Jonathan Cordero

Bio

Jonathan Cordero, Ph.D. (Ramaytush Ohlone/Chumash) is an Affiliated Scholar with the Indigenous Law Center Founder in Spring 2022.  Dr. Cordero is Executive Director of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, a Visiting Scholar at USC’s Spatial Sciences Institute, and a research partner for the University of California Critical Mission Studies grant. Dr. Cordero’s scholarship focuses on California Indian and Spanish relations during the Mission Period. He works as a consultant in both the public and private sectors, especially in the arts, and he serves as a leader, speaker, and activist in the broader Ohlone and Chumash communities.

In Fall, 2021, Dr. Cordero served as a Visiting Professor at the Indigenous Law Center to co-teach a seminar on American Indian Law: Land Acknowledgment with Dr. Jo Carrillo, Professor of Law and Director of the Indigenous Law Center. The seminar focused upon the underlying ideologies and structures that inform American Indian law as it relates to land, with a special emphasis on how U.S. law affects unrecognized California Indigenous Peoples.  Dr. Cordero has also advised the College on the drafting of a living land acknowledgement for affixation on the school premises.