Splintered Tribe Seeks Federal Recognition

At grade school, he was given a drum to beat and called Apache. When he came home, Rudy Ortega asked why his teacher had called him Indian.

Because you are Indian, Rudy’s mother explained that day in San Fernando. But six decades later, no one has yet answered all Ortega’s probing questions about his Native American ancestry.

Ortega is 73 now. His silvery hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Turquoise and silver jewelry adorns his neck and fingers.

Years of digging through yellowed records have yielded much about his heritage, dating to the early San Fernando Mission days. Now what he most dreams of is federal recognition for his Fernandeno/Tataviam tribe.

Federal status also means money from government programs for health and education. Also, official status opens up the possibility for Indian-run casinos.

Indian reservation casinos were nationally sanctioned under a 1988 federal gaming law that requires tribes to abide by state regulations. In March, California voters approved Las Vegas-style gambling on Indian land, and on May 5 the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs signed casino agreements with 59 tribes in California, more than any other state.

The tribal recognition process can be exhausting. Tribes have labored for decades to assemble the genealogical and historical data required by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has recognized only 15 tribes nationwide in more than 20 years.

But the Fernandenos face a formidable challenge during the arduous process: getting along with each other.

Political squabbles and family enmity have kept the Fernandenos and related tribal members separated into three rival groups. Two have started the federal recognition process and a third splinter group says it will also make an application.

“It’s literally turned Indian against Indian,” said Beverly Salazar Folkes, a spokeswoman for the newest breakaway group and a cousin of Ortega.

Such divisions hamper recognition efforts, said John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

“They need to unite behind a common leader and they haven’t done that,” said Johnson, who assists tribes with genealogy research. “I wish they would all work together for their common good.”

Fifty California groups are listed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs as applicants for recognition.

Four in addition to Ortega’s group are from Los Angeles County, including two bands of Gabrielinos, whose ancestors lived at the San Gabriel Mission.

As for the three local Native American groups affiliated with the San Fernando Mission, their leaders said they have made no deals with casino businesses. One of the groups was approached last year by a casino company that offered to help with federal recognition, but no deal was struck.

Hesitant to Share Power

Because many California mission Indians like the Fernandenos no longer have tribal land, they have two ways to establish a reservation if they are recognized: The government can transfer federal land to them or they can buy property through a trust with the federal Department of the Interior.

Anthropologists say that the Fernandeno and Gabrielino are two separate linguistic groups and that the Fernandenos speak a dialect of Gabrielino. Both groups have the intermixed Indian heritage that was common during the mission period.

As Mission Indians, both the Fernandenos and Gabrielinos have to trace their family roots back through a tangled web of Native American communities whose cultures and languages from California and Mexico were mixed and suppressed by the Spanish fathers more than two centuries ago.

Long before the Europeans’ arrival, distinct Indian villages were scattered throughout the state. But at the missions, the village residents were centralized and intermingled.

At the San Fernando Mission, established in 1797, several distinct languages could be identified, Johnson said, including the Fernandeno dialect of Gabrielino, Tataviam, Ventureno-Chumash and Serrano.

Those languages and groups blended into a rich, culturally vibrant stew, but it is now difficult to distill their origins. “Every person I have met who has history at the San Fernando Mission has more than one linguistic background,” Johnson said.

By the end of the mission period in the 1830s, Native American families returned to their separate communities in what are now Piru, the Antelope Valley, Chatsworth and Ventura County near Ahmanson Ranch. Some, like Ortega’s family, remained near the San Fernando Mission.

Today, descendants of that mission Native American community all know each other and can be found from the San Fernando Valley to Santa Clarita to Ventura, Johnson said.

Although the tribal rifts are familiar, they are still painful.

“If we were together we would have federal recognition by now,” said Rudy Ortega Jr. His father’s group will probably have 600 to 800 members in its application.

Leaders, however, just don’t want to share power, said John Valenzuela, tribal chairman of the Ish-Panesh United Band of Indians, a second Fernandeno group that numbers about 300. Folkes claims that her group, which broke away from the Ish-Panesh, is 150 strong.

“Everyone wants to be chief,” said Valenzuela, 62, of Hesperia. “There are people in our group that are not in favor of Rudy Ortega. It’s all a family thing.”

Folkes, a Thousand Oaks resident who said she is part Chumash, Fernandeno and Tataviam, said her group, Antik, will also seek recognition. Though casinos weren’t the impetus, she doesn’t dismiss the possibility of establishing one.

Raised in San Fernando, Folkes, 61, disavows any familial ties to Ortega. Her split last fall from Valenzuela’s Ish-Panesh stemmed from rivalry over leadership of the Oakbrook Regional Park and Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand Oaks. She then asked the Bureau of Indian Affairs to transfer names from Ish-Panesh to her new group, whose members are Chumash and Tataviam.

The bad blood mystifies Ortega.

“I don’t butt in with what she is doing,” Ortega said. “She is supposed to be a spiritual leader over there.”

While Folkes struggles over membership roles, Ish-Panesh and Ortega’s group recently agreed to avoid listing the same members in their separate applications, a factor closely scrutinized by the bureau.

Recognition, Valenzuela said, will help his people get medical and education benefits. But it is not a quick process, he said, and casinos may be beyond his time.

The lengthy application process requires groups to meet seven criteria. Among other things, applicants must show that a tribe has been a continuous community from historical times to the present. Another requirement is to show how a tribe has historically maintained political authority or influence.

Evaluating petitions, including public comment and a possible appeal, takes a minimum of 22 months.

Rudy Ortega Sr. remains optimistic that official recognition will eventually be granted.

“I dreamed I wanted something for my people before I left this earth, this happy hunting ground,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been working so hard. Now I feel like it’s coming to a close.”