Charlene Nijmeh, the Tribal Chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, is calling on President Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk to investigate the true financial position and contracting practices of the Presidio Trust and its ties to former Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
“If the Presidio Trust is truly generating an operating profit, as it claims, then why did Rep. Pelosi pour $200 million into it as part of the Inflation Reduction Act,” postulates Chairwoman Nijmeh. “If the Presidio Trust isn’t paying for its own capital budget, where are all those operating profits flowing? The obvious solution is to stop the bleed of financial government funds and return the land to the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.”
In recent weeks, the Tribe has submitted a formal presidential request that the Administration transfer title of the lands back to the Tribe – which has never ceded or surrendered aboriginal title to the site. The move would eliminate federal taxpayer spending and constitute one of the most significant rematriations of land in U.S. history.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe was previously federally recognized as the Verona Band of Alameda County, was never terminated by an act of Congress, and a federal district court judge in the Northern District of California affirmed that the Tribe has retained its sovereign immunity despite not being on the BIA’s list of officially recognized Tribes.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs erred when it wrongly omitted the Tribe from the official list of recognized Tribes when that list was first drafted in 1978. The Tribe has struggled for more than 45-years to affirm its federal status, petitioning the Congress for legislative recognition and petitioning the Administration for corrective action.
In March of 2024, then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared his intention to help the Tribe affirm its federal status.
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