Residing in Sacramento County, Z-Sides Press operates on the unceded ancestral homeland of numerous indigenous peoples, including but not necessarily limited to the Nisenen, Maidu, Patwin, Wintum, and Wintu peoples.  Furthermore, Z-Sides press has historically operated on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula.  

Due to the precise nature of the work of this Press, the story of the Ohlone people deserves particular consideration.  The Ohlone's ancestral tribes began to arrive on the west coast of North America between 20 and 25,000 years ago.  A peaceful, coastal people, the Ohlone tribe subsisted on the areas rich ocean fauna until the mid to late 19th century, when they were culturally eradicated by the ever-increasing pressure of American westward expansion.  

Tragically for the world, a musical and dance tradition that had extended backwards in time for thousands of years, got irrevocably severed.  As completely as the white settlers of the 19th-century United States leveled the ancient pyramidal oyster mounds left by these people as a means of managing their food waste in an ecologically sensitive manner, so too the ancient Ohlone traditions of spoken word, song, and ritual dance had been strained to the point of severing, perhaps never again to be fully restored.  

In a particularly tragic twist, the ultimate breaking of these chains of transmission took place only a few decades prior to the emergence of recording technologies that might have preserved the Ohlone performative arts traditions in perpetuity.  If that all-important documentation had taken place, we might be able to refer to audio, film, and video references for the Ohlone peoples the way we have them for numerous other indigenous Native American tribes.

In the 21st century, a variety of organizations have emerged in an effort to reconstruct those aspects of the musical and performance tradition that might be saved and Z-Sides Press would like to be considered an ally of those efforts.  

As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, and for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. The Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, as well as the other tribes here mentioned, are not a mythical population of the past but an integral and active community in 21st-century California and in other places around the world.