Access-restricted-item

true

Acknowledgment

Source material provided by OC Public Libraries. Managed by California Revealed.

Addeddate

2017-10-25 17:35:58

Color

Color

Date-published

2017-06-14

Genre

Oral histories

Identifier

corcl_000083

Interviewee

Robles, Rebecca

Location

San Juan Capistrano (Calif.)

Projectidentifier

caps00003110

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This item may be used for non-commercial and educational purposes. The opinions expressed in OC Stories do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of OC Public Libraries or its partners and no official endorsement should be inferred. Images are courtesy of story tellers and affiliate organizations or used in accordance with fair use and Creative Commons. Music and sound in accordance with fair use and Creative Commons [ http://creativecommons.org ].

Run time

00:06:36

Scanner

Internet Archive Python library 0.7.9

Sound

Sound

Source

mp4: 1 file

Title-collection-guide

OC Stories
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8ns10b6/

Title-series

Indigenous Voices of San Juan Capistrano: The Acjachemen (Juaneño) Indian Community

Transcript

My name is Rebecca Robles. I'm a member of the Juane±o Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation. We call ourselves Acjachemen, but the name, ‚Juane±o,‚ came from San Juan Capistrano. My mother was very, very active. The last fifteen years of her life she devoted to preservation of sacred sites and culture areas. Burial grounds, important sites, historical sites. Much has been lost. When they think of Native Americans, they think of people from South Dakota with big feathers and head dresses, and they don't realize that we‚re here. We‚re a vibrant, vivid culture. Our ancestors have lived here for thousands of years. Some of the sites on Orange County date 10,000 years. Some of the sites that you have probably have heard of, but don't even realize how important they are. Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach, that‚s the only place in North America where cog stones are found. We suppose that they were used for, like, observation of the stars or ceremonial use. My mother‚s family was from Panhe. That‚s a village to the south of here, the mouth of San Mateo. Another site that we‚re actively ‚Äì we‚re working with the community on to preserve, is the site of Putuidem in San Juan Capistrano. That‚s our mother village. The people came there from a different place, a village called, ‚Sejat‚ [?]. There was a drought and the Chief, his name was, ‚Oyaison‚, he came and he let ‚Äì he established a village there. He left his daughter, her name was, ‚Coronne.‚ After Coronne, all of our female leaders were called, ‚Corrones.‚ They came there because there was a spring, the spring was bubbling up from the earth and Coronne, by chance, had a navel that was, you know, protruded. So, that site is called, ‚Putuidem.‚ It means, ‚her navel.‚ The City of San Juan Capistrano, community leaders, preservationists, and historians were ‚Äì tribal members ‚Äì were working together to preserve the site and to establish a park. We‚ve survived, you know. We survived. Many people say it was a genocide because we suffered such, you know, such hard times. We were removed from the land. We were essentially attached to the Mission essentially. The labor force lived under very, very harsh conditions and then when the country became a part of Mexico, you know, the lands were supposed to be transferred to the Native Americans, but they weren't. We had treaties - and then when we became a part of the United States, we had treaties, but the treaties were not ratified. And so, we have a very curious relationship to the land because we have these very, very strong ties; very strong historical ties and actually responsibilities to take care of our culture, to take care of these sites. And yet, we don't have ‚Äì they‚re not, you know, like, they may belong to private individuals, or the state, or the federal government; and so, it‚s a challenge. There was a great persecution of Native Americans, and so, we ‚Äì to survive ‚Äì we kept quiet. So, we are still here. We do have our gatherings, we call them fiestas. We have powwows now. We have gatherings. We consider the earth to be our mother. We consider that we have sacred responsibility to care for our mother. We had a knowledge. We had a wisdom that all of us had. When there was ‚Äì the influenza, the great epidemic; I think it was in 1918, that my uncle Sonny, Edward Valensuela, he was very, very ill. They thought he was gonna die through the night. My grandmother stayed up all through the night and packed him in herbs, you know, and brought his fever down, and he lived through the night. A doctor came by the following morning and said, you know, and asked, ‚What did you do? What medicines did you use? What herbs? Because whatever you did, we need to know so we can help other people live.‚ That‚s sacred knowledge, because the plants, you know, they were all gifts from creator. I understand that all the animals, you know, the animals were our teachers. They taught us how to live. And that way of life, you know, it‚s different. It‚s gone. We have little, teeny pieces of it. When we all come together and share our knowledge, it‚s like a cup that is broken; a saucer and a cup. And, if you look at it, it‚s just, like, a little shard of something; but when we share our knowledge and come together, you know, that those little shards form the saucer or the cup and it may be still kind of a fractured, broken cup; but you can still see that it is a cup. Our culture‚s very similar to our neighbors‚ to the south, the Luise±os, and we share culture with the tribes to the north, the Gabrielino, the Tongva. What I understand is that most of southern California culture is so, so similar. And so, when we share with each other, we have pieces of our culture that are ‚Äì that make it more whole.

Year

2017

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