Native American culture and lifestyle explored
By Alex Wilson 07/24/2008
Visitors to the Los Padres National Forest Wheeler Gorge Visitor Center connect to nature by learning Native American traditions from local residents whose relatives have lived here for thousands of years.
Monique Sonoquie traces her ancestry to the local Chumash as well as the Apache, Yaqui and Zapotec tribes. She helps run a Santa Barbara based cultural and environmental organization called the Indigenous Youth Foundation dedicated to teaching about native cultures. Sonoquie stages a multi-media presentation called The Chumash Experience on Saturday July 26th starting at 11:00 a.m. It includes props like ceremonial items and a film Sonoquie made on Chumash creation legends.
Her presentation illustrates ways Native American ideas about sustainability and respect for nature can help solve current problems.
“We worked with the environment,” says Sonoquie. “We used to do traditional burns that helped the plants grow and created more food for us and for the animals and created a healthy forest. And today we have overgrowth and giant forest fires that rip through and take everything out when before we had small forest fires.”
Learning about native traditions helps people connect with the environment and understand how people fit into nature’s balance, says Sonoquie.
“When we hunt we use all the parts of the deer. We eat the meat. We use the hide for clothing or for blankets. We use the antlers for tools. We use the bones for musical instruments or tools. Once people see what these animals meant to native people they’re less likely to go out and kill them for no reason or waste them,” says Sonoquie.
“If you look back in traditional cultural ways such as Chumash ways you’ll see a better way of living, of surviving and something you can leave for your children.”
The center is operated by the Los Padres Forest Association. Ojai Chapter President Mike Havstad says they love hosting Native American speakers, and some visitors are surprised to learn the traditions are still alive. “Most average people don’t realize that there are still Chumash and other tribes living in Southern California and have a sense that they’re gone,” says Havstad. “But they’re not gone, their ancestors are here and they’re just trying to carry it on.”
Havstad says people sometimes need exposure to the Native American experience before the messages hit home, like when he first saw a California condor that’s sacred to the Chumash.
“I don’t know if they can ever get it back again unless they have a life changing experience like I did going into condor country and seeing a condor fly overhead, seeing the great thunderbird and saying ‘Now I get it. I see what the native American culture saw in that bird,’” says Havstad.
Other upcoming Saturday presentations at the center include Trees are Tremendous on August 2nd, Reptiles from Around the World on August 9th, and Rescuing Ocean Animals on August 16th. It’s located on Highway 33 north of Ojai and more details are posted on their internet website at www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/.
Sonoquie says she’s glad the visitor’s center is helping spread Native American culture.
“I appreciate the hospitality that the visitor’s center has given me and other native people,” says Sonoquie. “They have a great little center there and I think it might be underutilized. People need to go up and really learn about the environment they’re in, the forest and the people who were there and are there.”
Please contact Outdoor Observer with details and contact information about environmental events, volunteer opportunities and adventure sports at outdoors@vcreporter.com.
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