niṡek huṡwej: our wish
The Wishes We Inherit
Our wishes, prayers, and dreams are shaped, in part, by what we believe is possible.
And what feels possible is shaped by what came before us: by what our Ancestors experienced, what they survived, what they were able to hold on to, and what circumstances allowed them to imagine for those who would come next.
For the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe, the horizon of possibility has changed drastically across generations.
There were Tribal Elders for whom survival itself required adaptation, and for whom what had been lost felt firmly located in the past. The closest analogy may be living in the aftermath of a devastating flood or fire – not able to look back at the disaster from a safe distance, but still living within the damage it left behind, tending to what remained, and adapting to the conditions it created.
For generations of Nisenan People, this was the lived reality. The devastation of the gold rush was not a single historical event followed by recovery. Its impacts continued through violence, displacement, dispossession, assimilationist policies, systematic erasure, the illegal termination of the Nevada City Rancheria in 1964, and the ongoing realities of federal non-recognition.
Within that history, hope and wishes can be complicated. Even imagining something different could carry a risk.
From the present, there are limits to the words available to capture the pain and horrors experienced by Nisenan Ancestors, or the depth of historical trauma their descendants have continued to navigate. Still, beginning to understand and unwind those impacts is part of navigating Tribal Wellness today – alongside creating the conditions in which hope and possibility can begin to take root again.
Over time, the generation that followed began to create a little more space for possibility, gently pushing against the edges of what had been accepted and what could be imagined – to wonder if what had been accepted as gone might not be gone forever, if what had lost could be revitalized, if some relationships could be restored, and some hopes for the future reclaimed.
And slowly, the conditions for hopes and wishes began to change.
Over the past few years, some of those possibilities began to take form for the Tribe. Wishes that once felt distant became tangible, creating new circumstances from which to imagine what might come next.
Each step forward has expanded the horizon a little further – not only changing what was tangibly possible, but changing what felt possible to hope for into the future.
“In navigating Wellness today, we have to have hope. We have to wish for a better future.
Having hope at all today is more than my mom’s generation had. They were so afraid to hope. So we’re making progress.”
Tribal Spokesperson Shelly Covert
And now, another shift is taking place. There is a growing willingness within the Tribe to dare to wish for more – because some of the wishes previous generations could only quietly wonder about are becoming real.
That evolution is the heart of this year’s Nisenan Heritage Day theme: niṡek huṡwej – our wish.
Wishes Taking Form
Over the past several years, the pace at which those wishes have moved from possibility into reality has been extraordinary.
One of the most profound examples is the rematriation of Yulića, 237 acres of Nisenan Ancestral Homelands returned to the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe.
The Homeland Return of Yulića in and of itself was an enormous wish made manifest for the Tribe. But it has also created the conditions for entirely new hopes, dreams, wishes, ponderings, and possibilities to emerge.
On the Land, Cultural connection deepens through presence and relationship. Knowledge is practiced rather than remembered or held at a distance. Tribal Members gather, reconnect, learn, teach, care for Place, and imagine what it means for future generations of Nisenan People to have access to their Ancestral Homelands in an unobstructed way.
Land Return makes space for Tribal stability and Cultural revitalization.
And Tribal stability and Cultural revitalization creates the space and conditions for new questions to emerge:
What does it mean to rebuild Tribal Wellness through connection to Culture and Community?
What becomes possible when Tribal Youth have opportunities to know themselves within their own living Cultural traditions and empowered identity?
How can Traditional Ecological Knowledge guide contemporary stewardship?
What can responsible economic development look like when it is rooted in Tribal values and intended to sustain the community into the future?
These are no longer abstract aspirations for the Tribe.
Across the Tribe’s work, programs and possibilities are growing around Cultural revitalization, Tribal Wellness and Youth Development, Land Stewardship and rematriation, economic development, and the restoration of Tribal relationship with their Ancestral Homelands.
This expansion has required the nonprofit supporting the Tribe to evolve alongside it.
For 15 years, California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project (CHIRP) created a structure through which the Tribe could preserve history, increase visibility, educate the public, and pursue work that federal non-recognition otherwise makes extraordinarily difficult.
But as the resourcing and stability of the Tribe continued to develop, the nonprofit’s work was no longer adequately described by research or even heritage preservation. The organization has increasingly supported something much larger and more dynamic: Land, Culture, Wellness, Youth, Stewardship, community, economic possibility, and a sustainable future being actively rebuilt.
And so, earlier this year, CHIRP became HUṠWEJ.
huṡwej means wish in the Nisenan language.
And while this change is symbolic, it also reflects a very real evolution of the work.
HUṠWEJ exists to respond to the evolving priorities of the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe – to build organizational capacity, resources, partnerships, staffing, and infrastructure necessary to help Tribal visions take form.
As the needs and wishes evolve, the organization must evolve with it.
In that sense, the transition from CHIRP to HUṠWEJ marks a much larger change than simply in name. It reflects a shift from protecting what remained toward creating capacity for what can become.
And some of what is becoming possible feels, quite simply, miraculous.
Wishes Supported Through Relationship
None of this work happens in isolation.
One of the most significant changes in recent years has been the growing relationship between the Tribe and the broader Sierra Foothill community, and from it, a dynamic feedback loop has emerged.
The Tribe articulates a need, a possibility, a wish. People listen. Community members show up. Partners offer resources and expertise. Donors contribute. Relationships deepen. Through that growing network of support, Tribal priorities that once felt distant begin moving from possibility toward tangible reality.
And then those changes are reflected back, not just as another completed project, but as a step towards restoring trust and believing that continued healing is possible.
The process has begun happening so rapidly that what once might have unfolded across generations is now being made manifest within years. Tribal Elder Ginger Covert described this as a kind of “quickening.”
At the heart of this cycle is the central truth that relationship requires visibility.
The more opportunities the broader community has to encounter the Nisenan Tribe as a living, contemporary Tribal community – to hear their voices, learn from their knowledge, understand their priorities, and witness their work – the greater the opportunity to understand what it means to live and build community within Nisenan Ancestral Homelands, and for recognition to grow into meaningful relationship and reciprocity.
That visibility also reflects an important internal shift for the Tribe. Being seen, heard, and met with community support creates a very different experience from generations of being rendered invisible within their own Homelands. Over the past several years, Nisenan presence has become increasingly visible and reflected in community spaces, public art, education, events, partnerships, environmental stewardship conversations, and the stories this region tells about itself.
And while that increasing visibility does not undo generations of erasure, it does begin to restore what that erasure attempted to take: the ability for the Nisenan People to see themselves reflected and represented in their own Homelands and to know that their identity, Culture, knowledge, and presence belongs here.
The broader community does not determine the Nisenan wish. The wish belongs to the Tribe.
But community members can choose to be in relationship with the Tribe and it’s wishes – to listen, learn, show up, contribute, build reciprocal partnerships, and help create the conditions in which Tribal priorities can flourish – for the benefit of the Tribe, the Land, and for the Sierra Foothill community.
And each time the Tribe’s wishes are met with recognition, relationship, reciprocity, resource, or support, the horizon of what feels possible expands a little further.
Wishing Into the Future
Perhaps this is what niṡek huṡwej asks us to recognize.
The wish was never only one thing.
It can be the rematriation of Land.
It can be Indigenous children growing up with stronger connections to Culture.
It can be healing within families, community, and connection to Land.
It can be caring for Land through Nisenan Traditional Knowledge.
It can be economic stability.
It can be federal restoration.
It can be walking through ‘ustomah (Nevada City) and seeing Nisenan People, art, language, history, and contemporary life reflected throughout their own Ancestral Homelands.
And when one part of the wish becomes possible, the horizon expands again.
This October, the 17th Annual Nisenan Heritage Day gathers the Tribe and the broader Sierra Foothill community around niṡek huṡwej – our wish, with conversations about Land rematriation, Tribal Land Stewardship and Cultural fire, sovereignty, Nisenan visibility, and the continued presence of the Nisenan in their Ancestral Homelands.
It is an opportunity to celebrate what has already taken form, as well as the more nuanced and amorphous metric: hope returning.
The freedom to imagine beyond survival.
The confidence to speak wishes that might once have remained private.
The knowledge that a wish shared can be met with reciprocal relationship, and that relationship can help create tangible change.
And then, from that new place, the ability to look toward the horizon once again and ask:
What do we wish for now?
