Tribes Gather (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Tribes Gather

By AMELIA NEUFELD
BEE STAFF WRITER
http://www.modbee.com/life/readysetgo/story/11339298p-12087199c.html

For California Indians, the advent of autumn historically was marked by
a two-week-long "gathering," a celebration of the bounty of the fall
harvest at which members of various tribes met to trade goods, catch up
with distant relatives and perhaps find a marriage partner.

This annual tradition lasted until the 1760s, when Spanish missionaries,
and later Mexican ranchers, pushed into California tribal lands and
actively "recruited" — either by force or enticements — the native
Indians to work for them in building missions, farming or doing menial
labor.

The Indians were forbidden to speak native languages, and many of their
traditional cultural expressions, like the fall gathering, ended.

In recent years, some California Indian tribes have brought back the
fall gathering, but this time as more of a public-education event. Many
fall gatherings still function as places for tribal members to meet, but
now the events, which are typically one day long, also serve as a way to
introduce and educate the general public about American Indian history
and culture.

"A lot of people in the Central Valley don't know that there are Indians
here," said Jennifer Morgan, a ranger and interpreter at the San Luis
Reservoir State Park in Los Banos, "or they don't know anything about
Indians other than what they see in movies."

Mutsuns, guests gather

Saturday, a fall gathering will be held at the park. About 70 members of
the Mutsun tribe will converge and celebrate their heritage and culture
with dancing, demonstrations and storytelling. An additional 10 or so
members from two other Northern Californian tribes, the Maidu and
Mewuk, will join the gathering to demonstrate their tribal dancing. The
event is free and open to the public.

"It's to promote cultural awareness of California Indians and to teach
the public about our tribes," Quirina Luna-Costillas, a member of the
Mutsun tribe, said. The Mutsuns' (moot-SOONS) land historically
stretched from the Monterey coast to Pacheco Pass (Highway 152 west of
Los Banos) and, some say, as far inland as the San Joaquin River.

Now in its fifth year, the gathering will feature demonstrations of how
to make abalone-shell necklaces, baskets, soap-root brushes, arrowheads
and miniature tule boats, as well as lessons on "atlatl," or
spear-throwing.

Demonstrations of traditional Indian dancing and storytelling will be
ongoing throughout the day.

These tribes "are happy to share their culture with everybody," Morgan
said. "They would rather have a day to share their culture than build a
museum for it."

Saturday's gathering is co-sponsored by California State Parks, a Los
Banos community group called the Four Rivers Association and the Mutsun
Language Foundation, a nonprofit agency co-founded by Luna-Costillas and
her cousin, Lisa Carrier. The women started the foundation in 2000 to
document and preserve traditional Mutsun practices and language.

Mutsun is one of eight Ohlone/ Costanoan dialects that were spoken along
California's central coast. The last fluent speaker of Mutsun died in
1930.

The idea to form a nonprofit foundation "came from eight years of trying
to revitalize our native language," Luna-Costillas said. The women
worked with linguists and historians from the University of California
campuses in Berkeley and Davis, trying to hunt down any documents with
references to a language that, like the other 100-plus American Indian
languages in California, was oral-based.

"There needs to be an interest in the community to make these languages
work," said Lisa Woodward, a graduate student in American Indian
studies at UC Davis who worked with Luna-Costillas as she researched
documentation of the Mutsun language.

Language collector

The University of California houses a database of some of the papers by
American linguist J.P. Harrington, who traveled the West collecting
pages of notes on native languages. Stored in the database are probably
15,000 to 20,000 pages of notes Harrington took on the Mutsun language,
Woodward said. His original notes are stored in the national
anthropological archives at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C.

Woodward said she has noticed an interest from many California tribes in
"bringing back" their dormant languages. For example, the Pechanga tribe
in Southern California employs a linguist full time to teach its
children their ancestral language. The Hoopa, in Humboldt County, have
set up their own language program as well.

"It's part of the lifestyle, part of the culture," Woodward said. "Some
people believe that you don't truly understand your culture until you
speak the language."

For Luna-Costillas, the impetus to start the project came out of a
desire not only to document the language, but to "revitalize our
culture."

Since working with researchers and doing the detective work,
Luna-Costillas said, the tribe has found "tons" of songs that it is
starting to bring back, and has started dancing again. Luna-Costillas
has become "semifluent" in Mutsun, teaching herself the language with
the help of a linguist; now she is teaching her children.

Increasing awareness of her people's language and culture is the main
reason Luna-Costillas said her tribe wants the public to take part the
annual fall gathering. "We're proud of our culture and who we are," she
said. "It is important to understand that your people didn't just fade
out and not exist anymore.

"You get a little tired of hearing that you're extinct."

Bee staff writer Amelia Neufeld can be reached at 238-4537 or
aneufeld at modbee.com.


MORE INFORMATION

What: 5th annual Fall Gathering of Native California Peoples

When: Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Where: San Luis Reservoir State Park (San Luis Creek exit off Highway
152 between Los Banos and Gilroy)

Admission: Free (parking $6)

See ...: California Indian dancers, tule boat building, atlatl (spear
throwing), basket weaving, flintnapping, abalone pendant carving,
soap-root brush making, storytelling

Information: 826-1196, mutsunlanguage.com or parks.ca.gov/events



Posted on 10/12/05 00:00:00
http://www.modbee.com/life/readysetgo/story/11339298p-12087199c.html