Sacramento weekend roundup: Miwok Big Time festival, local mural unveiling and more

This past weekend in Sacramento featured a tribal celebration in Placerville to a Sacramento City Unified ongoing fiscal crisis. Here’s a quick look at what readers may have missed.

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• The Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians hosted its 38th annual Big Time festival over the weekend in Placerville, opening the celebration to non-Native visitors for cultural learning, traditional dancing and family reunion. More than 90 Native vendors, cultural craft demonstrators and dancers from Miwok, Pomo, Patwin and other tribes performed and shared centuries-old techniques during the two-day gathering at Shingle Springs Rancheria.

• A new coffee shop, Baker’s Brew Cafe, has opened at 621 Capitol Mall, Suite 107, serving handcrafted espresso drinks, a signature banana bread latte, smoothies and sandwiches to the downtown crowd.

• A public mural titled “Threads of Belonging” will be unveiled Aug. 31 at the Valley Hi-North Laguna public library, weaving Palestinian, Filipino/Ilocano and Hmong textile traditions into a tribute to South Sacramento’s immigrant communities. Artists created the mural with early support from City Councilmember Mai Vang, the city’s Office of Arts and Culture, the National Academy of Design and the Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Trust Fund for Mural Painting.

• Sacramento City Unified reaffirmed a rescinded teachers’ union agreement as roughly a third of its 2026-27 solvency plan, even after the Sacramento County Office of Education rejected the deal, district officials said at Thursday’s board meeting.

• State Sens. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, R-Yucaipa, and Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, urged the University of California to reinstate SAT and ACT scores in undergraduate admissions, with Ochoa Bogh planning legislation in the next session, as the debate over standardized testing intensifies. The UC Academic Senate is conducting a formal review with a recommendation expected by June 2026, meaning the earliest any change to testing rules could take effect is the 2027 admissions cycle for students entering in fall 2028.