New West Replaces the Old : Camp Offers Indian Youths Updated Adventure

Lectures on Indian lore and demonstrations of moccasin-making are highlights of many children’s summer camps. But not at the one that started Thursday afternoon in Agoura.

Those activities were missing from the agenda as 83 American Indian children from tribes throughout the country began a 10-day camp-out in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Although they are sleeping in a meadow less than half a mile from Southern California’s oldest-known Chumash Indian cave, their outing will focus on the new West instead of the old.

“We want to show these kids the other side of the hill,” said Ellen Hughes, a Granada Hills real estate agent who will chaperon a tent full of Indian girls through Aug. 18. “I don’t think these kids need to learn about Indian crafts.”

That means that the 10- to 15-year-olds will do their hiking through such places as the Norton Simon Museum. Their nature talks will occur at Marineland and the San Diego Zoo.

The unusual summer camp is being staged by Windfeather, a Beverly Hills-based nonprofit Indian assistance group set up three years ago by singer Connie Stevens.

Striking a Gusher

Until now, the organization has spent money it raises through fashion shows to dig water wells on Arizona Indian reservations. Thursday, it was clear the group had struck a gusher with its summer camp.

Children, some of whom have never owned a bathing suit or seen a swimming pool, jumped into a pool at the edge of Calamigos Ranch in shorts and T-shirts. They splashed everything in sight as they tried to imagine what the ocean will look like when they see it Sunday for the first time.

“I think the ocean will be hot and clear with lots of fish and things crawling in it,” said Stephanie Telles, 12, a member of New Mexico’s Mescalero tribe.

“I want to see a shark. I think I can out-swim it if I see it,” said Marty Heavyrunner, a 13-year-old Montana Blackfeet Indian who wears his long black hair in a pair of braids.

The camp was organized after companies donated such things as food and airplane tickets, Stevens said. Other celebrities agreed to visit the Agoura mountain site and serve as hosts during outings. The campers were chosen by their tribes.

Stevens said she has been “interested in American Indians since I was in school and studying history. There was so much left out of the textbooks about the native Americans.”

The idea for a camp, she said, grew out of a visit by several Indian youngsters to her Holmby Hills home several summers ago.

The camp’s $32,000 cost is being financed by proceeds from a June 23 fashion show that featured 30 male stars as models, Stevens said.

The children and the 20 adult volunteers who are helping run the camp are staying in tents lent by the Marine Corps. “I entertained some Vietnam veterans and the last voice I heard that day was from a Marine major who told me to call if there ever was anything he could do for me. So I called the Marines,” Stevens said.

Stevens also called the Coast Guard to borrow life jackets for the campers to wear Sunday to the beach. She called on the Air Force to arrange a visit to Edwards Air Force Base on Aug. 17 to see the space shuttle.

Nervous Chaperons

The children were quick to settle into their 16-person tents Thursday, but Hughes and the other chaperons acknowledged being nervous.

“This looks like a MASH unit,” Hughes joked as she helped her charges fit sheets and blankets onto folding cots.

“They’ve put plastic down on the ground to keep the creepy-crawlies from coming in. But, if we hear a thump in the night, I’m blowing my whistle and we’re evacuating.”

A few tents away, 10-year-old Floyd Gomez, who lives at the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, was anxious for the activities to start. He said he was happy to be going to the zoo and Marineland and such places as Disneyland and Universal Studios.

“I want to be an animal doctor when I grow up,” Floyd said. “When I find mice on the road at home, they bite my mother, but they never bite me.”