The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) In the early decades of California’s statehood, the relationship between the state and California Native Americans was fraught with violence, exploitation, dispossession, and the attempted destruction of tribal communities. In 1850, California passed a law called the “Act for the Government and Protection of Indians,” which facilitated removing California Native Americans from their traditional lands, separating children and adults from their families, languages, and culture, and creating a system of indentured servitude as punishment for minor crimes such as loitering.

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(b) Between the years 1850 and 1859, California Governors called for private and militia campaigns against Native American peoples in the state. In his 1851 State of the State Address, California’s first Governor declared “[t]hat a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.” Subsequently, the state authorized $1,290,000 in 1850’s dollars to subsidize these militia campaigns.

(c) Despite these wrongs, California Native Americans resisted, survived, and carried on cultural and linguistic traditions defying all odds.

(d) On June 18, 2019, the Governor of the State of California signed Executive Order N-15-19 formally apologizing to California’s Native Americans for historical mistreatment, violence, and neglect; and acknowledged and affirmed that, while we cannot undo these wrongs, we can work together to improve the lives of California Native American peoples.

(e) On September 25, 2020, the Governor of the State of California issued a Statement of Administration Policy (hereinafter “policy”) which encouraged every state agency, department, board, and commission to seek opportunities to provide access and inclusion of ancestral lands to Native American peoples.

(f) The purpose of this policy is to support tribal self-determination and self-government, and reduce fractionation of tribal trust lands, among others things.

(g) The actions associated with this policy include, but are not limited to, working cooperatively with California tribes that have ancestral territory within state-owned lands, assist them in acquiring those lands by prioritizing tribal purchase or transfer, and adopting preferential policies and practices for California tribes to access natural lands owned by the state that are located within ancestral lands, including coordinating with local governments to zone natural land in excess of state needs in a way that is conducive to tribal access and use.

(h) The Legislature acknowledges that structural barriers to access and acquisition of ancestral lands have been prevalent at all levels of government, and promoting equity on both the state and local levels is of utmost importance.

(Added by Stats. 2021, Ch. 291, Sec. 1. (SB 712) Effective January 1, 2022.)