By Staff Reporter November 9, 2025
In the heart of the Bay Area’s progressive activist scene, where calls for #LandBack and decolonization echo from Oakland’s streets to Berkeley’s hills, one name has become associated with indigenous resilience: Corina Gould. But beneath the veneer of rematriation rhetoric and viral Shuumi Land Tax campaigns lies a web of deception that has bilked hundreds of well-meaning donors, activists, and foundations out of millions.
Gould, self-styled leader of the so-called Confederated Villages of Lisjan—a fabricated “tribe” with no historical, ethnographic, or legal basis—has built an empire on stolen narratives, diverted funds, and outright fraud, according to explosive allegations from the legitimate Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, recognized by the federal courts and the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the successor to the Verona Band of Alameda County.
For years, Gould has positioned herself as a tribal chairwoman and visionary for Ohlone sovereignty, leveraging her partial descent from Muwekma lineages to commandeer sacred sites, grants, and public sympathy. Yet, as detailed in a damning May 2025 investigation by the Alameda Native History Project, her “Lisjan” entity is nothing more than a 2018 nonprofit invention, a “pop-up tribe” designed to hijack resources from legitimate tribal communities.
The Muwekma Ohlone have over 600 enrolled members. They trace their lineages to the Verona Band, federally recognized begining in 1906, and through Missions Delores, San Jose, and Santa Clara before that. They have watched in horror as Gould’s operation erodes their sovereignty, siphoning donations under false pretenses of “returning land to the Ohlone people” and the language of “rematriation”.
The Myth of Lisjan: A Fabricated Identity
Corina Gould’s story begins with a kernel of truth: In 2005, she requested—and received—genealogical documentation from the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, confirming her ties to their ancestral lines, including relatives like her aunt and uncle who have been enrolled Muwekma members since 1995. But instead of joining the tribe’s enrollment rolls and contributing to its federal recognition efforts, Gould withdrew, using that very documentation as a springboard for her own branded identity.
She founded the Confederated Villages of Lisjan (CVL) in 2018, a name cobbled from a single, mistranslated 1920s reference in an interview with her ancestor José Guzmán. Guzmán, a Muwekma forebear, used “Lisjanes” to describe a geographic area near Pleasanton—not a tribal confederation, as Gould now claims.
Ethnographic records, including a 2009 National Park Service report by anthropologist Randall Milliken, make no mention of “Lisjan” as a tribe or villages. Instead, they affirm the Muwekma as the primary Ohlone authority in the region. Gould’s CVL boasts no BIA enrollment lists, Tribal Council, or governance structure—it’s essentially a nonprofit corporation run by Gould, her daughter, and a cadre of non-Ohlone allies and activists.
“This is a title without a people, a nonprofit corporation posing as a nation,” the Alameda Native History Project exposé charges.
By blurring the lines between activists, nonprofits, and sovereign tribes, Gould has peddled misrepresentations that have fooled Bay Area institutions and donors alike.
She invokes terms like “rematriation” and “traditional territory” without disclosing her absence of any form of federal recognition, history, government, or membership rolls that would ethnographically constitute a tribe. Critics, including enrolled Muwekma members, who question her are dismissed as “perpetuating colonial violence,” a tactic that shields her from accountability while bamboozling and further confusing well-intentioned supporters.
Swindling the Faithful: The $20 Million Shellmound Heist
No scandal better illustrates Gould’s grift than the 2024 transfer of the sacred West Berkeley Shellmound—a 2.2-acre ancient Ohlone burial ground and village site—from developer Ruegg & Geyser to her Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (STLT). Hailed as a triumph of indigenous advocacy, the handover was bankrolled by a staggering $20 million donation from billionaire heiress Regan Pritzker, funneled through her Kataly Foundation.
Pritzker, scion of the Hyatt Hotels fortune, partnered with Gould to promote the deal as a model for “settler accountability,” complete with cultural gardens and youth programs.
But the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe calls it theft. The land was not “returned to the Ohlone people”. It was essentially stolen from the Ohlone people on fraudulent misrepresentations, tribal leaders contend—ignoring Muwekma’s aboriginal title to the land and instead landing in STLT’s nonprofit coffers.
“This isn’t rematriation—it’s theft,” the Muwekma stated in a May 1, 2025, public declaration, calling for audits, clawbacks, and redirection of funds to legitimate titleholders. The donation, the largest cash gift to a purported Native-led organization, was enabled by Berkeley City Council minutes that treated STLT as the default Ohlone voice—without consulting Muwekma.
This isn’t isolated. Through STLT’s Shuumi Land Tax—a voluntary “rent” system from non-Indigenous donors—Gould’s operation has collected millions more, all diverted from enrolled tribal members to a corporate entity with opaque finances. Hundreds of Bay Area activists, from grassroots organizers to tech philanthropists, have been duped into contributing, believing they were supporting sovereign Ohlone efforts.
A Pattern of Pretendianism: Echoes of Dolezal in the Bay
Gould’s saga draws uncomfortable parallels to high-profile “pretendians” like Rachel Dolezal, who fabricated Black identity for personal gain. Like Dolezal, Gould is an unenrolled descendant who weaponizes partial ancestry to eclipse legitimate communities. Her CVL joins a rogues’ gallery of fraudulent outfits, from the NunatuKavut Community Council to the Métis Nation of Ontario, all accused of grifting under indigenous banners.
Gould has largely stonewalled direct responses to these charges.
While she defended her work on podcasts like Scene on Radio, framing it as decolonial innovation, she has not addressed the core fraud allegations in recent statements. Kataly Foundation, too, has gone silent amid calls for internal reviews, leaving donors like Pritzker potentially complicit in a tax-advantaged scheme that benefits from the optics of philanthropy without the substance.
Reckoning over rhetoric — a time for accountability?
“This is colonization, rebranded and crowd-funded. It is settler violence in a progressive disguise,” warns the Alameda Native History Project.
The Muwekma’s plea is clear: Institutions must verify a tribe’s legitimacy before platforming or funding; donors should demand transparency and redirect support to legitimate tribes like Muwekma.
For the hundreds of Bay Area activists and donors who’ve poured their hearts—and wallets—into Gould’s mirage, the betrayal stings deepest.
What began as a quest for justice has funded a fraud that fractures indigenous kinship. As the Ohlone fight for true sovereignty continues, one lesson rings true: #LandBack demands truth first.
Will the Bay Area’s progressive elite finally listen?
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