Alliance for Felix Cove: A VR Journey Home to Tamal-liwa

U.S. National Parks are Indigenous ancestral homelands and created for the enjoyment of others with marginalized access to Indigenous communities and families. Indigenous communities and families were driven off by gun point or court eviction. The Felix Family, a Coast Miwok/Támal-ko family were the last family to live in their ancestral home, built by their grandpa in the late 1800s. California courts protected the unjust claims of white settler ranchers to the Felix Family home and later these ranchers sold the land to the National Park Service for the creation of Point Reyes National Seashore. For over 60-plus years the family has not had access to their mothers' home. Others were allowed to live in their home even after the National Park was established. Today the 19th wooden home is the only surviving home built by Coast Miwok hands and it stands alone unprotected and vandalized. The Park does not prioritize the protection of the family home. Twice the Park planned to demolish the home ignoring the historical and cultural significance. Vandals could burn the house down. With the trends of climate change and rising seas, this home will be under water in 100 years. The Felix Family descendants requested access to go inside their family home, however the Park requires the family to seek special permits. The floors are rotted, the road to the house is locked as well as the door to the home. Vandals recently pulled the lock off the door and spray painted the shed also built in the 1800s. The home's location is on a cove at Tomales Bay, Tamal-liwa. It's a one mile walk down to the cove. Not everyone can make the walk down and backup to parking lot. Everyone must drive through a leased dairy ranch to reach the parking lot. Many feel uncomfortable. 

In addition to not protecting the house, the Park does not tell the story of the Felix Family. Hikers and kayakers who find the house think it's an abandoned ranch house. Instead the Park celebrates the 160 year history of settler ranching and not the 15,000 year history of Coast Miwok/Támal-ko families living on the Bay in a tended ecosystem of animal, plant, water and land that provided food, clothing, shelter, transportation via tule canoes--all of which was in relationship to Mother Earth. Now visitors find overgrown invasive species like eucalyptus trees and grasses choking out the Native medicine plants like strawberries, hazelnuts, elderberries, mugwort, etc. The Bay is contaminated with fecal bacteria from the commercial dairy and beef cattle from the leased ranches. No one can experience the beauty that once was when our ancestors tended our animal and plant relatives. No one learn about the legacy of resilience of a family that survived colonization to continuously live in their ancestral home as recent as the 1950s. We've asked the Park to partner with us to build a living history center and Indigenous garden at the cove. We've been waiting two years for response.

 Our solution to denied access and threat of destruction by the Park, nature and/or vandals is to build a virtual living history center and Indigenous garden that will allow family, Indigenous communities, visitors and local to experience the cove and home in a state of loving restoration.  Our virtual history center and garden would provide everyone, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, an opportunity to experience the Park as it was managed by our ancestors utilizing ecological knowledge based on tens of thousands of years of observation and a balanced relationship among humans, plants, and animals. Our project, starting with the Felix Family cove, would share what the Park could be if Indigenous science practices were applied, such as cultural burns and restoration of creeks. 

We will create a sense of immediacy and immersion for all audiences – whether they’re standing on the shore at Tomales Bay, wearing an Oculus headset at a cultural center or at home with their laptop or phone. 

• Location-based smartphone app: Those with the ability to visit the Park can download and utilize a smartphone-based augmented reality app that guides visitors to important Coast Miwok sites. Once there, visitors can experience in-depth location-based oral histories and companion imagery that will immerse them in the lives of the original inhabitants of the land. By receiving these underrepresented stories on the sites where they actually occurred, visitors will be presented with the opportunity to reimagine the space, filling in the many gaps and incorrect histories currently presented by the Park. 
• Web portal: Anyone on any device with an internet connection will be able to use Google Street View-like interactions to view our key locations on Tomales Bay in 360°. As viewers click and drag within the 360° sphere they can listen to the audio storytelling and watch 360° and HD/16:9 videos specific to each location. We will provide full accessibility, allowing viewers to read transcripts, listen to interviews and interact with rich companion archival media. The web experience can be used to support a common-core curriculum, enabling teachers to utilize these resources in their classroom.
• Virtual Reality headset experiences: Equipped with Oculus headsets, an Indigenous museum or cultural center can host a VR experience and complementary exhibit. A traveling version of the exhibit can be created for schools and communities area-wide. 

Our target population is Indigenous communities, first with the Felix Family, then the larger community of Coast Miwok/Támal-ko, Pomo and California Indigenous coastal peoples. Our virtual history center and garden would show how we, humans, have and can continue to live sustainably with nature, our mother, and not as an extractive force degrading nature, our mother.

Younger generations did not have the benefit of learning to fish, hunt, harvest shellfish, harvest plant medicines from our family as our elder generations had to leave by eviction or for work and affordable housing. Our ties are still held to our ancestors' ways. The coves are not easily accessible by car and/or hiking. Instead of having to make the drive, 1-1/2 hours from San Francisco, and hike down to the cove, anyone can access and experience the cove through our VR center and garden. 

We are impacted by intergenerational and cultural trauma of being different or of our elder generation made to feel less than because they were "Indian". These feelings intergenerational discomfort are passed down through generations. We were denied the opportunities to learn from our parents and grandparents. We carry the cultural trauma of not knowing the ways of our ancestors. This VR center and garden is an opportunity for creating a place of healing for elder and younger Indigenous generations.

Elder relatives and community members, who cannot physical visit, can experience the house and cove as they remember it or see it in a new light.Some elder Felix Family members do not want to visit because their home is not what they remember. Now younger Felix Family members wonder what new damages they will see from a fallen tree or vandalism. We want to utilize technology to create a safe and healthy site of an ecosystem meant for the younger generations to inherit. By the creation of our VR ancestral homeland they will see abundance of healthy plant relatives like strawberries and hazelnut trees. They will hear voices with laughter as someone harvests teas from the garden or the sound of the waves lapping on the shores as someone paddles a canoe across the Bay, just like our ancestors enjoyed.  

Our targeted audience is our Indigenous relatives first and then the public. The Alliance for Felix Cove is an Indigenous women led grass roots organization that is of the local Indigenous community, including the Felix Family. Our solution addresses the lack of visibility and recognition of our ancestral relationship to our homelands that are now the Park. The waiting game with government bureaucracies would be side-stepped. Our solution would benefit the local Coast Miwok/Támal-ko, Pomo, California Indian, San Francisco Bay Area Indigenous communities. The elders of our communities would see themselves shown as significant knowledge keepers and storytellers of Indigenous resilience. They would hear their stories told from a first person voice. The younger generation does not necessarily know this history or have access to the remaining elders who lived at Tamal-liwa/Tomales Bay. It would provide a means for our Indigenous relatives and communities to access Támal-ko ancestral homelands and experience it as our ancestors meant for them to know. It would be a virtual re-matriation of our ancestral homelands and an evergreen record of the Felix Family home and lifeways. 

Our intention is to share the technology with other Indigenous communities so they can replicate and improve upon our work to create a virtual world, an Indigenous virtual world to tell their stories. The experience of Indigenous people driven off homelands for the creation of national parks and forced to witness preservation and conservation built on the exclusive of Indigenous peoples. This could add to the landback movement, through technology and imagination.

We work within the community such as Felix Family members, Támal-ko descendants, and other organizations such as the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin and enrolled citizens of Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria of Coast Miwok and Pomo peoples. 

We successfully create programming that engages Indigenous community members as speakers, teachers, builders, singers, and audience members. We are inclusive to our local San Francisco Bay Area Native communities, including the people who we share relationship with the Pacific Ocean. At last years tule canoe launch we were joined by Sogorea Té Land Trust representing the villages of Lisjan, The Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin, and our Hawaiian relatives. Our ancestors shared the San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean waters. Our gathering was historic as we were reunited again as relatives and people of the water. We have demonstrated that we are of Indigenous communities. Tamal-liwa: Welcoming Our Relative Home

The Alliance for Felix Cove VR team is composed of Felix Family members, Indigenous community members, Indigenous videographers and artists, 3D videographers, landscape and historical architects, and Indigenous partners such as New Mexico Community Capital which provides resources to technology experts at Google and You Tube. We have a planning team which meets every other month to review existing work and available technologies, develop our approach to the work, re stages and areas of specificity of talents and gifts, and to build a working relationship that is based on Indigenous principles such as respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and relationship. We will begin to break into subgroups as we further refine our approach. We are talking to community members to join our team as we are have further developed the structure of the group and identifying Indigenous artists such as animators to join us. We are in the concept phase and will expand as we progress.

We are applying for assistance with technical, cultural and financial barriers. Our team is composed of experts in their field but we are attempting to build an Indigenous virtual ancestral homeland that requires an even greater core of technology experts like Google. Our cultural barrier is not Indigenous based, it's technology based. We need need help to speak that language that will convey our intention to technology resources such as web3 which we do not know a lot about. We need connections to people who can think of ways to help us create something much more than a website, but a virtual platform that is interdisciplinary, combining Indigenous science, ancestral ways, climate change citizen science, animation, sound that is innovative and is so much more dimensional than a website. We need help with meeting people in technology who know about work that may help us enhance our vision or someone with an even better idea. We do need help with financial partnerships, but we're looking for more than a check. We need partnerships that will help with cost but more importantly link us to people who know about resourcing and connections. Someone who will say you need to meet this person and that person to provide opportunities of influence and leverage.

Theresa Harlan is the daughter of Elizabeth Campigli Harlan. Elizabeth grew up at Felix Cove and in the home with her seven siblings. Theresa's grandmother is Bertha Felix Campigli and the daughter of Joseph Felix, who built the house that is now standing on Park lands. Theresa established the Alliance for Felix Cove to amplify the call to protect, restore and re-matriate the Felix Family home at Point Reyes National Seashore. She is the lead in the Emergence Magazine podcast about the Felix Family and author of an op-ed in the LA Times and Marin Independent Journal. She has taken a stand against ranching at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Our solution would join existing VR projects with Indigenous people. We want our VR project to be artistic and visionary. Experiential in a way that provides meaningful impact to the viewer and listener. Our onsite app would be built for  an Apple phone platform and geo-coded so it would work on site at the cove or as someone drives or bikes through the area and passes specific spots for audio stories. We intend to share the technology so other Indigenous communities can replicate it. 

First Year Goal: 

1) Generate greater awareness of Indigenous Támal-ko history and historical site at Point Reyes National Seashore

This will be accomplished through:

A) Gathering of relatives and community members at Felix Cove to share the project and gather questions 

B) Citizen science projects to identify Indigenous plant medicines and create assets for VR project

Five Year Goal:

1) Achieve re-matriation of Felix Family home to its Indigenous family and community

A) Distribution of short videos for social media posting on the call to re-matriate Felix Cove

B) Produce podcasts from interviews collected for VR project

2) Complete VR project 

A) Secured funding and resources

B) Contracts and payments to artists, designers, contributors

1) Generate greater awareness of Indigenous Támal-ko history and historical site at Point Reyes National Seashore

This will be accomplished through:

A) Gathering of relatives and community members at Felix Cove to share the project and gather questions 

Indicators:

i) An increase of gatherings from one annually to twice a year

ii) An increase of community member awareness and participation

iii) A prioritized list of community based essential messages for VR project

B) Citizen science projects to identify Indigenous plant medicines and create assets for VR project

Indicators:

i) Growing number of Indigenous community volunteers to participate in plant phenology monitoring

ii) Increased data collection for Indigenous plant phenology monitoring

Five Year Goal:

1) Achieve re-matriation of Felix Family home to its Indigenous family and community

A) Distribution of short videos for social media posting on the call to re-matriate Felix Cove

Indicators:

i) Increased number of followers on social media

ii) Increase invitations for speaking engagements and panel presentations

B) Produce podcasts from interviews collected for VR project

2) Complete VR project with secured resources and funding

A) Secured funding and resources

Indicators:

i) Contracts and payments to artists, designers, contributors

Our theory of change is to create a narrative shift built from telling our own story of Indigenous history and cultural ways at Point Reyes National Seashore. Our VR project will pull together ideas and artistic visions of new ways to tell the story. We will catch attention and bring greater awareness in the Indigenous communities and San Francisco Bay Area communities. Our message will be amplified to push the Park to do the right thing by the Felix Family and Indigenous communities in California. The Park will engage and partner with the Alliance for Felix Cove to protect, restore and re-matriate the Támal-ko Felix Family home to its rightful place in history.

We intend to blend traditional ecological knowledge, such as plant medicine, basketweaving, tule canoe building with the technologies of augmented reality, virtual reality, and audio podcast segments. This will be blended in different ways to serve different audiences with differing interests in a variety of locations - site-specific at Point Reyes (AR), Indigenous museum and cultural center (VR headsets), for example, or across the country (VR or internet). Overall, this innovative blend of generational storytelling, visual re-creation and easy-to-use technology affords an inclusive, engaging experience of Indigenous history and Indigenous science share ways we can live sustainable in this climate change era.

The Alliance for Felix Cove established principles of a decolonized mind and heart set.

The values that guide our work with each other and community

Re-Indigenize 

• Following the leadership of indigenous people whose lands we occupy

• Centering Indigenous ways of knowing & being 

• Integrating wisdom from the body, spirit/source and bringing your full self

Love

• Speak your truth and honor the truth of others.  Honor multiple ways of knowing.

• Empathize – self and others (no blaming/shaming/attacking)

• Experience discomfort, expect and accept non-closure

Learning 

• Being open to what I do not know and what I thought I knew

• Try-on new ways of seeing, lean into complexity; both/and thinking 

• Trust intent, care for impact

Collectivism 

• Shifting from the I to the we, from individualism to collectivism

• WAIT (Why Am I Talking) share space/take space. 

• Embrace the process. Participate by staying engaged and welcome change and transformation.

Gratitude (from Robin Wall Kimmerer)

• Gratitude is founded on the deep knowing that our very existence relies on the gifts of beings who can in fact photosynthesize. 

• Gratitude propels the recognition of the personhood of all beings and challenges the fallacy of human exceptionalism—the idea that we are somehow better, more deserving of the wealth and services of the Earth than other species

Interconnection 

• You are the other me

• Be open to other ways of being and move at the speed of trust

• Decentering humans and honoring the lives of all other beings (water, trees, birds, ect.)

Integrity 

• Confidentiality – share the learning not the story/person.  Honor the gifts you receive

• Stand in our own authentic power 

• Reflecting instead of reacting

We are an Indigenous-based and led grass roots organization that focuses on three essentials:;

Advocacy: Building an effective grassroots advocacy campaign to re-matriate the Felix Family home and ancestral ways

Narrative Change and Education: Increase Indigenous communities' and the public's awareness of the history of Támal-ko people at Point Reyes National Seashore and engage with partners such as the National Park to increase tell the story accurately

Community Building: Create opportunities and spaces for Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members to engage and build support for re-Indigenizing Point Reyes National Seashore

We are working with a fund raising and capacity building firm, Emergence LLC, to build a diversified funding stream for organizational growth and capacity. We currently have foundation grants, individual donors, and monthly contributors. We are looking at raising investment capital through opportunities offered from New Mexico Community Capital.

We have been successful securing foundation grants from Kalliopeia Foundation and local foundations like The Cultural Conservancy, Justice Outside, and the Seventh Generation Foundation. We have a donor fund campaign that is bringing in increased funding from individuals. Our largest funder is Kalliopeia Foundation with funding of  nearly $170,000 over two years.