Railroads in Native America Program

7:30am - 11:30am PT

Registration & Networking

Light breakfast & coffee available

Welcome Ceremony & Prayer

Led by Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians

• Chairwoman Regina Cuellar (Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians), Tribal Council

• Secretary Christina Snider-Ashtari (Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians), Governor's Office of Tribal Affairs

• Tim Schroepfer, President & CEO of the California State Railroad Museum Foundation

• Dr. Ty Smith (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), Sacramento City Historian, Railroads in Native America Steering Committee Member

Cultural Art Walk

With the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians (SSBMI)

• Jacky Calanchini (Nisenan), Artist, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indian’s Exhibitions Tribal Curator & Cultural Specialist

• Meyokeeskow Marrufo (Eastern Pomo – Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians), Artist, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indian’s Exhibitions Curator

Join the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians (SSBMI) Exhibits and Collections Center for an engaging tour of nearby cultural offerings, including a walk down the Riverfront Promenade. Unveiled in 2025, the collaboration between the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians and the Center for Sacramento History, in partnership with the city’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development, features 30 interpretive panels mounted along the pedestrian walkway and bike path overlooking the Sacramento River, providing glimpses of tribal history and ancestral ties to local waterways. Guests will also be treated to a guided visit to the Mómtim Péwinan exhibit at the Sacramento History Museum in Old Town Sacramento. The cultural art installation, featuring contemporary works curated by the SSBMI Exhibits and Collections Center, pays tribute to the old ways, sharing the resourcefulness of regional tribal artists who balance the need to maintain the continuity of old time techniques, while challenged with a lack of access to cultural sites and resources.

This segment of the forum will not be live-streamed and alternative programming will offered for on-site attendees who are unable to join the walk.

Lunch on your own to explore Old Sacramento.

1:30pm - 4:45pm PT

Next Stop: Nisenan Territory

Panel

• Chair: Meyokeeskow Marrufo (Eastern Pomo – Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians), Artist, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indian’s Exhibitions Curator

• Jacky Calanchini (Nisenan), Artist, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indian’s Exhibitions Tribal Curator & Cultural Specialist

• Ray Le Beau (Pit River), Artist

• Koppa Enos (Nisenan), Artist

• Jacinda Tayaba-Cordero (Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians), Artist

The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians Exhibitions Curator is joined by regional artists whose works will be featured in the Great Hall of the California State Railroad Museum (CSRM). Listen to the community stories behind the artworks that consider the impact of the railroad on the California Native landscape and tribal communities. Switching Tracks: Renewing the Old Routes, located in the CSRM Entry Gallery, showcases these original works alongside the cultural arts of Malissa Tayaba (Nisenan), Jeremy Peconom (Mt. Maidu), Shanti Parks (Mewuk), Carson Bates (Northern Sierra Miwok) and Petee Ramirez (California Valley Miwok Tribe). The exhibit grounds Forum participants on Nisenan territory, welcoming guests to consider the history of continuity maintained by regional tribal communities through the perpetuation of Central California Lifeways and Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

The Railroad vs The Queen of Capistrano: New Perspectives on the Modesta Avila Story

Panel

• Chair: Chairman Nathan Banda (Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation), Tribal Council

• Luis. I. Reyes, Independent Film Historian, Scholar, Journalist, Lecturer

• Pocha Peña (Bolivian Aymara), Writer, Co-Founder of Media Arts Santa Ana (MASA)

• Victor Payan, Writer, Multidisciplinary Artist, Founding Director of Media Arts Santa Ana (MASA)

Most people don’t think of Orange County, California as Indian Country. But the Orange County community of San Juan Capistrano into which the railroad arrived in 1887, was a thriving community in which the indigenous Juaneño (Acjachemen) population had been integrated into California society via conversion to Catholicism, intermarriage with Spanish and later Mexican settlers, and reliance upon as the primary labor force, since the founding of Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776. The story of folk hero Modesta Avila is firmly situated in this world, and her legend of resistance to the railroad is much more fascinating, nuanced and complex than the popular legend that has become her legacy. Accounts of Modesta Avila’s true story as a 21-year-old woman defying the railroad rarely acknowledge that Avila herself was mestiza, meaning that she had both indigenous and Spanish roots in her family that dated back more than 100 years before the railroad’s arrival. This panel will provide a historiographical overview, real-life facts and world-building around Modesta Avila that is being used to develop a dramatic, authentic and inclusive screen scenario highlighting the Acjachemen people of Orange County.

7:30am - 11:30am PT

Registration & Networking

Light breakfast & coffee available

Train Ride on the Sacramento Southern Railroad

Free 45-minute round-trip ride

• Join us for a free 45-minute, 6-mile round-trip ride along the scenic Sacramento River and experience railroading just as it was in the early 20th century. Pulled by one of our historic steam or diesel locomotives, this special charter excursion on the Old Sacramento Waterfront will be for registered on-site Forum attendees only. Alternative programming will be offered for those who don't ride the train.

  Call (916)445-5995 or email [email protected] for accessbility questions.

Railroading Indian Territory: Resistance, Revenue, and Reorganization in the Nineteenth Century

Panel

• Chair: To Be Announced

• Dr. Megan Baker (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), Assistant Professor at Northwestern University

• Dr. Robert Voss, Associate Professor at Northwest Missouri State University

Explore how some Native nations in what is now Oklahoma—Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Muskogee (Creek) peoples—resisted control by railroad companies with their own well-coordinated efforts from the 1860s to early 20th century. "Vested in the Whole People" (Baker) highlights how the Choctaw Nation used taxes on railroad companies, outside workers, and natural resources to fund schools and government operations long before casino gaming. Even though the U.S. government forced railroads through their territory, Choctaw leaders made sure these companies worked for their people while retaining control of their land with large influxes of new people. "The Hole in the Map" (Voss) illustrates how Native nations who owned their land completely made it much harder for railroads to take what they wanted. Treaties also forced railroads to build in straight north-south and east-west lines instead of cutting diagonally across their territory. Native nations taxed the railroads, profited from them, and never ceded their territories at a time when companies were able to acquire millions of acres in other parts of the country. Together, these stories show that modern Indigenous economic development started long before casinos, and that Tribal nations could be strategic powerful, players during railroad expansion.

Lunch on your own to explore Old Sacramento.

1:30pm - 4:45pm PT

Laguna Pueblo Box Car Villages: Transformations along the Rail Line

Panel

• Chair: Ron Solimon, J.D. (Pueblo of Laguna), Laguna Community Foundation, Inc."

• Thelma E. Antonio (Pueblo of Laguna), Research Associate & Evaluator for Native Pathways, YAKANAL Member (non-profit)

• Fred Friedman, Railroad Historian & Lecturer for the Historical Society of New Mexico, New Mexico State Historian Office

• Donald Salcedo (Quechan, Pueblo of Laguna), Lead Program Officer for the California Tribal Fund—First Nations Development Institut

This group collaboration explores the enduring relationship between the Pueblo of Laguna and railroads from 1880 to 2026. It centers the “Flower of Friendship,” an unwritten agreement with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad that enabled Laguna railroad workers and their families to establish satellite “colonies” at Gallup, Winslow, Barstow, and Richmond while maintaining cultural identity. The presentations document mutual benefits and sacrifices: Laguna communities permitted railroad access to land and resources in exchange for wage jobs, becoming a reliable labor force during strikes, world wars, and economic shifts. Through storytelling, images, and video, this roundtable discussion reveals how railroad expansion reshaped Laguna’s physical landscape and contributed to modernism within a traditional society, while highlighting Indigenous workers’ critical contributions to western expansion and economic development in New Mexico and the U.S. Audience participation and questions are encouraged.

Railroad (Hi)Stories of the Great Basin: Mobility, Survival, and Self-Determination

Panel

• Chair: To Be Announced

• Hillary Renick (Pomo/Paiute), President of the California Indian Land Institute

• Brigitte McFarland, PhD Student at the University of Chicago

• Staci Lamb, Historical Research Assistant at Golden Spike National Historical Park

This panel centers Native experiences often erased from railroad history. “No Need for a Caboose” (Renick) shares Northern Paiute perspectives on homeland divestiture, cultural disruption, and enduring presence despite the 1862 Railroad Act’s expropriation of 174 million acres, emphasizing the connections that gave their people strength to remain on their ancestral lands today. “Beyond the Golden Spike” (Lamb) reframes Promontory Summit through Native women’s lives, showing how rail expansion reorganized Indigenous land relations. Safety, labor, and sovereignty functioned as daily survival practices. “Infrastructures of Colonization” (McFarland) reveals how settlers relied on Native guides and knowledge while imposing wagon roads and railroads in the Great Basin, exposing the ambivalent relationship between settler and Native mobility. Together, these speakers show railroads as colonial infrastructure that reshaped Indigenous economies, cultures, and land relations—while Native peoples persisted, adapted, and can still speak to us through many artifacts of the past, allowing us to help tell their stories today.

5:00pm - 6:30pm PT

Reception at the California State Railroad Museum

Attendees are welcome to enjoy an evening of reflection and networking with the Railroads in Native America Steering Committee, Forum Speakers, Partners, as well as a few Special Guests. Heavy appetizers, wine, beer and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided by the California State Railroad Museum Foundation.

7:30am - 11:30am PT

Registration & Networking

Light breakfast & coffee available

Iron Roads, Contested Ground: Railroads and Indigenous Sovereignty in the American West

Panel

• Chair: To Be Announced

• Paul Spruhan, J.D., Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law

• Dr. Jayne Kinney, Assistant Professor at University of North Dakota

Resistance to railroad expansion could come in unexpected forms and opportunities. “General Sherman, the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, and the Navajo Treaty of 1868” (Spruhan) examines Sherman’s role in negotiating the Navajo Treaty, where he initially sought to remove Navajos to Indian Territory to clear the way for the Transcontinental Railroad but abruptly reversed course, allowing them to return home. Understanding the role that competition played between companies gives context for possible reasons why. “Pan-Indigenous Advocacy at the 1925 Fort Union Indian Congress” (Kinney) shows how this Great Northern Railroad’s staged cultural event, designed to romanticize Indigenous people as “wild” and “primitive,” transformed into something else completely. Indigenous participants used the gathering to coordinate political advocacy, publicly denounce U.S. treaty violations in their own languages, and allow tribal leaders to strategize for treaty rights and their sovereignty. Together, these presentations show railroads as both tools of coercion and unexpected platforms for Indigenous political power and organization.

Rails to Trails, a Choice: Repairing Genocide and Ecological Destruction or Repeating Conquest Narratives

Panel

• Chair: To Be Announced

• Markida Hoaglin (Round Valley Indian Tribes), Redwood Forest Foundation Member, KMUD Radio Host, Kinest'e Community Coalition Member

• Perry Lincoln (Round Valley Indian Tribes-Wailaki-Kinest’e), Founding Executive Director of Native Health in Native Hands

• Michelle Merrifield (Round Valley Indian Tribes of Wylacki, Nomalacki, Cahto, and Little Lake Ancestry), Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Coordinator for the Round Valley Tribe

• Bruce Evan Hillbach-Barger, Kinest'e Community Coalition Member, Round Valley County Water District Board Member, Upper Eel Watershed Forum Board Member

This roundtable explores the cultural, community, and ecological impact of converting the former Northwestern Pacific Railroad corridor into a multi-use trail by the Great Redwood Trail Authority, or GRTA (formerly North Coast Railroad Authority). Significantly impacted locations include the Kinest’e (Eel River) homelands of Northern California, which have been granted an exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act despite special provisions for tribal cultural considerations. Panelists will share their work to preserve sacred sites and promote community-driven visions of restoration that honors Indigenous history. They'll also highlight deeply personal ties that inform their Traditional Ecological Knowledge, which includes attention to safety, species care and relationship to the land. This panel will frame the opportunities for collaboration and healing offered by the Kinest'e Community Coalition after years of research and development, while also critiquing lack of engagement from leaders of the GRTA. Panelists hope their experiences will help others doing similar work, as well as lead to new connections and resources with Forum attendees.

Closing Keynote: Dr. William Bauer

(Round Valley Indian Tribes), Professor of History at University of California-Riverside

Closing Ceremony

Led by the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians