Ancient ways and modern times (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Ancient ways and modern times

The Kumeyaay people practice their traditions and revive native crafts
in remote areas of Mexico and California as encroaching civilization
brings electricity and running water.

By Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times
September 26, 2011, 8:33 p.m.
USA

Reporting from the Sierra Juarez Mountains, Mexico— In the high table
land, a small, rawboned woman picks her way across ash and sand to a
cave where she slept as a girl when her family came to harvest pine
nuts every August.

Teodora Cuero is 90 years old, half-blind behind her sunglasses, with
skin like crinkled wax paper.

She moves her fingers over the lichen-mottled rock, and the memories
flood her with emotion. She talks of lost friends and family members,
how they used to live.

Her friend Mike Wilken, an anthropologist, listens with rapt
attention. What she describes are final scenes from the Indians'
ancient yearly migration between the sea and desert, a pattern of life
in Southern California and northern Baja long before the Spanish set
foot here.

Access full article below:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adv-kumeyaay-20110927,0,6784675.story