members plant and tend shrubs and herbs in the remnants of an historic pond / swimming pool repurposed as nursery space at Cascade Ranch, November 2023.
AMLT staff, MAH staff, and AMLT volunteers begin planting the new native garden in the courtyard at the Museum of Art and History at Santa Cruz, December 2023.
