Shut Out : Valley’s 10,400 Native Americans Lose Information Center

When Dana Smith, a member of the Shoshone tribe, heard the news--he was crushed. “What are we going to do now?” Smith asked his wife, Dustie. “Where else can we go?”

The Smiths were not the only ones dismayed when the Van Nuys office of the Southern California Indian Center closed its doors Feb. 29, leaving the San Fernando Valley’s 10,400 Native Americans--by census count--with no place to call their own.

The federal budget ax came down on the nonprofit center last week, slashing its federal funding by almost 50%, although the center’s administrators will not reveal its budget or the amount of the cuts.

Founded in 1967, the center provides job referrals, financial assistance and such other essential services as bus tokens and food, to the Native American community through four remaining offices in Los Angeles, Garden Grove, Carson and Commerce.

But the Van Nuys office, which opened in 1990, stood out among the other locations, functioning as part information center and part refuge for the many Native Americans scattered in and around the Valley, and drew users from as far away as Barstow.

Dustie Smith, a Lake View Terrace mother of four, said losing the office is going to hurt a lot of Native American families, most of whom don’t have cars to drive to the other locations.

“If we had the money to travel to Los Angeles, we wouldn’t need the center in the first place. It’s a Catch-22 situation,” said Smith. “It saddens me because I want my children to stay in touch with their heritage.”

The closing comes at a time when many Native Americans are out of work. Now, Barbara Alba, who was the client coordinator at the Van Nuys office, becomes another statistic on the government unemployment rolls. Alba, a descendant of the Chumash and Paiute tribes, said that although the center succeeded in placing more than 100 Native Americans in jobs every year, its other functions were even more important.

“Some people would come to us for food in the middle of the month, and we would help them make it through until the next paycheck came,” said Alba, who lives in San Fernando. “That’s how it was.”

Alba said her phone hasn’t stopped ringing with calls from clients who now feel helpless and out of touch without the center. Plans were underway to open a satellite office in Lancaster and provide free transportation from the Valley to the Los Angeles office, but all that is on hold until April, when the center’s administrators hope to get additional federal funding.

“They are robbing us of our emotional support center,” said Dustie Smith, who used the center frequently. “If we were another minority group, the funds would come from somewhere. But because we are Native American, we don’t count. We are the unimportant minority.”

The cutbacks in aid by the U.S. Department of Labor came after 1990 U.S. Census figures showed a drop in Los Angeles County’s Native American population.

Alma Rail, president of the center’s board, says that the head count was inaccurate.

“I know we’re not being singled out. We’re taking cuts like everyone else,” said Rail, a member of the Seneca tribe. “But, everything can be blamed on the census. I don’t think it’s [the census] geared toward Native Americans.”

Although the nation’s overall Native American population increased by 38% from the 1980 census to 1990, the number of Native Americans in Los Angeles County fell from 47,234 to 43,689 in the same period.

Local Native American leaders argue that the population is at least twice that size. Rail said among the problems with the census is that it does not reflect mixed families of part Native American descent. She also said that because some Navajo, Apache and Pueblo tribe members have Spanish surnames, Native Americans sometimes get counted as Latino.

“We’re all over; you can’t tell us by color or by name,” said Rail.

Edna Paisano, a race statistician with the U.S. Census Bureau, disagreed, saying the census does not count Native Americans as Latinos. Paisano, who is also Native American, said she thinks cultural differences may cause many Native Americans to mislead census takers.

“Native Americans don’t like to give strangers information about their nationality or tribe. All you have to do is look at a history book and read about the negative things that happened to this minority because of federal policy,” said Paisano.

Paisano said more Native American organizations are needed to educate the community about the importance of the census. Meanwhile, administrators of the Indian Center try to reshuffle its budget so they can continue caring for the people who formerly used the Van Nuys office.

“We’re like a convenience store. The commodity is still there, but now people can’t get to it.”