Published: March 30, 2024
Dear Friends:
Davis Friends Meeting would like to share with Western Friend and other Meetings the following Minute, which we wrote in the form of a letter to the Board of Trustees of College Park Friends Educational Association.
Many thanks, on behalf of Davis Friends Meeting,
Laurel Beckett, Clerk, Davis Friends Meeting.
We are writing regarding the land that has been home to Woolman School and other Quaker activities for the past 60 years. We revere the land and our memories of the special times we have had there. Over the years our meeting has made donations to College Park Friends Education Association (CPFEA), and several members of our meeting served on the CPFEA Board at various times, so we appreciate the complexity of CPFEA affairs and the burden that they place on current Board members. We would like to see the land back under the stewardship of the Nisenan tribe. We do not know the agreed upon price between the California Heritage Indigenous Research Program (CHIRP) and CPFEA, but we hope that it is sufficient to pay any debt and to cover any remaining costs that CPFEA might accrue during the transition. We ask that every effort be made to minimize the cost to CHIRP for the transfer. Once the transaction has taken place, we ask that any remaining financial CPFEA assets be given to CHIRP so that they may be good stewards of the land and that CPFEA lay itself down. As the CPFEA Board has acknowledged, “together we can amend the tragic legacy of the past. We can’t change history but we have the power to change our future.”