Flat Files _ Shifting Relationship with Land

We invite you to touch the objects on the surface of the flat files and to open each drawer to explore aspects of the changing relationship between people and land within what is today the extended Bay Area.  

The de Saisset Museum and Santa Clara University stand today on the ancestral homeland of the Ohlone and Muwekma Ohlone people. This land was also the site of Mission Santa Clara de Asis, 8th of 21 Alta California missions established by Spanish padres in the late 1700s. The relationship between people and land continued to shift under the era of Mexican rule, early California statehood, and through present-day.

On the surface of the drawers you are introduced to several Native plants, indigenous to this region, and their uses within the Ohlone community. The objects on display within the drawers reveal diverse attitudes and relationships with land use over time and across cultures. There are also drawers featuring content from the third Ohlone Youth Cultural Campout organized by Isabella Gomez ’27 that took place at SCU during Summer 2025.

Each drawer tells one aspect of this larger story of shifting relationships with land, and links thematically to adjacent drawers. Shifting Relationships with Land is part of the new series of interdisciplinary and transhistorical projects connected to the Museum’s new vision and is designed to connect to the Monica Rodriguez: Californiana project as well as to California Stories from Thámien to Santa Clara.  

^{This Flat Files of Curiosity exhibition is organized by Assistant Director, Lauren Baines, Collections Manager, Summer Olsen, with Ohlone Consultant Isabella Gomez ‘27, and REAL Intern, Lucas Gustin ‘26.}