Our history
Since time immemorial.
Our history is a living relationship with Creator and our ancestors, families, cultural knowledge, and the homelands that continue to shape who we are.
What sovereignty means to us
“The living expression of our responsibilities entrusted to us by Creator.”
We strengthen our sovereignty by restoring our relationships with culture, language, ceremonies, traditional foods, ancestral lands, waters, and our human and non-human relatives.
Where we work
Sovereignty begins in relationship with place.
MASF works throughout the traditional homelands of the Mutsun-Awaswas Peoples, including watersheds, mountains, valleys, forests, grasslands, wetlands, coastlines, rivers, village sites, cultural landscapes, sacred places, and ancestral resting places extending from Pigeon Point south along the Pacific Coast to the Salinas River and across the greater Monterey Bay region.
Our responsibility
We carry out cultural stewardship, ecological restoration, education, research, advocacy, cultural resource protection, land-access work, and the restoration of Indigenous management and stewardship.
Culture is living
Continuing sacred responsibilities.
Mutsun-Awaswas people continue to practice and conduct our traditional sacred ceremonies and cultural practices, teach younger generations, care for homelands, protect cultural places, restore language and traditional knowledge, and speak in our own voices.
Learn more about our history
Our Awaswas Family of Santa Cruz
To learn more about our family’s continuity, displacement, survival, return, and relationship with Santa Cruz, read our complete family-history document.
Culture and creation
Our Creation Story.
These two companion works honor relationships among land, ocean, sky, birds, and the teachings carried through our community.
“Our Creation Story” — Artwork by Nathan Cruz Vasquez
A living village
Elders, youth, and adults carrying culture forward.
Community life takes many forms: ceremony, spirituality, teaching, stewardship, gathering, learning, and the everyday work of caring for one another.
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