Celebrate Los Angeles’ Indigenous communities on October 19th, 2024, at Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center. FREE.

The Music Center’s programming arm, TMC Arts, in partnership with The Chapter House, create a space on two Saturdays in October for cultural affirmation and joy among the county’s Indigenous communities.

The goal is to foster greater awareness, respect, and understanding of the ongoing cultural contributions of Indigenous people among Los Angeles County residents.

These events are by and for Indigenous Peoples. ALL are welcome to join in.

Coinciding with Grand Ave Arts: All Access, one of L.A.’s longest-running, FREE open house experiences for arts and culture exploration in Downtown Los Angeles, The Music Center will host a live drumming performance, live DJ sets, art workshops as well as the return of the marketplace — on Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center.

Let us know you're coming: The Chapter House Indigenous Peoples' Day Party RSVP (typeform.com).

21 myths about American Indians debunked

Authors Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker have 4.7 out of 5 stars with 380 ratings. This book is part of: Myths Made in America (a series of nine books).

This book unpacks the 21 most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans.

In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations.

Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as:

• The classic history explainer

  “Columbus discovered America”
• “Thanksgiving proves the Indians welcomed Pilgrims”
• “Indians were savage and warlike”
• “Europeans brought civilization to backward Indians”
• “The United States did not have a policy of genocide”
• “Sports mascots honor Native Americans”
• “Most Indians are on government welfare”
• “Indian casinos make them all rich”
• “Indians are naturally predisposed to alcohol”

Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of invading European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler colonial state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance.

Accessibly written and revelatory, “All the Real Indians Died Off” challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history. More

(MegalithomaniaUK) This is a new documentary exploring the mysteries of Santa Catalina Island (Pimu) 25 miles from the mainland beach in coastal San Pedro, Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles' Channel Islands have turned up hundreds of controversial discoveries; not only thousands of giant skeletons (over 8 feet long), but a prehistoric stone circle, incredibly ancient carbon dating, and evidence of historic red and blond-haired white islanders.

Thousands of giant skeletons, Indian artifacts, and evidence of occupation going back as far as 9,000 years have been scientifically recorded on the islands, with human occupation possibly dating as far back as 30,000 years before the present.

The story is intriguing and controversial, and it stars amateur archeologist Ralph Glidden and his bizarre museum of bones and artifacts on Catalina Island. But a few years before that, a German naturalist got the story going in 1913.

Dr. A. W. Furstenan unearthed an 8-foot skeleton with artifacts such as mortar and pestles and arrow heads on Catalina. He was told of a legend while in Mexico of a giant and noble race that lived on the island that existed long before the white man (European arrival) and had since vanished.

The film features Hugh Newman and Jim Vieira, authors of Giants on Record, ancient symbolism researcher Jj Ainsworth and Native American islander Mason Sanchez Lassos, a member of the Tongva/Gabrielino Tribe.

Get the book or Kindle at Amazon US amzn.to/1MrVH5, Amazon UK amzn.to/1OxghHM, and other outlets. #giantsonrecord. Support us on Patreon: megalithomania

It's easy, right? - This is so beautiful!

(Diggin SoCal Outdoor Adventures) The hike begins in the JPL parking lot, above the reservoir and dam visible from the 210 Freeway.

Up the Gabrielino Trail, established by the "Gabrielino Indians" (the Indigenous Kizh or Tongva of Los Angeles, once known as Tovaangar), beyond Gould Mesa Trail Camp and Paul Little Picnic Area, ending up at the dam (about 3.5 miles in one direction).

This is beautiful hike is leisurely with easy trails (and dangerous rattlesnakes warming themselves in the dappled light and mulch of fallen leaves).

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

However, it does involve crisscrossing the water numerous times. A river runs down and sinks beneath JPL to come up again at Devil's Gate Dam. This is usually easy but could pose a problem when it rains and the water level rises and becomes a whitewater chute.

Good hiking shoes and plenty of water are always smart choices, particularly as the weather warms. There is also poison oak (the reddish green leaves with a waxy coating in the brush next to the trail). Along the trail there was one snake no one would want to step on or have a dog bark at. Also, it's beloved by mountain bikers, who race by with hardly a warning. #dronefootage #hiking #hikingadventures

(Santa Monica History Museum) Join us for a look inside the museum's permanent gallery to explore the history of the original inhabitants of Tongavaar (now Los Angeles) the Tongva (now Kizh) people.

"All the Real Indians Died Off": 20 Myths

Not a Nation of Immigrants (R. Dunbar-Ortiz)

Indigenous Peoples' History US

On Thursday, Nov. 23, 2023, at the Los Angeles Thanksgiving Vegan Potluck Picnic, a Native American speaker from Wisdom Quarterly will kick off the festivities with a traditional acknowledgement of the unceded land in honor of the Indigenous people still here. As Prof. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, Native Americans are still here. The slow genocide has not yet succeeded in exterminating the original inhabitants. In fact, Los Angeles (Tongavaar) is home to more Indians and tribes than any other place in the country. They may blend in among the Latinx, sharing surnames from the time they were forcibly relocated to the south before their return to find themselves dispossessed of the land. "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us." There was no Mexican American border to cross. That came after the exodus to save our lives from the bounty put on scalps by the newly formed Los Angeles City Council, when whites from Europe were free to kill men, women, and children to depopulate the land to make way for the USA's settler colonial project. It's a shocking history.

Los Angeles is famous for its palm tree imports

California has only one "native" palm, yet many outsiders and locals believe that California is "The Land of Palms." 

The non-native palms are everywhere — along the coast, along the boulevards, in the movies, in front yards — but most are brought in from somewhere else [like Hawaii] to give California a distinctive look, even if it’s a look that belongs to some other place.

Non-native palms are high-maintenance trees, which are hard to keep small and pruned. Next to eucalyptus trees (also non-native), deaths by tree-pruners are high with palms. 

Regardless of species, palms can be hazardous though they have many valuable traits.

Let’s look at some of the value of the native palm, particularly to Indigenous peoples (Kizh, Tongva, Chumash, Tataviam, etc.) of the past.

Ever heard of Palm Springs, home of the gay and curious, players and gamblers, rich and famous?

Palms Springs got its name from the many native palms that grow in and around that area, particularly at Native village sites, such as Palm Canyon.

Is this the Los Angeles Palm? No.

Palms often grow where there is water, in desert oases, which is why there often came to be village sites at such locations.

Most people may think bright dates when they think of palms [no, we think of precious coconuts]. There are plenty of commercial date palms grown in the California desert, all originating from the Middle East.

But the fruit of the native palm is a small and black like a marble. Ripe fruit can be picked up on the ground to consume.

Chew the flesh off the hard stone (seed). The flesh is mildly sweet. Native people had several ways to eat these black fruits, and many still do so today.  

One method is to grind the entire fruit — seed and flesh — into a flour and use that flour to make bread, biscuits, or pudding. The fruits can also be gently ground so that only the flesh comes off. That flesh is then used as a sweetening agent for other foods.

Another method is to boil the entire fruit, which yields a mildly sweet water. That water can be used as a beverage or used to sweeten other foods. 

Pre-Los Angeles map of Tongva villages (Tongaavar)

Worldwide there are about 3,000 species of palm trees. They are very conspicuous trees throughout California, widely planted as a street and park tree.

Typically, they have a large trunk, fat or thin, rising as tall as a five-story building. The fronds are either palmately or pinnately lobed.

The palmate leaves are formed on a stem, the fan palms. The leaves can also form as pinnately lobed leaves or feather fronds.

The fruits are usually drupes and are generally called dates. The common date palm has sweet fruit and two-lobed seeds. The fruit of the native is black and round-to-ovate, which comes from the native California palm (Washingoni filifera).

We acknowledge that we are located on the traditional homelands of the Native Kizh, Tongva, and Gabrieleno American people.

We also recognize their neighbors in this region: the Tataviam (San Fernando Valley) and Chumash (Malibu) people. We are committed to developing an authentic relationship with this land and its remaining Indigenous inhabitants.

We further promise to keep an eye out for descendants of our lost warrior princess, Toypurina of California.

Toypurina: Cali's Joan of Arc

According to this book, we found one, a young girl directly related to the Native American "Joan of Arc," who was detained and forced to convert to the religion of the genocidal colonists in the San Gabriel Concentration Camp Mission.

It was there that she attempted to lead an Indigenous uprising, a revolution to win our freedom from European domination, before being caught and subjected to the worst punishment the invaders could come up with to impose -- forcing her to "marry" a white man and bear his blended children, which included forced relocation up north.

What precious ways were lost.

Oh, Sacred American Indians, please forgive us for what we have done, for what they did, for what we are still doing, for what European empires were in the habit of doing, for what the Catholic Church looks like it will never stop doing. We owe reparations, repatriation of lands, restoration of lost languages and stories, but most of all honor and respect for your survival here for thousands of years before it was ruined. May the prophecies be merciful. May we honor our pledge to make things right again rather than rationalizations, living in ignorance, and bitter denial.

Enjoy a plant day with guest leader and fiber-arts artisan Amy Stewart and Rob Remedi for another plant-dyeing and ethnobotany class, this time focusing on the plants and colors of the fall season.

The native plants featured are black walnut (brown), cactus-cochineal (pink), sagebrush (yellow), and orange (an over-dye).

Chumash Cecilia Garcia and Dr. Adams, USC

The class will also have an ethnobotany walk. This class starts with a short easy walk identifying plants and their uses, as well as which ones yield color.

Upon return from our walk, we'll learn the plant dyeing process and how to prepare different fibers (wool, cotton, silk) for dyeing, then make the dye bath and take home a fabric of choice.

This is a fun, informative, and hands-on class, exploring nature's colorful and useful bounty.

Say something, Chief. I'm recording.

The Autry in Griffith Park: Special 35th Anniversary (with tickets priced as if it were 1988). Join the Autry (with consumed the Southwest Museum's extensive American-Indian collection) for a day full of fun celebrating the Autry's 35th anniversary, with family-friendly activities museum-wide.

Special 35th-anniversary ticket prices are the same as they were when the Autry first opened in 1988.

See schedule and location of performances and activities. (Times and locations will be updated daily , so stay tuned for updates if it rains). SCHEDULE OF EVENTS... Details