For the past 20 years, the American Indian Cultural Center, a nonprofit that fosters Indigenous community and culture in San Francisco, has collaborated with City Hall to plan the annual Native American Heritage Night event in November.
But on Sept. 22, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office told the cultural center that last year was it. The cultural center will no longer lead the celebrations, a mayoral staffer told the group. Instead, the event will be planned by a dedicated committee and “co-facilitated by representatives from the Mayor’s Office and City staff.”
“The City envisions a long-term framework in which community-based organizations take the lead in organizing these events,” Moisés Garcia, the mayor’s community liaison, wrote in an email to April McGill, the executive director of the American Indian Cultural Center.
“We’ve identified a new partner,” Garcia wrote, adding that the cultural center “is welcome to join the planning meeting. The first meeting will be scheduled for next week.” The mayor’s office declined to identify the new partner.
McGill was furious. “This has always been an event led for us by us, with the full support and recognition of every previous mayor’s office,” she wrote back to Garcia on Sept. 25.
“The top-down restructuring of this celebration, without input from the American Indian community, undermines our autonomy and feels like an erasure of Native leadership in our own cultural affairs,” McGill continued.
“This is not reflective of a ‘shared leadership model’; rather, it suggests a unilateral decision-making process that excludes the very community the event is meant to honor,” she said.
She made the same point to city supervisors at a Sept. 30 meeting, questioning why they bothered to open their meetings with recognition of Native American tribes: “Maybe you all should just stop doing the land acknowledgments, because it’s useless.”
‘The runaround’
Lurie’s office did not respond to multiple questions about why it will no longer partner with the American Indian Cultural Center.
In the email to the cultural center, the mayoral staffer said the city needs a nonprofit to act as the “fiscal lead” for the event. The center did not qualify because it is “fiscally sponsored” — a common status for smaller groups that use another nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status to receive tax-exempt donations and benefits.
But that appears to be incorrect. The cultural center said it is its own 501(c)(3), and the Internal Revenue Service wrote the same in a February letter.
The heritage night is, like others hosted by City Hall, meant to celebrate a community. Last November, powwow dancers moved to the drums and “local heroes” from the city’s indigenous community won awards.
Afterward, attendees gathered in a City Hall antechamber to socialize over frybread and Indian tacos.
In past years, the planning for the Native American Heritage Night event usually began in spring, McGill said, whenever the cultural center’s members ran into the mayor’s team at an event.
“Hey, let’s get a date for Heritage Month,” they would say, McGill explained. “Oh, yeah, we need to start planning.”
But this year, no chance run-in occurred. McGill only met with Lurie once, in her capacity as the arts and culture chair of the American Indian Cultural District, a separate Indigenous organization. That meeting was to discuss the police presence at 16th and Mission.
So, on Aug. 19, McGill reached out to Garcia at the mayor’s office to set a date; she got an email with a $597.80 bill the cultural center owed from last year’s event instead, which she then paid. McGill followed up about setting a date on Sept. 12, but got no response.
“It was then I started to feel like, ‘Okay, now we’re just getting the runaround,’” McGill said.
Then, after McGill emailed again on Sept. 22, Garcia informed the cultural center that they would no longer lead the event, but that they could come to the first planning meeting next week.
“How disrespectful is that?” McGill told Mission Local. “To say, ‘Oh, we’re having a planning meeting about your community, but you were never invited. But oh, yeah, by the way, you can come if you want.’”
Ultimately, McGill said, many in the Native community feel that the mayor simply does not care about engaging with them.
“Our voices keep getting pushed to the side. But when a YouTuber like IShowSpeed shows up to City Hall, suddenly the mayor’s got all the energy in the world to say what up, be front row, hype it up, cameras all on, make sure he’s in the spotlight,” T.K. Halsey, a Native youth, said during public comment at a recent board meeting, referencing the Sept. 25 social media video filmed by Lurie and the popular YouTuber.
“Where’s that same energy for the Indigenous people who built the very grounds the city stands on?” Halsey asked.
Even without City Hall’s support, the cultural center still plans to host a Native Heritage event. It’s already sent out the nomination form for “local heroes” to honor and is searching for a new location.
“We’re still going to do it with or without the mayor, because it’s not his celebration,” McGill said. “It’s not about him. It’s about our people and celebrating our existence, our resiliency.”
Another entry in the file of how the City treats our neighborhood like dirt.
“Our voices keep getting pushed to the side. But when a YouTuber like IShowSpeed shows up to City Hall, suddenly the mayor’s got all the energy in the world to say what up, be front row, hype it up, cameras all on, make sure he’s in the spotlight,”
This is the problem. Lurie is London Breed in drag.
I’ve been a Nor Cal resident for 48 years now and my grandson is a tribal member of the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians.
The name McGill has been around forever and they have a good Native reputation.
Why would they push her out??
To replace her with a “White male” who has some flashy degree who is out of touch with REAL INDIANS?? Or “politically correct” out of touch with REAL Native Americans??
Indigenous People’s Day is a day to honor so MANY things but one of the most important one’s is to HONOR OUR ELDERS and HONOR OUR VETERANS.
Will this new person know about the true culture of Native people? The true struggles of Native people?
And WHY an INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S DAY is SO VERY IMPORTANT TO YOUNGSTERS??
Pretty odd, seems like the mayor could have left this alone?
FINALLY *** WE may have some true original native peoples recognized and in partnership with this important city for both parties.
Shared leadership requires inclusion and accountability.
Many Native community members have long been excluded from participation by the same organization now claiming erasure. Leadership that practices gatekeeping and retaliation cannot credibly speak for the broader community. City officials choosing a more inclusive planning model should not be misrepresented as silencing
Native voices.
Sounds like an erasure to me. And maybe a lot of lost votes!
Livable City produces Sunday Streets, and partners with AICC for the Sunday Streets event on Valencia. April and AICC are great partners: reliable, dedicated, communicative, transparent, and effective. They are definitely one of our favorite partners in the whole city. We urge the Mayor to restore AICC’s position and to work with AICC to resolve whatever the issue is about.
Typical Lurie. Totally top down. SF’s T***p.
I’m withholding judgement until we hear more about the replacement org – I’ve heard some rumblings and infighting from the local Indigenous groups, and I’m wondering if that’s part of it. The Mayor has been cleaning house in a lot of ways that seem random until the audits come back.
> “We’ve identified a new partner,” Garcia wrote, adding that the cultural center “is welcome to join the planning meeting. The first meeting will be scheduled for next week.” The mayor’s office declined to identify the new partner
If the mayor’s office says they’re partnering with another group for the event, who is this other group? That piece of information would probably shine some light on why the change was made. While the mayor’s office didn’t mention it in the email to the AICC, perhaps a JOURNALIST could pose that question directly and either insist on a response or an explanation as to why the new group is being kept secret.
Well, maybe actual people in the community doing the work will be recognized for a change- instead of McGill’s family? And if the AICC had misspent over a million dollars, maybe they would still be leading it?
You gotta be fucking kidding me this is what we are talking about the wasteful spending in this city with this nonprofit shit
Who asked you to talk about it if you have nothing to say?
The heritage night is still happening, no?
I can’t imagine the typical attendee of this event cares about this inside baseball.
It’s a matter of basic principle – you either have those or you do not.