Here's Pat Brennan's in depth article on how the Acjachemen/Juanenos and Gabrieleno/Tongva lived in a fruitful paradaise:

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=11007&section=NEWS&year=
2002&month=11&day=10

During the Spanish Mission era, estimated Indian population of 300,000 in 1790 decreased to 100,000 by 1848, largely due to disease, overwork and occasional military operations. This story is told from the Catholic point of view by the system of J. Serra's "Missions", which ultimately failed in their "mission" of destroying the Indian language, culture, system of laws and form of life. But few tell the story from the Indian side, which would be a tale
of genocide, cultural imperialism, and "ethnic cleansing". Few, if any, Indians were able to survive outside of the Euro framework. The very names of the tribes were replaced by the labor camp to which they were removed -- Gabrieleno, for San Gabriel Mission in Los Angeles, or Juaneno, for Mission San Juan Capistrano in O.C.

After 1848, things got worse for the Indians, whose pop. dropped from est. 100,000 to less than 50,000 by 1850, 2 years after the USA moved in. At this time, there were person-to-person massacres, at a level of individual cruelty documented in military accounts of the time and reminiscent of Bosnia, Dachau, or Rwanda-Burundi.

In 1851, the infamous Indian Indenture law was passed despite California being admitted as a "free" state. It allowed for indenture -- slavery -- of Indians by individual whites, and provided that "no white man could be convicted of a crime on the testimony of Indians alone", meaning that without Euro witnesses to "protect" them, Indians who tried to live a traditional life were fair game for robbers, rapists and worse.

Today, there are attempts at cultural revival of California Indians, exemplified locally by the Tongva Dancers, Heritage Park, Kuruvungna Springs in L.A., and memorials of all sort. Teachers and Euros of all sorts would like to hear the Indian side of things, but only the Mission view is taught.

The most telling struggle concerns land. That is, the Indians, once so gifted with their prosperous land, cannot even lay claim to a few acres of it. ALL of their land was taken from the Tongva and Juanenos. According to Indian law, you were offered hospitality on their land, but would eventually have to move on. One wonders what the old Indians would think, as they look on our sea of concrete, toxicity and waste, about "...how are they going to move all this stuff off our land?". The interesting question is, what basis, aside from brute force, justifies that the Euro view of land rights supercedes the Indian legal view?

Brennan describes the current two hotspots:

1. Hellman Mesa, in Seal Beach ( http://SealBeach.org ). The Indians, and some archaeologists, are asking for
"in-site preservation" of at least 20 ancient graves. This is the preferred alternative, which involves building around
the graveyard, and preserving it as a cemetary with a wall separating it from the housing tract. Indians, and
others, would have free access from Seal Beach Blvd. (near the submarine memorial) to tend the memorial native plant garden and for educational and ceremonial purposes. An illegal Coastal Commission permit to build a golf course on the Hellman Wetlands was overturned by a lawsuit, but the judge forced the winning litigants to accept an expansion of the housing tract from 14 to 18 acres on top of more than 5 sacred sites -- notably, ORA-264, ORA-261, ORA-262.

2. Putiidhem, in San Juan Capistrano ( http://Putiidhem.org ). The Indians, and archaeologists, have formed the California Cultural Resource Preservation Alliance and devised an alternative plan for the last 29 acres of Putiidhem, now slated for, of all things, a private Catholic High School. The CCRPA plan would involve no digging, but would tell the Juaneno story right down the street from the highly visited San Juan Capistrano. The irony is not just that the Indians are being denied a tiny fraction of their ancestral lands; it's also that their plan would be a big tourist draw, a resource for the entire community, and help slake the appetite of current kids and adults for more information about "before columbus". Not to mention ease the guilt. So even in their alternative plan, these Indians are being socially conscious in a way not provided for in Euro law.

Brennan poses this puzzler in the front-page article:

http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=11003&section=NEWS&year=
2002&month=11&day=10

Both sites, Hellman Mesa and Putiidhem, feature prominently, and both Anthony Morales and Sonia Johnston are quoted, among others.

Lots more to say on this one, but the battle may be for the health of our own souls, here, not just a land use issue. As Brennan points out, there are property rights issues as well as cultural matters. What eventually occurs with the Putiidhem property, and what happens at Hellman, needs to be the subject of public debate in the mainstream culture. Once lost, once built over, these cultural resources are gone forever.

/Doug
562-430-2495

Write a letter to the newspapers, especially OCRegister and LATimes, on this issue at:

http://SealBeach.org/jlh.htm ("save hellman bones from John Laing Homes")
http://SealBeach.org/putiidhem.htm ("sacred memorial not high school hell")

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