The map is courtesy of the Northern California Indian Development Council, which has provided resources for American Indian communities since 1976. According to the U.S. Library of Congress:
“The earliest Californians were adventurous Asians who made their way across the Bering Straits to Alaska thousands of years ago when a warmer climate and a now-vanished land bridge made such travel easier. These men and women and their descendants settled North and South America, spreading out to form the various nations and tribes whom the first European visitors to this hemisphere dubbed ‘Indians.’ The mountain ranges of the Pacific Coast isolated these early settlers from the cultures that developed in neighboring Mexico and the western United States.”
There were at least six unique language networks in what would become California. In the L.A. basin area, the Gabrieleño, Tongva, or Kizh nation is noted as part of a network which spoke an “Uto-Aztecan” language.
In early 2024, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is set to return 40 acres to the Pauite-Shoshone people in the Owens Valley in the department’s first ever such move.
In the “Southland,” 2023 also saw an Indigenous Charter School in El Sereno purchase 12 acres of land on behalf of the Gabrieleño Shoshone Tribal Nation to establish what will one day be known as the Chief Ya’anna Learning Village.
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J.T.