For years, the work of the Nisenan people was housed under the sterile, academic title of the California Heritage: Indigenous Research Project. While the acronym served a purpose, it belonged to the language of bureaucracy and archives. In Nevada City, the tribe gathered to retire the old name and replace it with a Nisenan word meaning "wish." This was the first time the community had collectively reached into their ancestral vocabulary to name their own future.
The transition is a quiet act of defiance against a history of erasure. In 1964, the Nevada City Rancheria was terminated by the federal government, a legal stroke that stripped the tribe of its recognition and services. When a class-action lawsuit restored seventeen other California tribes in 1983, a legal oversight left the Nisenan behind. To speak the word HUṠWEJ (pronounced HOOSH-way) in public is to assert that the language and the people never left the Yuba and Bear River watersheds.
The renaming comes at a time of tangible restoration. Working with linguist Dr. Sheri Tatsch, Covert and the tribal members are pulling their language back from the brink of silence. This linguistic reclamation is anchored by the physical return of Yulića, a 232-acre expanse near Nevada City. The land was secured after a grassroots campaign raised more than $2.5 million, allowing the tribe to step back onto soil they had been barred from owning for decades.
By placing a Nisenan word on signage, letterheads, and digital spaces, the tribe is ensuring that the sounds of the Sierra Nevada foothills are no longer filtered through a secondary lens. The word itself—a wish—is no longer a hidden hope but a spoken reality. It is a gesture of permanence in a landscape where their presence was once marked for deletion.