Respedt for the Tongva

The Tongva

The Tongva are the original peoples of the Los Angeles Basin and surrounding areas. To the west or north, were the Chumash. Our federal government has not yet recognized the Tongva as a people. Many developers also do not willingly respect the wishes of the Tongva to protect and preserve the last few known Tongva sites, especially burial sites. This has been an issue not only with private developers, but with the government.

Legitimate archeologists
or
gravediggers for hire

Representatives of the Tonga People have asked that their ancestors' remains in the Playa Vista area are not disturbed.

Yet, paid for by real estate developers, archeologists have moved in and are exhuming the human remains of a Tongva cemetery.

Archeology is often caught in a difficult position, between the acquisition of knowledge and understanding of lost cultures, and the requests of the decedents of those cultures to respect the remains of their ancestors.

When a salary from a developer pays an excavation over the objection of the decedents, it is hard to think of the archeologists involved as anything more than gravediggers for hire

This problem is not unique to archeology. Like archeologists, botanists and biologists fall into those camps which maintain the strictest professional ethics and those whose ethics are for sale.

In a ironic process of natural selection, developers hire those scientific experts who give them the findings they seek and fire those who don't. Often the only scientists with access to a site are those who provide developer-friendly analyses.

Maxine Waters views Tongva archeological dig at Playa Vista

Congresswoman Maxine Waters surveys the exhumation of Tongva remains at Playa Vista, California

Tongva archeological dig at Playa Vista

Tongva archeological dig at Playa Vista

The Friends of Friendship Park

In the early 1990's, then Los Angeles County Supervisor, Deane Dana, abused the public trust by directing the development of a "nature center" at Friendship Park, at the San Pedro/Palos Verdes boarder to build himself a monument at the public expense. Construction of his planned edifice would have required major excavation, including digging up an area of a known Tongva village.

A spontaneously formed group, the Friends of Friendship Park, fought the development, and met most of its goals successful through political pressure. The group was comprised of an alliance of homeowners, environmentalists and Native American Advocates.

Pictured to the left are some of the Friends of Friendship Park.

Friends of Friendship Park Archive