Customer Reviews

The Gabrielino

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When previously living in Los Angeles it was very difficult to think of the Native Americans who had previously inhabited that area. It is fairly common knowledge that Los Angeles was originally called "Bahia de los humos" or "Smoky Bay" due to the campfires of the Native Americans who lived in that area. But just who were those Native Americans. Due to forced assimilation in the Spanish encomienda mission system, less protection under the Mexican government, and even less under the Americans, this vibrant and well adapted people have disappeared. The book also includes a chapter and photographs of the lost woman of St. Nicholas, the last of her people.

The Gabrielino's are not extinct. We are alive and living all over Southern California and Arizona. Bruce Miller's book was informative and incorrect. Many families still live around the Mission San Gabriel where a lot of my family is buried. The reservation was out in the desert, unwanted habitat, as most res' were. Southern California has become a wasteland for the greedy whiteman. It was once lush and abundant with natural beauty. The air is putrid and the land drained. It could be rich again.

This is the best source of information I have found of the Native Americans who called themselves Tongva. They lived in northern Los Angeles - in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley. Easy to read and fully illustrated.

The Tongva (Gabrielino) people still number in the thousands in Los Angeles. This is their land. It was never obtained legally or fairly in any way. Land belongs to those who belong to it, who love it generationally, who sanctify it with their bones and their dedication. The European power structure that came into this area has NEVER cared about this land, let alone fell in love with it. The European history of Los Angeles has always been one of imperialism, of imposition, of people paying no attention to the land imposing their utopian vision of some other place onto the hills and valleys here. Los Angeles was NEVER a desert : it was an oak woodland with interspersing oak and walnut prairies. It was lush, both physically and culturally.

Any work that purports that a living people are dead is a genocidal work.

The sooner the Bulldozer People move out and take their asphalt and concrete with them, the sooner we can return this place to the PARADISE it once was.