Juanenos Are Steadily Learning Cultural Heritage of Tribe

On a given day, a group of Juaneno Native Americans will gather to study their native language, basket-making or beading in a room filled with pictures of ancestors.

Others convene at a local beach to perform a healing ceremony or visit the schools to teach students the history of a people who were here before the Spaniards as well as the other white settlers who arrived many years later.

Another Juaneno might be monitoring a construction site to see if ancestral artifacts are dug up or eating fry-bread and socializing at a powwow like the one today and Sunday at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

The event, which last year drew more than

10,000 people, is hosted by the Native American Student Organization and features singing, dancing, handcrafted art and food. Laguna Pueblo, Sioux, Apache and Navajo Native Americans are performing traditional music on drums.

While the state-recognized Juaneno band strives to achieve federal recognition, its members also labor to discover their own heritage.

Capistrano Indian Council member Teeter Romero, 59, puts it this way: “In 1975 we decided to get together and do something about (reclaiming our history), or it would be gone forever. We started working at it, and we started looking at the history and talking to the older people, asking questions and getting answers. Everyone wants to find a part of their roots, and they’re willing to put in the time to do what they have to do.”

With some 3,000 tribal members in the country, about 300 Juanenos now live in San Juan Capistrano, a city of about 27,000. In 1776, the Juaneno tribe, in what is now San Juan Capistrano, was forced to convert to Catholicism after a group of Franciscan missionaries arrived.

The community was reminded of its Juaneno origins Wednesday during the poignant funeral procession for Evelyne Marine Lobo Villegas, the city’s beloved matriarch and a strong voice for remembering the Juaneno past.

Romero, from one of the oldest families in San Juan Capistrano, learned from her grandmother a pride in being Native American. She learned to play a game called “Duck on a Pond” and rode horses. But she never got to experience her tribe’s uniqueness, because there was so little to draw from, she said.

That’s changing now. The mother of three and a waitress and housekeeper at a retirement home insists: “We do want our children and our children’s children to know our culture.”

So she goes to nighttime spiritual ceremonies at the beach, sometimes at the beginning of summer to mark planting season. Other ceremonies are for healing, and in 1991, there was one to bury Native American bones, for which Romero spent more than a year learning special dances and how to wrap the bones in keeping with ancient traditions.

People fast for purification before the ceremony, which doesn’t begin until someone spots a dolphin in the ocean. Then there is dancing, singing and showing reverence to ancestors.

Spiritually, she is largely self-taught. “When it comes to Indian things, it comes easy. It just seems like when you start to do something, like when we’re doing a ceremony for the first time, we know exactly what to do.”

She said ceremonies are rarely talked about with those who don’t participate. “These things are very special to us. Just because people don’t hear of them doesn’t mean they’re not happening.”

The Juanenos in San Juan Capistrano have also formed two groups that hold monthly meetings.

One group is active in political issues, and the other, the Capistrano Indian Council, has such cultural and artistic pursuits as a monthly “living history” demonstration at Mission San Juan Capistrano. Council members also appear at schools to teach the culture.

During one recent council meeting, 30 people sat on folding chairs in the main room of the Harrison House on Ortega Highway. Attendees included Al Flores, the great-grandson of Anastacia Davis, who wrote down the tribe’s Ajachame dialect, and the children of the late matriarch Villegas.

The group also discussed upcoming cultural events, shared their newsletter, conducted a drawing for a Native American doll, and talked about the old days over a potluck dinner of corn soup, fried chicken, stew and casseroles.

The same room is used for the group’s Tuesday basket-weaving class, where Juaneno Marian Walkingstick showed newcomers how to turn pine needles and raffia into bowls and containers.

“I think bringing basketry to the council was major . . . because we really didn’t have anything to draw from,” Walkingstick said. “We don’t know about art from our ancestors. I take from the other tribes and anyone who has anything to offer.” Her passion for the work is so strong that “my creative part of me just goes crazy after awhile.”

While similar artwork is popped out by machines at factories, Walkingstick, 57, spends about seven hours a day in her at-home workroom, painstakingly making baskets, cloth dolls, beaded purses, flowers, rattles, and jewelry by hand, mostly by teaching herself.

Walkingstick’s art has given her the opportunity to rediscover her own roots. “You get to an age when you want to know about your heritage,” she says, and art is how she has reclaimed it.

“It’s such a big part of my life--I couldn’t be without it. It’s like being Juaneno. It’s always going to be there.”