NORTHRIDGE : Chumash Elder Gives Blessing at Damaged CSUN

As construction workers with trucks and steam shovels tended to the outward damage on the Cal State Northridge campus Wednesday, Chumash Indian elder Bob Rivera was tending to its inward damage.

Rivera was invited to the campus by the American Indian Student Assn. to give a blessing in the Chumash tradition.

Association treasurer Joan-Marie King said the purpose was to soothe frayed nerves in the aftermath of the Jan. 17 quake and safeguard the campus against future quakes.

Rivera came from Buena Park with his daughter and grandsons for the occasion. About 20 onlookers gathered in a circle with him on the lawn in front of the damaged Oviatt Library, now encircled by chain-link fencing and scaffolding. Construction equipment roared in the background as Rivera began his ceremony.

He lit tightly wrapped bundles of white sage and, as students carrying backpacks ambled disinterestedly by, Rivera walked the circumference of the circle, showering each participant with a cascade of fragrant white smoke.

He then called two leaders of the students association into the center of the circle and brushed the smoke across their shoulders, over their heads and down their feet, using a spike made of feathers from a golden eagle. The group remained silent throughout, even when Rivera left their midst to cast dried tobacco leaves into the air around the circle.

The ceremony was addressed to ancestors, asking both forgiveness for the wrongs committed by man on Earth, and benediction.

“We are asking our grandfather that if he makes Mother Earth shake--and she has to shake--that no one gets hurt, that no one gets stressed,” he said.

King said it was aftershocks such as the 5.3 tremor Sunday that prompted her to invite Rivera to the campus.

“We thought it was a good idea to do this, to cleanse and purify the campus. . . . I thought it was really beautiful,” she added.