Betti Ono Foundation Artist in Residence Program in collaboration with Lisjan Nation, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, and Inés Ixierda

Iweš-‘Iweš Kečkeyma : One Hundred Women

September 18 - October 13, 2025 Faultline Gallery, Oakland / Huchiun

A Legacy of Indigenous Resistance and Resilience

When Spanish colonizers arrived in the land now called the San Francisco Bay Area, they forced thousands of Indigenous* people into coerced labor and brutal assimilation at Catholic Missions.

Among the first taken were Indigenous women and girls—stolen from their families, stripped of their freedom, and forced into a system that sought to erase them. But their names were not lost.

They would not be forgotten.

Centuries later, the living descendants of these ancestors, alongside a group of urban Indigenous people learned about records which included the original names of the women and girls that had first been taken into the Bay Area missions.

Working with Lisjan Nation, whose ancestors were held at Mission Dolores and Mission San Jose, a vision was born: to create 100 ribbon skirts in honor of each of the first 100 women that were stolen.

This Art is an Ancestral Reckoning

Iweš-‘iweš kečkeyma : One Hundred Women

A legacy of Indigenous Resistance and Resilience

9/18/25-10/13/25

Faultline Gallery 3908 Macarthur Blvd. Oakland / Huchiun

One Hundred Skirts for One Hundred Women and Girls

  • For Pulate

  • For Juana Maria Lorenza

  • For Felipe

  • For Tigan

  • For Maria Martina

  • For Gregoria

  • For Clara

  • For Paszem

  • For Equaman

  • For Queyeme

  • For Xiliatte

  • For Puctzim

  • For Maria Gertrudis

  • For Gilpae

  • Sage

Learn More

* Terminology Note: In this project we use the term Indigenous and Native to encompass the many ways the original people of the Bay Area have been named through different colonial eras.  We also refer to Ohlone people, another general category encompassing many different tribes in the wider Bay Area and Lisjan Nation, a confederation that includes Ohlone lineages and ancestral territory includes the East Bay Area.

Collaborators

Lisjan Nation

The Lisjan are a confederation made up of the seven nations that were enslaved at Mission San Jose in Fremont, CA and Mission Dolores in San Francisco, CA: Chochenyo (Ohlone), Karkin (Ohlone), Bay Miwok, Plains Miwok, Delta Yokut and Patwin people.


Sogorea Te’ Land Trust

An intertribal urban Indigenous women led land trust facilitating the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people the San Francisco East Bay.

Betti Ono Foundation

Black and survivor led Oakland based arts organization building creative cultural power in the Bay Area through a variety of initiatives.

Inés Ixierda

Artist in Residence with Betti Ono Foundation, Curator and Cultural Worker, Creative Director