From the Spanish to Trump: Who Controls the Land of the Ohlone?

On a clear day, the wind moves in from the Pacific, sweeping through the Presidio of San Francisco, over the hills, across the old parade grounds, down the walking paths where runners and tourists wander. The salubrious air, the 140-year-old stands of pine, redwood and cypress, and the scent of the eucalyptus are among the attraction of this business and residential development nestled in a park on 1500 acres of San Francisco’s most valuable land.

Before the roads, before the multi million dollar homes, before the barracks, before the generals and the wars, the land belonged to the Ohlone. There were no maps dividing it into parks and residential districts. No politicians carving it into patronage. No agencies managing the view.

The ancestors of the Muwekma Ohlone lived here, speaking a language now nearly extinct. The land was a place of bow hunting, spear fishing, and ceremony.

Then came the Spanish. Then the Mexicans. Then the Americans. Each claiming it.  El Presidio Real de San Francisco. Then, simply, the Presidio. A garrison watching over the Golden Gate.

Presidio of San Francisco, U.S. 101 & I-480, San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Archives, Public Domain.

A Request to Trump

In February 2025, the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe submitted a formal request to President Donald J. Trump, urging him to return the Presidio to tribal stewardship. The timing was no accident. Trump had just signed an executive order to dissolve the Presidio Trust, the federal agency that had managed the site since 1996, a decision that sent some of San Francisco’s political elite into a panic.

To Trump, the trust that manages the Presidio was wasteful bureaucracy—an outdated pet project of Nancy Pelosi and the late Dianne Feinstein, two women who had shaped the city’s politics for decades. To the Muwekma Ohlone, it was an obstacle. A roadblock on land that was once theirs, a site they had tried to reclaim when the US military decommissioned the Presidio in 1992.

Back then, the Tribe filed a Right of First Refusal, a legal mechanism that should have given them a claim to the land. It was denied.

Instead, Congress created the Presidio Trust, a federally managed entity that would redevelop the former military base into a park, commercial district, and residential hub.

The Trust made money leasing out its 700 buildings and charging rent to businesses and wealthy residents who wanted a piece of San Francisco’s most scenic real estate.

It also became a patronage machine. Pelosi. Feinstein. Zoe Lofgren. They appointed donors, allies, and friends to the Trust’s board, raising accusations that it had become another extension of San Francisco’s elite political class, exclusively Democrat.

Trump, who has ordered the trust dissolved, is, of course, Republican.

For the Muwekma Ohlone, the problem went deeper. Their history had been written out of federal records, their tribal status erased in the early 20th century, when  anthropologist Alfred Kroeber declared them “extinct.” It was not true. They  existed. Their people still lived here. In the eyes of the government, they had vanished.

For decades, they fought to regain federal recognition. They petitioned the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1989. They were denied in 2002. They could not own tribal land. They could not govern themselves. They were invisible in the eyes of the law.

A Tribe Without Land

The Presidio was one of the last places where their ancestors had once lived, hunted, and built villages. If the federal government was dismantling the Presidio Trust, the Tribe saw an opening.

“The Presidio is more than just land—it is a connection to our ancestors, our traditions, and our rightful place in this region,” Charlene Nijmeh, the chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, said.

But San Francisco’s power brokers do not want to lose control of the Presidio – not to Trump and not to the Muwekma Ohlone.

Charlene Nijmeh, Image courtesy of Muwekma Ohlone Tribe

The San Francisco delegation in Congress had spent years securing federal funding for the Trust despite its claim of financial independence.

In 2023, Pelosi helped get $200 million from US taxpayers through the Inflation Reduction Act to fund maintenance and infrastructure projects in the Presidio. If the Trust was dismantled, that money might disappear. And the contracts and patronage jobs  would disappear.

Pelosi had not always opposed the Muwekma Ohlone. In the past, she supported their federal recognition bid – provided it was limited recognition .

She, Feinstein, and Lofgren had fought tribal claims to the Presidio in the 1990s, fearing the land might be used for casino development, a deep concern since Bay Area politicians get enormous donations from tribes outside the Bay Area.

Across California, tribal casino operators have built fortunes. The Graton Rancheria, owners of Graton Resort & Casino, have poured nearly $6 million into political campaigns, most landing in Democratic coffers. The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, which runs Cache Creek Casino, has also spent millions. In the Inland Empire, the Pechanga, Morongo, and Agua Caliente tribes dominate the gaming landscape. Their casinos glitter in the desert, and their donations stack up in Sacramento and Washington – to Democrats.

And chief among the beneficiaries are Pelosi and Lofgren – out of San Francisco. They keep their local tribe in lockdown while taking millions from gaming tribes outside their districts.

These California gaming tribes have spent tens of millions to ensure San Francisco has no casinos. A casino in the Presidio, or anywhere in the city, could devastate their casino businesses – much of which comes from Bay Area gamblers.

The Muwekma Tribe has denied any interest in gaming operations, calling it a distraction from their actual fight: sovereignty. They want the same soveignity that the other recognized tribes have. Not one with restrictions tailor made to protect  gaming donations flowing to Democrats.

If the Ohlone were not in San. Francisco but in some region far from the Presidio, far from the Bay, the liberal, repatriation-friendly, #landback Democrats would be fighting for the Ohlone – standing shoulder to shoulder, calling upon all Democrats to support this noble cause of giving the Muwekma back its federal recognition.

Ownership in Limbo

Legally, the Presidio is still federal land. Trump’s order to dissolve the Presidio Trust does not automatically return the land to the Muwekma Ohlone, nor does it hand control to the National Park Service (NPS).

If Congress agrees to dissolve the Trust, the federal government must decide who takes over. It could go to the Park Service, keeping it under federal management. It could be privatized, opening the door for commercial development. The fear of the moment is that somehow, someway, the land could end up with a Republican developer.

Or, for the first time in over 200 years, it could be returned to its original stewards.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe wants Congress to pass a bill that would transfer the land into tribal trust, which would legally restore their claim while allowing them to co-manage the site with the federal government.

The precedent exists. In 1980, Congress returned Blue Lake lands to the Taos Pueblo Tribe in New Mexico. The federal government returned lands to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts in 2015. The Muwekma Ohlone argues that the Presidio is no different.

Aerial view of the Presidio parade grounds and 6th Army Headquarters Building, San Francisco, California. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Archives, Public Domain.

The Presidio, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, is part of the California Coast Ranges, formed 150 million years ago along the Pacific and North American Plates. The Ohlone people inhabited the land for at least 10,000 years before Spanish colonization.

Their decline began with the Spanish mission system, which forcibly brought them Christianity and fatally smallpox and measles. The Mexicans left them exploited as laborers on ranchos. The Americans brought further displacement during the Gold Rush, with state-sponsored violence against Indigenous peoples hunting them to murder and take children from their families. By the late 19th century, the Ohlone was a fraction of its original size; their traditional life nearly eradicated.

Despite these atrocities, the Ohlone people persist, hoping to reclaim their cultural heritage, preserve their language, and gain federal recognition as a tribe – something Pelosi and Lofgren have successfully blocked.

Now Trump comes and, by executive order, suddenly threatens to take Pelosi’s Presidio land away.

A Land in Waiting

Spanish soldiers built its first walls, thinking they would last forever.  The US Army held it for 150 years.  Through war, colonization, and erasure. Through the Spanish, the Mexicans, and the American military and then a politically controlled Trust,  with $3 million residences and business leased at twice the national average per square foot, along with a park – on land as valuable as land anywhere on earth.

After  32 years the trust has been dissolved or will be dissolved. For more than 200 years the Ohlone was nearly dissolved. Anyone who has been disenfranchised, who fought to reclaim land  or wandered homeless, as refugees or suffered the burning of a genocide will understand.

The wind moves in from the Pacific, sweeping over the hills. The fog lifts across the parade grounds. Down the walking paths, runners and tourists wander, oblivious to the history of the land.

Now, the question is who will claim it next.