A concrete building in San Bruno, just south of San Francisco, holds much of the federal government’s paper record of California’s Native people: agency files, enrollment applications, boarding school records and land documents. By the National Archives’ own account, the building also stands on the ancestral land of the Ramaytush Ohlone. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) now plans to close it and send those records out of state.
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop the closure. The complaint, State of California v. National Archives and Records Administration (N.D. Cal. No. 3:26-cv-11868), argues that the decision to close the National Archives at San Francisco and scatter its holdings violates the Administrative Procedure Act. It says NARA acted “absent any consultation with relevant stakeholders” and asks the court to vacate the decision and bar any transfer of records out of San Bruno. The court docket shows the case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Noel Wise.
“These records belong here, and I’ll fight to keep them here,” Bonta said in announcing the suit.
For Ohlone people, this is not an abstract fight over storage space. The records in this building are the kind California Indian families use to document their ancestry, and Interior relied on the same kinds of records when it ruled on the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe’s status in 2002.
What is moving, and where
NARA first said in June that its San Francisco and Chicago facilities “will be closing in the next few years.” In an August update, the agency listed where each record group would go. Bureau of Indian Affairs records, Record Group 75, are headed to the National Archives at Denver along with the rest of the Interior Department’s files. The state’s complaint says Denver will receive the largest share of the San Bruno holdings.
NARA says the closures follow the federal shift to electronic records, which left its records centers underused, and that the San Bruno and Chicago buildings, more than 50 years old, need upgrades that are “fiscally unviable.” In an Oct. 5 letter to Rep. Kevin Mullin, NARA Chief Operating Officer Jay Trainer wrote that the agency expects to save “in excess of $4.7 million annually.” He said the move would take two to three years.
The move has already begun. According to NARA, NASA’s records at San Bruno were closed to researchers on Oct. 13 for transfer to Fort Worth. The complaint says NARA awarded Iron Mountain an $8.8 million contract on Sept. 28, with up to $25 million anticipated, for “shelf-to-shelf transfer of federal records.”
Little of it is online. Citing NARA’s own statistics, the complaint says “only 3.35 percent of textual records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs have been digitized.”
The Ohlone record in San Bruno
NARA’s description of its holdings says the San Francisco facility keeps BIA records for northern and central California and Nevada, “but also some statewide California BIA records, particularly for Indian enrollments.” Its California BIA guide places the files of the Sacramento Agency, 1923 to 1947, at the San Francisco facility.
That office runs through the heart of the Muwekma case. In its 2002 Final Determination, Interior proceeded on the finding that the Verona Band, the band near Pleasanton and Niles that the Tribe traces itself to, had previous federal acknowledgment from 1914 to 1927. Interior’s summary traces that acknowledgment through the federal program to buy land for landless California Indians. The band was named by Agent C. H. Asbury in 1914 and “later by the Sacramento Agency in 1923,” and Superintendent L. A. Dorrington referred to it in 1927 before deciding against buying it land. The Tribe’s position has long been that it was never terminated, only ignored after that point.
The same decision weighed family records the Tribe submitted, including “21 applications in the 1950’s for inclusion on the California judgment roll.” According to NARA’s guide to the California judgment rolls, the San Francisco facility holds the series “Applications to the California Judgment Roll Authorized in 1948,” along with the 1968 judgment roll. The original 1928 enrollment applications are kept in Washington, D.C., and have been digitized. NARA says the later series may be restricted for privacy, with staff screening records before release.
None of this is in the past tense for Ohlone people. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Mission San Juan Bautista’s federal acknowledgment petition is open for public comment until Dec. 21. Previously denied tribes, the Muwekma among them, have until Feb. 14, 2030 to ask Interior for a second look based on new evidence. NARA’s two-to-three-year move would overlap the Amah Mutsun comment period and eat into the years left in the re-petition window.
“Lip service”
NARA held two virtual sessions for tribes, on Oct. 13 and Oct. 15, both after the record destinations had been announced. Tribal participants told ICT the sessions felt like listening sessions about decisions that had already been made.
“I’m getting a lot of non-answers,” Fallon Carey, digital archives director for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told ICT. “It feels a lot like lip service.” Michael LaRonge, tribal historic preservation officer for the Sokaogon Chippewa Community, said NARA officials agreed to move the BIA records last. He said tribes were also told those records are not a priority for digitization because they contain private information.
NARA’s invitation was addressed to “any Tribal Nation with an interest” in the two facilities. It did not say whether tribes without federal recognition, including the Muwekma and the other Ohlone nations, would be included. ICT reported that the Chicago and San Francisco archives hold records that “could be crucial to federally terminated tribes seeking restoration or unrecognized tribes seeking recognition.”
On Oct. 14, the same day the state sued, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Native Organizers Alliance, National Congress of American Indians and Native American Rights Fund wrote to NARA demanding meaningful consultation. “These are not ordinary government files—they are the evidence of treaties, land transactions, federal decisions, and commitments that define the United States’ trust and treaty obligations to our Nations,” said NCAI Executive Director Larry Wright Jr.
In August, Heather Hostler (Hoopa Valley) of California Indian Legal Services warned that “once the first box leaves San Bruno, we risk losing control of and access to records that remain essential to our communities,” ABC7 reported.
A building that knows whose land it is on
In 2021, then-Archivist David Ferriero published a land acknowledgment for the San Bruno facility. Quoting the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, it called the Ramaytush “the only original people of the San Francisco Peninsula.” Its reading list pointed to a Muwekma tribal publication on Ohlone revitalization. Five years later, the same agency is preparing to ship the Ohlone people’s federal records to Colorado and has offered a pair of video calls in place of consultation.
Records like the ones in San Bruno are how Ohlone families have shown that the federal government once knew them. They should stay where those families can reach them.
What’s next
The state is asking Judge Wise for a preliminary and permanent injunction. Rep. Mullin’s National Archives Protection Act (H.R. 10131), introduced Aug. 20, would bar the Archivist from closing any existing records center or archive facility. It has been referred to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
According to session participants quoted by ICT, NARA officials said the San Francisco research room remains open by appointment (sanbruno.archives@nara.gov). Its invitation to tribes said questions can go to tribalconsultation@nara.gov.
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