SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ohlone people and others rejoiced Wednesday over the return of sacred Native land dating back thousands of years, saying the move rights a historic wrong and restores the people who were first on land now called Berkeley, California, to their rightful place in history.
The 2.2-acre (0.89-hectare) parking lot is the only undeveloped portion of the shellmound in West Berkeley, where ancestors of today’s Ohlone people established the first human settlement on the shores of the San Francisco Bay 5,700 years ago.