[3] By the time Yamane's grandmother had reached adulthood, scholars and the federal government had already declared the various peoples comprising the Ohlone extinct.

[7] As a result, Yamane was able to trace her family back to the 1770s, including to Josef Manuel Higuera, one of the original settlers who as part of the planned creation of San Jose, California's first Spanish civilian city, in 1777.

[3][9] Growing up, Yamane could also identify Margarita Maria a woman from Tucutnut, the largest village of the Rumsen local tribe of the Carmel Valley in the 1770s.

[11] She creates art, such as the drawing of the tule dwelling that appears on interpretive signs in the Hillside Natural Area in El Cerrito, CA.

For the past two decades she has helped organize Ohlone Day in Henery Cowell Redwoods State Park.

[13] Because the last of the elders who spoke Rumsien died out while living in the missions, knowledge of the language were dead prior to the start of the Twentieth Century.

Thus, she published When the World Ended: How Hummingbird Got Fire; How People Were Made: Rumsien Ohlone Stories in 1995.

Elders Viviana Soto and Jacinta Gonzales sang traditional songs and told stories in Rumsien.

[20] Essentially, the Rumsien people stopped making traditional Olivella baskets when European colonialists came to the region.

[3][20] Even once it is harvested, the willow, sedge, and other materials she uses may take months or years to dry and go through proper preparation for weaving.

[8] She first learned to make them in the 1980s, when she photographed and took notes on the process at a Coyote Hills Regional Park event in Fremont, CA.

[20] To even see such baskets, Yamane had to samples travel to the East Coast of the United States and in Europe; no known examples remained in California.

Since they are hard to get and abalone are increasingly rare in the ocean, Yamane feels lucky that reaching out to friends and divers helped her build a large collection of the shells.

In response, Yamane opened an abalone shell "bank" for other indigenous artists who want to make traditional arts.

[4] 2009 - Creative Work Fund grant to make one Ohlone presentation basket in collaboration with the Big Sur Land Trust.

In 2021, artist Susanne Takehara created a mosaic, Weaving Past & Present, representing the basket on the exterior of an apartment building in East Oakland, in partnership with the EastSide Arts Alliance.

[3] When the World Ended: How Hummingbird Got Fire; How People Were Made: Rumsien Ohlone Stories (1995) - recipient of a 1995 Aesop Accolades.