00:00:14
COATES:
: Today is May 21, 2014, and I am sitting with Rudy, Jr. of the Tataviam
Tribe. Do you want to give your title and introduce yourself?
ORTEGA:
: Sure. I’m the tribe’s—my name is Rudy, Jr. I’m the tribe’s vice
president, which is the chairman of the Tribal Senates of the
legislative branch of the tribe.
COATES:
: Okay, okay, very good. Okay. Well, we want to begin in the beginning,
I guess, and to talk about your family, your ancestry, and how your
family and that ancestry kind of weaves into the tribal history, I
guess. So that’s kind of a wide-open place for you to start.
ORTEGA:
: Right. It’s a quite extensive history. I’m fortunate in myself, and
many other family members, that we have quite a few tribal elders who
did a lot of extensive research in genealogy, enough to go back to early
1700s, the time when the first people that were registered and baptized
at San Fernando Mission, and that’s when we have our documents recorded.
Prior to that, it’s more of oral history, no real true documentation,
because the tribal people didn’t keep documentation back then. But I
descend from—the families here descend from multiple villages throughout
the San Fernando, Santa Clarita, and Antelope Valley, and some members
even come from Simi Valley and also from Los Angeles, the downtown area,
that are enrolled in the tribe. My family directly, when the Spanish
came in, they were negotiating land grants and titles, so we got Encino
property, which is on Ventura Boulevard in Balboa, high real estate
today, but it escaped our hands due to embezzlement and other trickery
things that occurred with our ancestry.
00:02:00
COATES:
: When did that happen?
00:04:05
ORTEGA:
: That happened in 1857 when they lost the title of Encino. It wasn’t
protected at all, and it should have. And along with that, we also had
other tribal members, similar fashion, (unclear) that descend from
different areas. One, Universal Studios, where that’s a Rancho Cahuenga,
again, you know, high real estate areas. The Chatsworth Reservoir, which
is Escorpión Ranch, the the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
owns that. In fact, the tribe still today is arguing, disputing that
property to show illegitimate transfer of titleship. Then the city of
San Fernando, our members here were actually escorted out of the city.
We were banned from the city, which, knowing the history, we always from
time to time informed the city council or new city council that comes in
and say, “Hey, we were court-ordered, and sheriff walked us out of the
city boundaries.” So by law, we shouldn’t even be back in the city of
San Fernando, but our Tribal Office is right across the street from the
city hall office. So it’s impressive to see that we’ve come so far and
maintain our community. But like I said, my family comes from (unclear)
and also from villages in the Newhall area, Santa Clarita Valley,
multiple villages up there, and also my family comes from Simi Valley,
from the village of Tapu. So these folks descend, they come and created
the community, and over time, because of the Spanish folks coming in and
moving folks on to the mission, you had villages who traditionally
probably didn’t mingle or didn’t come in because of whatever
relationship they had, were forced to embrace one another during that
transition time, and then once again when the U.S. came in and took
California in their hands. So the tribe had to do that same thing in
order to protect land as much as they possibly can. And we lost it.
In one of the records we had, all the tribal captains from the villages
signed a petition to maintain at least some parcel of the land of the
(unclear) mission of San Fernando in the Valley. Then that’s where it
also shows history record of our recognition. During the Mission Relief
Act, the U.S. government sent an agent to put the tribe on to trust
lands, and due to the political climate here in Los Angeles, the scarce
of water, the finding of oil and natural gas, they didn’t have any
(unclear). And because of that, the success of moving us on to a
reservation, much at the same time when Morongo and Soboba and all these
folks got put on trust lands, our tribe would have been the same here in
Los Angeles. Fortunately, it didn’t occur. Again, that was because of
the political climate that was occurring here in Los Angeles at the
time.
COATES:
: And the resources and the value of the property and everything else.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. We’re in the mecca of the largest booming city in the nation, or
one of them, and still thriving, and yet in today’s climate, we’re
limited in water. Water resource is a huge thing. So back then, it was
the same thing. They were in a drought at the time, needed all the
resources. They knew that one of the property that we have today that we
named after my father, Rudy Ortega, Sr., was actually a land (unclear)
to one of our tribal captains, and he owned the property, but it had a
natural spring. So the city needed that water, so that was one of the
reasons why we lost property, because of the water.
00:05:53
COATES:
: And when was that happening?
ORTEGA:
: That was in 1891 to 1893 in which that time occurred.
COATES:
: So they were establishing reservations for other tribes to the east at
that time, but even then, Los Angeles was still enough of a city that—
ORTEGA:
: Enough of a city, enough of political strength that they didn’t want
it. The gentleman who fought for our tribe (unclear) San Fernando and
the founding of San Fernando, was a former senator of the United States
Senate, who became the founder of the city of San Fernando, Charles
McClay. So he had the political strength and power, he knew the folks
back in the White House, so that was not going to occur near his
property, and that’s the truth about it. Unfortunately, we were on the
wrong side of the table when it came to the negotiations.
COATES:
: Can you talk about your ancestry within the context of the tribe?
Because I know your father was pretty renowned and was the tribal
chairman for a long time, I think, wasn’t it?
ORTEGA:
: Right, yeah.
COATES:
: And then even going further back than that, I mean, is there that
lineage of leadership, I guess, that sort of runs in your particular
family? Or how would you describe your family in the context of the
tribe?
00:07:5800:09:42
ORTEGA:
: Well, the history, the genealogy, we do come from multiple tribal
captains. One of our tribal captains—and that’s the reason why when I
said earlier we had the Encino land grant, because Tiburcio Cayo, who
was a tribal chief or tribal captain, I should say more correctly, he
came from the village of Tapu which is the Simi Valley area. His
daughters married other Native people, Tataviam, Tongva folks from the
San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita Valley, and then my
great-great-grandfather, Francisco Papabubaba, was a sub captain, and so
they became ownership of the Encino property.
From there, the tradition of spokespersons or captains continue on, so
we have multiple captains. I’m like the traditional or plain style, or I
would say would have been advocated as one leader. We had multiple
leaders that represented multiple families or villages. So our family
line continued to go through, and from there, Maria Lipas, which is
Francisco’s daughter, she’s the one who lost her property of Encino, was
head of the family of the Encino village. And then from there, it went
to her son, Antonio Maria Ortega. So he had leadership at the same time
when one of our other captains, Rodego Rocha and Frank Ortiz, who are
enrolled today with the tribe, were also spokesmen for their families.
And then from Antonio Maria Ortega, it went to my father, Rudy Ortega,
Sr., at an early age. So the tribal elders, which was his aunts and
uncles, selected my father to take the next reign after my
great-grandfather passed. And not too long after he passed, my
grandfather passed, and that’s why my father was selected. They were
selected in the old-fashioned way where the elders of the tribe, once
they said this is the person to be selected, to continue on. Today we
don’t have that. We have an election process. We have a democracy. We
still have some traditionals and we fight among ourselves, to be honest.
The elders said, “This is who we want. We don’t care about the
election,” but we hold the election still, and it’s a process.
So after my father passed, my brother was vice president of the tribe at
the time, and by tribal constitution, he moved up to presidency, and
then I got elected on to Tribal Senate and then voted into vice
presidency. Then again every four years we run tribal elections and we
select our tribal leader to represent the tribe.
COATES:
: Am I using the proper terms, or is “captain” or “spokesperson” more
the term that is used nowadays? Or what is the title? It’s president and
vice president and things like that, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Actually, to be quite honest, we use them both. The more governmental
terms would be tribal president and vice president and secretary. Among
the community folks, even though we have those elected officials, we
still have our spokespersons and captains. So even though they may not
be selected to represent in the legislative body or tribal leadership,
among the community family members select their own tribal spokesperson
that will come and inform the tribal leaders, “This is what our family
wants.” So not all the family will come out and speak. They will choose
someone who is bold enough or loud enough to represent the family and
come out. So it’s kind of like, I’d say, just selected representatives.
COATES:
: So you’ve still got these parallel systems, then, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:12
COATES:
: Oh, how interesting.
ORTEGA:
: And it works well, because one of our elders who passed, he was a
spokesman for the family, and rather than the tribal government saying,
“This is who we’re going to select,” or run an election to tell us who
you select, the family goes themself, and among themself come back and
inform us that, “This is who we selected,” which keeps the peace. This
way they chose who they feel comfortable the most that can represent
them when speaking to the tribal government.
COATES:
: So where were you born?
ORTEGA:
: I was born here in Sun Valley, which is not too far from the Tribal
Office, and pretty much the time I was born, my father was already been
tribal leader maybe for two to three decades and created a nonprofit. So
for myself, I’ve grown up—I was very fortunate to have my father who he
was, to have grown up and, I guess, mentored by him and many of the
elders to see what the work they’ve done to ensure that the tradition
and customs continue on.
COATES:
: What was it like? I mean, you’ve talked sort of about the family
circumstances that you were born into. I’m trying to get to what were
the physical circumstances. What was your home like? What was the
neighborhood like? What was the community like?
00:13:30
ORTEGA:
: Our community, we lived in the outskirts of San Fernando and Sylmar,
right at the borderline at a dead-end street in a regular suburb house
with the four-bedroom home. And the community around us, from what I
remember, was predominantly white. Some Hispanics were coming into the
community. Over time—the time I reached eighteen, it completely flipped.
There was one white family in the neighborhood.
Housing right behind us, it was a dead-end. It was mountain terrain.
Those mountains, some of them came down, rolling hills, and became
housing. So at the end, the community really expanded from going—I think
on our block was about eight homes to about additional forty homes that
surrounded us, and that truly did change. It went from where the kids
were playing, one, in the rolling hills, because there was no one else,
kind of like our huge backyard, and then the street itself is a dead-end
street. Then I have older brothers, older siblings and sisters
(unclear), so they had, from me growing up, they were in and out of the
house because they were much older, so they had started their own
families, their own lives as well. But I think we blended in. Folks knew
who we were because of my father and stuff, that he would be in parades
and all, so a lot of people knew that. But we kind of just blended in
with the society that surrounded us. We celebrated with our neighbors or
we’d take in other—like my father other side of the family who are
non-Native, or my mother, who is Mexican, we’d take on some other
tradition and customs, and they had other relatives here. So we
celebrated the quinceañeras and all the different activities that
occurred around us and festivals. Our biggest thing when we were small
was going to the church in Santa Rosa for their yearly festival, the
carnival that they had. But I remember my father had a difficult time
dragging us out of the festivals at times. It was like that was our
Disneyland. (Coates laughs.) We weren’t a wealthy family, so we couldn’t
get to Disneyland all the time, so the carnivals made up for it, so that
that was a great time for us.
00:15:49
COATES:
: Yeah. Okay. So living in a predominantly white neighborhood, I’ve got
a lot of questions about that. Did you have a sense of discrimination
there or were you pretty accepted in the neighborhood or were you—
ORTEGA:
: You know, one thing I have to say is my father, for what he was, he
was friendly and made friends among everyone else, so the neighborhood
were pretty much friendly. I mean, they talked to us, and their kids
grew up with us. I think the racial discrimination that we had was when
we left our neighborhood block, when we went to the market and to shop.
San Fernando was still highly predominantly white. There was a lot of
racism. My father, he grew up more racism than what I had received, and
so I only remember a few incidents where, one, we parked next to a car
and the gentleman come out screaming, swearing, cussing us out that we
were immigrants from Mexico, and just moved his car, because once he saw
we were just sitting in the car waiting for my mother to come out of the
market—
COATES:
: This was at the supermarket?
ORTEGA:
: At the supermarket.
COATES:
: Oh, my goodness.
00:17:14
ORTEGA:
: The supermarket was literally around the block from where we lived,
and the time have changed from there. I think it was like Boyd’s Market
and one of those old markets that no longer exists, and that’s what
occurred. I remember I was like maybe eight, nine years old at the time.
And I turned around and looked at my father, and said, “What did he call
us?”
And he was just like, “Oh, he’s just an angry person. Just let it go.”
And from there, that’s how my father taught me to say, hey, you know
what? Some people just have their own demons inside. Let them deal with
themself.
COATES:
: That’s pretty unusual for somebody to just literally get out of the
car and start yelling.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: Even though they might feel that way, most people who feel that way
wouldn’t have.
ORTEGA:
: Oh, I know. He saw us. He looked directly and me and my father and saw
who was in the car, and just had to move his vehicle.
COATES:
: And with kids in the car and everything too.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he didn’t care. Yeah.
COATES:
: Wow. So if San Fernando was a predominantly white town at that point,
was this, like, where your father had always lived? Did he live here
because of employment, or why was the family in—
ORTEGA:
: We’ve always lived here, and prior to him, my father’s family had a
home on Celis Street, so they’ve always maintained San Fernando as a
residence. Prior to that, it was Encino and (unclear) and a few other
areas that they’ve gone and worked for and farmed, but San Fernando
predominantly they stayed. But from my father and my uncle, who still
lives and tells me the times, certain areas they couldn’t go into. They
couldn’t go past the tracks. Past the tracks is the white homes down the
south where the more minority homes, the Mexicans, the Indians, and so
on.
COATES:
: So there really literally is a wrong side of the tracks, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: There was literally, yeah, yeah.
00:18:46
COATES:
: Where are the tracks exactly here? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Well, coming to our city, we’re north of the tracks, and then we
crossed over that bridge. But I think as growing up, it did started to
change. San Fernando, more Hispanic folks start coming in. Just like the
restaurants around the city of Los Angeles, diversity started to occur
and more acceptance started to happen. I think there’s still racism. We
still see it. I know when I travel in places, we still get it, my wife
and I. My wife, she’s Mexican, but very fair skin, light skin, so a lot
of folks will gravitate towards her thinking she’s white. It’s funny to
experience—
COATES:
: (whispers) I know what that’s about. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: When we had our first child, the nurses and the doctor came in and
said, “Do you need a translator?” to me, and just gave me the hardest
time the very first time we had our first child.
COATES:
: Oh, my goodness.
ORTEGA:
: And my wife’s like, “He doesn’t need the translator. He doesn’t even
speak very fluent Spanish.” (Coates laughs) My Spanish is very broken.
Her side of the family teases me because I can’t speak it well. (Coates
laughs.) But, you know, that was only about seventeen, eighteen years
ago, so it’s their own folks when they see certain classes, and I fit
the stereotype, you know, dark skin, black hair. Must be Mexican or
something like that, yeah.
00:20:36
COATES:
: Well, every Indian person tells me the same thing, no matter what
tribe they are, it’s just like it’s what somebody called the default
race or something like that as to think, well, they must be Latino, some
sort, right?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah.
COATES:
: So were there other Tataviam people then in the neighborhood or maybe
just not in your immediate neighborhood, but nearby? I mean, was there
any kind of a Tataviam community?
00:22:12
ORTEGA:
: In our neighborhood block there was no Tataviam, but there were—not
too far. For me as a kid, I can get on my bike, and within three minutes
I was at a relative’s home, because we literally, around San Fernando
area, we were outskirt of San Fernando, some in Mission Hills. So I
remember visiting a lot of family and going to a lot of homes and stay
there for hours, you know, as the adults talk and the kids would on the
back and play. Next thing you know, it was dark, and the old trait was
that the adults will yell out our names to come back home, and that was
the way they’d go find us, just call our name. (Coates laughs.) “You’ve
got to be home now,” or, “Dinnertime!” Because we’d go out early. And
especially summer, I remember those times that we’d leave the house
right after breakfast and then come back into dinnertime. And a lot of
it was visiting our relatives, like I said, my cousins. Once we got to
like ten, twelve years old, we’d just hop on the bike, and three to five
minutes, depending what relative I’m going to go visit, or they’ll come
visit. A lot of times they’ll come visit us because we had the rolling
hills, my cousins, and we will just ride with our bikes in the hills.
Then we had a lot of family festivals, weddings, functions like in the
park that we’ll do together as a community. To us as a kid, we’re just
thinking we’re just having a good time with family, and it was normal
for us to see a lot of family members all the time getting together at
the park, and we’d literally take up almost a lot of the benches at the
park because there was so many of us.
COATES:
: Okay. What was the school like that you went to and all of that? Was
it a fairly mixed situation as well, or was it predominantly white also?
ORTEGA:
: No, it was fairly mixed. A lot of the schools we’ve gone to, they did
have a huge mixture. I think what we had, though, from my experience in
growing up, was the commonality and the same stories of many other folks
is that, you know, when they came teaching to Indian people, they will
say the Indians from this area were all extinct or dead. I remember
bringing my dad in and I said, “Well, here’s—.”
COATES:
: Not this one. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. “We’re here.” But it was different because a lot of my friends
were Hispanic. We did have some white friends. Once in school it was
just like you just had to blend in with everyone else, so it was like a
loss of identity or take the most predominant identity that was there,
and just flow with the chart and flow with everybody else. So I guess it
was just not bring any special attention to yourself.
00:24:27
COATES:
: Yeah. So as part of that, was there more of an inclination when you
were a child to identify with your mother’s Mexican heritage, then, as
part of that community, is that what you’re saying, or is that—
ORTEGA:
: Well, I think, yeah, as identifying myself, not wholly. I mean, I
never really said I was Mexican or any kind, but I would more have the
more Mexican friends than I would have the more white friends, because I
can relate to more of them, and there were certain things that they will
say or jokes they will say that I can understand. Even back then, I
think a lot of us, even my friends who were Mexican didn’t speak
Spanish, so that’s why I didn’t really retain the Spanish from my mom.
My dad spoke Spanish. That was their generation, too; they all spoke
Spanish. My great-grandfather, from what I understood, only really spoke
Spanish. He didn’t really speak English. So school was like we needed to
be kind of white, you know. Even my Mexican friends, they didn’t want to
speak Spanish; they wanted to blend into society. Some of them I
remember were a little bashful because their parents, they didn’t speak
English at all, so they really don’t want to broadcast that as well.
COATES:
: But did you assert a Tataviam identity or an Indian identity when you
were a child at school, and was that accepted?
ORTEGA:
: That was. I did it. I was pretty proud about that, but it wasn’t until
my father used to take us out of school, and we enjoyed that, and we
used to go dance and perform to other schools to show our culture. It
came down to one time my dad had told me, “We’re going to go to your
school,” because the principal had called him. So I went to school and I
got summoned out of classroom, and that’s when it really got exposed,
because I didn’t really say I’m Native or anything, just try to flow
with everyone else.
00:26:29
COATES:
: Just (unclear), huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. And at that point when they saw me, like, “Well, where you’re
going? Why are you being special? You’re getting summons to the
principal’s office,” and so on. First I thought I was in trouble. Then,
no. There was an assembly that day, and the school announced it was a
special assembly. They kept it secret, so they show the kids the
assembly when they came in there. It was a surprise. And next thing you
know, all my friends are going in and say, “Hey, why you—?” Then next
thing they saw me crossing across the auditorium, they say, “What are
you doing?” I was with my brothers, my older brothers and my other
cousins, and the next thing they saw me out dancing in front of the
school. And after that, I think that’s what turned and got me excited is
the fact that they didn’t ridicule me, but they said, “That was pretty
nice. That was pretty cool. We didn’t know you did that kind of thing.”
COATES:
: So they were pretty supportive of it.
ORTEGA:
: Very supportive, yeah, yeah.
COATES:
: Did it fade away, or did they continue to remember that about you?
(laughs)
ORTEGA:
: No, they always remembered, and I had kept those friends all through
high school. So when we’ve gone to different places in high school,
being a teenager, being foolish, and teachers will stop us or anything,
or somebody would say, “Oh, these kids,” or, “These Mexicans,” and my
friends will laugh, says, “No, we’re Mexicans. He’s Indian.”
COATES:
: But it wasn’t like a putdown, huh?
ORTEGA:
: No, it wasn’t a putdown. It was more like, “No, make sure you
understand he’s not—.”
COATES:
: Who’s who.
ORTEGA:
: Who’s who, yeah.
00:28:08
COATES:
: Right, right. So when was this, like in the eighties or something?
ORTEGA:
: When I performed, it was in the eighties, and then high school was in
the early nineties.
COATES:
: Okay. So would it have been the same, or was it the same—did you ever
hear your father talk about this? Because I suspect he might not have
had a similar kind of experience of acceptance of that identity and so
forth. Do you know?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. No, he didn’t, and his generation was way earlier, was in the
thirties, so it was more stereotype, and if you’re Indian, you really
didn’t get a good job or anything. He actually—there are family members
who said—who was first to kind of expose that they were Native American,
because you couldn’t say you’re Indian because you really are attacked.
So they all, depending on the shade of the color they took on, and my
father said that he was just Hispanic until later in life when he was an
adult. So from elementary to high school, he would just say he was
Hispanic and didn’t really say he was Indian. He used to say at home
they used to tell him that he was Indian, and he always had a story that
he said that in elementary school the teacher used to make him play the
drums or something when they did some storytelling on Indian and
cowboys, and he didn’t get it why he was always selected to be the
Indian.
COATES:
: So the teacher knew, but he didn’t?
ORTEGA:
: No, I think it was more, from what he said, he was more selected
because of his skin color.
00:29:48
COATES:
: Oh, really?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. And his appearance. So at home, my grandmother, my father’s
mother used to tell him, “Well, you are Native. Your father’s Native,
and they’re all Native. You should talk to them, and they would share
with you.” But at that time they have gone through—my great-grandfather,
my father’s grandfather, really didn’t want to expose that they were
Indian, and that was a huge thing in the community when we talked to the
elders. It was something you kept at home. You didn’t want to say it
because the fear of being taken to a reservation, the fear of not
getting employed, and they had heard about murders to Indian people.
They identified Indian folks and went out, and just it was like a hunt
for Native people.
COATES:
: Yeah. Well, that’s what I was thinking. If your father, if his era is
in the thirties, I mean, his grandfather literally would have come from
a time when that was happening, right? So that was a very rational fear
on their part.
ORTEGA:
: Right, right. And my father had told me they were told not to say they
were Indian or say anything. They were told to speak only English, not
even Spanish. When they went out in public, they had to talk in English.
So that definitely changed. My brothers, they’re more the sixties and
the seventies, and there were some—in looking at the photos and stuff,
my wife laughed because wherever she gets employed or move from job to
job, there’s always someone who knows my family or grew up with my
brothers or so on. My father kind of embraced being Indian, and we used
to go out and dance a whole lot more, so a lot of folks knew who my
brothers were, and they didn’t even have to say they were Indian. I
mean, people saw it. They had the long hair. So they already pronounced
that they were—you know, just exposed that they were Indian. And it was
the sixties, so that (unclear) was more supportive of Indian culture,
and it was kind of the style, so for them it was a lot easier just to
blend in because a lot of folks started to dress similar to Native
folks.
00:32:02
COATES:
: Even if they weren’t? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Even if they weren’t. They were supporting the style of clothing. So
they had a little different—and some of my brothers support, fully
support, embrace being Native. One of my other few brothers, it took a
little time. Well, didn’t like the attention, one, because they used go
out and dance. They felt it overwhelming, and just wanted to be like
regular community folks. So it was a little bit difficult for some of
them.
COATES:
: Just a normal kid. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: A normal kid. My other brothers, the ones who love attention, they
really enjoyed it.
COATES:
: So how many siblings do you have altogether, brothers and sisters?
ORTEGA:
: Altogether there’s twelve of us.
COATES:
: Wow.
ORTEGA:
: My father and mother were both previously married, so I have two half
sisters from my mother, who’s (unclear) tribe, and then I have two
sisters from my mother and father. There’s three of us together from my
mother’s marriage to my father, and my father’s been married twice
before, and I have two older sisters from his first marriage and then
five brothers from his second marriage.
COATES:
: So he was quite a bit older, I mean, when you were born.
ORTEGA:
: Right, right.
00:33:28
COATES:
: You’re one of the youngest of the multiple families, then, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. And I have one younger sister. She’s the baby of the family.
COATES:
: So you are the eleventh out of twelve, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: Wow. (laughs) You got a lot of advice over the years, I’ll bet.
(laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: Okay. What did your parents do? What kind of work did they do? Did
your mother work outside the home, or was she—
ORTEGA:
: She did. My mom, she’s the one I kind of go to and talk, and I think
my father would say I got the business aspects from her. She was more of
a businesswoman, self-educated. She came from Mexico. She only went up
to a certain grade in Mexico, and then worked for factories and
(unclear) factories and educate herself and continue to grow, and then
she ended up retiring from HydroAir, which is a manufacturer for
airplane parts, brakes and so on. So she was an engineer, not on paper,
but in work, and she got paid for it. So she really enjoyed the work,
and she’s very proud of the fact that she moved up and were able to do
so. She’s one of those what you would call the “American Dream” stories
that people come in and live that, and she truly was that.
COATES:
: In an era when it was possible to do that, still, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Right, right, right. And she did. She jumped from sewing machines and
housekeeping, and she just continued to just move herself and always on
the go.
00:35:04
COATES:
: And always learning, huh?
ORTEGA:
: And always learning, yeah. And then my father, he went to the war. He
was in the military, early age, eighteen years old. After he came out,
he worked in a couple of places, packinghouses. San Fernando had a lot
of packinghouses, orange groves. Then he went into the VA, because he
had some time there, so he went into nursing for quite a bit, a while.
And after the nursing, he went into—I think he managed a couple places,
and then he went—where was it? Oh, managed gas stations, and then he
went into the post office and retired from the post office. So he served
a number of years in the post office.
COATES:
: And where did they meet?
ORTEGA:
: I think they met here in San Fernando. I don’t know the story of how
they met. (Coates laughs.) Because I have different versions. I have my
mom’s version and I have my dad’s version.
COATES:
: And they don’t quite match. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Some parts of the stories match, but not all of it. One is my mother
was introduced to my father, and then other one, my father discovered my
mother at the same location. So it’s like depending on who you asked at
the time was—they were probably saying, “I secured your father,” or, “I
secured your mother.”
COATES:
: Right. Who’s responsible for this, huh? (laughs) And your father was—I
guess “president” is the later term, but he was a spokesperson or
something even before that, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Right, right. He was the chairman of the tribe for, I would say, five
decades, the longest running in the tribe.
COATES:
: And what did that entail during those decades, his duties? I mean, you
grew up with him in that position, right?
ORTEGA:
: Right.
00:37:17
COATES:
: So what did you see of his leadership? What did that entail?
ORTEGA:
: I think in the early part when he was selected, from the stories, from
what he told me and other family members in the tribe have told me,
there was differences of who should be the lead spokesman of the entire
tribe, and that continued on all the ways into—actually into his death,
they questioned the time. And this is back then. Our generation said
we’re going to leave it back there, because we weren’t there, and the
elders made that decision, made that call. But when he started off, he
began (unclear) in securing lands for the tribe. He began pretty much
educating folks on the judgment, the California Judgment Roll. Our
family weren’t recipients on the first two disbursements until the 1968
disbursement, and a lot of it was not truly understanding what it meant
to sign up that paper. Was it you’re signing your life away and you had
to be moved to a reservation, or not exactly known? So they chose not
to. The other half of the tribe did sign up and received funding.
COATES:
: Can you talk about that a little bit? What is that, the California
Indian Judgment?
ORTEGA:
: The California Indian Judgment Act was the sales of California lands
from Indian people, and (unclear) was sold, California was sold and all
the lands that were ratified or trust lands that were given to Indian
people, the land was sold to the United States of America. Besides they
got it from the Spanish, they went and signed a treaty and said, “This
is what we find fair value of California and the minerals and the rights
and all this towards Indian people.”
00:39:17
COATES:
: And the sale is forced, essentially?
ORTEGA:
: Forced sale. Actually, it was (unclear) sale, because this was later,
so this was a lawsuit file. So the Indians of California filed a
lawsuit, and it was settlement of the lawsuit that occurred.
COATES:
: So these were sales that had already taken place.
ORTEGA:
: Already taken place.
COATES:
: So is more like an Indian Claims Commission sort of act to seek
compensation for—
ORTEGA:
: Yes. So that’s what occurred earlier (unclear). Even today, tribal
members argue if our elders, our ancestors should have taken it and
fought for land instead of money. So, you know, still we try to educate.
This was aftermath, so really their decision to receive payment was best
option for them, and then to just—it’s like a regular claim settlement
that they had, and that’s what we try to educate our members. So from
that, my father got the family signed up in the 1968 judgment. From
there, he also created a nonprofit to establish activities, bring
funding, secure funding for the tribe. So since the tribe didn’t have
federal recognition or land or federal support as the other federally
recognized tribe did, my father had to think of alternative and
innovative ways to sustain and keep the tribe above water.
00:40:55
COATES:
: So there hadn’t been any sort of corporate entity before that time,
huh? Before he had done that, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Right, right. So that was the first. We had support, like I mentioned
in the beginning, was federally recognized tribes supported my father.
The chairman of Santa Ynez guided and instructed the formation of the
nonprofit and got it going with him. So he was very involved with it in
the beginning. He created a lot, so in his early years and younger
years, from the mid-twenties to, I would say, the mid-forties, he did a
lot of programming, got a lot of things going. Then from there in his
mid-forties, it was kind of coasting it. He was really on demand. Folks
knew who he was, called if he can speak or dance. Well, he didn’t dance,
but he’d send us, the kids, to go dance. (Coates laughs.) And just
continued that flow of activity in the community. He had Christmas and
Thanksgiving turkeys for the families, not just—one thing my father did
was not just our tribe that he helped, but he helped others. Then when I
started getting involved, it was with the toys. He used to get a ton of
toys, and we used to separate them and give them out to churches. He
used to go down to Tijuana and give kids down there toys.
COATES:
: Really?
ORTEGA:
: We’d give toys to one of the tribes in Nevada, down to a tribe down
south of Barona, we sent toys out for the kids, and this was all
pre-gaming, all this, and they extended the reach that my father used to
do. Used to go to the powwows. One thing my dad loved was not planned.
He liked to plan it in his mind, but he didn’t want to plan it with
everyone else. So he liked to show up and say, “Hey,” to a powwow, “I
have gifts for you.” You know what powwows do. “I have a community
offering.” And he loved that, and he used to out there and just put toys
all over the powwow arena and all the kids lined up. They didn’t know
what was going on, and he used to put the toys out there—well, have all
of us put the toys out there and then tell the kids that was for them.
COATES:
: Just go for it, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
00:43:23
COATES:
: So where did he get all of these toys? Was he collecting them? Was he
taking donations? Was he buying them himself?
ORTEGA:
: No, he took donations. My father, being a good spokesperson, he went
to Mattel, he went to corporations in Los Angeles, some in the Valley,
and they would do a toy drive or a collection, and he would speak to
them. Then later on when the Marines started doing collection of toys,
he had some toys from the Marines as well that he would give out to the
community, and he informed that Marines, “Hey, this is who we’re
distributing it out to. We’ll be your reach out to the community.” So
that’s how he received the toys, and from there, the toys—
COATES:
: So he was going straight to the producers.
ORTEGA:
: Right, right.
COATES:
: He wasn’t going door to door and asking individuals if they could buy
a toy, right? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Right, right.
COATES:
: He was getting the big donations.
00:44:32
ORTEGA:
: Oh, no. He did that. And same thing with the turkeys. He made friends
with the CEOs of these places. The Marines I enjoyed because he was
friends with the corporal, and just to get on the base and see all their
stuff was exciting.(Coates laughs.) But he met folks along the way.
One of the companies, the CEO of the company was Norman Cosmetics here
in Sylmar, and he used to give my father tons of makeups for the women
and he’d just have that out. So the toys went from not just the toys to
turkeys, but also stuff for everyone in the community that he wanted to
give out to. Even I think one year Warner Bros. gave us a ton of cups.
It was the Space Jam cups, that film Space Jam. People knew, just people
will come by, and people who moved out of the Valley would come down and
visit. We always had that house on Rincon that was a cul-de-sac, a
dead-end street that expanded on later on. And after my father moved out
of the home, I stayed there living with my family, when they got older,
people will stop by and say—different names. They’ll call him “the
chief,” you know. They’ll say, “Where is he at?” and just remember, and
every time they stop by, they will say, “I remember he gave me a cup,”
or, “I was a kid in—.” And from Warner Bros., again, he had ETs, those
little stuffed animals. People would say, “I remember him giving me an
ET.” Or even down to a little watch that would open up. It was a little
plastic watch, like a toy. And people said they remember those things
from him. He would just give folks items and stuff like that.
00:46:41
COATES:
: So, I mean, it sounds like you’ve got sort of like this informal
service sector, almost in a sense, that was going on with him and within
the community and the tribe and everything. Was it predominantly around
things like this, things for the kids and that kind of stuff? I guess
what I’m—do you recall other types of service perhaps that might have
been around things like education, healthcare, things like this? Was he
advisory and—
ORTEGA:
: No. He was big—one thing you asked me about careers that he did, and I
kind of blend it in because I’m thinking of paid income, he did some
(unclear) which was paid income. What he would do is work for, like, the
county community programs for alcohol, some of the other—I think that’s
where he kind of picked up where to bring services to the community and
try to understand what the community needs were, and I think that’s what
my father did, was not try to do a survey and find out and guess what it
was; he actually went out in the community. And since him being from the
community, he knew what it cost to raise a family. So he would go out
and gather and distribute items, but besides that, what he did, he
organized a Health Clinic one day at the church. Since he was a nurse,
one of his visions was to have a tribal hospital here that he tried to
organize, and we talked all the ways into the mid-2005 or ‘04 that we
talked about. And educational programs, we did youth camp trips. He took
the kids out to Catalina for educational programming. That was his other
vision, was to establish a school to teach Native culture and traditions
along with the curriculum. So those were some of the things that he
strives, but those were the summer-type programs that he had for the
kids at the time. Then for the adults, it was the Health Clinics and
diabetes program, those kind of things.
00:48:46
COATES:
: Yeah. (laughs) So what was the impact on you being raised in this kind
of environment of constantly being called on to dance and seeing your
father constantly engaged in this kind of service? Did he involve the
kids in all of that as well, that kind of work?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, he involved us all. I think I gravitated the most towards it,
and I found it to be natural, where my brothers, some of them, like I
said, some of them didn’t like all the attention. Some of them enjoyed
it, but then they had their own families. They moved out. So to have my
father older in the stage where he was more of a demand, I found it to
be natural until I was, I guess, when I got married and told this isn’t
natural (Coates laughs) to always have an activity on the weekend or
always have a meeting in the evening, always having a function going on.
It was a lot. So I think for me, I didn’t second-guess it. I thought
this is what it was. You had to do it. You had to go out there and do
it. And then I was told by elders, after I got married, they said, “No,
you’re selected by your activities.” Even if you didn’t want to do it
later on, but once you’re selected in the tribal community to do it, you
end up just doing it.
COATES:
: That’s it, yeah. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: You’ve got to do it. So that’s how I’ve seen it. So for me, it was
just an ongoing thing. I did it at early age, like separating toys. And
even back then, I’ll see a toy I really liked, and I had to put in my
mind, “This is for someone else, and I’m here doing a job. I’m here
doing a service.” So I had to put that toy in a group and give it out to
a kid.
COATES:
: That’s tough for a little kid, isn’t it? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. So it’s like those things, we were at the end. We had to get our
stuff at the end. That’s what it was.
00:50:53
COATES:
: Was your mother okay with that? I mean, this sounds like it takes a
lot of time away from family life, or was that—that was family life? I
mean, it could have gone either way, I guess, huh?
ORTEGA:
: It was both. When it got out of control where my father was always on
the go, it did. I remember my mother telling my father, “You’ve got to
slow it down. You’ve got more time on the family.” My father was pretty
well to balance it and mix it blendfully, in my eyes, that you couldn’t
tell what was—I couldn’t tell what was family most of the time and what
was his work, because when we’d go to an event or something, there was
family. If it’s a tribal event, there’s family. So to me, I’m like,
“This is family event.” My mother is like, “It’s not family. It’s
business.”
COATES:
: “What about my family?” (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. We needed to do stuff for ourselves. And that’s the way he was.
Like Fourth of July events, we used to go out to the beach, and he had a
motorhome, and we thought it was all family, but he invited multiple
tribal members that would go out there with us and have them celebrate
Fourth of July. And my mother’s like, “No. We need it, just us,” just
him, my father and mother and my siblings, that’s it, and not everyone
else. So that’s why I’m saying, for me, I think it was just blended and
what he did was blended.
00:52:25
COATES:
: Yeah. Now, the festivals that you’ve talked about, are these Catholic
festivals? Are they Indian festivals? I mean, what is the nature of
those events?
ORTEGA:
: We’ve gone to a lot of different festivals. Around our neighborhood in
San Fernando, they’re predominantly Catholic. Going out of the San
Fernando area, they were mixed-type festivals. They would probably be
the city’s festival. We will go out to Santa Ynez festivals, so it’ll be
tribal festival. And even tribal festival, when you look at it from
afar, you really couldn’t tell the difference between Catholic and
tribal, you know, because they were very close to each other. The only
difference is that you have Native dancing at a tribal. You’ll have some
type of a cultural presentation occurring. But those are the type
festivals that we’ll see or have done. And then my dad, that’s why I’m
saying he would blend it, because my father would put up a booth and he
would sell different—you know, tacos or something from the booth. And I
have photos. My older sister, she works here in the office with us, and
I was maybe five years old and I see these photos, and maybe from one
and a half or two, when I started walking, to five, I see these photos,
and we’re at festivals. And from what I remember—and then I look at it
and I take a real good look at it, and I see a booth back there, and it
has the tribe’s name on. So I’m like, “Well, we weren’t there to play;
we were there to work.” Well, at least my father was or someone was
there to work. So that was the type of festivals we’ll be attending or
seeing or going to.
COATES:
: So what is the relationship, would you say, with the Tataviam Tribe
and the Mission still? Are most people still affiliated in some way, or
is it a complex picture?
00:54:47
ORTEGA:
: It’s a complex picture. As a tribal member outside the tribal
government, it would be any other Catholic, who select to be Catholic,
who’d go to the church and see their relationship as, well, this was
once our ancestors’ place that was brought in with the Spanish, and go
to service there, because they still have some services occurring there,
or visit as a tour.
On the political side, there’s a huge difference. One, they don’t depict
or mention the tribe’s history there. They just call us Mission Indians.
Then when they took out the funeral markers in the back, they just said
there’s 2,426 Native Americans buried, not even culturally identifying
the tribe. There’s only one little marker, this
eight-and-a-half-by-eleven, that identifies what village was there
before, now gone. So we have that on-and-off relationship with the
Mission there, and even the archdiocese knows about it. So everyone
knows that the monsignor at the mission really don’t truly care for the
tribe, and know that was one history of time that should be forgotten
and left alone and become extinct and just become Catholic. But as
members, you know, some of our tribe members have their weddings there.
They still, like I said, visited, go to service or Mass, not knowing of
the political strife that goes on entirely. They’re aware of it, but
when they go, they sign up and they pay the fees and do what it is, and
they’re not (unclear) Indian. When we’ve gone there, the tours, we had
folks from Vatican come down and say, “I want to tour the mission, but I
want a tour by the indigenous people.”
COATES:
: Really?
ORTEGA:
: And when we’re get there, we’re still charged the entrance fee, and
even the gentleman from the Vatican with his business card, “Hey, I’m
here to visit,” still charge.
00:56:32
COATES:
: How does this monsignor, this particular one, happen to react when
people from the Vatican say, “No, we want the indigenous people
conducting it”?
ORTEGA:
: He treats us by charging us entrance fee into the Mission. (laughter)
That’s what he did.
COATES:
: He doesn’t get a clue, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: No, he doesn’t get a clue.
COATES:
: Even the Vatican says this, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: We had the bishop with us. The gentleman from the Vatican, he was the
archives. He was a talented man, and he says, “I want to tour the
mission with indigenous people.” And when we showed up, this was all
foretold, planned with the monsignor, and monsignor doesn’t come out
himself, because we’re part of the tour and we’re giving the tour. So
since we’re giving a tour, we had to pay the entrance fee, and there
wasn’t even an argument at the gate, because the staff is told,
instructed to charge us, and the Vatican and the bishop from the
archdiocese in Los Angeles saying, “This is our Mission. We should be
able to walk in. We are guests,” and it didn’t occur. So but from what I
understand, the monsignor did later on had a meeting with the gentleman
from the Vatican and the bishop, but more welcoming when I was out of
the picture or the tribe was out of the picture. But that’s the
relationship—
COATES:
: Oh, boy. Yeah. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: —that we have with the Mission right now.
00:57:55
COATES:
: So do most people not attend services there? They don’t—
ORTEGA:
: No. A lot of our members, I mean, from what I understand, the Mission
itself, I think they have one Mass that they have there, but a lot of
our tribal members don’t attend. Then when they think of the Mission,
they thinking of a time of their quinceañeras because the tribe members
do that and—
COATES:
: Special occasions.
ORTEGA:
: Special occasions, a wedding, or they use across the street—well, the
tribe uses across the street, which is not part of the Mission, the park
grounds across the Mission, for gatherings, and last year we had one of
our tribal gatherings there. We had about 140 people are across the
Mission. But that’s the relationship that we have with them.
COATES:
: So I guess most people are probably just geographically dispersed
enough that they probably, if they attend services at all, it’s
probably, you know, in the town where they live or something like that.
Would that be a fair statement?
ORTEGA:
: That’d be a fair statement. Or if they moved out, they’d bring their
children or grandchildren back, and they’d show them the Mission,
because that’s still our history and culture. So they know the history
and culture, so they’re better explaining it to their kids. To the kids,
all it is is building structures, because when you walk through it,
again, they have Indian basketry from Arizona and New Mexico, and
nothing of Tataviam, nothing of Fernandeno, and we’re still here.
COATES:
: Yeah. Is there an interest in revitalizing sort of traditional
spiritual practice, or is that—
01:00:32
ORTEGA:
: No, we do. We practice our songs, our dances. We’ve brought back our
Bear Dance to the tribe. So now when we brought it back—it’s actually
been back for, oh, I would say twenty-two years, and a lot of folks
learned that we were practicing again, but we kept it very secret. We
wanted to be sure that we’re respecting our ancestry, respecting the
tradition and customs and religious practice first, and especially with
the mixed tribal members’ beliefs now. We have folks that are
Christians, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, some Jewish, because that’s
what everyone had married into or married out to. So we wanted to be
sure that it’s (unclear) and reintroduce the tribe.
So now we have it—this past spring was the first time we invited the
public to one of our bear ceremonies, and so it’s been more
traditionally to—the more sacred traditional ceremony that we’ve started
bringing people in more, and then the tribal folks have been coming in.
COATES:
: Is it more people of the middle-aged and younger generations who are
interested in this kind of revitalization, or are the elders also
participating in it?
ORTEGA:
: The elders, actually when we brought the Bear Dance, we went to the
elders first. We brought it to them. So we’ve been dancing for them
for—well, for the Bear Dance, we’ve been dancing for them in the spring
and in the fall.
COATES:
: So did some of them actually remember it or know something of it?
01:01:43
ORTEGA:
: They know of the aural histories of it. I don’t think a lot of them
remember the dance itself, but a lot of them remember the aural
histories, and that’s how we brought it back in the community. And they
really enjoy it when they see it, and it shows that we’ve been working a
long hard way, and we’re maintaining and keeping our traditions and our
customs and revitalizing it all.
So now we have some of our tribal members as singers, and it’s growing
now so now there’s more folks that are singing the songs. And the songs
that we learned from were from a recording, 1928—from 1926 to 1928, on
wax cylinders. So these are songs that are, from described on the
description, they’re spiritual songs, they’re ceremonial songs. Some
songs are funeral songs that we keep some for funerals that we’ve
learned. So now in tradition of the tribe, we designated one of our
tribal members to be the captain singer, so he’s in charge of retaining
all these songs and teaching them and giving us permission to sing the
songs when we go out and sing them, and telling us what songs we should
be singing, because he’s the one that’s learning all the stories behind
the songs.
COATES:
: Are most tribal members pretty much behind this type of revitalization
of traditional spirituality? Is there conflict about that from—
ORTEGA:
: There is some conflict. They support it, but will refrain from
practicing it, even to the songs. They won’t practice the song because
they feel if they’re Christian, they should follow one religious belief,
and then they can be in the room and be part of it, but they won’t
practice. Then on the other side, we have—that’s just a very small
percentage that does that, and then very large percentage is that we’re
not fast enough. We don’t have enough—because learning the songs means
also learning the language. So you’ve got to translate some of the
words. So we have our vocabulary words that we got, and it’s about five
hundred words. So we’ve learning, we know some of the songs, and because
of the songs, we know some of the words, but we’re not fast enough to
get it out there to teach the kids, to teach not just the kids, but the
adults. Adults are really inspired to learn these songs and dances and
then the words. And like I said, we don’t have enough instructors, and
the reason is because our instructors are still learning it. So it’s
hard to teach someone when you’re not really defined and efficient in it
yet. So that’s the other part. That’s the more bigger demand. We’re not
quick enough or fast enough to get it out there.
01:04:22
COATES:
: (laughs) But you don’t have people who are absolutely saying, “No,
this is the devil’s work. You should not be doing that at all,” or
anything like that?
ORTEGA:
: No, no. Just like I said, they will refrain from teaching a song. When
we say, “Hey, come out, learn the songs,” they’ll say, “No, I’m
Christian, and you’re praying to a god, because some of those songs are
prayers to god, and we don’t know what god.” And I go, “Well, you have
to learn the language.” He goes, “Yeah, but I prefer this right now.”
And we don’t force them. We understand.
COATES:
: So there’s enough diversity within the practices of the tribe that
people just pretty much respect what anybody else is doing, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Right, right.
COATES:
: Even if they don’t do it themselves, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Right. And the folks that we’re selecting to retain this information,
like myself and a few others, we, one, are not Christian or religious in
any other religion, and our philosophy is—or our belief is that if we’re
trying to capture the true ancestral religion or practices or
ceremonies, just like the other folks, we respect, we can go to prayer,
we can talk to those folks, but we can’t be followers if we’re going to
be teachers of something that’s ancient. So that’s one thing that we try
to do and maintain. So this way to focus our attention on something.
01:05:54
COATES:
: So is that a shift for you to—when you say that you’re not really a
practitioner of any other except the traditional at this point, has that
been a shift in your life, then, from having been Christian earlier or
raised in Catholicism or something like that?
ORTEGA:
: My mother, she took us to both Catholic and Christian. She just found
that you had to go to a place of worship. And I think my separation
started, I would say, around twelve years of age, where I start
questioning and asking a lot of questions. And by the time I was sixteen
years old, I seek to go do bear dancing, so I went to Pala Reservation,
Tule Reservation, and that’s where I went back to learn the dances and
bring it back to the tribe. At eighteen, when I did the ceremony to
(unclear) the rights to be a bear dancer or a spiritual leader, from
there I made that decision. It takes a lot on you. So there’s other
members now who are asking me. They want to go through what I’ve gone
through, and when I tell them about the lessons and the journey you go
through is not an easy path, and making sure you have full devotion for
it. Just like a Catholic priest, he’s a priest, he will go into another
place of worship, but he’s only Catholic. And that’s what I explain to
the folks who are coming and asking us. “Well, if you’re going to be the
captain singer, you can still go to the place, you can still respect
other folks, but this is going to be our path that we take,” just like
the priest or a Christian pastor or something like that. So that was the
decision that I made back then before I was married. (Coates laughs.)
Actually, I didn’t do the ceremony until it was after I got married, and
then my wife was like, “What are you doing?”
01:07:38
COATES:
: Really, yeah. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: It’s like intense ceremonies and time away from family, and so it was
an eye-opener for her, but I guess I’m pretty blessed to have a wife
that’s supportive of the actions or the decisions that I made.
COATES:
: So this kind of—it’s sticking in my head. You said twenty-two years or
so that the revitalization of the Bear Dance, is that what it was and so
forth?
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: So what was it for your father in his generation? Did they have any of
this?
ORTEGA:
: Spiritual, they had not the dance, but what they had, my father and my
uncle and few other people had, was remedies they had that they will do,
or my father actually, when the children were sick from their stomach,
they used to bring—my sister learned that—would do a massage to the
child, and it would cure them from stomach pain. So my older sister, she
does it because my father taught her. So those are the remedies or
techniques or things of healing they will do that will still be in the
tribe.
COATES:
: So there’s kind of a medicine practice that still existed, huh, or it
still does, presumably.
01:10:03
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, that we pass it on, and those practices will be passed on to
each families that each one of them had. And in talking to different
families, each one had a little slightly different technique or remedy
that they will do. One would have—each time it rains, they’ll go
out—well, not just rain, but storm. Each time it storm, they’ll do a
blessing or prayer, and then they will bless each down of their—or each
entrance to their home, and their belief was or the tradition, aural
history that had been passed down is that when the storm comes down,
that’s when the evil will come in. So they would—you know, bad spirits
would come into the home. So that’s what they will do. They go bless
before the storm started—they knew the storm would come—and do that.
Then one of my older cousins will ask for a blessing, will call all of
our seniors together and say—and he’s the one that will say, “I know
when an earthquake comes,” or felt that before an earthquake occurs, he
will ask for a blessing of his home and his family. Some of them who
come new to it, like, “Oh, yeah. That’s not going to happen,” and a
cousin will say, “Just like the animals.” All of a sudden you don’t hear
any birds, the dogs all get quiet, and then Mother Nature happens. And
he goes, “We also have those instincts, but we don’t feel them anymore
because we’re so tied up in regular society. But just like the animal
has that instinct, we do, too,” and that’s what he would explain to
them. He goes, “So you have it in you if you want to discover it.”
COATES:
: If you just be real quiet and listen to it, right?
ORTEGA:
: Right, right. And he would say that, and sure enough, maybe a couple
months or a week later, an earthquake will occur. So every time he calls
me, I’m like, “Oh, an earthquake’s coming, so let’s be prepared.”
COATES:
: So they were able to mix that continuity of that tribal understanding
and knowledge and everything with the Catholic religious practice
throughout your father’s generation, your grandfather, and so forth?
01:11:54
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Each family was a little different. Some families would embrace
more the Catholic than the tribal. A lot of the old-timers, the older
generation, my father’s generation that I’ve seen, I think went to
church just out of custom. It was the other side. It became the new
tribal tradition. When someone got married, you do what the Catholic
Church asks you to do, and when the funeral occur, you go back to the
Catholic Church.
When we started bringing the songs back in, that’s when we started
mixing the two. So when my father passed, the family ourselves said,
“We’re staying out of the church. We’re doing an entire Native
ceremony,” but it didn’t occur. I began the services, but my father
being who he was and knowing so many people, and then the folks who knew
us—we made so many friends who are priests, reverends, and so on, so
they all came and said, “We’d like to share some words of prayer,” and
out of respect, we allowed those folks in. So they all came in and did
that, and then other tribal members from different tribes came down and
offer blessings and songs as well, so we did the same thing. So at the
end, it was still that mixture of all the different religions there or
here, or became part of the tribe.
COATES:
: But you’ve got the church representatives coming in as a guest in this
case—
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: —just as somebody from another tribe have been—
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: —so rather than the ones who are conducting the whole proceeding, huh?
01:13:54
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. And that’s what changed, too, in the last fifteen years, when we
used to go do ceremonies at the Mission church, like it’s a Catholic
Church, and we were not truly allowed to do any ceremony there. The
Catholic priests prohibit it because we’re burning sage, we’re singing
songs, we’re doing prayer. But as we started talking to the Mission
cemetery, and now they have us down where if someone walks in and says,
“I’m Native American,” even not from our tribe, they will give them our
tribal number and say, “Well, you can talking to these guys because they
come in and do the ceremonies.” So now they’ve been more supportive and
say, “Hey, this works,” especially when the priests have been allies and
friends with the tribe, said, “No, this is perfectly fine. We can do the
funeral services together.” So that we’ve seen change quite a bit.
COATES:
: Good. (laughs) What about your own education? You were talking about
things were changing for you when you were about twelve or thirteen
years old in terms of sort of this informal tribal knowledge that you’re
beginning to become interested in and starting to learn, right?
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: But you continue in these formal education systems as well around
here.
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: And where does that take you?
01:15:22
ORTEGA:
: It took me—doing stuff with my dad, I wasn’t too big in education. I
thought that you had to be more hands-on and learning from the book, and
so I’ve gone out, and the one career I chose was get an MBA, a master’s
in business administration, and a marketing degree. I went out for both
of them. I finished the marketing, but didn’t finish my MBA. Went back,
and that was after high school, and the same time I got married early, a
young age, at twenty, and started a family really early, too, right
after I got married, so it was like all these things hit. Had a job,
moved fast, and I got that from my mom, as I mentioned earlier, is like
make decision quickly. And the fact of speaking my way through stuff, I
got that from my father.
So I managed to land a job in Warner Bros., Disney, L.A. Times, and
these folks were very excited to bring me in, and even the Daily News.
So I was like I finished my marketing. It got me good enough money, and
it was at the time when computers became more advanced in the workforce,
and if you knew how to work them, you got a secure job. So I was fresh
off of the graduating classes and knew how to maneuver and work really
fast on computers in marketing, so that’s one of the reasons I was one
of their good picks for these firms and companies. So I made decisions
who to go work for when I had offers from both the L.A. Times and Warner
Bros.
COATES:
: That’s great, yeah.
01:17:02
ORTEGA:
: So it’s a wonderful feeling. I think that that’s probably gone now. I
don’t know. (Coates laughs). Everyone seems to know everything now, and
I think that era has gone for something new to come in. My business
degree, I didn’t finish. I gone through it, but as I helped the tribe
maneuver and receive grants and open its office with my father, he had
an office in the seventies and eighties, and then throughout the
nineties, we didn’t have an office. We worked out of the house. I mean,
all this stuff was him just guest-speaking and very minimal activities
with the tribe, just the natural annual things like Christmas and
Thanksgiving, all these other things.
So when I came in, I helped to further establish the nonprofit to get
(unclear) services that we provide today that were like social service
programs. And then with the tribe, I helped negotiate a contract, one of
the first largest contracts with the tribe, in cultural preservation. So
we work with the developer to have them agree to hire the tribe and
retain the tribe as a consulting firm. Usually the CR, the Cultural
Resource management firms, usually get those contracts. We convince the
developer they need to hire us, not them. So we were successful to do
that and move forward. So with those things going on and then home life
and marriage and children, and my wife who was very supportive for me to
do online study along with going to school, just completely didn’t find
it to interest me. I really want a degree and get it because I can see
value for it, but didn’t find the place, and I think it just because I
was more fascinating what was going on here, and I was hands-on doing
the things and just weighed out, and next thing I know I was slipping
the classes, and wife saying, “You’re paying this money and you’re not
doing it.”
01:19:15
COATES:
: But you may be getting just the same experience anyway just by
working. I mean, I’ve heard recently people say that the value of those
MBA degrees is sort of—unless it comes from like the really Harvards or
someplace like that, that you can really just learn just as much just by
going and doing the job. So everything must have seemed like it was just
really compounding when you were in your early twenties, because you’ve
made this commitment to the spiritual practice and pathway and you’re
learning about that, and you’ve just gotten married and you’re having
children pretty quickly, and you’re trying to finish a degree, and those
were probably pretty intense years, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. No, they were. I mean, like I said, growing up with my father, I
found it to be natural. I had to be on call with the tribe and find a
way to balance out my own personal life, and they seemed to blend quite
a bit. And my wife at first was trying to find and figure out why there
is no time sometimes for the family, and then figured out to blend with
it, and now she’s supportive and she supports me in the fact that—and
she goes out to some of the meetings with me now. And she laughs. She
says, “A lot of people thought you weren’t married.”
COATES:
: You’re married to us, the tribe, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: Yeah. (laughs) So how would you characterize the relationship between
the Tataviam Tribe and the surrounding tribes? You’ve touched on some
things like relationships with Santa Ynez or different things. I mean,
do you interact quite a bit with the other tribal communities around?
ORTEGA:
: We do. We interact very much, a lot and especially on a
project-to-project or an issue-to-issue concern that involves the tribe.
For us, we have a really close relationship with San Manuel. So a lot of
project that deal with overlapping cultural resources activities, we
support one another. Well, they mostly support us because they’re the
one with the federal recognition. So when it comes to a property on the
federal forestry where our tribe can’t have a seat at the table, they
invite us in. And same thing with Santa Ynez, we have a project with the
Department of Energy on the western end of us, and they invite us out to
the table, so we have a participant seat there. And then also
culturally, the folks from Santa Ynez—Santa Ynez were more tied in, and
the reason is my father’s first wife was from Santa Ynez, enrolled
there, so her uncle was chairman back in the seventies. He helped—
01:21:38
COATES:
: So you have half siblings probably that are from there as well.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, they’re from there. They decided to enroll with us, not with
them, and sometimes I scratch my head and said, “Why?”
COATES:
: (laughs) But they still have family that’s there?
ORTEGA:
: They have family. We have family. And in the tribal family, even
though they’re half from us, their relatives or cousin relatives call
all of us cousin relatives. So they’re more of a cousin to my sisters
than to myself, but they reach out to me as so if we were blood. So
that’s the relationship we have with Santa Ynez. San Manuel, we have
culturally more similar history and songs and dances with them, so we
interact with them quite a bit. We try to incorporate or partner-up on
some activities that they do, and our tribe has an education department,
so we try to team up with what they have going on over there as well. We
did the same thing with Saboba, the tribes when they were revitalizing
the song, music—I mean the language. They use Herrington’s notes, and in
Herrington’s note, there’s a Fernandeno reel, so the tribes down in
Luisenois, whatever words they didn’t have, they use our Fernandeno
words to replace it, since the language is close in hand on that. So
that’s how we participated and interact with them. Then locally here,
the other non-recognized tribe, Gabrielinos, we work closely with the
San Gabriel band and the other Gabrielinos as well, but mostly out of
the San Gabriel band, we work with them.
01:23:18
COATES:
: And that’s Anthony Morales? Is that that group?
ORTEGA:
: Anthony Morales’ group, yeah. So we work a lot with them and some
sites for repatriation. We got one site we’re repatriating right now to
bring some of the artifacts back and working with the museums or
anything that comes up our way. He usually calls us here if it’s more in
our neighborhood, and he’s been notified, and we do the same. If we’ve
been notifying more in his neck of the woods, then we give them a call
and inform them and partner up with them.
COATES:
: I skipped over—I wanted to ask where did you go to school? Where did
you go to university?
ORTEGA:
: I went to Platte College. I went there for marketing, and then I was
going to CSUN for the MBA.
COATES:
: And you had these job offers right at the beginning when you’d first
graduated, you said, and everything.
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: Which one did you accept, ultimately?
ORTEGA:
: I accepted L.A. Times, and the reason is because I actually—I take it
back. I was about to graduate when I got offered the jobs, and Warner
Bros. offered me an internship for associate director, a film director.
So I was like I’m doing marketing. L.A. Times is actually what I was in
school for, and Warner Bros. wasn’t so much it. But I kick myself each
time because right at that point that’s when they came up with the CGI
graphics, the animation films, and Warner Bros. just created their new
animation building. They were in construction of the animation building.
So my father wanted me the Warner Bros. because he drove me to the
interview on the lot. I was nineteen years old. (Coates laughs.) Just
because I wanted to finish school, college fast, so I took everything as
much as I possibly can to just get it done.
01:25:17
COATES:
: Did you finish in two or three years, then?
ORTEGA:
: In three years.
COATES:
: Three years for a B.A., huh?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: Wow.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. I knew myself, if I took longer, I wouldn’t have gotten
finished. I knew the MBA, so I just knew I had to get it done. So Warner
Bros. was—it was at that time and not knowing what was going on, and I
was selected, and I found out I was selected because I was Native.
Timing was that the law that passed—I forgot, can’t remember what it
was, but just to fill in employment of minorities, and they knew I was
Native, and the referrals, some of the referrals that told them about
me, so they brought me in, and they gave me a whole tour of Warner
Bros., and told me, “This is our new animation building that is under
construction,” and offered me the job and said, “This is what you’d be
doing.” And I said, “No, I’ll just take Times.”
COATES:
: (laughs) And so what did you do at the Times, exactly?
ORTEGA:
: I was in their creative services department, so I was in charge of any
of their marketing displayments. I was the junior artist, what they
called, so I did all the graphics under the direction of the art
director, which helped because that’s the career I was going for. Then
from there, I went to the Daily News, to the Ventura County Star, and
then back to L.A. Times, because they were giving me job offers. Ventura
County Star—
01:26:53
COATES:
: They were competing for you, it sounds like, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. They offered me three months to move and three months’ rent to
pay down there and my move to Ventura, and they knew I just recently got
married. So I was newlywed and told my wife, “Do you want to go?” And
she says, “Yeah.” And then I wasn’t ready for the move. If I would have
moved, I would have moved away from the tribe, and even though it’s not
that far, but my life would have been over there. So I decided to stay
nearby and work down here, and then I started getting closer and closer.
Then the local paper here, it’s called San Fernando Valley Sun, had an
opening for the art director, and I went for it, and happened to be my
cousin who runs it—not runs it, but owns it.(Coates laughs.) So out
there talking with them, I know all the (unclear).
COATES:
: Yeah, that didn’t hurt. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Was there for a couple of years, and in that same building, I
opened the tribe’s office for grants. And from there, we were there ten
years, and then we moved to our office, to where we’re in now across
from city hall.
01:28:03
COATES:
: So you’ve been full-time in tribal employment since you got that
grant, or do you still do the other?
ORTEGA:
: No. No, I didn’t become full-time employment until 2005. Even with the
Sun, I was part-time with the Sun, but I did a lot of freelance work, a
lot of consulting work. I worked for multiple ad agencies throughout Los
Angeles, international ones. So I did a lot of stuff. It took me back to
the movie business, being in L.A., so I did stuff with Tom Cruise and
some big-name celebrities and stuff in the U.K. and South Brazil, things
like that.
COATES:
: So did you travel to those places? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: No, I didn’t travel. All my stuff was—it was like I was the ad office
here and had to ship all the digital files for the magazines to those
areas. So I had to be sure that the product or the devices—and this was
a time when Internet service was—the ISBN is when you are wealthy and
you had that type of service, which is equivalent to a cell phone
sending your data over the Internet on a computer.
COATES:
: Right. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: So a file would literally take about five to six hours to get
transmitted to London or wherever I was sending it to. So my job was to
ensure it got there. So I’ll start it off in the morning, an hour
difference to wait, and so since I was on call, I had to get a phone
call at eleven or call at eleven at night to say, “Hey, did you get
there at ten?” or in the morning, which was exciting. I really did enjoy
that because I got to travel around L.A. a lot and see different
companies and work for a lot of huge firms. I was able to see a lot of
big CEO companies.
COATES:
: Meet a lot of people and all of that. (laughs)
01:30:08
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. And since I was interested in business so much, I made myself
acquainted with the CEOs. I said, “How did you get your business
started?”
And the advice is—when I told them I was Native and tribe, and they all
shared with me their success or how they got started off. A lot of
interesting stories, and I did actually compare a lot of it a lot of our
tribal members who were successful as well, like my mother and a few
other folks that made something from nothing.
COATES:
: Have you been able to implement that advice on behalf of the tribe
itself?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. I think it was helpful for me to negotiate one of the largest
contracts for the tribe. It was helpful for me to help navigate the
tribe’s petition for federal recognition. It was helpful in branding the
tribe. I remember when, my field being what it is, our tribe was the
first tribe to have a website, and I was told by that by Morongo. Then
Morongo was like, “Isn’t it embarrassing, a non-recognized tribe have a
website before a recognized tribe that has gaming?”
COATES:
: And a gaming tribe at that, yeah. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, a gaming tribe with a casino running, operating. So we were
ahead of the curve on some of those things. It really was beneficial for
us.
COATES:
: Yeah. And what does your wife do?
ORTEGA:
: She’s a physician educator in compliance, so she works for Youth
Health Works. So she’s in charge of making sure the physicians are up to
date in their medical billing, up to federal law, and what to charge,
not to charge, and what could they charge, and the duration that they
have to spend with the patient to make sure they get quality care,
healthcare. So that’s her job.
01:31:56
COATES:
: And how many kids do you have?
ORTEGA:
: I have four children together. Two girls, the oldest are the girls,
and then two boys are the youngest, and ages are six, nine, twelve, and
sixteen, and about to be seventeen in a week.
COATES:
: So you have a very active household right now, I imagine. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah. All that and balancing when they’re enrolled in sports
or—so, yeah, we’re happy that the first two are girls because they help.
COATES:
: And why is that? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Because the boys are just boys and—
COATES:
: Being boys. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: —being boys, and every little while we’ve got to break them up from
slugging each other.
COATES:
: So you got some practice before that happened before that came along?
(laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. They’re a little bit more daring. They say they can do certain
things. And they like the comics. We can’t put a Ninja movie on or a
fighting movie on, because they feel they have to act out what’s
happening in the movie at the time the movie’s happening.
COATES:
: (laughs) And I presume that they’re all being raised very strongly in
the tradition, huh?
01:33:29
ORTEGA:
: Oh, yeah. My son, the older son that’s nine, he says that he’s not a
bear, he’s a wolf, and that he’s going to wolf dance. He says the Bear
Dance is too much work, and he says it’s a lot of responsibility. And I
go, “Well, you only saw it danced. You haven’t known the
responsibility.”
He goes, “I see what you do, and it’s a lot of responsibility.” So he’s
already saying, “I’m not going to be doing all that work,” which is
good. But he knows the songs. They’ve been taught the songs. We had
music classes, and all of them gone through it. So they all sing it.
When they were younger, they sing it, and then when they get into high
school stage and with their friends, my daughter doesn’t really say she
sings it, but proud, because our tribe has the education program for
high school kids, so she has friends that are enrolled in the program
here with the tribe that go to the school there with her, so she’s able
to—and she likes it because they do a lot of trips and activities,
embrace education.
COATES:
: Well, you talked earlier about you as a child with your own father,
and that it just seemed natural to you and that you took to it and you
liked it and all of that. I was just wondering if you see already that
that is being passed to another generation yet, or another generation
coming up that there are those among your own kids who—
ORTEGA:
: All of them know it. I think my oldest daughter and the youngest son
will probably be the one more embrace. My oldest daughter, when she was
a baby, always (unclear). I had her with me and I took her to meetings,
meeting with council members and a few other folks. I’d come in with a
rocker or a cradle, or they’ll come meet me and she’d be in my office.
And the other one, we started getting childcare and my other son, too,
the two middle ones, and then the youngest one, he’s been same amount of
time like my first daughter with me in my office. Of all of them, I
would say the youngest one is the most outspoken one and the one who
will probably—I think he’s the one that’s blended, doesn’t know what is
normal and not normal, because he met the mayor, he met a few other
folks, and the mayor had went to shake his hand, and he just looked at
him and turned around and walked away and laughed, and a person in the
audience says, “He must be Republican.” (laughter)
01:36:01
COATES:
: How did that happen, huh?
ORTEGA:
: And then when it came time for the photo op, because he loves cameras,
and he knows there’s always a—you know, we always start taking photos.
So he runs into the picture and the grabs the proclamation and holds it
with his hand with the mayor, who he didn’t even want to shake his hand.
He still didn’t want to shake his hand after. So, yeah.
COATES:
: Getting ready for political life, clearly, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: He’s the one, because we will go to the events, and I will take him,
and if we’re performing or we’re going to go up and speak or sing, we
always get to the backstage or we get to a Green Room, and he will
always find his way out to the stage and testing the mic, and not a
care. When there’s an audience there, he will say, “Hello,” and
introduce himself. “My name is Noli.”
COATES:
(laughs.) So my wife’s like, “You’ve got to get him off the stage.” So
now the older ones have security detail not to let him on the stage.
01:37:37
COATES:
: Yep. You can tell where they’re headed from such an early age, huh?
(laughs) Well, we’ve been going for quite a while, and I think we’ve
gone through most of things I had, at least as subjects for the first
interview. Are there other things about your upbringing, your personal
history that you think would be important for us to know?
01:39:58
ORTEGA:
: I think anything different or more—I think overall, growing up, being
Native from this area and not from a different tribe, I think when
people first hear, it’s a shocker, and then this huge shock. Even today,
even folks who know me or business associates that know me and different
venues I go into, and I notice it from a child till now. It’s like, “Oh,
there’s Indians here.” And then more shocking, “There’s Indians from San
Fernando Mission?” And shocking, “There’s an Indian office in San
Fernando?” I think that was the biggest turn because most people are
used to what you mentioned earlier, the folks in the Relocation Act, you
have a lot of Indian people who made Los Angeles their home and brought
their traditions and customs. And then also we’re Hollywood, and
Hollywood Indians who portrayed Indians on film, so people have a visual
impression of what Indian people should be like. And growing up here,
and us just to say who we are, and I think we made a change in our
community from growing up and to now, is that we’re teaching our kids to
be proud of who they are, identify themselves correctly, and not say,
“Well, we’re Indian,” and that’s about it, and, “What you see on TV,
that’s what we do,” but to correctly state it and show it. So I think
from (unclear) time, and I think everyone (unclear) still a learning
curve. I think everyone’s still learning about our community and
knowing, like I said, that even—I’ll run into someone in the street some
other time and ask me what I am, or I get identified, especially
nowadays, either Persian or Armenian or Arabic, and those people will
ask me, “Are you this or that?” And I won’t identify them or say what I
am, and, again, that’s where it gets shocked. “Oh, I didn’t know.”
Because nowadays, besides what’s on film, they think all Indian tribes
have a casino. So the next statement is, “Are you Indian? Where’s a
casino?” That’s the next statement.
COATES:
: Or that they’re somewhere else and that they have a reservation. Total
unawareness that, in fact, there are tribes right here.
ORTEGA:
: Right. And that’s what occur to my family. We were easily blended into
society and able to keep our traditions and custom and culture as much
as possible and inherit other customs and traditions for being Los
Angeles. We received other folks and we made it ours as well. But that’s
it.
COATES:
: Okay. All right. Thank you. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Sure. (End of May 21, 2014 interview)
00:00:34
COATES:
: Okay. So, my name is Julia. Today is July—July. June 4, 2014. We are in
San Fernando, California, at the offices of the Tataviam Tribe. I’m
speaking with Rudy, Jr., and this is our second interview. I’m just
saying it for the record, but as we’ve just discussed, we’re going to
try and get into some of the larger sorts of issues and questions and
processes at Tataviam today.
ORTEGA:
: Sure.
COATES:
: I think you made comment about this a little bit in the first
interview that we did, but I know that one of the things that you hear,
that I hear, that you just hear around a lot is on the subject of
identity and kind of a changing identity at least in the perception of
the public. What I mean by that is that sometimes I hear statements
that, “Oh, I just knew that person. They were Latino,” or they were
Mexican, or they were something like that, and suddenly they’re—and then
fill in the blank, whatever tribe or band it is. Can you just talk about
that a little bit, the continuity of identity within the tribe, but also
the shifts that people have made, perhaps recently, or at least in the
way the public perceives it?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Well, generally throughout time, a lot of the family members,
tribal members throughout the tribe, will usually identify themself as
Mexican, white or Caucasian, Hispanic or Latino, and they still do so
today as well, because Los Angeles, where our homes are at, there’s a
lot of intermarriages. Plus, it’s easier to go with the popularity and
numbers that are much more greater than the tribe. More in recent times,
though, we’ve seen more of a pride, say, of children, the youth, tribal
members taking pride in their heritage and the tribe as well, especially
the fact that we’re able to create programs not just for elderlies or
seniors usually would tend to focus on, but general for everyone in the
tribe that they are able to participate in. Then for the last ten years,
we’ve been just gradually encouraging the identity of their heritage,
giving them more information, information they may not even known about,
because a lot of time we’re speaking to our grandparents or fathers or
parents, they only know so much history, and the tribe here has tons of
archives of information, history they may not have known. So we try to
broadcast that information out to our members. So the children usually
take—you know, they’re fascinated of the fact that they’re Native, so
that’s what I think we see as a larger trend.
00:03:17
COATES:
: Is that different from previous generations, the fascination that
children have? Do you think that earlier generations had that same
feeling about it or—
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, I think probably more so they would have had the same curiosity,
but the times are different than they were fifty, forty years ago.
Nowadays, everybody’s into political correctness, everyone is into,
hopefully, racism, try to diminish the stereotyping and so on, so
there’s a lot more argument publicly-wise. So forty, fifty years ago, it
was a trend just to take the hits and not to say who you were, because
being Native or being Indian was derogatory or the bottom of the chain
of citizens or human beings, and it was a cross. And it wasn’t just here
in the States. It was also for folks, from Aborigines down south in
Mexico or up north in Canada. So Native probably wasn’t one of the most
focal point, and those who stood up for Natives got a lot of challenges
ahead of them to say that they were.
00:04:29
COATES:
: Have you experienced much of that in your adult life, of those kinds
of challenges that you’ve had to—
00:06:35
ORTEGA:
: No. For me, it always seemed to be like—well, I see myself Native
first, and then I have other—like my mother’s Mexican, and I don’t even
see her as Mexican; I see her as indigenous. So my perspective is
different than probably some other folks. So when someone does make a
racial slur or comment, I think my humor or my viewpoint of it is
slightly different, so it doesn’t really get under my skin. A lot of
people have asked me how come I don’t get really upset to hear what
happened in the missions or upset that someone, for instance, today
someone using a Native word, (unclear), incorrectly, “Why doesn’t it
really bother you so much?” The mascots, I’ve advocated for the school
here, the Catholic Church (unclear) to change their mascots and remove
Indian from it. In talking so to the kids there, they’ve asked, “Why you
want to remove the word ‘Indians’?” And simply, I just told them, “I
don’t have a huge concern. It doesn’t really bother me. One, I don’t
come to the school. Two, I don’t participate in your sport activities.
But I’ve seen it’s important to change it because you are hurting other
people’s feelings.” And the bottom line is it’s the old trait of
America. We take stuff without asking, and we do that across the nation,
not just for Indian people, but to everyone else. As Americans, whatever
we like, we just want to take it. It’s like going to someone’s home and
taking a television set, is what I told the high school kids, without
asking. Well, that’s a crime, right? It’s a thievery. You can be
prosecuted and sentenced into imprisonment or jail. I go, the same thing
for using the word “Indians.” Did you ask the local tribes? I know, for
example, no one asked my tribe.
And we do that to a couple of things, so it’s more of a politeness and
appreciation as far as Native religious practices. That’s what you’re
taught. If you’re going to do ceremony, you’re going to go on to some
other tribal lands, ask permission. Depending on what you’re doing, you
seek that individual and request that, and it’s up to that person to say
yes or no, because you’re entering their home, and that’s the kind
gesture. I think overall, myself, like I said, I see certain things, and
I think just growing up and just kind of focusing on just advocating for
the tribe, I don’t know, that’s how I view things. I know a lot of folks
say how come I don’t more get upset about certain stuff, but I think
there’s always someone there to raise a cause.
COATES:
: Yeah, and someone else will get upset. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. I can always support that, but I think there’s always—like I’ve
been told by elders, we do the job we’re meant to do and the stuff that
we follow up with.
COATES:
: Yeah. It’s not really your personality, and you’re going to be most
effective following your own character, your own personality.
ORTEGA:
: Right, right.
COATES:
: Are there instances when the lack of understanding of a Native
identity by the outside world has impacted the tribe?
00:09:21
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. I would say entirely (unclear). I remember as a kid, we were
known as Fernandenos only and not Tataviam, and then about twenty,
thirty years ago, a lot of the tribes started going back to their
traditional tribal names, and we went back to Tataviam. So a lot of
people, the public—and still to today, we get a lot of people saying
that we’re Gabrielenos or saying that we’re Tongva, saying that we’re
Chumash, and truthfully, honestly, there’s a lot of intermarriages,
historically and ancestral, with those different regional tribes, but
the tribal band today is Tataviam, and even our own tribal members
sometimes says, well, we’re more Chumash than we are Tataviam, and
that’s because of the influence from what they receive from the outside.
Folks are saying, well, Chumash are more well known. There’s a federally
recognized tribe that’s Chumash, so those folks are more well known.
Then you have Gabrieleno, which has been, I think, publicized quite a
bit, and then for me to follow, there’s a lot of folks that participated
as the Gabrieleno, Tongva, so they’re out there championing the name and
broadcasting it out, publicizing, doing a lot of outreach versus our
tribe. We kind of stay in our own territory. So a lot of folks
(unclear). Then there’s a lot of anthros or historians or
anthropologists who documented it and called us western Gabrielenos, so
that didn’t really help. So when you have people researching or studying
us, they say, “Well, you guys are western Gabrieleno.” So there’s a lot
of educational information that we have to provide out to folks so that
they learn more about Tataviam.
COATES:
: What are the cultural relationships between Tongva, Tataviam, Chumash?
How would you describe all that? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Well, I think even from historical times to today, I would honestly
say it is what it is the way it is today. We interact quite extensively.
We enjoy each other’s companies when we’re not at each other’s ends of
the fence. (
00:10:50
COATES:
(laughs.) There’s differences because we’re humans and we don’t all
agree at the same thing at the same time. So when that starts, that does
create some friction.
But other than that, enjoying each other’s companies, sharing a meal
together, participating in each other’s ceremonies, sharing the songs,
that still occurs today. We still do today as well. Both sides, the
Tongva and the Chumash, will invite us all to each other. Then when it’s
political or for a cause, they also invite us out, and vice versa. So I
think those always have occurred and always have and will continue to as
well.
COATES:
: Are there overlaps of cultural practice and things like that that you
all share?
ORTEGA:
: No, there’s overlaps. As a younger person, I learned a lot of Chumash
songs, and when we did some more study, we found out one of my
great-ancestors—it would be great-grandfathers, was a swordfish singer.
So when we read more of the documentation, we learned that the Tataviam
people will sing the songs for Chumash, and the Chumash people will
dance to the swordfish song. So there was those intertwining. And then
Tongva folks and ourselves, our languages are more similar, so they will
always cross and go travel to each other’s villages. So there’s a lot of
folks that we read and historically that would travel a great distance
from village to village, and that was without transportation back in the
time. Today, too, there’s a lot of people who still travel a great
distance to join each other’s activities. So there’s a lot of share, and
then there’s also folks who sing with each other that are a mix of
either Chumash or Tataviam or Tongva, and they will probably be singing
only Chumash songs, or they would sing some Tataviam songs, depending
who’s the leader of the singing group.
COATES:
: And you’ve got a pretty extensive cultural revitalization program
going on, I think, at Tataviam, don’t you?
ORTEGA:
: Mm-hmm.
00:13:16
COATES:
: I know at UCLA we’ve got a lot of materials that come from it that
I’ve looked at and everything. Can you talk a bit about that a little
bit? What was the impetus to start that, and when and who did you go to
and—
00:15:52
ORTEGA:
: The revitalization, I think it was always a search (unclear) even my
time, but for myself, in the fifties and forties and sixties, it was
more like embracing each other, so a lot of folks learned powwow, and
they’re still in the tribal community, in our tribal community, in
Tataviam community, are powwow dances. But in the last twenty years or
so, it was determined to choose the more correct culture and history of
the tribe. And in 1993, I was still in high school, I don’t remember,
seventeen or so, eighteen—it was ’92, actually, we got Herrington’s
reel, and that was before the explosion or right at the time (unclear)
the Internet, so they wasn’t even available at the time on the Internet.
So we had all their songs, traditional songs on there with notes from
Herrington, so a lot of stuff that we had too. And then stories and
listening to tapes when people are talking on the tapes that we heard,
they will go from Spanish to probably the traditional language and then
back to Spanish and learn the songs. So that really fascinated me to
hear that, because it sounded like my uncles, my father. They will go
from (unclear) the Native language, but they went from Spanish to
English quite extensively, and so I felt that similarity there to learn
a song. So I felt that it’d be best for the tribal members here to learn
traditionally what our people done religiously, culturally to maintain
it, whatever little was left. There was quite a few elders in the
community. A lot of them have passed now, but back then it was quite
extensive, that were able to provide information. So what we did is we
started audiotaping them, talking to them and asking them what they do
for medicine, how they cure people. A lot of them did some special
techniques and massaging individuals when they were ill, especially
children. So they did a lot of things like that, so we wanted to make
sure that we knew that was the tradition of the tribe and the medicines
that were passed down, but we also want to incorporate the songs, the
dances as well, so we went on a pursuit for that.
COATES:
: Had those medicine practices been ongoing, then, throughout all of
this time, or were these things that elders just sort of remembered from
their youth that hadn’t continued to be practiced?
ORTEGA:
: The one that they practiced was the more effective ones, because when
I went and spoke to a few of them, they could not remember certain
plants or certain reasons why the elders or their parents or their
grandparents would do. They just knew they had some type of plant, they
had some type of prayer, or they had some type of ceremony happening and
didn’t quite understand what it was. So those disappeared, but the
techniques that they saw or felt that was important and that were
effective, like when the kids had upset stomach or feverish, those
techniques they tend to kept and pass on.
COATES:
: What was the process of recording that information? Did they sit down
together in meetings and talk with each other, or exactly how did that
happen?
ORTEGA:
: Some of it was sitting down just at—I remember one time I was at a
Tribal Council meeting, and I just brought the tapes for sitting down
with them, and I was probably fifteen, sixteen at that time.
COATES:
: Were you that young?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
00:17:28
COATES:
: Wow.
00:19:12
ORTEGA:
: So I was really interested and fascinated about it, and started
talking to them. Then just actually on Saturday, this past Saturday, we
had a mural unveiling, and some of the elders came in and were talking
about just that, just the fact of recording, getting the information. So
it was a group session in some points, and some other points we want to
go visit the elders, but when they talk to us—and I even had folks from
Santa Barbara come over, some college students, interviewed them to
record as much as possible, and I remember, because knowing them,
knowing the family members, they would joke around or they’ll give you
false information and they will tap your feet in the bottom just to make
sure you didn’t say nothing, because you’re the younger person. And you
knew what they were saying was incorrect, and they were testing the
interviewer at times. So I remember then that, and that just spawned in
my mind, because on Saturday we were talking about that, and I told my
cousin who’s older than I— he’s in the sixties—and I say, “Well, you’re
at an age where those other folks were back twenty years ago, and they
used to do this,” and I did it to him. He just started laughing. He
goes, “Oh, yeah, I remember my father doing it.” They will just say
these things, and I think it was just the fact that, I don’t know, I
guess it was their way of joking with individuals and the sincerity. I
remember after the interviewers are left or the college students,
whoever was doing it, the documentation, I asked them, “Why do you guys
take it seriously?”
They go, “Well, they were too serious, and then everything we say, they
took it down literally.” So it was their way of playing or
horseplaying.(laughs.) So we had to be careful or actually every time
that we went to an interview, I actually had to speak to the elders
first and tell them the sincerity about it, and I had to sit in the
meeting with them. So I’d catch them.
COATES:
: Tell them to behave themselves? (laughs.)
ORTEGA:
: Yes, and catch them before they said something that I knew was not
correct.
COATES:
: (laughs) So if they were doing this with college students that you all
had brought in, right, and they were making recordings for the tribe,
right, not for Santa Barbara or UCLA or anybody else, but for the tribe
itself, do you know that in fact what it was was—when they were joking
and when they weren’t?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, because in sitting down with the students prior to interviewing,
I will check the questions that they had, and so then I would visit with
the elders first and talk to them, and they’re a little bit more sincere
with me, or they would joke and I knew when they were joking. I know the
body language and the posture, and then I can catch on to that. But the
other folks, interviewers who were not used to the community, didn’t
know that, so I kind of already had the information ahead of time, so
that when they came in, it was also an easier way to get them engaging
with folks, because a lot of them were resistant to being interviewed.
They really didn’t like it or enjoy it. Sometimes I’ll get my older
sister on the spot. I’ll have someone who’s already interviewing me, and
she’s in the room or somewhere near by, and I say, “Come and talk to
her.” And later on, she’ll call me up and yell at me and say, “Why did
you do that?” Because some of them just are very reluctant to do it.
They didn’t want to do it. They’re hesitant.
00:21:56
COATES:
: Well, I’ve had that experience myself. (laughs) I know Pamela’s
really—you know, (unclear) keeps telling me, “This is going to take a
long time.” (laughs) Okay. Had they been interviewed before? I mean, you
talked about the Herrington recordings and all of that kind of thing,
and I know that many tribes across this country have just had anthros
and others just swarming them for many generations. Had that been their
experience? Was that part of their reluctance, do you think?
00:23:17
ORTEGA:
: I think so, because in reading Herrington’s notes, I keep going back
to it and I keep going back to the audiotapes, because some stuff just
didn’t make sense or some stuff it didn’t really kind of go with
everything else, so we go back to it and read it. In one example, we
have the word “Pacoima,” and we don’t know where the term came, “rushing
waters,” and it’s nowhere near—and people in Pacoima, the resident, the
city council member says, “We found the meaning. It means ‘rushing
waters,’” and there’s no recording. Then we have our recording from
Herrington, and the gentleman was young. He would have been a Tongva in
today’s times, and he said that it meant “the entrance.” So we had these
two different words. Then along with that same recording, they tried to
interview my great-grandfather, and he was resistant. He didn’t want to
be interviewed. He was documented in the transcript saying that he was
very fluent in the language, spoke it extensively, and in speaking to
other folks who remembered him and spoke with him and said that he only
spoke Spanish, and he did speak a different language as well, but it
wasn’t really taught to anybody else.
When we go back and hear the audiotape, we can hear them talking, and we
amplify and change the audiotape, and we can hear them. There were three
folks on the tape, and you can just hear them talking among themself and
agreeing to something, and then one will chuckle, and they go on and
then record a song. So not knowing the language or speaking the
language, we don’t know what they said, because they went from Spanish
to Native language, and then they pause and then into a song. So we
don’t know if the song was a humorous song, but the song was recorded as
a ceremonial song, so they couldn’t laugh and say we’re singing a
funeral song or a ceremonial song or a serious song, but before that,
they were chuckling. So to me, I’m thinking, well, I think that behavior
that my father and my grandfather and all those had, my uncles, I think
it was there. It was always there. I seem to kind of have it, too,
sometimes. I have other family members or other tribal members say they
don’t know if I’m serious or joking around. They just can’t read me.
COATES:
: Kind of deadpan, huh? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, a straight poker face, I guess.
00:24:49
COATES:
: Where did you all acquire the Herrington recordings? Did those come
out of UC Davis and that collection up there, or did you have them
yourselves already, or how did that come about?
ORTEGA:
: They were given to my father, and I’m pretty sure it was like ’92 they
were given to us, and I think they came out of somewhere over in
Riverside. I just can’t remember the individual’s name who handed it or
actually mailed it to my father.
COATES:
: So a private individual had these, or was it an institution?
ORTEGA:
: I think it was both. I think it was an institution but a private—an
individual friend, institution, who friended my father, made a copy of
his own to mail out, because it said “Fernandeno Reel” on there, so
that’s how we had it. It was at the start when they were going through
the Herrington records, and they had said, “We’ve got the Fernandeno
Reel,” and it was rough. Everything was really rough. The Xerox
copies—or actually not the Xerox copies, the main copies off
Herrington’s notes and everything else, and they had transcribed it.
They would have a transcription from Herrington’s notes on to what they
were working on. I just can’t remember the university’s name, but it was
their work that they were doing.
COATES:
: Was your father expecting that? Had they let him know that such a
thing existed?
ORTEGA:
: No.
COATES:
: What was his reaction when he—
00:26:35
ORTEGA:
: He was pretty excited. He saw it. What he was more fascinating, there
was photos from Herrington in there as well identifying certain
individuals in certain regions in the Valley. So his fascination was
over that.
Then the audiotapes, he just handed over to me and says, “I need you to
learn these songs.”(Coates laughs.) So he kind of handed it over to me,
and then I just started reading the book and reading the transcripts and
reading what each song meant or as close to what they were talking
about. And even the transcripts were saying they’re speaking Spanish and
then going Native language, and they didn’t—well, there’s some mention
of a bear, and that was about it. So I guess it was even hard for them
to try to capture what they were saying or speaking.
COATES:
: The people who were on the recording, you mean?
ORTEGA:
: Right, yeah, because they were transcripts. So someone listened to the
audiotapes as well, or there was Herrington’s notes as he wrote down as
the folks were taking, and he labeled each song. So that’s what they’ve
done, so the tapes that we have says this is reel number off Herrington,
so that was that transcription, so we knew each song to each
transcription of the documents that we had.
COATES:
: Did he keep this sort of in the family, so to speak? He was interested
in the photos, he told you to learn the songs, and so forth. Did it stay
that way for a while, or did he sort of present this and take it to the
larger community pretty quickly? Or how did that happen that the larger
community began to know that they existed and start to work with it?
00:28:40
ORTEGA:
: One, we seeked out someone who was more dedicated. He didn’t want to
just hand it out, the audiotapes, because back then it was more funding
of time, so we wanted to make sure that they weren’t erased. So were
making some copies of them and handing out to tribal members and family
members who were really interested, not just take it because they wanted
a collection and put it in their shelf, but that will actually learn it.
So it was more of that.
The photographs, there was a huge document, maybe about a couple hundred
words in it, that one we took out the words because some of it were
translated to English, some of it translated to Spanish, so we had
someone who spoke Spanish translate the Spanish into English, so we have
more of an English translation. Then we did a file. Then we print those
out for tribal members who wish to get a copy and have that copy, and
that’s pretty much the extent of how we distribute the information out
to the community. Then only a few people—we did hand it out to a few
other members, but I think it was too soon because this was before more
people started doing more bird songs. Only very few people were still—a
lot of Cahuilla still did it, very few people on the rez. So a lot of
folks up here in L.A. area really didn’t do a lot of those songs yet, so
it wasn’t as trendy as it is today. So they had the tapes for a while.
We had one gentleman, one young man who did have the passion and started
learning it and now started passing out the songs. Then we did music
classes after that, after he got a hang of the songs and learned it. I
knew some of the songs, he knew some, but he was the one that we pretty
much told him, “You’ve got to learn them and teach them.” Kind of like
they did to me, I did to him.
COATES:
: (laughs) So who was doing all the work, the copying of both the
photos, the words, the tapes, all of that kind of thing before—
ORTEGA:
: Handing them out?
00:30:36
COATES:
: Yeah, they got handed out to people.
ORTEGA:
: The photocopying was my dad. He loved to make copies, and those who
knew him knew that. He would give you a copy, and he had more copies
besides that. We had this one organization donate a Xerox copier to us
one time, and we installed it in the garage where we lived. It was an
old thing. It would get stuck, and every little while I had to go help
him and do a clear paper jam, but he would have tons and tons of
copying, and I even one time I asked him, “Why you making so many
copies? Make copies as you need them.” And he says, “Well, you never
know,” and that was his thing. So he had tons of copies to hand out to
everybody. The recording of audiotapes, I was one that was responsible
for doing that. He left the technology stuff to me and whatever. He
didn’t want to mess around with any of that stuff.
COATES:
: And these were on cassette tapes at the time?
ORTEGA:
: Cassette tapes at the time, yeah, so we had to get a dual processing
tape recorder.
COATES:
: Because they were on reel-to-reel originally?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah. So it took a while. We didn’t have extensive money or cash
flow to buy something really expensive and fancy to record them onto
something nicer.
COATES:
: So you guys were just doing this in your own time. You didn’t have a
grant or anything like that.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, it was off our own time, our own resources, own dollars, yeah.
And then it wasn’t till—
00:32:08
COATES:
: That’s a lot of work.
ORTEGA:
: It was. What made it easier is maybe about five, six years later, we
transferred them over to CD and then to computer audio, and that’s when
we’re able to really define the pitching and audio recording of it and
then put them on a couple CDs, and it was easier for us to transfer it.
Because nowadays, CDs are really inexpensive, so we can distribute them.
Some of the folks, some of the members who got them moved them over to
their iTunes library. So they have them, so you can listen to the music
or headphones, they can be listening to the songs.
COATES:
: Are they learning the language that way as well, or is there enough
there to really—
ORTEGA:
: There’s a little bit of words there. They can learn the language.
Learning language is beneficial, or key words, because they will know if
a song said a certain plant or animal or like the sun or the moon, it
was picked up in the—they knew what they were talking about in the song,
so it made that easier. But there’s still a lot of other songs that we
just don’t have words for and are just very difficult to learn. They’re
super fast. We do have one deer song that we all like that’s on the
recording, and that’s the fastest song in the entire recording. It’s
just that we just can’t keep up with it.
00:33:55
COATES:
: (laughs) How did the people react? How did the community react when
these things start showing up and being distributed?
ORTEGA:
: I think fascinating, but I think the culture class or the contemporary
Indian, a powwow Indian, has really made the impression in their mind
and has been embedded, implanted. So when they looked at our traditional
regalias when we had the kids dress up and said these were more closer,
realist to our ancestral families, and these are more traditional songs,
at first it was slow getting acquainted to it. There were still—turn
around and say, “Well, I still like the powwow dancers. I still like the
drums.” And we said, “Californians don’t drum,” which was great because
we got them to engage with that. It was too much embracing, we felt.
Then there was no questions, and then there’s no learning curve. But if
they questioned us and say (unclear) and I prefer to have—I like this.
So we had them engaging with us, and so the kids did learn a lot of
songs. Family members learned the songs. So now it’s more of a custom.
So for every event that the tribe holds, we have our singers sing, and
we invite also outside singers as well, singers who are Chumash or
Tongva that will come down and sing with us.
COATES:
: So what kinds of changes have you seen in tribal governments as a
result of the cultural revitalization, the reclaiming of a Tataviam
identity, things like that? Has that led to changes within the
organization, the structure of governance?
00:36:26
ORTEGA:
: It changed quite a bit. We have a tribal constitution, we have tribal
code, a massive tribal code. Sometimes we even think we did wrong by
putting certain laws in there. Our tribal government’s broken in three
branches now—well, actually two branches and an administrative branch,
so we have all that. We still have tribal elders, who act as a council.
We have general council still, and informally we keep the traditional
ways, which is spokespersons within the families.
Prior to that, there was a lot of challenges and questions of who is the
person who is granted the permission to be the next spokesperson for the
entire tribe. So there was differences of families’ opinion in there, so
that made it hard. Then the second part was who is tribal and who
wasn’t, who was enrolled and who wasn’t enrolled, and even still today
we have family members says, “I’m enrolled.” I say, “Well, your name
doesn’t appear on the roll, and you need to file.” So the files, that
even became a conflict. You know, “I don’t need to file a document.
That’s how the U.S. government does it. That’s not us. You’re breaking
our own traditional ways.” So a lot of that stuff, a lot of that old
mentality and way of thinking did really change. Having our
spokespersons—like I said, that still happens. We have family members,
and if they came up and said, “I’m the spokesperson of my family,” the
tribal government doesn’t intervene or step in. We allow for that
because we know that’s our old ways. But more the newer ways with the
constitution and laws, it’s a little bit more challenging, but also I
think through the test of time, it helps out quite a bit. I think
there’s still a lot of room of improvement, which is good. Not
everything’s set in stone. There’s ways of electing our tribal leaders
today through election process versus just by family base or elders.
Some elders will speak up and say, “We want it back the old ways and let
the elders decide who shall be governing the tribe.” Like I said,
informally we have that, and informally we have our elected leaders. So
tribal members today are learning, and some of them likes it better
because they feel it’s more of a balance. They always felt the stronger
families will always be the rulers of the tribe, or there’s always
something going on that they weren’t privy to or inclusive to. This way
now with the election process, they’re able to voice their opinion. In
their mind, they feel that they do, and then a lot, they do have that.
00:39:15
COATES:
: Do you still see in the election process, though, what you’re calling
the stronger families still sort of coming through there even to elected
positions as well?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, the more local, the more vocal. In my direct family, we still
get criticized that my entire—actually my entire family’s in tribal
government right now, and a lot of members feel that needs to be
changed, and we tell everyone that they can make that change. You know,
“You elect your spokesperson for a family. Now you need to vote that
person into leadership as well, not just as a spokesperson for your
family.” But my family, over the recent years, from my father’s side and
my uncles, if we include my uncles, we are now the second largest in the
tribe. There’s one family that overgrew us.
COATES:
: (laughs) In terms of how many family members there actually are?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. That’s where my political side starts thinking, wait, I’ve got
to be nice to that side too.
00:40:28
COATES:
: (laughs) But there’s probably some degree of intermarriage, also,
isn’t there, between families, so that it’s not clear—I mean, it’s clear
that you’re this family, but you’re also that one, or something like
that?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. There’s some of them, but the lines are drawn, because they will
say they’re more on this side than that side because of intermarriages,
and then the intermarriages, a lot of the family members, those are more
closer in time or prefer not to take a side. They say, “Or I’ll take
neutral grounds.”
COATES:
: Stay out of the politics. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Stay out of the politics. You know, “It’s too close and can’t be
divided that way.”
COATES:
: So I mean if I’m understanding what you’re saying—and correct me if
I’m not getting this accurately or whatever, but there’s a traditional
sort of structure of governance that is centered around spokespersons
for families, but then what has recently come about, or more recently
come about, are these elected positions as well, so the effort right now
is to try to find the way to kind of—
ORTEGA:
: Infuse them together.
COATES:
: Yeah, infuse them together or something like that.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. It’s a little difficult because some of the spokesperson for
families are not enrolled in the tribe and choose not to enroll in the
tribe. So they will—
COATES:
: And they have this resistance to enrolling? Is that—
00:42:14
ORTEGA:
: Some of them do. Some of them are just—in a political stance don’t
make sense, and I’ve told them that. “You’re saying you don’t want to be
involved in politics, but you’re the spokesperson for your family, and
you’re making a decision for them, and your resistance to enroll in
tribe, it doesn’t make good sense.”
Others are just the fact that they find that they will never have a
strong place at the table collectively for the entire folks, so that’s
the reason why some of those members are not enrolled in tribe. It’s not
that we’re blocking them or not including them. I mean, right now our
rolls are open and they have the opportunity to come in and show that
they are part of the tribe, and they feel maybe by enrolling, some of
them, they’ll lose that authority as a spokesperson for the families.
COATES:
: Really?
ORTEGA:
: They feel that they have to relinquish and follow the new constitution
of the tribe, because they read it and they said, “You don’t address
it,” and that’s something, maybe we need to address it.
COATES:
: The constitution doesn’t address these traditional roles of
spokesperson?
ORTEGA:
: Doesn’t address the traditional roles, no. We tried to incorporate it,
but we found it to be confusing, too complex, and we know that those who
are enrolled in tribe and participating in new rules are engaging with
the tribe, and those who follow more the traditional way, some of them
are enrolled and some of them are not enrolled. So I think we’re trying
to keep both worlds comfortable and happy that way. So this way a lot of
spokesperson or some of them, they practice traditional ways. They’re
looked at to do the funeral ceremonies, the wedding ceremonies, so
they’re looked upon that, and so they’ve got that title. So that’s why
we don’t really engage that. We try not to keep the culture really
entwined with the constitution. Let constitution just handle politics.
00:44:02
COATES:
: When was it developed?
ORTEGA:
: It was developed—actually we worked with UCLA from 1998 to 2000, and
then we finalized it in 2002.
COATES:
: And you were a part of that process?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: What was that like?
ORTEGA:
: I think when we were going through the process, no one really truly
understood the importance of it or grasped the magnitude or the impact
that was going to come after it. As a tribe, we selected to pass it in
2002. It was, like everything, really not—I don’t know how to—I mean,
probably it was the fact of it really not on the radar. They felt how
this is going to change the tribe, or we knew we’re tribal; we don’t
need this document. So some folks read through it, and the Tribal
Council—that’s when it went from Tribal Council to Tribal Senate. We had
our own council. So we had some tribal members on council at the time
who said, “The tribal chair can’t have supreme power.” Maybe folks who
were against my father or maybe wanted to change rulership said they
shouldn’t have a supreme power, so that’s how the constitution got
advocated and passed through. But I don’t think a lot of people really
truly pay attention to it, until now we’re looking it, and we say we
can’t do this, we can’t do that, and then we have a swarm of attorneys
reading it for us, and then we have in recent times, some of the tribal
legislatures, senators saying, “We’re going to interpret the law the way
we understand it.
00:45:45
COATES:
: Is there a tribal court that does that?
ORTEGA:
: No, we don’t have a tribal court. The constitution has (unclear)
tribal court, and so there are ordinances in (unclear). It’s just that
we haven’t got there yet. So resolving issues like that has come down
the old way. You know, who is in the room, the elders and the most
vocal, wins the battle.
COATES:
: That’s always the case. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: So there are things about that constitution that twelve years down the
road are proving a little bit—as it goes into actual practice, there’s
some things in it that are problematic, is that what I’m understanding?
00:47:49
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. What we try to do is safehold the tribe. We felt that the tribe
should always be at a stable foundation. So when we built it up and
secured it, we put too many security locks on it that didn’t allow room
for breathing or comfort, and especially in the flow of Native ways or
in just the flow in just in general human being life, I would say. So
we’ve tried to retract some of it. We retracted some of the items. We
tried to change the rules. Just for example, enrollment in the tribe. We
have family members who are Tataviam, but not on the BIA California
Judgment Roll. So in order to enroll, you have to appear on that roll or
have someone who is on that roll and a direct descendant from, a lineal
descendant. If not, then you’re not. And then if you’re on those rolls,
you have to show that you are from a Tataviam village. So you can’t just
be Fernandeno on the roll; you have to be Fernandeno with this Tataviam
village.
So that changed, so we had family members, who were about two hundred,
three hundred people, very upset, because after we wrote the law, not
realizing that family’s very close to my side of the family. So that was
a law—you know, as they put in, I thought everybody was advocating and
championing our past, and then everybody on council was as well, and it
was an oversight. So now we go back, and every so often, we hear from
the family saying, “Have you changed your constitution?”(Coates laughs.)
So that’s what makes it very difficult. Then after the law has passed
and we have tribal attorneys reading it for us, they said, “It’s a good
thing because you’re pursuing federal recognition. You need some staples
in the ground with the federal government.” So we said to the family and
everybody else what the attorneys told us. Then nowatimes—this was maybe
five, six years back, and the family still comes around and asks us even
today, but now we’re like—you know, if we’re self-governed, and the BIA
doesn’t have rules over us right now, the United States government don’t
have rules over us right now, we’re independent, we’re truly
self-governed, then what does it matter? These are our rules. These are
our laws. We determine who’s enrollment or not. So now we’re determined
to change constitution, but now our members—I guess that’s where the
greed come in or the side of too many Indians in the tribe. So they’re
reluctant to change the law and says, well, that keeps the gate kind of
closed, a smaller gate. So now we have to go back. So that’s where we
find writing something, law, constitution is really crucial because it
does impact later on.
COATES:
: Yeah, it does. (laughs)
00:49:45
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah.
COATES:
: What’s the impetus for having a smaller tribe for keeping the gate a
little bit closed as you’re sort of framing it? I mean, I understand
what the internal conflicts within gaming tribes have been sometimes
over that, but what’s the impetus for a nongaming tribe?
ORTEGA:
: For us, I think a lot of it—and this is being consulted by attorneys
and all—was the bigger role you have when you’re pursuing federal
recognition, your enrollment-based participation level. If you have a
huge number of tribal members and only 10, 15 percent participates in
the tribe, it’s a flag on your petition. But that’s where I said to the
attorneys, “You need to argue it better,” because when you have a look
at elections of United States, they have a huge citizenship base and a
very small election voting turnout. So their participation level is much
lower than what we have as tribal community. So I think that’s biased
and unfair.
COATES:
: I do too. That’s a standard that even other tribes aren’t held to,
because I’m from the largest tribe in the country, and we have probably
80 percent of our citizenry who don’t participate much in anything.
ORTEGA:
: Right, right, right. So that’s the hurdle and the thing about going
through the petition process. So we’re cautious on it, and I think it’s
just the matter of better arguing it at the end of the day, having good
lobbyists, attorneys saying the case. But they don’t have control and
they’re fearful, because at the end of the day, it’s whoever’s in the
department makes the decision.
00:51:47
COATES:
: Right. So the impetus to develop a constitution, was that because you
were seeking federal recognition, state recognition? Was it part of that
whole effort or was it—
ORTEGA:
: No, it was part of that effort, but also, too, I think it was a part
of—as I mentioned earlier, we have families who differ in as who’s the
spokesman. We have spokesmans of families, then you have spokesman for
the entire tribe, and that was the difference of what family we got to
say their family’s the one’s going to be leading the entire tribe. So to
eliminate that, that’s why we came up with the constitution. Then as
well, we’ve learned—you know, we also understood it’s important to have
a constitution written up if you’re petitioning for recognition. It’s
not necessary. They don’t ask for that. The only thing they truly ask
for is rules of your bylaws of enrolling people in the tribe, but you
really—constitution’s not the—
COATES:
: It’s not required.
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Because if you get recognized, they will make you write a
constitution. So we felt we should write our own and get things
going.(Coates laughs.) We’re a little more aggressive that way.
COATES:
: Do they make you write a constitution if you’re recognized, if you
gain recognition?
ORTEGA:
: I’m not quite sure. I don’t know.
COATES:
: Yeah, because there are tribes that don’t have constitutions—
ORTEGA:
: Mm-hmm.
COATES:
: —so I was just—yeah. Anyway, it’s a question I don’t know either. It’s
a—
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, it’s something to ask.
00:53:16
COATES:
: —question that occurred to me. Okay. When was the state recognition
achieved?
ORTEGA:
: State recognition’s informal. After Gabrieleno, Juaneno went in as a
legislative decision, our tribe went in through the Heritage Commission,
acknowledged as an historical tribe. The State of California says, “We
don’t acknowledge tribes,” and especially the whole situation that
occurred with the Gabrieleno folks in using their state recognition to
pursue gaming rights now without federal acknowledgement. So, the State
of California just closed the door completely, and when we came after
them, they said they are not going to pass any more legislation because
it does not grant formal state recognition. So that’s including the two
tribes, the Juanenos and Gabrielenos. It’s not a full regulated state
recognition.
COATES:
: Now, can you explain to me this a little bit, because I haven’t talked
to anybody that is Juaneno. The people from Tongva, Gabrieleno that I’ve
talked to have not been in tribal government. Both of them have been
opposed to gaming just generally, I guess.
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: But you’re not from that group, so you’re not part of that process,
but can you just kind of fill me in a little bit on what you’re talking
about here, the attempt to try to gain gaming as a state-recognized
entity that they did?
00:55:27
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. One of the groups from the Gabrielenos has an attorney who filed
documents and tried to persuade the state into moving some lands to
state-recognized lands, and with that they said that the state had the
authority to enter into the tribe for gaming aspects, so that they
didn’t need the federal involvement. If the tribe is sovereign through
the state, and the state is sovereign through the union, then they can
make their own declaration of having a gaming facility.
COATES:
: And this was a non-Indian attorney—
ORTEGA:
: A non-Indian attorney—
COATES:
: —making this argument?
ORTEGA:
: —working with one of the groups of the Gabrielenos who pursue the
gaming facility.
COATES:
: And the state did not buy that argument, huh?
ORTEGA:
: No, no, and that’s what I think caused— because myself, I’ve lobbied a
couple of State Assembly members and state senators to put a more
enforceful state recognition, which would mean the state caring for the
state-recognized tribes, moving some lands to state trusts for the
tribes. So when that was occurring at the same time I was lobbying, the
state legislatures got scared and said, “No, we can’t do that.”
COATES:
: So when tribes talk about having the Tataviam Tribe, the Tongva,
right, having state recognition, you’re saying that’s an informal
recognition that is more through the Heritage Commission or something
like that?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, it’s—
COATES:
: What am I missing here? (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Well, because state recognition doesn’t—if you look at state laws,
there’s no law that says there’s such a state-recognized tribe.
COATES:
: Yeah, there’s no authority on—
ORTEGA:
: No authority.
00:56:44
COATES:
: —the part of the state to do that, actually.
ORTEGA:
: They don’t grant any funding, they don’t provide any resources, they
don’t provide any care for the tribe off the federal funding that comes
in for tribes. None of the state-recognized tribes receives them. So
there’s truly no state acknowledgement under Heritage Commission. I say
that and I know a couple of folks kind of feel like, well, you’re not
state-recognized. It’s more historical acknowledgement. It’s still
acknowledgement from the state, and that we do have, and that gives us
the authority, or it gives us participation in protecting cultural
resources and involvement that way. Then the other informal is in the
county of L.A., we’re able to participate with their
government-to-government relationships that may impact tribal members or
citizens on their right as being Indian or Tataviam. So that we have,
something we do, and we always stay within that arena to protect tribe
rights.
COATES:
: Have there been issues for you that you’ve been involved in of
protection of cultural sites or sacred sites or resources?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, many. We get an average, like many other tribes, maybe hundreds
of letters a month that involve reviewing.
COATES:
: Wow.
00:58:31
ORTEGA:
: So what we’ve done, with that authority, we went to the county general
manager and request that we charge a permitting fee that we’ve been
trying to issue out. One, just get it on our tribal books, in our tribal
laws, and then to just create the form and resource review permit, so
that each ours go through.
So we were able to protect sites that are significant, important to the
tribe that minimize impact or no impact. We were able to negotiate
artifacts that are culturally to the tribe become the property of the
tribe instead of the property landowner. So we enter into contracts in
that, so that provides us. So we took more of an aggressive approach
that way. Then within the state Heritage Commission, they acknowledge
one person as a most likely descendent. We request that the state
Heritage Commission determines the entire tribe as MLD rather than one
single individual, and the reason is is that the tribe is based on three
families, and our three families come from multiple villages that are
not together. So the tribal elders (unclear) our best to make the
decision who descends from village and also who most likely may descend
from a nearby village, who have more cultural significant relationship
to. So those are the things that we’ve done as far a cultural resources
and under authority granted by the Heritage Commission to us.
COATES:
: What are some of the specific instances when you’ve had to enter into
that, and what was it like? Were you directly participating in those
kinds of negotiations or protests or whatever it may have been? Can you
talk about that specifically?
01:00:34
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. I think the (unclear) and the climate—my brothers, my father,
and Pamela was actually involved in one of them—saw the climate change
different. Instead of picketing with signs up in the front of the area
and protesting, we took it to a political arena. We went after our
supervisors, whoever’s in charge of making that decision. If the Army
Corps Water Board, we found who it was, we went to them and stated our
case.
Then negotiating the contracts with developers, we sat down with them
and said, “It’s vital that we’re at the table making the decision,
especially if it means impacting cultural resources.” One of the lines
that we’ve used—well, negotiation was intense for the first one. I don’t
know how many tribes have done this or do that, is negotiating amount
of—well, they hire archeologists, an environmental firm, to do their
study.
COATES:
: Where was this? What was the specific—
ORTEGA:
: This was in Santa Clarita. So we were dealing with a massive land
developer, moving to install houses, build homes in the area. So that’s
where we negotiated with them. We told them that they needed us, our
support, so negotiating with them, I would say it would be like more of
corporate American than anything else and negotiations. So I think that
was a different turn, a pivotal point, definitely, for the tribe,
because like I say, not that I know of or heard of anyone else
negotiating the way we did for the tribe and its rights. So we got
monetary funding for the tribe to enhance our culture—
COATES:
: From the developer?
ORTEGA:
: From the developer. That helped us. Actually crucial because filing
for federal recognition is quite extensive.
COATES:
: Yes, it is.
01:02:28
ORTEGA:
: We have no investor. We have no game investor. We’re always proud to
say that, because that’s one thing we get accused of (Coates laughs),
which we did our own, so that’s where funding come from.
The history, the lands were originally our lands. Whatever reason, the
political and history, and the climate had changed. We no longer have
the land, so that’s one thing we made known to the developer. So
artifacts and all that, items, like I mentioned before, become the
property of the tribe. So anything found, if it’s something that’s
salvageable or if it’s something that needs to get reinterred, reburied,
it gets reburied, and then we negotiate where the reburial sites are at.
COATES:
: So this included human remains as well as artifact?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. If human remains were accidentally discovered, they will get
reburied at a site, and we negotiated land for the tribe as well, and we
negotiated sites that are known to be cemetery sites not to be impacted,
so they become open space. So as a developer, they thought us a
headache, because losing land, keeping more open space is less return
for them. The artifacts, at first they were a little hesitant, said,
well, it’s there’s because it’s on their land. As we told them, what
significant value did they have for you? “They’re priceless to us. What
value do they have for you?” So that’s how we’re able to negotiate our
terms. At the end, the tribe and the company have become close and
understanding to each other. But at first, it was a lot of resistance.
01:04:19
COATES:
: Yeah. Those are my questions. How did you overcome that? Because in my
experience, these kinds of companies are not—I mean, and not being
federally recognized, not having certain federal laws on your side,
right? How did you hold their feet to the fire on this?
ORTEGA:
: The fear of us going public, going more in the paper, the fear of them
finding more artifacts or anything like that really impacting their
case. At the end of the day, I think one of the things, the way we were
able to be successful was the tribe and myself and everyone else, part
of the team that was negotiating, said the company has an interest and
an agenda, and our tribe has an interest and an agenda, and how can
these two have a parallel track and what’s the meeting ground of that.
And of course they have a lot more than we have, and our interests may
be quite different from each other, but where can we meet down the line
so that everyone is successful and content and be able to move forward.
So that’s what we did when we went into negotiating rooms, is that it
was all their side, and they didn’t want to listen to us, and so we
said, “Well, don’t listen to our side, we won’t listen to you, and it
looks like we’re not going to go anywhere, and it’s going to be a mess.
And we don’t want a mess; we want a relationship.” So I think one of the
things we were champion was, “Let’s build a relationship.” Nothing works
if it’s a broken relationship. And that’s how we were able to, I think,
successfully win the agreement with them. They were very pleased. Each
time we see the company, they keep telling us how much they enjoy our
relationship and able to work with them, help them out.
COATES:
: So they were able to complete their development.
ORTEGA:
: They were able to get past all the approvals. They’re still waiting to
break ground. So they’re hopefully to break ground this year.
01:06:31
COATES:
: But you were satisfied. You have an agreement with them that when they
do these—you were able to negotiate certain things that are going to be
respected in your expectation. And I presume it’s going to cost them a
little bit more money if—
ORTEGA:
: It cost them a bit more money because we ask for money upfront.
COATES:
: Plus, if they do discover things that need to be dealt with, that’s
going to be time and—
ORTEGA:
: And maybe more land lost. So they are aware of it, so they’re willing
to work with us on that.
COATES:
: And they were willing to give that in order to not have a poor public
relations or—
ORTEGA:
: Poor public relations and even—
COATES:
: Public image, huh?
ORTEGA:
: —image and even more land lost, because they knew there’s always
environmentalists, there’s always community residents who—it goes back
to the tribal enrollment list. Keep the gate smaller. We don’t want
more. But population around it continues to grow, and it’s an
ever-growing demand. It’s something we need to be facing. And that’s the
other approach, the other angle the tribe looked at. We’d rather be
involved in development and say how it should be done to minimize the
impact to environment, to cultural resources, and also one thing we
really enjoy is the fact that since the landowner own so much property,
harvesting. So we’ll oppose for educational items, and then
we’ll—feather droppings all over the place. We get tons of feathers. So
the resources open up for us. So it’s like we’re gaining back our land
indirectly. We did get some titlement of land, but right now the
pristine open forest land or any of that land, we have access to, which
is really—
01:08:12
COATES:
: Even though they own it, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Right. It’s like we gained an easement to it.
COATES:
: For gathering and harvesting.
ORTEGA:
: For gathering, harvesting, yeah.
COATES:
: Wow. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: So that’s what I’m saying, I think overall we all tend to win, because
they had something, an interest in their mind, we have something, an
interest in our mind, and we needed to make it work together and to a
comparable understanding.
COATES:
: Now, as you were engaged in these negotiations, was the community
being kept informed about what the negotiation was?
ORTEGA:
: Not exactly. It was only set in tribal government, in Tribal Senate,
in the executive branch. Decisions were made there. The only thing that
was public that was to our members was, “Here’s this developer moving
forward on and possibly disturbing a lot of artifacts.” In fact, we went
to the paper on one item, so that made them really listen to us, because
then they realized, “Wait a minute.”
COATES:
: They got a little taste of the threat. (laughs)
01:09:26
ORTEGA:
: They got a little taste, yeah, that we were serious. So that’s what
was informed to the members.
Once it was done, the developer and the tribe came to an agreement to
only certain information be released until full, complete breaking
ground. Then everything can be informed to the public. That was just the
fear of the developer’s side that they had more tribes or tribal
individuals knocking on their door asking for the same kind of contract.
And that’s where we go to the state Heritage Commission and say, “You
can’t determine one person MLD. You’ve got to determine the tribe.” And
as a tribe, collectively, we make that decision, and we prefer it that
way. That’s one reason why we kept certain information not very
disclosed, and then once we were signing the contract, then we told the
entire tribe.
COATES:
: Right. But the community members, the tribal members had had this one
newspaper article that had sort of illuminated the issue for them at
least, okay?
ORTEGA:
: Right.
COATES:
: What was the sense within the community about that? Were they upset?
Were they holding you all—was there pressure on you as the negotiations
were going on, and so forth?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, they were watching us. They were hoping that we make the best
decision. I think that’s something that I’ve learned in the tribe. If
you’re the leader, you’ve just got to do it. All the members depend on
you to get it accomplished and get it complete. There’s no ifs and buts.
There’s no, “I can do it halfways.” If you’re sitting in the seat and
you request to sit in the seat, then you’ve got to get it done. And I
think that’s what the members were looking at towards, and they’re
waiting for the end result. They didn’t ask, during the whole process
where we’re negotiating, we told them we were, there’s no like, “What
are you negotiating? How are you negotiating? Here’s an advice to
negotiate,” because we told them who our team was in negotiations and
what we’re doing. So they left it as is until we said, “Okay. Now we’ve
completed it and we’re going to inform you at a meeting,” and that’s
when they all came out and wonder how we do it and very pleased to hear
how much and what we did and what our (unclear) was.
01:12:21
COATES:
: So there was a lot of confidence in the people who were negotiating
within the community. Was that pretty widespread, or was there any kind
of challenge to that negotiation that came when people didn’t—I mean,
before it had finalized, or people were just pretty willing to sit back
and wait and see what—
ORTEGA:
: People were somewhat willing to sit back and wait. I think since they
only knew so much information, so they knew like, well, okay, tribal
government’s keeping it closed doors and they’re talking about it.
COATES:
: And there’s a reason for that.
01:13:39
ORTEGA:
: Right, right. Especially if there’s an opportunity of going to the
courts, you want to keep certain information there still. Then the other
part, within Tribal Senate itself, there was the discussion of who
should be in the room negotiating, what amount we should be requesting
if it’s monetarial funds, how much property we should negotiate, how
much easement we should ask, how much artifacts, because it was even
that. Human remains, that was a hands-down they all get reburied.
Nothing gets kept. Artifacts that are found with human remains gets
reburied. Artifacts that are found close by the human remains get
reburied. Artifacts found by itself, depending on the condition and what
item it is, it may get kept for display for educational purposes.
So those are the things that we talked about, and that became—when it
became further more of the discussion, that was like, “Okay. What are we
doing?” So we put in the contract, “When we get there, we discuss it,
but then if we’re not in it right now, we don’t have to.” Then the other
point was who shall be in the meeting and who should speak in—in Tribal
Senate, it was mixed families. It was entirely not my family at the
time. And the one that got chosen was my entire family. The other family
member says, “Well, you guys go and negotiate the room.” And myself, I
was no longer on Tribal Senate. I was the tribal administrator. So it
was my father, trial president; my brother, vice president; and my other
brother, who was a tribal senator; and another senator that was involved
with it. That was the first negotiation. Then when we came to the final
complete one, again they chose me to go, then my father, and then
Pamela, because we did a presentation of it. So that’s who was selected
to be in that room. So even then, they felt who should be and who
shouldn’t be in the room. Some people get hurt. I’ve been told, “Why did
they select you?” or, “You’re not on the government office. You were
staff at the time.”
COATES:
: But in the end, people were pretty pleased with the outcome of the
negotiation?
01:15:53
ORTEGA:
: Very pleased. Because as soon as that happened, we turned around and
said we had funding to keep going in our petition and make the next step
and file it and get ready to file. I mean, do all the research. We have
the funds to hire the research team, the writers of the petition, bring
the attorney back onboard, and get things going and moving.
COATES:
: Okay. So there really wasn’t any sort of disgruntlement with it in the
end or anything like that?
ORTEGA:
: No, no. They were pleased.
COATES:
: And you’ve got precedent if you come up against other developers and
other situations—
ORTEGA:
: Right, right, right.
COATES:
: —in the future. That’s amazing. (laughs) Have there been other kinds
of economic development that the tribe has pursued over the last thirty
or forty years? Have you been able to do that, even lacking federal
recognition?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Well, the tribe, in the late sixties, we started a nonprofit
that provide community services, and through that we solicit grants, and
it’s still running today, which now it’s called Pukuu Cultural Community
Services. So we have that operation, and they provide general community
programming, social services, youth involvement, job and training
placement programs. And then the tribe, a few years back, we—well, prior
to that, there were a couple of ventures that were established
short-term, and then we created a creative design agency that does
marketing design. So that one, we still have today, and it’s called Pahi
Creative Group Services. So through them, it’s a growing part of the
tribe, and today now we’re looking to hire someone who can look at
creative ways to establish business for the tribe, and whatever little
resources we had left over, to reinvest it or create something that
would generate more secure funding for the tribe. So we’re still adamant
in chasing those dreams, yeah, even though we’re not recognized.
01:17:53
COATES:
: Right. There’re still other means to do things.
ORTEGA:
: Right, right.
COATES:
: In terms of your overall tribal membership right now, and looking at
changes that have occurred over the last thirty or forty years, what
could you say about economic change for individuals, for families? Has
their situation improved, stayed the same, gone down? What do you see?
ORTEGA:
: In the mid-1990s, a lot of families moved out of the Valley area and
moved further north or moved out of state, and that was due to either
jobs or affordable housing, more affordable for them and to own a home.
And jobs, just like everyone else, we’ve always lived in the very
metropolitan area, the city area, urban areas of Los Angeles, so jobs
are always a little more plentiful for us around, but also, too, it
impacts us like every other residence in Los Angeles. So jobs are
scarce, and there’s a higher number right now, I would say, of not
full-time employment. Maybe they’ve got part-time retail or unemployment
and unable to find certain jobs. Some of them may be just forced into
early retirement just so they can get some funding into their household,
and that’s due just, again, through the regular economics that are
occurring in the States, but averagely it was probably about the same.
We don’t have a high number of high breadwinners in the tribe. There’s a
few. I’ll say maybe about a dozen or so that maybe we can handpick them
out, that make a very well and stable living, and then the majority of
the tribe, I would say, I don’t know, probably about 40 to 45 percent
that’s in the poverty area.
01:20:16
COATES:
: Is it?
ORTEGA:
: And then the rest of it, about 50 percent of that in medium household
income, and about 5 percent is above that. That would be the economic
status of the tribe.
COATES:
: And most people are engaged in what the anthros call wage labor, huh,
that they’re working for a paycheck and that kind of employment?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: And what I guess I’m wondering, because was there more of a
subsistence type of economy maybe previous to fifty years ago, in terms
of people who were engaged more in small-scale agriculture or ranching
or things like that? Was that the case for people, or have they always
been in this wage situation through most of the twentieth century?
ORTEGA:
: They’ve probably been mostly in the wage situation, but a lot of
it—well, generations prior to that was in agricultural, a lot of it also
in construction and labor-intensive trade. I would say maybe about the
seventies or so, maybe in sixties, a lot of them started going to more
of administrative work, but a lot of manufacturing. A lot of them did a
lot of manufacturing work or government-paid programming jobs that were
in. So I think that has always been the trade of the tribal members.
COATES:
: I’m wondering because—and being relatively new to the region, it seems
like maybe more to the east that the urban area hadn’t sprawled quite
that direction yet, and so there was more of that going on, whereas I
think around here, it’s been pretty urbanized for a long time, huh?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah.
01:22:23
COATES:
: Maybe like for a century or more, it’s been—
ORTEGA:
: Oh, yeah. The aerospace was here. Ford Motors was here—I mean GM was
here, so a lot of them had those jobs after the war. That’s what I’m
saying, after the war, a lot of those factories came in, construction of
the ranch-style home—or I forgot how they call them, the tract homes,
actually. So a lot of them worked in construction and built a lot of
homes in the Valley, made that big boom in growth, and that was all
through the sixties, seventies, and took those jobs. When GM left, a lot
of them were forced into retirement because they were at that age, and
some of them had to go find jobs in different areas. And since they was
in manufacturing, they went back into manufacturing of some kind. Some
of them went into medical manufacturing. Some aerospace stayed in the
Valley, some of them moved up to Palmdale, and a lot of them followed.
Those tended to be the type of jobs that they were receiving.
COATES:
: You said about 40 percent, you would estimate, are at poverty level,
and that there’s been some amount—approximately, just speculating, what
percentage of the tribe has maybe moved out of—
ORTEGA:
: Of the area?
01:23:54
COATES:
: —their original villages or whatever, out of the area?
ORTEGA:
: Out of the area? It would be roughly close to 40 percent or a little
bit more, but those who moved out but are not in the poverty areas as
well. You’ve got a lot of them—or you’ve got a few, maybe a handful or
so moved out of the area and moved to a different state because of work.
They follow the job. Some of them were in construction building
freeways, so they raise their family in a different state, and then
those individuals are in high-paying positions in their jobs. Some of
them, I think, are university professors as well.
COATES:
: So the ones at poverty level would maybe tend to be more those who
stayed rather than those who left, or is there a correlation at all?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. The ones who left would have left—some of them left because—the
ones at poverty level, I will say they moved further up north in the
county, and then those who moved out prior, the generation—the first one
who did move out moved because of job placement, and then their
children, some of them may be in the poverty area because whatever their
condition is in their state.
COATES:
: Right. So it’s just kind of a mixed situation. It’s not really
anything to correlate. Okay. What about educational changes for—I mean,
in your own family, it seemed like—were you the first-generation college
or second?
ORTEGA:
: First.
COATES:
: First, okay. Was that typical that your generation was kind of the
first within the tribe to gain that educational level?
ORTEGA:
: Pretty much. My brother Larry went to community college, and then
myself attend college, and I think it was just no one understood the
reason. You had your parents just telling you just got to go.
01:26:16
COATES:
: Go to college or—
ORTEGA:
: Go to college. Or a lot of members, tribal members—not really a
college, but more of a trade school, an occupational school to learn a
trade to go after a contractor’s license or something like that—did
that, but the understanding or the complexity was a little bit much, or
it didn’t really (unclear) the members to go to school, and also they
didn’t know how. They just knew that it was a heavy burden, expense, and
if you have a family of six, or in my case, twelve siblings, it makes it
very difficult to go to school, and it’s something they looked at as you
go to school, continue learning. I remember some of the elders saying—my
father saying, “If you didn’t learn anything in the first twelve years,
you’re not going to learn nothing in college.” So it’s like, “You need
to go get a job,” and that was their thing. They didn’t understood the
higher education process, how can it advance you in career or not
advance you. Nowadays, sometimes you’ve got to weigh out going to
college. But they just felt that making ends meet and putting food on
the table and finding a secure job was more beneficial. So there’s quite
a few family members that ensure that their families continue to work
work, not really go in. Today the tribe offers an education department
where we’re teaching that. We’re teaching how can you afford college,
where can you go to college at. It’s much like anything in life. You
only eat as much as you can afford, you don’t go to the five-star
restaurants in Beverly Hills—
COATES:
: Hopefully. (laughs)
01:28:44
ORTEGA:
: —if your budget doesn’t allow you to. So it’s just the program we have
teaches the kids and encourages them to look towards higher education,
and teaches the parents, not only the children, the kids, but also the
parents, in showing them ways that they can look for scholarships and
funding and what schools they can afford as well, and how the whole
system works about going to college.
COATES:
: So are there more that are going to college and graduating? Is the
overall educational attainment of the tribe increasing?
ORTEGA:
: It’s increasing. There’s a lot of starters but no finishers. But
there’s quite a few—and the numbers change. Each decade we go, the
numbers continue to grow towards education, which is a good thing,
because I think from the seventies is when—sixties maybe perhaps when a
lot of them started having the concept of college. Because I think even
though we’re part of the community (unclear) here, a lot of the jobs
were still farmers, you know, all the jobs, trades that we talked about
earlier. So a lot of it was, “You don’t need to go.” And the parents
prior to us, education-wise, maybe stopped at eleventh or tenth grade,
so they didn’t see the other need for other education at all.
COATES:
: What is your relationship with the other tribes in the area that are
indigenous to here? Do you have good relationships with most of them? Do
you receive encouragement, assistance, support from them in your
petitions for recognition and things like that?
01:31:07
ORTEGA:
: If it’s federal recognition, human nature is maybe some will be very
supportive and some of them very envious. My relationship or the tribe’s
relationship with other groups, I think it would be as the same in any
other neighbor relationship you have at home. You have your neighbors to
your left and your right and front and behind you. Some of them you get
along with very well. Some of them may truly pester you because whatever
they do in their yard and stuff is bothersome, and vice versa. There may
be something you do that they truly don’t like. That’s the relationship
that we have with other tribes.
Culturally, when it comes to events and programming, it seems like to be
the neutral ground, and we can tolerate (Coates laughs) or hang out
depending on the situation or the political climate that occurred prior
to that, but I think some of the groups we tend not to have a
relationship with. It’s just some groups may other political approach.
It’s a little bit aggressive or hostile than ours, or if they’re a
little bit pushy and being a bully and want everyone to follow their
path will defer us from speaking with them or interacting with them.
COATES:
: Very diplomatically stated. (laughs) Then there’s a large population
of Indian people in Los Angeles County who have come from somewhere else
in the country, right?
ORTEGA:
: Mm-hmm.
COATES:
: Do you interact much with the urban Indian, the Pan-Indian community,
I guess?
01:33:20
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Well, when my father started the programs, when he had the
nonprofit, he had quite a few people who were Indians who came from a
different state that made Los Angeles their home and participated with
them. And because of that idealism, our nonprofit has folks who are
Navajo, Tohono O’odham, Pima, you know, different folks from different
tribes. We have Apache, Lakota at a point of time. They were serving on
our nonprofit board. So we engage with them and we circle and then
participate and have them involved, so this way we can involve the
community that surrounds us and those who may made Los Angeles their
home, and as well we have folks who work for us, or have worked for us,
who may be from different tribal affiliations as well.
So they engage quite—we have one now who’s a Seminole Indian, and
another one—let me see. Who is the other one? I can’t remember. I
think—no. Actually they’re both Seminole as the uncle. We had an uncle
and a niece work for us. The uncle’s working for us now.
COATES:
: Based on my last couple of questions here—and they’re big, broad
questions—we’ve talked a little bit already about the issues of cultural
resource protection and sort of the sprawling urban environment, and so
forth. What are some of the greatest issues for the tribe? I mean,
that’s one. But for the tribe, other than that, of being in the middle
of this huge metropolis and everything, what are the challenges of that
for you?
01:35:4101:37:20
ORTEGA:
: I think the larger one is healthcare. I think being Indian, a
non-recognized Indian, you have a federal law that says that healthcare
should be afforded all American Indians, and then when wrote it to code,
they defined it to be from federally recognized tribes, but the original
bill was for all American Indians. It wasn’t based on tribes; it was
based on just the fact that you can have it in ancestry. So that’s a
challenge and hurdle over that, because the healthcare services, even
though we now have an Affordable Care Act that’s through, it’s not so
much affordable for a lot of our members, and they have to make a living
sustainable to paying that extra fee and have good care. A lot of them
probably makes enough just to bring home some food. Well, a lot of them,
probably they’re living paycheck to paycheck. They have enough to pay
everybody and maybe have $10 for themselves, and that’s not really a
good life. So the healthcare is really essential.
The second part would be jobs, having good job resources in places that
our members can be proud to work at and do some work for as well and
motivate them. So I think those are the two things outside of federal
recognition that would bring so much other stuff and probably answer
some of those questions for us, but those are the needs for that. Then
lastly—(unclear) probably jobs, and this one’s probably, I think, the
same as housing. A lot of our members move quite often, those in the
poverty areas, so they lease out their areas. Some of them have lived in
motels for a point in time, became homeless, and they’re here. So if Los
Angeles is their home and become homeless, it’s very difficult for them
to—there’s no reservation to go to. There’s no other state to go to.
They go to another state if they already had a job offer, or if there’s
another relative lives out of state and says, “Oh, I can get you a job
as a cook or the dishwasher man here at this restaurant, and you could
come here to live here with us.” Rent is $300 versus here in L.A. rent
to be almost $1,000 or maybe 1,000 or more in some places. So they do
that transition and move out. But if we had good housing programming and
affordable housing for—and we don’t—again, as Indian who’s not federally
recognized, we don’t qualify for Indian HUD, so they can’t go into those
programs as well. So those are the items, I would say.
COATES:
: And we should know, because it’s real apparent that in Los Angeles
County, which has the largest Indian population of any county in the
country, right, and yet because Tataviam and Tongva are not federally
recognized, there are no services for Indian people here of any kind,
especially in healthcare. So if that recognition were gained, it would
be a tremendous benefit, not only to the two tribes, but to all the
overall Indian population in the county, which is so large, and which at
this point has no access to that type of assistance, right?
ORTEGA:
: Right, right. I think if it’s a win, it’s a win for everyone, as
mentioned. So it’s a pivotal point to have. It’s something crucial.
COATES:
: That’s something you need to take your negotiating skills into—
(laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah.
COATES:
: —because it would take a lot of the pressure off of public health
types of facilities and things like that.
ORTEGA:
: Well, we tried. We went to one congressman already and advocated that
they entrust the tribe to run an IHS clinic. Came close, but that’s
where we had oppositions because going in—
01:38:46
COATES:
: The federal law doesn’t—
ORTEGA:
: Well, they’re looking to grant us or kind of give us that permission,
but the issue was appropriations, and we will cut into the healthcare
funding, and that meant other federally recognized Indians and other
Indians saying, “Wait a minute. It’s going to non-recognized Indians? We
can’t do that.” So that’s where it didn’t happen.
COATES:
: Yeah. Then I guess to kind of flip the question over, what is the
impact of the tribe on the larger region of Southern California that you
see?
ORTEGA:
: The impact as today?
COATES:
: Or over the last forty years or so, say.
ORTEGA:
: Last forty years, I think we became more of an educational history
location, more correctness and information that’s being taught about
American Indians, especially San Fernando Indians, especially Tataviam
Indians in the school systems, and we’re slowly doing that correction
over time. We’ve provided educational scholarships to the community. We
created jobs. We provided jobs. We assist in providing financial aid to
some individuals. We also took some of the burden off of some local
government. Immediately here in the city of San Fernando, we saved them
roughly between 80 to 120,000 annually on maintenance fees, because the
tribe has its own maintenance crew and now maintains the park facility.
(Coates laughs.) So the city loves us on that because they don’t have to
put in their maintenance crew and they don’t have to put staff there for
that, and we have a three-man staff there. Within the national forest,
similar to the city, we maintain a Cultural Center, granting the forest
another destination for visitors to visit the forest, have a facility up
and kept and utilized by the public. So we’re able to do that. It saves
the forest and federal dollars, tons of money, because that’s something
they don’t have to put employment or staff or oversight or maintenance
care. So we’re probably averaging—saving their savings about half a
million up there on that site. And I think those are the impacts right
now, immediately that we’ve impacted the city and the county.
01:41:37
COATES:
: So you’re convincing them it could be beneficial to have an Indian
tribe in there. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Definitely. And that’s not being recognized.
COATES:
: Right, right.
ORTEGA:
: Imagine recognized, a lot more, and the county itself will receive
funding, more appropriations coming towards them.
COATES:
: So I was thinking about the little story that you shared with me last
time about your experience in school, and I think it was you that they
were not saying something correctly about, or it was you or a friend or
somebody saying, “Actually, I am Indian here.”
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah.
COATES:
: And when they were saying, “Well, everybody’s extinct,” and so forth
or something like that—
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah.
COATES:
: —as I recall. So that wouldn’t happen nowadays, huh, because—
00:00:00
ORTEGA:
: No. I think more kids are proud to say who they are and—well, I’ll
probably take—I think there’s probably school here or there with a
teacher, one or two loosely around, who will say, “There’s no more
Indians.” But I think the fact of us being out there more publically and
doing the correctness about it has changed quite a bit, and there’s more
information. (00:00:00)
We have a map that we develop and we’re publishing, right now is in our
third version that we’re getting ready to move out to the public. It’s
been on high request and demand by teachers, and now people are using
it, and instead of saying, “I live in West Valley,” they say they live
in one of those village areas. So it has changed quite a bit. But again,
there’s always that one individual who will say to a room of Indians,
“There’s no Indians here.”
COATES:
: Until somebody pops up in their class and says, “I am.” (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Says, “Yeah, I am, and I can bring the people to tell you.” Because
besides me, my niece did the same thing. She was in school and the
teacher argued with her. It’s my sister’s daughter, and they came over
to us. She came over to me, and I wrote her a letter and I said, “Well,
give this to your teacher,” and it had the tribal seal on there, my
father’s signature, my signature on there, and it pretty much says, “The
tribe’s here. You’re near the Mission of San Fernando, and the people
who descend from who built it are here, the descendents, and if you’d
ever like to have go in for a presentation, we’re more than happy, free
of charge.” I never got the call (Coates laughs), but my niece said that
the teacher apologized.
COATES:
: Did she acknowledge in the class and everything?
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, she acknowledged it, yeah, definitely.
COATES:
: Very good.
00:00:00
ORTEGA:
: Yeah, yeah. (00:00:00)
COATES:
: Very good. Okay. Well, is there anything else that you’d like to state
for the record, so to speak, or things that I haven’t asked that you
think it would be important for a researcher or a student or somebody
that might be listening to this in the future to know about this moment?
ORTEGA:
: To know? I think overall, American Indians, tribal people, just like
anyone else in an educational profession or a research profession, is
constantly learning and realizing and restoring their history and their
culture. So along the way, there’s always going to be bumps, but more
importantly is be respectful to them, and get the time to engage with
the people and understand them and get to know their personalities and
the way they work, and that’s what makes them that community. What makes
that community thrive is that uniqueness, characteristics, and the
people’s soul and spirit from that community.
COATES:
: Okay. Well, thank you.
ORTEGA:
: Sure.
COATES:
: Thank you so much for sitting with me these two sessions. (laughs)
ORTEGA:
: Yeah. Well, definitely. Thank you for coming down.
COATES:
: Appreciate it. (End of June 4, 2014 interview)