[3][4] Prior to European contact, the residents of Marin and Sonoma Counties were bands of Native Californians belonging to two linguistic and cultural groups: the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo, living in close proximity to each other and indigenous to Marin and southern Sonoma Counties in Northern California.
[5] Occupied at various times during more than thirty centuries, over 600 village sites have been identified in the Coast Miwok territory, stretching from Bodega Bay to the north, eastward beyond the towns of Cotati and Sonoma, and along the Point Reyes National Seashore and the shores of Tomales Bay.
[citation needed] The year 1579 was the earliest recorded account made by the Europeans of the Coast Miwok people on the coast of Marin in the Point Reyes area, as documented in a diary by Chaplain Fletcher who was aboard Sir Francis Drake's ship.
[citation needed] California anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber stated: Most of the Coast Miwok continued to live in their traditional lands through the 20th century.
[15] Since 2007, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria has collaborated with Occidental Arts and Ecology in Occidental, California to create workshops called Tradition Environmental Knowledge on organic farming, herbology, native plant restoration, and ethnobotany.