The Tongva people are the Indigenous inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, with a history spanning thousands of years. They thrived as hunter-gatherers and traders, establishing complex societies with villages along rivers, coastal areas, and inland valleys. Their language, part of the Uto-Aztecan family, influenced many place names in Southern California, such as Topanga and Malibu. Colonization, particularly through Spanish missions in the 18th century, devastated their population and culture. Today, the Tongva continue to fight for recognition, preserving their traditions, language, and heritage while advocating for Indigenous rights and land acknowledgment in California.
You may be more familiar with the Tongva language than you realize. Many places in the area have names derived from Tongva words. The Tongva people, the Indigenous inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, have contributed several words to English and Spanish, often through early contact with Spanish missionaries and settlers. Here are five words derived from the Tongva language:
The Tonga people were known to sing and dance daily for celebrations or ceremonies. Seasonal changes, like the Winter solstice, were important times for extended celebrations. Girls and boys were initiated in special rites of passage. Tongva remember and honor their ancestors in special gatherings and are deeply connected to their ancestral lands.
When the elders gathered the Tongva children around the fire to tell stories, they taught them lessons about their history and environment.
There probably hasn't been a fluent speaker of the Tongva language since the 1940s, but the notes of anthropologist John Peabody Harrington are helping to revitalize the language. Harrington gathered countless pages of phonetic notations on the languages of Native Americans. Modern researchers are working to create lessons and a dictionary of the Tongva language based on his written material.
At LMU, the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe, “People of the Earth,” inhabited the area from about 1000 A.D. Artifacts of the long-ago residents had been recovered on the bluff before the start of student residence hall construction. The site was rededicated in 2004 after the remains of 200+ Native Americans were found on the Playa Vista property below the bluff. Within the Ballona Discovery Park, these were re-buried in an earthen mound.
A thousand years ago, the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe inhabited the area, which is now occupied by LMU student residences. The first memorial anywhere to these “People of the Earth” was dedicated in 2000 as a fitting complement to the present-day dwellings. Visitors can gaze out over the Pacific and towards the Santa Monica Mountains as did Native Americans before them. Low stone ben ches surround a dolphin-motif pavement circle that is, in turn, bordered by explanatory plaques, shrubs, and other plants that have long been native to this area, thereby encouraging thoughts of past, present, and future to come readily to mind and heart.
Ballona Discovery Park
Location: 13110 Bluff Creek Drive, Playa Vista, 90094 | Mail: PO Box 5159 Playa del Rey, CA 90296
A Project of Three Partners
LMU - Playa Vista - Friends of Ballona Wetlands
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