[music] My name is Rich Storeck.

I'm the Executive Director of the Canal Arts nonprofit.

The Canal Arts is dedicated to creating public art, mostly in the Canal, which is an immigrant community in San Rafael.

Peoples of the Canal Project began with my walking this path to think about what this place was like many thousands of years ago.

Who were the people here?

What really happened?

This project is incredible in terms of its scope, in terms of the story it's telling, but also in terms of its physical distance.

This is a two-mile path stretch of the San Francisco Bay, and what we're doing is to tell the story over two miles, 20,000 years, up to the present and even up into the future.

As you walk along, you'll be going by 20 different exhibits.

If you begin at the one end of the path, in the past, you'll be looking at a small beach that 20,000 years ago was not there.

As you begin walking north from the past, you'll be going into the Ice Age phase and the megafauna that we know were here.

Then as you come on through the thousands of years of Coast Miwok Indigenous history, they're telling their story, and you come to more present-day migrants that come into this area from Asia, from South America, Central America, Mexico, and of course the history of the Spaniards coming in to build their missions and in effect enslave and indenture the local people.

[music] When I think about public art, we are always looking for opportunities to have those moments where community members can stop and pause and reflect on whatever is in front of them.

I think having the voices of the people who are inhabiting the area now is really important.

This was Mexico before it was California, so this is nothing new.

It's just that the shifts that have been happening in the last few decades have changed it a certain way.

[music] We have scenes happening around the country where we are constantly reminded that we don't belong here, and I think that is going to change only when people really feel that they do.

What I love about this project, there is an aspect that says, "Yes, we see the Indigenous folks and we see who's living here now in the canal.

We see you, we appreciate your.. we understand how important you are to the fabric of San Rafael, and this is literally the personification of the city's values of saying we need you and we are here to support you."

We are one of the stakeholders in the project.

We are supporting the Canal Arts and the city of San Rafael and the residents.

We provide a space for meetings, we support them, we're securing funding to this work, but also we are actively being part of that storytelling.

We are the trusted partner for the Latino community, so our participation also allow the Latino community to feel safe to participate as well.

I'm born and raised in San Francisco and as a result of my public education, unaware of a lot of California history, and that just plunged me into doing a lot of research and a lot of book reading, a lot of talking to people, and learning things that I've never known here as a native Californian.

An unknown part of California's history to many, many people is what was done legally to the indigenous people who lived here.

There's literally a written law by California's first governor that says, "Here's the bounty, you are legally permitted to enslave, to kill if necessary, to take the land."

It's a hideous, hideous story.

However, the Coast Miwok have endured.

They're still here.

I think it's very important for all of us to understand where we are now in this moment, in this present time, but also understand what brought us to this point.

The historical context is very valuable in that journey because that will allow us to ground ourselves in this present time and start dreaming about a better future for us.

Toward the present time, we come to the realization that this area is now really under threat.

The Canal area is low-lying, is flooding right now, and everyone is worried about its future.

The last three chapters here will be dealing with what happens.

This neighborhood in all of the San Francisco Bay will be one of the first neighborhoods to have inundation from sea level rise from the bay because it's low lying.

Having that intersection of climate change in this path where you're standing and recognizing the impact is there.

How do we show up and how do we talk about that?

Again, having it be in an artistic framing, people tend to be less defensive and more in curious and more inquisitive, which is what we're going to need to do to address all of these issues.

This project started small and it's been growing now through the years.

We've been now over two years putting all the part.. The cooks in the kitchen here are numerous.

They're poets, they're writers, they're historians, they're archeologists, they're tribal members, visual artists, and they have really collectively formed this project.

By the end of this year, we will have installed these 20 exhibits along the two miles, and we'll have a fabulous celebration.

Art is inviting us in, is being inclusive, and that is what this project does.

[music]