Reviving a legacy (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Reviving a legacy

Far-flung members of North County tribe are returning, with their hearts
on the reservation and their eyes off it

By Chet Barfield
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 27, 2005
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20051127-9999-1n27ysabel.html

SANTA YSABEL INDIAN RESERVATION – When his 95-year-old mother died last
year, Ken Ponchetti took her ashes up to the 6,000-foot peak where she
was born and raised. Praying in an ancient language, he sprinkled a
pinch of her remains in each of the four directions.

[photo inset - EDUARDO CONTRERAS / Union-Tribune
Christian Dominquez, 7, got some homework help from teacher Theresa
Gregor at the Santa Ysabel reservation, which the band is trying to
revive after decades of poverty.]

It might seem unusual for a man who spent his long professional career
off the reservation to say goodbye the Indian way. But the retired
General Dynamics executive is, in blood and spirit, a Diegueño, an
Ipai, a Santa Ysabel Indian.

Ponchetti is part of a large and diverse North County tribe that is
undergoing a transformation. Under new leadership after decades of
disconnection, the far-flung members of the Santa Ysabel Band of
Diegueño Indians are coming back to their tribe, and they're changing
what it is.

These modern-day Indians are revising the sad legacy of Santa Ysabel,
creating a different kind of tribe, a tribe with its heart on the
reservation and its eyes on the outside world.

They'll tell you that the small casino they're about to build is only
part of the story, that this journey is about more than money. It's
about healing old wounds, about re-weaving a fabric that has been
unraveling for more than a century.

"We're headed in a new direction," tribal Chairman Johnny Hernandez
said. "We want to make this a reservation our people are proud of and
make the land itself proud of the people who are on it."

Pride has long been scarce on this 15,500-acre reservation 65 miles
northeast of San Diego. Its forested mountains abound with beauty, but
its people are among the poorest and most oppressed in the region.

Over generations, families fled the reservation, mostly for economic
survival. Today more than two-thirds of the tribe's 770 members are
scattered throughout California and other states.

But lately, more and more are coming to tribal meetings, from Orange
County, Los Angeles or farther. Some are even moving back to the
reservation, as Ponchetti did in 1984 and Hernandez did in 2000.

What's bringing them back? The push for a casino? Opportunities for free
land? Family connections? A voice in tribal decisions?

According to dozens of members, all those factors play a part and fuel
frictions between old and new thinking, between factions on and off the
reservation.

For many, however, the pull comes from something deeper.

"A lot of them wanted to come back to their roots to find out who the
hell they were," said Ponchetti, 67, whose father was a prominent
tribal leader in the 1950s. "They were Indian, but they didn't know
what that meant."

Santa Ysabel's roots began splintering long ago.

Before being renamed Diegueño by Spanish missionaries, the natives here
called themselves Ipai (EE-pay). Cousins of the Kumeyaay to the south,
they occupied nine villages between what is now Ramona, Warner Springs
and Anza Borrego.

[photo inset - Tribal Chairman Johnny Hernandez sat atop a mountain
above the site of a planned casino. "We're headed in a new direction,"
he said.]

Two hundred years ago, the priests came to change their religion. A
small mission was erected in 1818 near what later would become the
reservation. The church graveyard is filled with tribal members, from
the 1800s to this year.

After California became a state in 1850, the Ipai villages were
displaced by settlers. The Indians were forced onto the reservation,
established in 1893.

"In the very beginning, Santa Ysabel had no tribe," said one elder, Don
Beresford. "We never had a government of any kind. We never had a
chief. We were just a bunch of families.

"They came in and they fenced in the place and pushed the Indians up in
it and said all the Indians living on or near it will be known as the
Santa Ysabel band of mission Indians."

The government built a one-room school on the reservation and made the
federal Indian agent headmaster. The Ipai were not to speak their
language or practice their ceremonies. Those who did might be thrown in
a small jail, the ruins of which still stand, roofless.

And so the exodus began. Children were sent to boarding schools and
assimilated. Many left to look for work. Some found success and raised
their kids to be self-supporting. Many of those offspring would become
what today are the more than 100 Santa Ysabel members who hold or are
pursuing college degrees.

A governing council elected three years ago reflects the makeup of the
tribe itself. The six officers have roots on the reservation and
experience off it.

One has a business degree and was an accountant for Lexus dealerships.
Another attended a New Mexico art college and teaches Indian culture.
Another studied environmental sciences and manages the reservation's
natural resources.

Hernandez, 53, grew up hunting rabbits in Santa Ysabel's mountains,
surrounded by elders who filled his head and heart with stories of
suffering. He attended San Diego State University and thought about law
school but instead took a job with Pacific Bell that turned into a
30-year career.

As an installation technician, working from Escondido to Hollywood,
Hernandez learned as much about societal diversity as he did about
technology. And when he retired and moved back to Santa Ysabel five
years ago, he brought his wider horizons with him.

"We've got to deal with the outside world," Hernandez said. "We can't
stay still in today's society. Nobody can. Things change. We can't be
using old typewriters when everybody's got a laptop."

Almost everyone on the reservation has lived somewhere else. And others
"out there" maintain ties to the tribe.

Mesa College professor Roy Cook has close relationships with many of
Santa Ysabel's "urban Indians." Like them, his day-to-day life in San
Diego is far removed from the Arizona tribe of his ancestors.

"It's like running parallel lives," Cook said. "Your actual base, your
rock, your tie, your essence, is in the land-based reservation. That's
where your heart is. But your mind functions . . . in the Western
world."

Karen Vignault, 47, is one of Santa Ysabel's "off-rez" members, as they
are called. She has a degree in filmmaking, lives in North Park and
works at a Kearny Mesa business college. But she feels deeply connected
to her tribe and likes where it's heading.

"The new council has brought the urban Indian experience to shed light
on the reservation and balance both worlds," she said. "The new people
that are coming in are helping to bring back the old traditions."

[photo inset - JOHN GASTALDO / Union-Tribune
Javier Dominguez, 9, retied his bandanna during a break in the action at
a Santa Ysabel tribal festival in August. The annual cultural
celebration, which the tribe has revived, features traditional songs
and dances.]

Vignault and others had grown disheartened over recent decades as the
reservation foundered in poverty and discord, made worse by alcohol and
drug abuse. Members accused elected officers of plundering what little
federal funding the tribe got.

Still, a handful of elders remained who spoke the old language, who
remembered the stories and bird songs that the U.S. government and
boarding schools had tried so hard to quash.

Like flickering candles, the elders kept Ipai culture from dying out. As
the 21st century dawned, some of their grandchildren would try to fan
those flames again.

But as important as it is to connect with the past, it is also important
to look to the future.

"Indian tribes are not stuck in a time warp. They're more than missions
and baskets and bird songs," said Cook, the Mesa College professor. "We
have to realize the process of enlightenment, from fire to bows and
arrows to ATVs and SUVs."

Santa Ysabel has basic needs: housing, electricity, running water. The
reservation infrastructure – the homes clustered near state Route 79,
the power lines running only a mile or less up into the hills – was
built almost entirely with federal funds.

For any real comeback, Santa Ysabel would need an economic engine of its
own.

Nine months after the new council was sworn in, the tribe signed a
gambling compact with then-Gov. Gray Davis.

Members had argued for years whether to go down that road. Doubters said
the reservation was too remote for a casino. Some feared the tribe would
lose its land, or its soul, to outside business interests.

But supporters, including most off-reservation voters, wanted to give it
a shot. As with most tribes, Santa Ysabel members don't have to live on
the reservation to collect casino dividends or revenue-sharing proceeds
from other tribes that have gaming.

Santa Ysabel signed a $27 million deal last year with Arizona's Yavapai
Apache tribe to build a casino with 350 slot machines. Construction has
been delayed for months, heightening fears of yet another tribal
failure. But the bulldozers finally are scheduled to begin grading
early next month.

[photo inset - Marcelino Osuna (left) of the Santa Ysabel reservation
competed with his grandson Harold Hale Jr. of the Barona reservation
during the cultural celebration.]

The casino is expected to open in about a year, but the Yavapai will
have to be repaid before Santa Ysabel starts making any real profits.

In the meantime, the tribal council is aggressively using federal grants
and revenue-sharing funds to resuscitate the reservation.

A social services department has been created to address drug, alcohol
and family issues. A full-time tribal police officer has been hired to
stem drug dealing, domestic violence and other crimes.

A tribal youth coordinator tutors children after school. A visiting
instructor teaches native arts, games and culture.

Santa Ysabel has also revived its annual cultural gathering, sharing
traditional songs and dances.

Nearly two-thirds of the tribe's $3 million budget is earmarked for
developing housing and extending electrical power to the 15 to 20 homes
lacking it now.

Electricity also is needed for the dozens of off-reservation members who
want to move back. If their applications are approved, they can have a
free acre of land, but they can't get a federally subsidized home
unless they have electricity for a well pump.

At least 20 members have moved onto the reservation in the past few
years, living in trailer homes, hauling their own water, running
appliances on gas-powered generators.

One of them is Stan Rodriguez, 50. He grew up in Fresno, raised by
parents who left Santa Ysabel to harvest crops. He returned to San
Diego County in 1979 and has spent the decades since learning the
native language, songs and spirituality.

Rodriguez works as a military contractor, teaching alcohol-and
drug-abuse prevention. He also sings traditional bird songs and teaches
Kumeyaay language classes at a community college on the Sycuan
reservation.

Rodriguez moved to Santa Ysabel in 2002, towing a mobile home to a
hilltop plot beyond the power lines.

"I have a master's degree, and I run my house off of a generator. I have
to truck my water in water tanks," he said. But he added that those
sacrifices – and the 70-mile commute to work in San Diego – are worth
being re-connected to his tribe.

"We are in a period of transition," he said. "People who are moving back
to the reservation are bringing their experiences. Sometimes it'll flow,
and sometimes there's conflict."

  

Tribal leaders must contend with conflicts and infighting. One
persistent source of criticism is Tammy Leo, 33, who dropped out of
school at 16 and is raising three children in a travel trailer with no
electricity.

Leo wants more of the intertribal revenue-sharing money. At Santa
Ysabel, half goes to members and half goes into tribal development. The
occasional checks, divided among a roster of 770, have ranged from a few
hundred dollars to less than a hundred.

Leo thinks the off-reservation newcomers who pack tribal meetings mainly
want to build the casino and get bigger checks in the mail.

"I see a lot of white faces, a lot of black faces. I don't even know who
they are," she said. "They all want the right to vote, but none of them
live up here and live the hardship. The people who live up here should
have more of a say."

Tribal leaders acknowledge that they can't please everyone. They say
they want youth on and off the reservation to grow up to be like Vice
Chairwoman Brandie Taylor, who is putting her business education to use
for the tribe. Or Santa Ysabel's in-house attorney, Devon Reed
Lomayesva, who left the reservation as a child but has remained close
all her life through her family.

Lomayesva, 34, put herself through college and law school on loans. She
says Santa Ysabel is on its way to a new beginning.

"We're trying to recapture our identity and our place on our land," she
said. "It's not about the money. It's about redefining ourselves,
putting ourselves back on the map."

Hernandez, the tribal chairman, said Santa Ysabel is rediscovering a
sense of hope.

"I take pride in this tribe because of all the people in the past who
have suffered," he said. "We were forced here, put here. . . . Nobody
asked to be put here, but now we're here.

"This is a great tribe. We have so many diverse people. Whether people
like each other, that's not the point. We're still here."

Chet Barfield: (619) 542-4572; chet.barfield at uniontrib.com
 
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