Before the Emeryville shoreline was a shopping center and commercial area, it was the site of a sacred burial site belonging to the Ohlone people, natives of the San Francisco Bay Area.

There were once more than 425 of these shellmounds across the Bay Area. And today, native people are still working to protect what’s left of them. Bay Curious explores the history of these shellmounds, and what happened to them.

Episode transcript

This episode of Bay Curious originally aired Nov. 8, 2018. Since then, the California Court of Appeals ruled that a housing development could move forward on the West Berkeley Shellmound site, despite arguments by the city of Berkeley and the Confederated Villages of Lisjan. Berkeley appealed the ruling, but the State Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

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