An End to Irate Letters? Social Justice in Tongva Land

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Social Justice in Native North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For the past thirty years, Tongva leaders and cultural educators have created educational programs with local scholars in order to rectify the belief that the Tongva are extinct. In some instances, these programs were the result of irate letters from and protests by Tongva community members when exhibits, tours, interpretive signs, etc. were planned or installed without the community’s participation, resulting in information that did not reflect our past, present, and future. This misinformation has hindered the Tongva community’s ability to practice self-determination as it relates to the telling of our history, access to and protection of our sacred spaces and places and the repatriation to our Ancestors. In this presentation, the author will describe projects in which the wants and needs of the Tongva community were at the forefront, although for a few, it took some intense re-education in order to make the project proponents understand the implications their projects would have on the Tongva community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Social Justice in Native North American Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24324