Content uploaded by Brian D. Haley
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Brian D. Haley on Feb 21, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
Current Anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
1997 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/97/3805-0005$3.00
larry w. wilcoxon is Senior Archaeologist with Wilcoxon
and Associates, Goleta, Calif. He was born in 1951 and educated
at the University of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., 1974; M.A.,
Anthropology and the
1976; C.Phil., 1979). He has published (with M. A. Glassow)
‘‘Coastal Adaptations near Point Conception, California, with
Particular Regard to Shellfish Exploitation’’ (American Antiquity
Making of Chumash
53:36–51) and ‘‘Subsistence and Site Structure: An Approach for
Deriving Cultural Information from Coastal Shell Middens,’’ in
Archaeology on the Northern Channel Islands of California, ed-
ited by M. Glassow (Coyote Press Archives of California Prehis-
Tradition
1
tory 34, 1993).
The present paper was submitted 15 xi 96 and accepted 31 i 97;
the final version reached the Editor’s office 17 iv 97.
by Brian D. Haley and
Larry R. Wilcoxon
Anthropologists have played an important role, some-
times inadvertently and sometimes seemingly will-
Anthropologists employ concepts of cultural persistence, indige-
fully, in promoting Chumash Traditionalism. By ‘‘tra-
nous resistance, and primitivist imagery which mystify their
own roles in the construction of Chumash identity and tradition.
ditionalism’’ we mean a movement which seeks to
We attempt to demystify the scholars’ remembering, forgetting,
transform contemporary traditions by instituting be-
and imagining of the Chumash past that has helped to construct
liefs and practices that the group’s members believe are
an influential Chumash Traditionalism since the 1960s, and we
both taken from their own past (Geertz 1994:5–6) and
discuss how scholarly advances in understanding the fluidity of
cultural identities now contest Chumash Traditionalism. We ex-
more natural, appropriate, and authentic than the be-
amine the variety of roles played by anthropologists in this pro-
liefs and practices to be replaced (Handler and Linnekin
cess of identity negotiation, especially in traditional-cultural-
1984:278; Handler 1988:32–39). Contrary to the man-
property evaluation and contract archaeology. The origin of the
ner in which it is popularly represented and understood,
current sacredness of Point Conception, California, provides an
traditionalism represents a break in cultural continuity
issue to frame this examination. We find that anthropological
practice and Chumash identity and tradition are so deeply entan-
and is itself an important force for change. Traditional-
gled that there is little hope that anthropologists can avoid partic-
ists are therefore not necessarily any more traditional
ipating in the self-determination of Chumash people. We con-
than nontraditionalists (Geertz 1994).
clude that this creates a great need to historicize anthropology’s
We examine this traditionalism to reveal and ac-
role in shaping and constraining identity and tradition until fur-
ther progress can be made in resolving the ethical dilemmas of
knowledge anthropologists’ position of influence and to
the anthropological study of cultural creativity.
illustrate some of the problematic implications of a
contemporary anthropological understanding of the re-
brian d. haley is Senior Anthropologist with Wilcoxon and As-
lationship between tradition and cultural identity.
sociates, Goleta, Calif. (his mailing address: 7396 Freeman Place
There has been considerable revisionism in the social
#B, Goleta, Calif. 93117, U.S.A. [6500hale@aucsbuxa.ucsb.edu]).
sciences over the past two decades regarding the use of
Born in 1957, he received his education at the University of Cali-
history and traditional culture in contemporary con-
fornia, Santa Barbara (B.A., 1979; M.A., 1987; Ph.D., 1997), where
he was a researcher with the Center for Chicano Studies. He has
texts. At the heart of this revisionism is recognition of
published Aspects and Social Impacts of Size and Organization
the creative representation of the past and its political
in the Recently Developed Wine Industry of Santa Barbara
use as a weapon of or for power. Studies of the ‘‘inven-
County, California (Center for Chicano Studies Working Papers
tion of tradition’’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, Handler
2, 1989) and ‘‘We Want Our Town Back!’’ Housing Discrimina-
tion as Exclusion (Center for Chicano Studies Papers on the
and Linnekin 1984, Anderson 1991) have encountered a
Working Poor, in press).
serious and unresolved ethical problem; research which
unmasks recent cultural or social constructions is
threatening to the social position or goals of the group
1. We thank John Johnson, who has followed our project from its
that claims them as its heritage or tradition. The notion
inception and provided advice, references, and unpublished data
that identities and histories are social constructions ne-
and reviewed early drafts. We have also benefited from the sugges-
gotiated between parties necessarily raises questions
tions provided by Eve Darian-Smith, David Cleveland, Tanis
Thorne, Don Brown, Mary O’Connor, Richard Handler, Richard
about the boundedness of self-determination, who
Fox, and two anonymous referees. John Johnson, Janice Timbrook,
speaks for whom, or what Chatterjee labels efforts ‘‘to
Linda Agren, and Gilbert Unzueta of the Anthropology Depart-
claim for us, the once-colonized, our freedom of imagi-
ment, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, assisted us with
nation’’ (1993:13; see also Castile 1996).
the Harrington microfilm. Richard Fox graciously provided a copy
All peoples employ myth/history as a charter of their
of and permission to quote from his 1995 lecture at the University
of California, Santa Barbara. Donna Sheeders brought the Esselen
collective identity (Malinowski 1960 [1944]), and all en-
Western Gate to our attention and provided source material. Susan
gage in selective remembering, forgetting, and imagin-
Davidson and Hallie K. Heiman assisted different stages of our re-
ing of that myth/history (Renan 1990 [1882]; Anderson
search. A portion of our research was performed under a contract
1991:187–206). Social science generally (Handler 1988),
with California Commercial Spaceport, Inc., Lompoc, Calif. We
alone are responsible for the interpretations contained herein.
folklore studies in particular (Orso 1974; Dundes 1989:
761
762 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
1–39, 40–56), and even archaeology (Dietler 1994) are generally within the region.
2
We have made a detailed
examination of John Peabody Harrington’s (1986) mi-drawn upon to identify the cultural content used to dis-
tinguish ethnic and national identities. Sociology is not, crofilmed field notes on the Chumash from the 1910s
and 1920s, and we have conducted our own interviewsas Giddens (1990:15) appears to suggest, unique among
the social sciences in being reflexive. Anthropological with Chumash Traditionalists and nontraditionalists,
as well as relevant non-Indians. We also draw upon ourknowledge generated by research is incorporated by our
subjects and changes their own understanding of their cumulative 45 years of work with Chumash and an-
thropologists in the region, treating it as long-termcultural identity and heritage. Anthropologist partici-
pants in cultural identity construction may be antici- participant-observation or insider ethnography on an-
thropologists’ roles in Chumash identity transforma-pated sometimes to have their own selective-memory
problems, too. tions over the past two decades.
The actions taken by some anthropologists to liberate
traditional belief and practice among the Chumash of
California’s central coast should be understood in the
Identity, Tradition, and Oppositional
context of this academic debate. Employing oppositions
Convention
of traditional versus modern and indigenous versus
Western, guided by notions of persistence and continu- Recognition of a process of cultural differentiation in
ity, and lacking a contrasting concept of identity differ- addition to the long-noted processes of assimilation and
entiation or creation, local anthropologists have pro- persistence is one of the important developments in the
moted the creation of a new religious philosophy and field of ethnicity and nationalism in recent decades. We
its classification on the traditional side of the dichot- see this described as the ‘‘invention’’ of tradition or his-
omy. They have facilitated the creation and empow- tory (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, Handler and Lin-
erment of Chumash Traditionalists at the expense of nekin 1984), the ‘‘creation’’ of ethnic groups or tradi-
other Chumash, who come to be viewed as nontradi- tions (Sollors 1989), ‘‘imagined community’’ (Anderson
tional through the logic of oppositional classification 1991), the ‘‘reconstitution’’ of ethnicity (O’Brien 1991),
alone. This case illustrates not only what Roseberry and the ‘‘construction’’ and ‘‘negotiation’’ of identities
O’Brien (1991:11) call the ‘‘modern tracks toward the (Keefe 1989), and ‘‘ethnogenesis’’ (Roosens 1989). As
traditional’’ but also what may be characterized as the this list of terms implies, the creation of identities and
postcolonial tracks toward the indigenous. The Chu- the creation of traditions go hand in hand, and therefore
mash are roughly 3,000 persons residing on California’s ethnic and nationalist movements characteristically ex-
central coast who claim descent from aboriginal inhab- hibit discontinuity as well as continuity with the past
itants of the same region who spoke a half-dozen or (Handler and Linnekin 1984, Handler 1988).
more related Chumashan languages (Bureau of the Cen- Groups employ claims of traditional culture or cul-
sus 1994:7, 218; cf. Stoll 1994). Only since the 1960s has tural uniqueness as weapons of domination, resistance,
there been a category of people who both identify them- or exclusion or for commercial purposes (Roosens 1989,
selves and are identified by others as Chumash. The Fox 1990, Sider 1993, Darian-Smith 1993). This has
switch to ‘‘Chumash’’ from ‘‘Mission Indian’’ reflects been cause for growing concern among anthropologists
anthropology’s influence as well as Indians’ desire to be (Stolcke 1995, Barth 1995, Fox 1995). Wagner (1981) ar-
seen in purely indigenous terms. gues that we must reveal the processes of invention, for
We address what has become a central symbol of we will never eliminate it and this is the only way to
Chumash Traditionalist identity and belief: a sacred be liberated from its manipulators. Yet anthropologists
place known as the Western Gate which is associated often object when accusations of inauthenticity or spu-
with Point Conception, on the Pacific coast 40 miles riousness or an ‘‘uncharitable’’ stance toward research
west of Santa Barbara (fig. 1). Point Conception also subjects appear in such works (Eriksen 1993:71; Strong
holds special value for many nontraditionalist Chu- 1994; Friedman 1994).
mash, who believe it was sacred to their ancestors. Colin Scott has dismissed the ‘‘currently fashionable
Other Native Americans and even non-Indian New Age accounts of tradition as ‘invented’ ’’ (1993:328). But the
followers value Point Conception as the sacred Western inclusion of a notion of cultural differentiation in re-
Gate, and still others value it as a symbol of Native cent overviews of ethnicity and nationalism (Eriksen
American political activism dating to 1978. We have 1993, DeVos and Romanucci-Ross 1995) derives logi-
conducted private-sector research on Point Concep- cally and empirically from studies built upon—to name
tion’s cultural significance off and on since 1988. In a few not mentioned previously—Leach’s (1965 [1954])
1994 we performed a study to determine its eligibility ‘‘myth as justification for faction and social change,’’
for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places Mitchell’s (1956) ‘‘retribalization,’’ Hallowell’s (1963)
as a ‘‘traditional cultural property,’’ and much of what ‘‘transculturalization,’’ the permeable ‘‘ethnic bound-
we report here stems from that work. We draw upon
cultural resource management’s ‘‘gray literature,’’ the
2. Given that the news media also offer an arena for establishing
standard scholarly literature, and the extensive media
one’s authenticity, we cite news media sources here only when we
have verified their accuracy by other means, usually ethnographic.
coverage of Indian activism at Point Conception and
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 763
Fig. 1. Chumash territory, linguistic divisions, and mission locations.
aries’’ found in Barth (1969), the ‘‘instrumental’’ eth- bounded, unique, and enduring contrasts sharply with
the perception of them by the general public and bu-nicity of Cohen (1974a, b), Charsley’s (1974) ‘‘formation
of ethnic groups,’’ immigrant ‘‘ethnicization’’ or ‘‘eth- reaucracies.
3
The social construction of cultural identi-
ties and traditions is a process that scholars have notnogenesis’’ (Greeley 1974:291–317), and ‘‘Islamisation’’
in India (Mines 1975). Ethnicity is a moving category of explained well beyond the university (or even very con-
vincingly within it). Some anthropologists are moreus/them identification in which identities, boundaries,
and cultural content are always to some degree in flux comfortable emphasizing persistence and continuity
among the people they work with (see, e.g., Scott 1993;and renegotiation. Ethnic origins and identities are fre-
quently a matter of fabrication (Brown 1973), conscious Friedman 1994:136–41), perhaps because their subjects
have a vested interest in being represented in morechoice, or situational switching within particular his-
torical constraints (Leonard 1992). And authenticity is static terms. There has been little progress in resolving
the problems that arise from the study of the use andless a fixed characteristic of cultural phenomena than a
contextualized judgment of contemporary value to the creation of culture.
4
The growing tendency is to juxta-
exercise or pursuit of power or social position (Handler
3. Commentaries on this problem include Leach (1965 [1954]:290–
1988; Eriksen 1993:131).
92), Fried (1975), Wagner (1981), Wolf (1988), Handler (1985), Clif-
The growing literature on the dynamic nature of both
ford and Marcus (1986), Clifford (1988), and Barth (1995).
cultural identities and traditions is problematic because
4. Attempts to address these problems include Handler (1985), D.
the flexibility of cultural groupings that scholars are
Scott (1991), C. Scott (1993), Jackson (1989, 1995), Linnekin (1991),
Hanson (1991), and Briggs (1996).
documenting after decades of portraying them as
764 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
pose hegemonic invention with inventions of indige- hence, the indigenous advocate, wannabe, or subaltern
scholar must struggle to keep indigenous and Westernnous resistance and implicitly or explicitly disparage
the former while applauding the latter (Roseberry and separated at some level. We should not be surprised,
then, when this indigenous/Western dichotomy inac-O’Brien 1991, Sider 1993, Briggs 1996).
This dichotomizing approach often appears in tan- curately portrays the contemporary social world (Dirks
1990, Roseberry and O’Brien 1991). In reality, there aredem with the criticism that cultural innovation studies
maintain Western or modernist hegemony by denying frequently more than two players or positions in our
global society, and, as competing claims to ‘‘colonized’’a right of self-representation, self-determination, or self-
invention to indigenous or subaltern peoples and ignore status in Quebec illustrate (Roosens 1989:79–83), one
man’s subaltern is another man’s hegemonist. Indige-the persistence of indigenous control over particular
cultural domains (Scott 1993; Friedman 1994:136– 41; nous and Western (and all the others), too, are fluid cate-
gories, subject to negotiation, manipulation, and appro-Briggs 1996). Chatterjee (1993), for example, argues that
the spiritual domain of indigenous culture remains un- priation.
As Dirks (1990) observes, the public expects anthro-der indigenous control despite the transformations
wrought by colonialism. When Gill (1987) provides pologists to be expert in traditional and indigenous mat-
ters, and anthropologists historically have championedpowerful evidence that Mother Earth is a product of
Euro-American and Native American interaction rather the underdog indigene and subaltern. But Richard Fox
(1995) has asked us to recognize that sometimes thisthan the purely indigenous concept it is popularly per-
ceived to be, Churchill’s (1988) subaltern critique is support has been naive; there are ‘‘no good guys for the
anthropologist to patronize’’ in a global society. When-that Gill has ‘‘expropriated’’ an indigenous concept (cf.
Gill 1988, 1990). In effect, Chatterjee and Churchill ever culture is objectified into the political weapon of
heritage, Fox argues, it acquires a capacity to harmseek to maintain a rigid boundary between indigenous
and Western spiritual domains, whereas Gill finds a someone (see also Roosens 1989:149–61). Fox, like Han-
dler (1988) before him, acknowledges anthropologists’fluid and permeable one.
5
Subaltern orthodoxy is entirely dependent upon the participation in this objectification but urges us to his-
toricize and distinguish our concepts of culture and her-assumption that the boundaries of cultural distinc-
tiveness correspond to highly conventionalized opposi- itage so as to weaken the force that heritage has. We
would add that in historicizing battles over identity andtions of former-colonizer versus once-colonized, West-
ern (or industrial) versus indigenous, civilized versus tradition it is equally important to account for the role
of anthropologists in the creation of contemporary so-savage (or primitive), Occidental versus Oriental, hege-
monist versus subaltern, or modern (or progressive) ver- cial distinctions.
Anthropology’s role in making peoples and traditionssus traditional (Dirks 1990, Roseberry and O’Brien
1991).
6
This essentializing dichotomy has become a is especially significant in relation to Native American
groups. Mead (1975:176) observed that ethnographers’popular idiom for the effective use of notions of indige-
nous tradition and heritage in negotiating social posi- defense of Indians has often represented them in artifi-
cially positive terms, attributing any negative traits totions and acquiring and exercising power. Indigenous
rights movements more often obtain influence when outside influence. These idealized images have influ-
enced the self-image of subsequent generations of Indi-they employ the kind of widely held primitivist images
described by Pearce (1988 [1953]), Berkhofer (1978), and ans and the general public’s understanding of Indian
culture(s) and identity. The adoption of the Indian bySaid (1978), treating the indigene as a timeless part of
the natural world, victimized but uncorrupted by West- environmental, pan-Indian, and other countercultural
movements in the 1960s and 1970s as a symbol of hu-ern civilization. As antithetical as it seems, adoption of
this strategy contributes to the further transformation man coexistence with nature exemplifies the involve-
ment of diverse interests in remaking Indian cultureof indigenous groups (Darian-Smith 1993, Jackson 1995,
Conklin and Graham 1995). It appears, to paraphrase Er- (see Friedlander 1986, Gill 1987, Kehoe 1990, Albanese
1990, Castile 1996). Primitivist writings by scholars andiksen (1993:129), that indigenous peoples must first lose
their culture in order to save their identity and heritage; nonscholars alike continue to create and re-create In-
dian identity and what is perceived as ‘‘authentic’’ In-
dian culture.
5. Gill (1987) fails to consider the importance of Mother Earth to
Native America is divided by the competing images
contemporary peoples and assumes misguidedly that his discovery
of Mother Earth’s Euro-American roots will be liberating for Native
of Indian culture and heritage. In addition to excoriating
Americans (see Briggs 1996). In fairness to Gill, it is clear that by
non-Indian scholars who unmask particular ‘‘inven-
1990 he had recognized these flaws in his original work.
tions’’ (Churchill 1988, Deloria 1992), prominent Indian
6. After describing the weaknesses of a similar set of ‘‘naturalized
writers have condemned primitivist representation and
oppositions’’ for a slightly different reason, Roseberry and O’Brien
its bearers as ‘‘inauthentic.’’ Rayna Green (1988:45) ar-
(1991), utilize a similar one, referring to historical studies, hege-
monic versus subaltern. As long as hegemony and subalterity are
gues that ‘‘the seemingly fathomless hunger for Indian
treated as properties of group relationships at certain points in
guruism’’ creates ‘‘Wannabees’’ who may be neither ge-
time, we have no quibble. However, in much usage hegemony and
netically nor culturally Indian yet are the most market-
subalterity come to be treated more as fixed properties of groups,
able bearers of Indian culture. Through such ‘‘substitute
with little practical distinction from the other oppositions that we
have listed.
impersonation,’’ she argues, ‘‘Indians . . . are loved to
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 765
death’’ (1988:50). Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifforn Lytle gibility for the National Register of Historic Places.
8
This is not a role which we embrace uncritically, for we(1984:253) contend that because of the misrepresenta-
tions of ‘‘white impostors,...thewandering scholar, find that the guidelines are a theoretical throwback to
earlier decades when traditions were thought to be sim-the excited groupie, and the curious filmmaker and
writer,’’ and the self-serving agendas of ‘‘ethnic Indi- ply either genuine or spurious and cultural groups were
presumed either to persist or to assimilate. For reasonsans,’’ the ‘‘cultural landscape is now so littered with er-
roneous information that it is extremely difficult for the we hope will ultimately become clear, we believe that
nonparticipation in this evaluation process is equallyserious Indian youngster to learn the truth about his
past.’’ They conclude that ‘‘the tradition of many tribes problematic.
The guidelines for evaluating traditional culturalhas become what the most aggressive people say it is.’’
Native American ethnography since the mid-1970s is properties were written in 1990 by two anthropologists
with considerable expertise in cultural resource man-replete with examples of Indians’ using the expertise of
supposed native ‘‘elders,’’ popular primitivist imagery, agement and historic preservation (Parker and King
1990). One of the principal applications promoted forand fragments of ethnography to create traditions that
are very different in form and content from past beliefs the traditional-cultural-property criterion is as a legal
tool to protect Native American sacred places, since theand practices.
7
Non-Indian counterculturalists have
pursued Indian tradition in the same way, either to ap- American Indian Religious Freedom Act has proved in-
effective (Parker and King 1990, Parker 1993). Thepropriate beliefs and practices for a New Age (Albanese
1990, Kehoe 1990, Geertz 1994) or to become Indian guidelines empower anthropologists as judges of the
genuineness and authenticity of tradition and therebyTraditionalists themselves (O’Meara 1981, O’Connor
1989). Although the New Age has negative connota- position them as gatekeeping identifiers and objectifiers
of heritage and delineators of identity.
9
tions for many Native Americans (Churchill 1988), In-
dian Traditionalists and the eclectic New Agers share a ‘‘Tradition’’ is defined by the guidelines as the ‘‘be-
liefs, customs, and practices of a living community ofconviction of the centrality of nature which is expressly
primitivist and countercultural, and there is much syn- people that have been passed down through the genera-
tions, usually orally or through practice’’ (Parker andcretic ‘‘mixing and matching’’ between them (Albanese
1990:153–98). Leading originators of Chumash Tradi- King 1990:1). The community may be ‘‘an Indian tribe,
a local ethnic group, or the people of the nation as ationalism have been prominent among those Indian
‘‘Traditionals (or those presenting themselves so)’’ who whole’’ (p. 1). Thus traditional cultural properties are
places associated with ‘‘cultural practices or beliefs . . .have catered to non-Indian counterculture audiences
and the commercial possibilities of the ‘‘medicine man rooted in that community’s history’’ that are ‘‘impor-
tant in maintaining the continuing cultural identity ofcircuit’’ (Brand 1988:571; Wolf 1991; Lame Deer and
Erdoes 1992). A number of these same originators are the community’’ (p. 1). Tradition is also given a fixed
age requirement: ‘‘A significance ascribed to a propertylinked to a loose national pan-Indian network of activ-
ists and traditionalists (Matthiessen 1983). Chumash only in the last 50 years cannot be considered tradi-
tional’’ (p. 15). However, if a property’s traditional useTraditionalism borrows heavily from these networks
and especially from the Hopi Traditionalist movement has been revived or revitalized within 50 years of its
evaluation after a prolonged period of disuse, it may stillthrough non-Indian New Age allies (O’Meara 1981:26).
Geertz (1994:288–319) argues that the Hopi Tradition- qualify as a traditional cultural property (pp. 15–16).
The age requirement is, in a way, a judgment againstalist movement itself draws upon premises formed in
‘‘dialogue’’ with the New Age. the validity and authenticity of the identities claimed
by groups with histories of less than 50 years. Indeed,
consultants performing traditional-cultural-property
evaluations are advised to beware of properties whose
Anthropologist Authenticators and
significance is ‘‘spurious’’ (p. 2) and to demonstrate
Traditional Cultural Properties
8. Protection of historic properties in general, including those of
The particular roles assigned in the region to anthropol-
traditional cultural significance, is encoded in federal law in the
National Historic Preservation Act. Criteria for defining traditional
ogists and bodies of anthropological work place re-
cultural properties have not been encoded in law. The guidelines
searchers in a position to influence Chumash identity
provided by Parker and King (1990) provide direction to investiga-
and tradition. One of the roles we have played in defin-
tors, and they were treated as binding by the regulatory agencies
ing Chumash tradition is as arbiters of ‘‘authenticity’’
involved in reviewing our study. We should note that the Herger
within a framework established in the U.S. Department
bill (H.R. 563) introduced in the House of Representatives January
18, 1995, and reintroduced in 1996 would make any property lack-
of the Interior’s guidelines for evaluating ‘‘properties of
ing physical evidence of human activity ineligible for inclusion on
traditional cultural significance’’ to determine their eli-
the National Register. This is a direct challenge to the traditional-
cultural-property category.
9. The guidelines specify that specialists with ethnographic re-
search training should ‘‘normally’’ assist in identifying, evaluating,7. Important examples of this ethnographic literature include Par-
edes (1974), Blu (1980), Landsman (1988), Clifford (1988), O’Connor and managing traditional cultural properties (Parker and King 1990:
22), but in practice much of the ethnographic identification and(1989), Roosens (1989), Clifton (1990), Sider (1993), and Geertz
(1994). evaluation is performed by archaeologists (Parker 1993).
766 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
great care and thoroughness in considering cases in Indians ‘‘still believed’’ in. This sacred area was initially
defined as all of the mainland coast within view fromwhich traditional cultural significance may be ‘‘in-
vented to obstruct or otherwise influence those plan- Point Conception, which encompassed the section of
coast slated for development. The archaeologist andning the change’’ (p. 9). Sebastian (1993) has argued that
if a place has no history of use, practices associated with two nontraditionalist Chumash who made this argu-
ment in 1994 had other goals in mind as well, includingit, or beliefs concerning it and is not a part of the oral
history of a living community, it simply may not be a preservation of coast for a possible future park and a
museum for display of local archaeological objects.traditional cultural property (see King 1993:62–63).
The guidelines assume that traditional cultural val- Since for unrelated reasons the proposed development
was relocated out of view from Point Conception, ourues related to particular places ‘‘are often vital to main-
taining the group’s sense of identity and self-respect’’ report has not been released, although we have pre-
sented some of our findings elsewhere (Haley and Wil-(Parker and King 1990:2). Anthropologists engaging in
traditional-cultural-property evaluation are thereby en- coxon 1996). We concluded that the immediate locality
of Point Conception qualified as a traditional culturalcouraged to treat ethnicity and other forms of cultural
identity as ancient and intrinsic properties of groups, property but the larger area within view from Point
Conception did not. We concluded this while recogniz-derived from the persistence over time of unique cul-
tural content whose maintenance may be all that pre- ing that many Chumash viewed the larger area either
as sacred or as an important heritage site and as signifi-vents assimilation. The guidelines also encourage fall-
ing back upon the distinction between modern and cant to their identity.
We reached this conclusion because we found thattraditional communities. For example, Sebastian (1993:
24) identifies ‘‘traditional communities as those that the manner in which Point Conception had become the
sacred Western Gate for contemporary people differeddepend heavily on oral transmission of their history and
traditions, those whose unique historical practices de- substantially from what most of them believed or cared
to portray as the truth. The notion of the Western Gatepend on continued access to and use of places whose
history cannot be discovered in written records.’’ Le- lacks the qualities of age and persistence deemed cru-
cial by the guidelines, and Chumash is far from being avine and Merlan (1993:56) speak of the ‘‘maintenance
of traditional cultures’’ through ‘‘conventional confor- continuous and bounded category of identity. Chumash
Traditionalists do not form a ‘‘traditional community’’mity’’ among communities defined by ‘‘political bound-
aries . . . and by distinctive cultural practices, or ethnic as the federal guidelines define it. Ultimately, the entire
category of Chumash is modern, and neither its mem-criteria.’’ They argue that the traditional-cultural-
property investigator must ‘‘demonstrate the persis- bership nor its cultural content is unambiguously indig-
enous. We say this not to denigrate those who hold atence of a community tradition.’’
Our impression is that the traditional-cultural- Chumash identity but to highlight the political ramifi-
cations of traditional-cultural-property evaluation.property guidelines conform well to what the general
populace perceives ethnicity and tradition to be but
conflict dramatically with the fluidity researchers now
recognize in cultural identities and traditions. The in-
Contested Chumash Identities
fluence of contemporary circumstances on the con-
struction and objectification of traditions becomes spu- Previous researchers have reported creative ethnic dif-
ferentiation, imagined community, and discontinuityriousness under these guidelines. The guidelines lack
an appreciation of the constant creation and re-creation with the past among the Chumash (O’Meara 1981; King
et al. 1985; Wilcoxon et al. 1986; O’Connor 1989; John-of ethnic groups and presume an overly bounded con-
cordance of culture and group identity over time. There son 1994a; Flynn and Laderman 1994). Chumash Tradi-
tionalists lack the kinds of biological and cultural link-is a failure to comprehend tradition and ethnic identity
as modern products, and, indeed, a judgment of authen- ages with the region’s aboriginal past that they claim—
few are descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants theyticity is dependent upon neither’s being too modern.
Emphasis on Native American sacred places instead op- consider their ancestors—but they are active and suc-
cessful in defining traditional Chumash culture forerationalizes the conventional primitivist imagery of
static tradition among indigenous people. Indeed, it is a themselves, other Chumash, and the general public.
Many individuals have adopted a Chumash identityway of assigning greater value to static tradition than to
change, unless change takes the form of traditionalism since the 1960s, including persons with and without lo-
cal aboriginal ancestry. Indeed, Chumash populationand the investigator mistakes this for—or chooses to in-
terpret it as—persistent tradition. growth reportedly exceeds the birthrate of Chumash
women (Bureau of the Census 1994, Stoll 1994).Under these guidelines, we evaluated Point Concep-
tion’s qualifications as a traditional cultural property Individuals have shed former ethnic identities to be-
come Chumash following transformative life crises andfor a development that would have been placed 12 miles
away on Vandenberg Air Force Base. Our study was ini- experiences, including divorce, battles with substance
dependency, participation in a museum project to con-tiated by the argument that Point Conception was the
focal point of a larger sacred area traditionally desig- struct and sail a Chumash canoe or tomol (Nabokov
1980:69; O’Meara 1981:32, 37), genealogical research fornated the Western Gate that some Chumash and other
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 767
land settlements or archaeological mitigation (O’Meara ditionalists were held at bay for years by threats of vio-
lence by Traditionalists, bureaucratic support for the1981:25, 35; O’Connor 1989; Flynn and Laderman
1994), and discovery by a Traditionalist’s ‘‘genetic Traditionalists, and local anthropological responses
that included indifference to and open promotion of thememory’’ time-traveling method (O’Meara 1981:26;
Wolf 1991:218–20). Several years ago, two Traditional- Traditionalists.
Following news media stories of the genealogical dataists described their transformation to us as ‘‘the call of
the blood,’’ casting a return to tradition(alism) as some- that contradicted Family A’s claims to local aboriginal
ancestry (Corwin 1987), particular details of Tradition-thing which came naturally and appropriately to any-
one with Chumash ancestry, however it might be deter- alists’ stories of descent changed, revealing that their
identity was based initially only on family stories of lo-mined.
The core of the region’s Traditionalist movement is cal aboriginal ancestry (KCET 1987) and later shaped by
personal experiences. Some of them have since claimeda group of extended kin from Santa Barbara whose an-
cestors came to the region as Spanish colonial soldiers that their ancestors were Chumash who had ventured
to Mexico only to return later with the Spanish. Familyand servants (Wilcoxon et al. 1986; Flynn and Laderman
1994). O’Connor (1989) refers to this group as Family A. A’s members understandably continue to object to the
conclusions drawn from these genealogical data andIts members and allies normally portray their tradition-
alism as having been transmitted to them ‘‘orally’’ from portray them as malicious white distortions. A decade
after Family A’s genealogy came to light, Ventura, Santa‘‘elders’’ who had long maintained traditional beliefs
and practices in secret from non-Indians, scholars, and Barbara, Santa Ynez, and Tejon Indian descendants used
it to persuade the California Native American HeritageChristianized Chumash behind a ‘‘Buckskin Curtain.’’
It is, they claim, one of the last aspects of their culture Commission and the City of Malibu to remove mem-
bers of Family A from their lists of ‘‘most likely descen-which has not been ‘‘taken away’’ or ‘‘spoiled’’ by
‘‘Western civilization’’ (Hardy 1979). Their acceptance dants,’’ which identifies persons to be contacted when
human remains are encountered in archaeological sites.as authentically traditional by others is largely depen-
dent on this manner of representation. Thus, in the mid-1990s there was some shift in influ-
ence in favor of the nontraditionalists. However, SantaYet some members of Family A have indicated that
in fact they ‘‘learned that we were really Indian’’ when Barbara County retains Family A on its list of approved
Native American archaeological monitors.someone told them so in the 1960s, that they did
not really have traditional knowledge about places
(O’Meara 1981:25, 29, 35), and that they had only re-
cently endeavored ‘‘to develop a lifestyle’’ (Nabokov
Chumash Origins
1980:69). A participant in the early activities of the Tra-
ditionalist movement has argued that the logic underly- Anthropologists’ participation in making Chumash
identity and tradition begins with the first naming anding their beliefs is consistently Catholic (Flynn and Lad-
erman 1994), as were Family A’s members until the late bounding of what is now viewed as Chumash. In the
1880s, John Wesley Powell of the Bureau of American1960s. Indeed, Traditionalists’ actual sources of ‘‘tradi-
tional’’ knowledge include creative assumption, bor- Ethnology arbitrarily chose the name ‘‘Chumashan’’ to
designate an aboriginal linguistic stock from Califor-rowings from non-Chumash spiritualists, popular ste-
reotypes, and anthropological publications (O’Meara nia’s central coast and the populations that spoke its re-
lated languages. As Powell indicates, ‘‘there appears to1981). Traditionalists frequently employ their version
of tradition to privilege their demands for federal tribal have been no appellation in use among them to desig-
nate themselves as a whole people’’ (Powell 1891:67).recognition and control of the region’s archaeological
monitoring, heritage sites, and federally mandated We assume that Powell’s action reflects the popularity
of the ‘‘ethnographic principle’’ of defining nations bygraves repatriation over the claims of nontraditionalist
Chumash (see, e.g., Lacy 1995; Wilson 1996:6).
10
linguistic or racial criteria (Renan 1990 [1882]). These
were the criteria used by European and American intel-From 1978 until the 1990s, Traditionalists received
the vast majority of the millions of dollars paid in moni- lectuals from 1880 to 1914 to distinguish ‘‘nations’’
(Hobsbawm 1992:95–102). From the start, then, thetoring wages, controlled the repatriation and reburial of
human remains, received land in the name of all Chu- boundaries of a Chumash identity bear the stamp of an
arbitrary and historically contingent outside ideology.mash but excluded nontraditionalists from its use, mar-
keted their services as traditional healers and cultural The term ‘‘Chumash’’ was originally used by main-
land Barbaren
˜o-speakers to identify residents of theauthorities, and set the public standards for ‘‘authentic’’
Chumash appearance, belief, and behavior (O’Connor Channel Islands, who spoke another Chumashan lan-
guage (Henshaw and Kroeber 1907). The six major Chu-1989, Flynn and Laderman 1994). This greatly angered
nontraditionalists, who objected to their exclusion from mashan languages—Venturen
˜o, Barbaren
˜o, Cruzen
˜o,
Inesen
˜o, Purisimen
˜o, and Obispen
˜o—were as distinctthese arenas and the portrayal of their heritage. Nontra- from one another as English, Dutch, and German. The
people who spoke them—from Morro Bay to Malibu
10. The only federally recognized Chumash are the members of the
and inland at least to Tejon Pass—were never unified
Santa Ynez Reservation, who with but a few exceptions are nontra-
ditionalists.
into a single or even a few overarching polities prior to
768 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
their complete incorporation into the Spanish mission Traditionalists because of their shared mission of pre-
serving the area’s archaeological record (see, e.g., Kingsystem by 1804. There were, in fact, a number of named
group identities among Chumashan-speakers corre- et al. 1986:104). Traditionalists merely render this vi-
sion of boundedness and continuity in more personalsponding to village, language, or region (Heizer 1952,
1955), and significant regional cultural differences and terms. As one Traditionalist told us, ‘‘My ancestors
have lived here since the earth was molten.’’ It is notepisodic warfare between villages existed in pre-
mission times (Kroeber 1910, 1953 [1925]; Blackburn unusual to encounter scholarly references to the Chu-
mash as a ‘‘tribe’’ (Grant 1978, Gibson 1991), a ‘‘nation’’1975:8 –15; Glassow and Wilcoxon 1988; Johnson 1988;
personal communication, 1995). (Nabokov 1980, Gibson 1991), or an ‘‘indigenous na-
tion’’ (Wilson 1993). One of our colleagues told us thatIn his Handbook of the Indians of California (1953
[1925]), Kroeber wrote of ‘‘the Chumash,’’ defining she values studying the Chumash past to help restore
cultural elements to the contemporary people whothem in terms of a contact-era climax culture and
bounding them spatially by assigning them to a ‘‘Chu- ‘‘have lost their culture.’’ With Handler (1988), we feel
that the notions of ‘‘having a culture’’ and ‘‘losing a cul-mash territory’’ (see fig. 1). This effectively institution-
alized the use of ‘‘Chumash’’ to designate a population ture’’ are rooted in a nationalistic ‘‘naturalization of
culture’’ in which the continuity of traditions becomesand a culture. Olson (1930) declared all of the aboriginal
human past within this territory to be ‘‘Chumash pre- a moral imperative: people who have lost their tradi-
tions ought to get them back, because no other condi-history,’’ subordinating previously defined archaeologi-
cal cultures such as Oak Grove, Hunting People, and tion is normal or natural. We feel that these regional
scholars have helped construct an identity in which allCanalin
˜o (Rogers 1929) to a Chumash identity.
As Chumash research picked up steam in the 1960s, Chumash Indians are ‘‘hemmed in by concepts of
continuous tradition and the unified self’’ (Cliffordsome scholars appear to have forgotten the arbitrary ori-
gins of Chumash identity. Chester King (1976) describes 1988:10).
The widened meaning of the term ‘‘Chumash’’ pro-the ‘‘boundaries of the Chumash interaction system’’ as
having a ‘‘close congruence’’ with the Chumash lan- vides ideological fodder for Chumash Traditionalism.
King et al. (1985:97–105) participate in this by em-guage territory, which he assumes has not changed over
time. He reaches this conclusion despite—or thanks ploying Edward Spicer’s (1971) idea of persistence to au-
thenticate Traditionalist claims of a continuous linkto—the absence of northwestern Chumash groups from
his analysis. He further assumes that material remains between the Chumash past and present. The persis-
tence argument rests upon an unsupported assumptionon the northeastern boundary were associated with
Chumash-speakers (Kroeber had felt that they might that what is tradition and who is indigenous are fairly
continuous and bounded from past to present, main-have been Salinan), and he treats the southern Channel
Islands occupants as non-Chumash (Kroeber had tained through ‘‘organized resistance to change, and
persistence of traditional values, custom, and cosmol-lumped them with Chumash materially but with Sho-
shoneans linguistically) (cf. Hudson and Blackburn ogies beneath a veneer of assimilation’’ (King et al.
1985:97). However, their own research documents a1982:17–38). King adopts the position that Chumash
society has developed in place for more than 7,000 years ‘‘new religion . . . [derived from] spiritual leaders from
other tribal groups . . . [and] academic works’’ (pp. 102–(King 1990:200; cf. Arnold and O’Shea 1993), and Gib-
son (1991:14) places the beginnings of Chumash culture 3). The new religion is ‘‘conceptually distinct from the
aboriginal pattern . . . [and] heavily infused with pan-‘‘about 10,000 years ago.’’
Descendants of the region’s aboriginal inhabitants in Indian elements’’ (pp. 103–4). King et al. report that a
person becomes a Traditionalist through ‘‘an awaken-their 50s and older who throughout their lifetimes have
been strongly rooted in the region’s Indian communi- ing of his or her Indian identity’’ and that the move-
ment’s ‘‘ethnic boundaries and group solidarity are en-ties tell us that they did not call themselves Chumash
or envision a bounded Chumash identity corresponding hanced by self-imposed isolation from the non-Indian
community and by the performance of rituals . . . [in]to anthropologists’ use of the term prior to compilation
of the California Judgment Roll in 1968–72, when fed- communities . . . [and] ceremonial encampments . . .
[where] revivalistic doctrines developed and were elabo-eral tribal rolls were reopened to identify appropriate re-
cipients of a cash settlement of California Indian land rated’’ (pp. 103–4). They overlook these findings when
they appeal to an imagined persistence with unsubstan-claims (Stewart 1978). Anthropological names such as
Chumash were used to compile the judgment roll in tiated rhetoric: ‘‘Cultural traditions, as such, span the
generations, and therefore transcend the lives and expe-place of the names by which people had identified
themselves up to that time, such as the more general rience of individual group members’’ (p. 102).
Similarly, Diana Wilson (1994), exploring ‘‘indige-designation ‘‘Mission Indian’’ or the specific regional
terms ‘‘Santa Ynez,’’ ‘‘Santa Barbara,’’ ‘‘Tejon,’’ or nous’’ reactions to the portrayal of American Indian cul-
tures in Los Angeles museums, argues that her consul-‘‘Ventura’’ Indians.
Anthropologists have created a Chumash cultural tants, some of them Chumash, are ‘‘authentically
indigenous’’ (p. 37)—that they possess an ‘‘Americanidentity bounded in space but continuous in time from
the original peopling of the region to the present. This Indian way of knowing’’ wielded strategically against a
‘‘Western academic knowing,’’ a relationship which isidea is shared by some anthropologists and Chumash
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 769
‘‘grounded in the historical facts of colonization’’ (p. Many Chumash are active and committed environmen-
talists, and they envision their past in precisely the42). Despite their sometimes coming from families
whose previous identities were ‘‘Mexican,’’ her consul- terms Gibson employs. Yet their history tells a more
varied story, one which Gibson and other regionaltants’ ‘‘subjective awareness of being indigenous . . . ap-
parently survived’’ (p. 365). But Wilson never investi- scholars consciously or inadvertently ignore.
gates the sources of her consultants’ identity and ways
of knowing. ‘‘I presume that Marcus’s indigenous
knowing comes at least in part from his father,’’ she de-
Point Conception and the Western Gate
clares (p. 24). Her consultants, she claims, are credible
because they have ‘‘indigenous DNA’’ (p. 400) and ‘‘in- Our reconstruction of how Point Conception attained
importance as the Western Gate for many Chumash dif-digenous epistemologies which they presumably inher-
ited from their families’’ (p. 365). Lacking an apprecia- fers substantially from what many people believe. Chu-
mash Traditionalists usually portray matters far differ-tion of modern creations of ethnic identity and
tradition, Wilson stakes her research on the word of ently, as they have when speaking with us, but there
are also substantial contradictions in what they haveanyone who portrays him- or herself to her as indige-
nous. Not surprisingly, then, Chumash consultants de- said over the years. It is by seeking and incorporating
evidence accounting for those contradictions that wescribed as ‘‘traditional,’’ ‘‘elder,’’ ‘‘medicine man,’’ and
‘‘spiritual leader’’ (pp. 24, 98) include members of have produced the summary that follows.
First, although classified in local thought as purelyO’Connor’s Family A and descendants of similar post-
1960s Traditionalists who established their often- Chumash, belief in the Western Gate is not so neatly
bounded. We frequently encountered lines of culturalcontested credentials in the actions of 1978 –80 at Point
Conception described below. The indigenousness of transmission corresponding to the following testimony
of one Chumash: ‘‘I learned about the Western GateWilson’s Chumash consultants is a modern creation.
More important for our purposes, however, is that Wil- from Indians and non-Indians. If you read the culture,
you know what is there. There are a lot of non-Indiansson herself actively participates in the authentication of
her consultants’ indigenousness through both what she who believe in the Western Gate. Many people snub it,
but people who are into psychic things, crystals . . .says about them and what she does not ask.
Errors that we have encountered in the portrayal of know all about the Western Gate.’’ Thus, non-Indian
New Agers are sometimes important sources of knowl-the ethnohistoric record on Point Conception reflect
some anthropologists’ promotion of a contemporary edge about the Western Gate for Chumash people. This
statement also points to the influence of published de-Chumash identity and also many environmentalists’
and landowners’ efforts to gain allies in the fight to pre- pictions of Chumash culture, and it is here that anthro-
pological writing enters into the transmission and in-serve property, environmental resources, and archaeo-
logical sites. The concerns raised by Chumash Tra- terpretation of culture from past to present. Point
Conception first came to the attention of contemporaryditionalists—religion, heritage, the dead—transform
environmental controversies into more dramatic hu- Chumash from the field notes of John P. Harrington in
Thomas Blackburn’s landmark collection and analysisman rights issues. The promotion of Chumash Tradi-
tionalism has succeeded because the images of static of Chumash narratives from Harrington’s papers, De-
cember’s Child (1975).
11
Young adults seeking to restoretraditionalism, spirituality, and closeness to nature pre-
sented to the public play effectively on popular Ameri- Chumash traditions and establish a new lifestyle were
especially influenced by this book (Nabokov 1980,can stereotypes of Indianness and are effective tools in
environmental controversies and because anthropolo- O’Meara 1981).
Harrington held the post of ethnologist with thegists have ‘‘authenticated’’ the images of traditional
Chumash culture that are employed. For example, Gib- Smithsonian Institution from 1914 to 1954. He con-
ducted salvage ethnography with Chumash consultantsson (1991:93) concludes his popular book on the Chu-
mash with a statement which exemplifies the primitiv- in 1912–17 and off and on from 1918 to 1928 (Blackburn
1975:5–6) and periodically worked with the last Barbar-ist imagery that Pearce and others have long credited to
non-Indian observers: en
˜o-speaker, Mary Yee, as late as the 1950s. He system-
atically identified and worked with the Chumash-
11. Although many Chumash frankly admit this, Traditionalists
The Chumash of today are prominent spokespeople
often do not. However, repeating a pattern first reported by
for many environmental issues facing the people of
O’Meara (1981), the sources of knowledge on the Western Gate that
California and the rest of the world. They have
Traditionalists claimed in 1994 were not consistent with sources
lived in balance with their surroundings for thou-
they cited on previous occasions. In one instance, two Traditional-
sands of years, and they realize that this balance
ists offered us the name of a recently deceased nontraditionalist
elder from whom they said they had learned about the Western
must be maintained if cultures are to survive and
Gate. We had worked with this elder on this issue, and not only
prosper. In this way, they continue their spiritual
had she repeatedly denied that Point Conception had this historical
and cultural relationship with their ancient home-
function over the course of many years but also she had routinely
land while embracing the issues that affect their life
disparaged the Traditionalists who in 1994 cited her as their
source.
as 20th-century Americans.
770 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
speakers who were the most knowledgeable of their toward the setting sun from Santa Rosa Island by an-
other Harrington consultant, Fernando Librado Kitsepa-generation about the past, though they were born after
mission secularization in the 1830s and 1840s. He pub- wit, also fails to mention Point Conception (p. 98).
Blackburn acknowledges that narrative variations maylished extremely little and did not share his voluminous
data with others. Harrington’s field notes became acces- reflect ‘‘subcultural’’ or ‘‘personal’’ differences, but he
fails to address the absence of Point Conception from allsible after his death in 1961 to a few scholars such as
Blackburn, who then brought bits and pieces of his data but Marı
´a Solares’s one narrative. The reader is likely to
conclude that all aboriginal Chumash-speakers’ beliefsto the attention of interested members of the public in
their written work. Most of his extensive Chumash conformed to Solares’s Point Conception story.
In 1978, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving termi-field notes became accessible on microfilm in 1986
(Harrington 1986). nal was proposed for a site several miles east of Point
Conception, and the neighboring ranch owners opposedDecember’s Child contains two crucial items related
to Point Conception. The first is a narrative by Harring- it, largely because it would conflict with development
options of their own and would reduce property valueston’s consultant Marı
´a Solares describing the journey of
the soul to the land of the dead (Blackburn 1975:98– and the pastoral beauty of their country estates. They
retained a Los Angeles–based public relations firm to100). Point Conception, says Solares, is where it was
said that the soul of the dead person went before em- fight the LNG plan and recruited environmental groups
in the Santa Barbara area to their cause (Sollen 1978a;barking on this journey. In ‘‘ancient times,’’ she also
states, people went to Point Conception only to make Hardy 1978; Littlefield and Thorne 1990:152–56). They
hoped to stop the project through public opinion and‘‘sacrifices’’ at a nearby shrine (p. 98).
12
Thus, Solares’s
testimony establishes that she believed her forebears the environmental review process. Among those re-
cruited were a group of kinsmen from Santa Barbaraheld that the soul reached the land of the dead via Point
Conception and that they avoided going there except for who had begun to assert a Traditionalist Chumash iden-
tity about the time the California Judgment Roll wasreligious reasons. The second item is Blackburn’s analy-
sis of the narrative (1975:32–34). He presents Point being compiled. Few people knew it at the time, but al-
most all the Chumash participants in the LNG resis-Conception’s role in the soul’s journey as an uncon-
tested element, leading the reader to assume that the tance, including the spokesmen and spiritual advisers,
were not descendants of the region’s aboriginal inhabi-belief’s distribution was pan-Chumash—held by all ab-
original speakers of Chumash languages prior to mis- tants and had only recently begun to assert a Chumash
identity in place of a Chicano identity. They were mem-sionization. But he must contend with a shortage of evi-
dence for this interpretation. Blackburn includes in bers of O’Connor’s (1989) Family A. Non-Chumash In-
dian activists from the Santa Barbara Indian Center alsoDecember’s Child all three myths from Harrington’s
notes describing journeys to the land of the dead (pp. participated, hoping for a first test of the new American
Indian Religious Freedom Act. Collectively, the Indians104–12, 172– 75, 249–51). None mentions Point Con-
ception, and one told by Solares places the land of the based their participation on the protection of archaeo-
logical sites in the area and the pan-Chumash interpre-dead in a far different location: north of Tejon down the
San Joaquin Valley (pp. 249–51). That story is easily dis- tation of Marı
´a Solares’s narrative about Point Concep-
tion inferred from reading December’s Child (Nabokovmissed because it conforms to Yokuts beliefs and proba-
bly originated with Solares’s Yokuts maternal kin at 1980:50). The alliance against LNG also included surf-
ers who feared the loss of a famous surfing spot, archae-Tejon (p. 27).
13
A brief description of the soul’s journey ologists who opposed destruction of a historic village
site, the Sierra Club, fishermen, and environmental
12. There are some differences between Blackburn’s (1975:98–100)
version and Harrington’s originals, because Blackburn edited them
groups concerned about catastrophic accidents, threats
to enhance their readability. The pertinent section that follows is
to wildlife, and destruction of scenic coastal environ-
taken directly from Harrington’s typed copies (1986:07/0250), and
ment. The rock musician Jackson Browne, a neighbor,
in the handwritten original (07/0142–0144) Solares is identified as
performed a benefit concert for the alliance in Santa
the source. ‘‘It was said that the spirit of the dead before leaving
for shimilaqsha went to Point Conception. That was a wild,
Barbara. Elements of the alliance’s activities were fi-
stormy place, and there was no rancheria there. It was called hum-
nanced primarily by the wealthy neighboring ranchers
qaq. There, below the seacliff in a place which can be reached only
whose development plans were put at risk by the LNG
by lowering a man by a rope down the seacliff from above, is a pool
plan (Hardy 1978).
of water, like a basin—water, fresh water, keeps dripping down
from above. And there on the surface of the stone beside the pool
The alliance adopted the position that Point Concep-
of water are footprints of women and children to be seen. There
tion was the only place Chumash souls could leave this
the spirit of the dead bathes and paints itself and then it sees a light
world for the land of the dead and claimed that con-
to the westward and goes towards it and thus reaches the land of
struction of the LNG terminal would block their depar-
shimilaqsha, going through the air—not through the water. In an-
cient times no Indians ever went near humqaq—they only went
to a place near there for the purpose of making sacrifice by depos- sea to the west. There is evidence of this from Salinan, Costanoan,iting things at a great sha’wil [shrine].’’
13. The standard location of the land of the dead for Yokuts and Chumash, Kitanemuk, Fernanden
˜o, and Gabrielino sources (Mason
1912:183, 195; Harrington 1942:41; Kroeber 1953 [1925]:549, 625;their inland neighbors was down the San Joaquin Valley (Kroeber
1907:216–18, 228; Gayton 1930:78). Inhabitants of the central and Heizer 1968:55 –68; Hudson and Underhay 1978:122–23). See also
Applegate (1977).south coast consistently placed their land of the dead across a large
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 771
ture. Archaeologists drafting a portion of the environ- The first of many anthropological promotions of
Point Conception as the Western Gate was written inmental impact report for the LNG terminal stressed the
importance of both the archaeological sites and the ‘‘sa- 1978 in direct support of the LNG resistance. The report
of Craig, King, and Staff (1978) reproduced Solares’s ac-cred place’’ of Point Conception to the ‘‘traditional Cal-
ifornia religion’’ of ‘‘Native Californians’’ (King and count, added a few materials from Harrington’s notes,
and included verbatim testimony by Native AmericanCraig 1978). These conclusions were publicized in the
third of more than 100 stories run in the Santa Barbara LNG-resistance participants who interpreted and em-
bellished Point Conception’s traditional meaning. TheNews-Press on the LNG resistance (Sollen 1978b) and
were a recurring theme thereafter. To give it emphasis, report was widely circulated among regional scholars
and state agencies and is still considered an authorita-the alliance also renamed Point Conception the West-
ern Gate, and a popular rallying cry for the LNG resis- tive statement on Point Conception’s role in traditional
Chumash culture. But the report is seriously flawed, astance, Indian or not, was ‘‘Save the Western Gate!’’ Ac-
cording to one of the Indian spokesmen in the alliance, subsequent ethnographic studies have helped to reveal
(O’Meara 1981). Its flaws include a methodologicallythe name Western Gate was ‘‘coined by outsiders’’
rather than the Chumash themselves for its ‘‘sound unsound ethnographic section in which LNG-resis-
tance participant testimony obtained in a socially andbite’’ quality: ‘‘It made good copy’’ (Flynn 1995).
Indians occupied the proposed LNG terminal site politically charged atmosphere is taken at face value as
key informant data without cross-checking or screeningthree times to protect their interests. The second and
largest occupation was an encampment of roughly 20 to identify appropriate key informants. The reporting of
ethnohistoric data is inaccurate, incomplete, and mis-Indians—and as many as 60 to 100 Indians and support-
ers during brief periods—lasting from July 1, 1978, to leading, and the interpretations and conclusions are un-
supported by any valid data.March 7, 1979, when it was terminated by court order.
The encampment was pan-Indian rather than strictly Two errors in the report have contributed to the belief
that Harrington’s notes support the pan-Chumash dis-Chumash, but it lacked the militancy of previous occu-
pations at Alcatraz, Wounded Knee (Deloria and Lytle tribution of Solares’s Point Conception story. The first
of these is the insertion of an Inesen
˜o etymology for1984), and Ganienkeh (Landsman 1988). Its political
and religious influences reflected the urbanized back- Point Conception’s Cruzen
˜o place-name (Craig, King,
and Staff 1978:82). Inesen
˜o was the aboriginal Chumashgrounds of most of the participants. It was here that
many Traditionalists learned and perfected many of the language of the mainland Santa Ynez Valley in what is
now Santa Barbara County and was spoken by Marı
´a So-new traditions (O’Meara 1981:35; King et al. 1985:104;
O’Connor 1989). lares. Cruzen
˜o Chumash was spoken by inhabitants of
the northern Channel Islands and not by Solares. SinceAs Point Conception acquired significance for pan-
Indian interests, the Chumash Traditionalists partici- Harrington’s notes are Craig, King, and Staff’s cited
source, the effect of their error is to suggest that inhabi-pating in the occupation began to describe themselves
as the ‘‘Keepers of the Western Gate,’’ implying a partic- tants of the Channel Islands attached the same meaning
to Point Conception as Marı
´a Solares did. This agree-ular role for the Chumash people throughout history in
service to the other inhabitants of North America ment is not found in Harrington’s notes.
14
The second
error is the interpretation that another story portrays(Craig, King, and Staff of the Santa Barbara Indian Cen-
ter 1978:39; Wolf 1991:122–23). This has been a corner- Marı
´a Solares visiting Point Conception in the early de-
cades of this century and engaging in traditional ritualsstone of Traditionalist identity. In 1994 two LNG-resis-
tance participants told us that Shinnecock Bay, Long (p. 2). Although subsequent researchers have looked
upon this as definitive proof of traditional persistenceIsland, was the ‘‘Eastern Gate,’’ where souls reentered
this world; they had recently taken part in ceremonies among Harrington’s consultants as late as the 1920s
(see, e.g., King et al. 1985:96–97), the full text of thethere with Shinnecock Indians. Another LNG-resis-
tance participant has called the Greenland Inuit the story in Harrington’s notes—from which Craig, King,
and Staff only excerpt part—reveals that Solares was at‘‘Keepers of the North Gate’’ (Lame Deer and Erdoes
1992:274). In 1992, a Northern California family as-
serting an Esselen Indian identity opposed a reservoir
14. Librado’s Cruzen
˜o place-name etymology is as follows: ‘‘Palo
project on the Carmel River with the claim that the area
carajo [pole, post, tree, or ship’s mast 1expletive expressing dis-
‘‘is associated with the western gate, to which the dead
gust or displeasure; probably sailor’s slang for a sailing ship’s upper
observation post or crow’s nest (Dolores Elkin, personal communi-
must journey. The Esselen are responsible for the main-
cation, 1994)] is called kunuq’aq’ in Cr. [Cruzen
˜o]: Point Concep-
tenance of the central part of this window, while the
cion is also called by this same name in Cr.’’ (Harrington 1986:12/
northern and southern ends are maintained by the
0153 and 74/0450). In Craig, King, and Staff (1978:82), elements
Pomo and Chumash groups, respectively’’ (Breschini,
from Solares’s Inesen
˜o place-name are added to Librado’s Cruzen
˜o
Runnings, and Haversat 1992:29). This is but a minor
version: ‘‘qumqaq’a 5Point Concepcion. This is the o.k., clear
carefully pronounced form of the word. It has two qin it and one
modification of material originating in 1978 with the
q’. Alli habia el qaq’—por eso decian qumqaq’a [There was the
LNG resistance that was widely circulated in Matthies-
raven—that is why they say qumqaq’a]. The qaq’ that lived there
sen (1984). This system of ‘‘gates’’ with their respective
was a qaq’ of the other world. They pecked out the eyes of the soul
‘‘indigenous keepers’’ is gradually becoming a na-
as it passed—hence the placename’’ (Harrington 1986:12/0151–
0152).
tional—and international—phenomenon.
772 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
Point Conception as a midwife to the wife of a light- who periodically visit it for spiritual and personal rea-
sons. Acceptance of the idea of the Western Gate hashouse caretaker. No ritual activity is depicted in the
story.
15
spread to other Indians, in large part because of its in-
clusion in two books by the popular writer Peter Mat-In the face of strong feelings about Point Conception
among Chumash, anthropologists who had reservations thiessen (1983, 1984), whose association with one of the
LNG resisters coupled with his own eco-primitivismabout the embellishments they observed withheld
them. Some repeated Solares’s story or called Point (Gill 1987:148, 172 n) had earlier led him to become one
of the LNG project’s many vocal opponents (Matthies-Conception the Western Gate in professional articles
and books, persuaded that it was a piece of ‘‘authentic’’ sen 1979). But popular acceptance of the Western Gate
story is not due only to its frequent repetition by popu-traditional pan-Chumash culture that had been restored
to its people. Some may have done this to maintain and lar authors or the press (see, e.g., Hardy 1979; Santa Bar-
bara News-Press, January 17, 1979; Nabokov 1980;improve working relations with Chumash in archaeol-
ogy, where archaeologists and Traditionalists struggled Brantingham 1985; KCET 1987; Wolf 1991:122–23;
Gilbar and Stewart 1994:4–7). It has been both reifiedfor authority in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first
ethnographic work to discuss the recent development and promoted by anthropologists, too, in a number of
publications and reports (see, e.g., Hudson and Un-of Chumash Traditionalism (O’Meara 1981) cannot be
distributed for confidentiality reasons, but not even all derhay 1978; Hudson 1979; California State Lands
Commission 1982; WESTEC Services 1982; Craig 1983;archaeologists within the Los Padres National Forest
headquarters where this manuscript is kept and in- Hudson and Conti 1984; Bracher 1984; O’Connor 1984,
1989; King et al. 1985:97, 104, 110–11, 116; Flynn 1991;tended for use have been informed of its existence and
its implications for their work. and Gibson 1991:32–35). Belief is widespread among
anthropologists, Indians, and other members of the pub-The LNG resistance of 1978–80 led directly to the
formation of at least two Traditionalist Chumash lic that Harrington’s notes unequivocally support a pan-
Chumash (or beyond) aboriginal distribution of Marı
´agroups. More significant, it inaugurated and institution-
alized Native American monitoring of archaeological Solares’s Point Conception story and that it is this
source that designates it the Western Gate.excavations and construction in Santa Barbara County.
The Traditionalists who had insisted upon the right to Sincere belief among Chumash that Point Concep-
tion is either a sacred place or a heritage site has notmonitor LNG activities near Point Conception domi-
nated what quickly became a lucrative business that of- prevented it from being used instrumentally. A pattern
has emerged in which Point Conception’s status as theten supported the two new groups in subsequent years.
Thus, as O’Connor (1989) has stressed, the LNG resis- Western Gate is used as a negotiating tool in develop-
ment projects as much as 12 miles away. In the plan-tance was the crucial final step leading to the recogni-
tion of Family A Traditionalists as Chumash by both ning and review stages of several projects, Chumash
spokespersons—until recently always Traditionalists—Santa Barbara County and the California Native Ameri-
can Heritage Commission. defined the sacred area as being very large, but this im-
pediment to development was overcome in exchangeSince the LNG controversy, Point Conception has re-
mained the Western Gate for Chumash Traditionalists, for monitoring contracts and even land from which
other Chumash groups were excluded. One group
reached such an agreement by this method when it de-
15. In a paragraph which discusses ‘‘how Point Conception is cur-
cided that there was no way to stop construction of a
rently being used for religious purposes,’’ Craig, King, and Staff
(1978:2) state that ‘‘weekly bathing by Chumash people in pools
pipeline a mile from Point Conception and therefore it
of water near Point Conception, described in Chumash myth and
might as well negotiate the best deal it could. When not
history, continued into the 20th century.’’ Their evidence is a story
threatened by development, even some of the same Tra-
of a visit to Point Conception by Marı
´a Solares in which she de-
ditionalists place the Western Gate ‘‘right at Point Con-
scribes bathing on Sundays with other women in tidal pools and
ception,’’ roughly equivalent to the U.S. Coast Guard
placing her feet in the ‘‘footprints’’ of the dead that appear on the
rocks to see if they fit (1978:86). They do not include the following
property. In the eyes of many observers, such instru-
portion of the story: ‘‘Inf. was three months there tending a woman
mental uses of the Western Gate contradict sincere be-
who was going to have a baby but se equivoco
´[she made a mistake]
lief in its sacredness. But instrumentality is not at odds
and inf. stayed there three months until the baby was born. Inf.
with sincere belief for all Chumash, nor is it proof of
lived in the house above the farol [lighthouse]. The lighthouse is
part way down the cliff. Men at night took two hour shifts tending
cynical or manipulative motives.
the lighthouse. Nobody slept at the lighthouse. The woman who
bore the baby was named Marta (—). The baby was a girl. The
woman’s husband was lighthouse cuidador [caretaker]’’ (Harring-
Harrington’s Data
ton 1986:12/0151). From a story of a later trip to Point Conception
to visit and to collect abalone, it appears that the women who
To complete our traditional-cultural-property evalua-
bathed with her were the non-Indian wives of the lighthouse care-
takers (Harrington 1986:09/0506–0514). Thus, Marı
´a Solares did
tion of Point Conception, we returned to John P. Har-
not avoid Point Conception herself as she believed Indians had
rington’s field notes.
16
Since most of them dated to the
prior to Christianization and never claims to have participated in
or conducted traditional rituals there or describes any actions 16. Twenty-nine rolls of microfilm were examined wholly or in
part. This effort focused on those labeled Field Notes, Slipfiles, andwhich unequivocally fit those terms.
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 773
1910s and 1920s and therefore met the 50-year age re- from the pre-mission aboriginal culture by two or more
generations (Johnson 1982; 1988:3; Flynn and Ladermanquirement as a source of traditional data and since they
were the largest body of Chumash ethnographic data 1994; cf. Sandos 1991).
19
We have noted that Marı
´a Solares’s myth placing thefrom any time period, we expected them to prove deci-
sive in our evaluation. land of the dead in the San Joaquin Valley is a Yokuts
myth. However, it contains many of the same detailsTen of Harrington’s roughly 25 Chumash consultants
had some knowledge of pre-mission eschatology, but she provided in her description of the soul’s journey
from Point Conception. Harrington suspected Yokutsthey presented a picture quite at odds with contempo-
rary beliefs.
17
First, the distribution of the belief that influences in Solares’s Point Conception narrative, as
he indicated by a parenthetical remark in the midst ofPoint Conception played a role in pre-mission beliefs
about the journey of the soul was restricted to three his notes of her tale: ‘‘Maria does not know where the
gate referred to in the La Quemada legend is situated,Barbaren
˜o and Inesen
˜o individuals. Second, other loca-
tions for the departure of the soul from this world were but supposes that it lies beyond the palo [the pole which
serves as a bridge to the land of the dead] (a mixing ofidentified in Venturen
˜o and Inesen
˜o territories and
equated with previously identified shrine locations. Tularen
˜o [Yokuts] and Costen
˜o [Costanoan] mythol-
ogy?)’’ (Harrington 1986:07/0201). Possible confusion ofThird, contrary to the interpretations of Craig, King,
and Staff (1978), no Harrington source had witnessed or Yokuts and Chumash material in Solares’s testimony is
not a novel idea. Johnson (1988:236) has found that So-used a shrine at Point Conception, nor did anyone claim
to know anyone else who had witnessed or used a lares conflated Yokuts and Chumash kinship data. So-
lares had probably learned Yokuts material from hershrine there.
18
However, shrines to the dead in other ter-
ritories were observed and their ritual use described by mother and during visits to her Yokuts maternal rela-
tives at Tejon (Blackburn 1975:11, 18–19, 27; JohnsonHarrington’s consultants.
Harrington’s Chumash consultants told him what 1988:3, 8, 236, 238, 239). If there were no preexisting
similarities in Yokuts and Chumash beliefs (which isthey thought their ancestors had believed regarding
death, the afterlife, and the journey of the soul—that is, unclear), Solares may have confused them herself, or
perhaps ideas were blending at Tejon. In the mid-19ththey did not claim to hold these beliefs. Each consultant
routinely began statements with ‘‘It was said . . .’’ or century Tejon was a mixed Indian community of Kita-
nemuk, Yokuts, and Chumash (Johnson 1994b). Tejon‘‘Old Indians used to say . . .’’ or ‘‘They used to think
. . . .’’ Concepts and terms such as penance, Heaven, residents participated in Ghost Dances held in Califor-
nia in 1871–75, and Solares’s Yokuts myth has theHell, purgatory, and resurrection were used repeatedly
to interpret the beliefs they attributed to their ances- same structure and composition as those associated
with this Ghost Dance movement (Gayton 1930). Thus,tors, and there was a mix of syncretism and Christian
skepticism in their ideas (see, e.g., Harrington 1986:07/ the boundedness of particular beliefs within specific
cultural groups likely varies between pre-mission0200– 0202, 0250–0251). Neither of these characteris-
tics is surprising, for the consultants were separated and post-mission times as those groups themselves
changed.
Three consultants provided reasonably consistent
Texts. Rolls designated as Slipfiles were systematically examined
testimony that linked Point Conception to the journey
for the presence of headings for Astronomy, Placenames, and Reli-
of the soul: the Yokuts-Inesen
˜o Marı
´a Solares and the
gion, and then the contents of these categories were thoroughly ex-
Barbaren
˜os Juan de Jesu
´s Justo and Luisa Ygnacio. So-
amined in detail. In the case of the Venturen
˜o data, these latter
categories are entire rolls of film. The following roles and frames
lares, Justo, and Ygnacio were all acquainted, and Justo
were examined: 01/0001–0837; 02/0001–0761; 06/0001–0613; 07/
had heard Solares tell the story before she told it to Har-
0001–1011; 08/0001–0900; 09/0001 –1154; 10/ 0001–0596; 11/
rington in Justo’s presence. We may never know
0001–0633; 12/0001–0684; 13/0001 –0506; 19/0001–1006; 20/
whether Justo and Ygnacio learned the Point Concep-
0001–1147; 21/0031–0045, 0064–0501; 50 /0278–0469; 54 /0224–
tion legend from Solares or from other sources, but nei-
0816; 55/0001–0143, 0193 –0559; 59 /0001 –0708; 64/0001– 1003;
68/0537–0712; 69 /0001 –1107; 72/0147–0167; 74/0001–0666; 75/
ther provided Harrington with anywhere near the detail
0001–0163, 0508–0588, 76/0001–0871; 77 /0001–0639; 78 /0001 –
of Marı
´a Solares’s narrative. However, Justo may have
0596; 79/0001–0744; 80/0001–0737; 95/0001–0085.
been the first to bring Point Conception to Harrington’s
17. In addition to the Yokuts/Inesen
˜o Marı
´a Solares (1842– 1923),
attention. On March 26, 1913, he told Harrington that
they include the Barbaren˜ o-speakers Juan de Jesu
´s Justo (1858–
1941) and Luisa Ygnacio (1835?–1922), her daughters Lucrecia
Garcı
´a(1877–1937) and Juliana Ygnacio (1878–1925), and Lu-
crecia’s daughter Mary Yee (1897–1965); the Venturen
˜os Simplicio 19. Marı
´a Solares remarked, probably in 1914, that ‘‘Indians an-
ciently had more religion than people do now’’ (Harrington 1986:Pico (1839–1918) and Jose
´Juan Olivas (1858–ca. 1940); the
Cruzen
˜o/Venturen
˜o Fernando Librado Kitsepawit (1839–1914); 07 /0753). This included Solares, according to Librado, who told
Harrington that Solares’s Yokuts kinsmen had rejected the requestand the Obispen
˜o Rosario Cooper (1841–ca. 1917) (Blackburn 1975:
17–20; Johnson 1982; 1988:8, 232, 235, 237, 238; personal commu- of her maternal uncle that she be trained to succeed her deceased
mother as their next medicine woman because she was ‘‘broughtnication, 1994; Ygnacio-DeSoto 1994).
18. The results should be viewed as inconclusive, but an archaeo- up among white people and could not be the same as Brigida.’’ Her
uncle had accepted this and destroyed his own magical parapherna-logical survey of Point Conception found no evidence of a shrine,
though there are a dozen prehistoric archaeological sites on the lia out of respect for his sister (69 /0997–1000; Blackburn 1975:
267–69).Coast Guard property (Glassow 1978).
774 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
the name of the land of the dead was Shimilaqshan in also silent on Point Conception. For example, his note
on the Obispen
˜o Rosario Cooper’s response to his in-Barbaren
˜o and he thought it was the same in Venturen
˜o.
Harrington (1986:19/0076, 75/0583) records, ‘‘They quiry on these matters is ‘‘Rc. does not know of the land
beyond the sea in the west, but she thinks it likely thatused to think it was at humqaqa, Point Conception.’’
In 1914, Ygnacio also told Harrington that Point Con- they believed that’’ (1986:02/ 0446).
23
Our most striking find in Harrington’s notes is an ex-ception was called Humqaq(a) and that the Conception
Indians would see the souls of dying persons and try to plicit denial of the Point Conception story by the Cru-
zen
˜o-Venturen
˜o Fernando Librado Kitsepawit.
24
In ob-make them return. The dead, she said, went west to
Shimilaqsha (19/0608– 0609).
20
jecting to the story, he identified several other locations
near the San Buenaventura and Santa Ine
´s missionsWhen Solares told Harrington the Point Conception
story, she said that her grandfather’s nephew Ygnacio which played this role. The San Buenaventura sites are
supported by testimony from two Venturen
˜os, Jose
´JuanTelenahuit ‘‘would not believe the myth of the pool at
Point Conception, and he and a number of other Santa Olivas and Simplicio Pico. Harrington (1986:69/0750–
0751) records Librado’s crucial testimony from 1913 asIne
´s Indians went down to the coast at the Point to in-
vestigate’’ the stories her grandfather had told him (Har- follows:
rington 1986: 07/0250– 0251).
21
Justo was present at this Said dead went to the west. Did not go to Pt. Con-
1914 session with Solares, and later that evening out- cepcion. No ghosts or anything about Pt. Concep-
side of Solares’s presence he told Harrington that in a cion as far as he has ever heard. On the other side
previous narration Solares had said Telenahuit went to of the Yndart Ranch [near Mission Santa Ine
´s] there
Point Conception primarily to gather abalone and not is a picacho [peak or summit] and that is the real
to investigate the sacred landscape (13/0037). Not only ’anapamu. This word means ‘‘al suvidero’’. napamu
had Solares told the Point Conception story more than 5‘‘suvidero’’. makinapamu 5‘‘nuestro suvi-
once but, if Justo is to be believed, she had also changed dero’’—place you go up. F. appears not to know the
it. And the person who told her about Point Conception S.B. [Barbaren
˜o] word sha’wil. It was place of adora-
also did not avoid the place or go there to use a shrine, tion for dead and alive. V. [Venturen
˜os] call the
as she had said was past practice. place chwashtiwil—w. of mouth of V. river. Had
We found no mention of the journey of the soul, the only one here then. In 1869 F. saw that place—old
location of the land of the dead, or Point Conception in shoes, caps, zapato de verucha [rawhide sandals].
Harrington’s Purisimen
˜o notes, though it was Purisi-
men
˜o-speakers that occupied the Point Conception area Thus, Librado—who was quite familiar with Point
prior to missionization. This reflects, in part, the short- Conception—not only denied it a sacred role but also
age of good consultants for Harrington from this lan- equated painted and feathered-pole shrines on hilltop
guage group. Similarly, although there are no microfilm locations where offerings to the dead were placed with
rolls for the small inland linguistic groups, the Emig- places where the souls of the dead departed from this
diano or the Cuyama, in Harrington (1986), elsewhere world. He identified at least four such places. These in-
Harrington (1942:41) indicates that an Emigdiano cluded ’Anapamu near Santa Ine
´s Mission and Chwash-
source placed the land of the dead across the ocean. Ma- tiwil, Ko’onwac, and Iwayi-ki- on the coast west of the
terial containing mythical elements of the journey to mouth of the Ventura River near San Buenaventura
the land of the dead was obtained from Pacifico Gallego, Mission. Librado’s descriptions of Ko’onwac and Iway-
a Miguelin
˜o Salinan rather than a Chumash (1942:5), i-ki- appear under the heading ‘‘Land of the Dead’’ in Har-
and subsequently used to prompt Marı
´a Solares (1986: rington’s notes (Harrington 1986:79/0562). Simplicio
13/0019, 0021).
22
Harrington’s Obispen
˜o sources are Pico and Jose
´Juan Olivas knew of the shrines at Iwayi-ki-
and Chwashtiwil, and, according to Pico, Chwashtiwil
20. Several decades later, Mary Yee was able to paraphrase the
was the place of reckoning, ‘‘onde echaban las cuentas’’
same story in Barbaren
˜o for Harrington (Harrington 1986:59/0286).
She also mentioned Shimilaqsha and Humokak in an incompletely
translated Barbaren˜ o text describing the soul’s travels (59/0137– 23. Cooper’s knowledge of Obispen˜ o religious beliefs came from
her classificatory aunt, Juana Lucia (Johnson, personal communica-0151). Yee’s daughter had not recalled hearing her mother speak of
Point Conception when we discussed the matter in 1994, but she tion, 1995).
24. Librado was born on Santa Cruz Island and raised at Ventura,had found it among her mother’s papers the next year; oral trans-
mission of the story appears to have ended with Yee in the Ygnacio and he was knowledgeable about both Venturen
˜o and Cruzen
˜o lan-
guages and beliefs (see Blackburn 1975:18, 27; Johnson 1982; 1988:family. Similarly, Marı
´a Solares’s descendants did not recall the
story and learned of it through Blackburn’s publication (see also 3, 8, 232; Wilcoxon et al. 1986). Librado appears to have derived his
knowledge of the past from many sources of diverse origin. AmongHardy 1979).
21. Marı
´a Solares’s primary source of information about Point Con- the important ones, Raymundo T’u¨mu¨ from the Venturen
˜o village
of S’omis in the Ventura River valley, whom Johnson (1982; per-ception was her paternal grandfather’s nephew, Ygnacio Telena-
huit (1789–1865), an Inesen
˜o from the village of Calahuasa, who sonal communication, 1994) has identified as the man Librado re-
ferred to as his grandfather, and his fellow ranch hand Silverio Qo-apparently learned of these things from her grandfather, Estevan
Colocutayuit (1775–1846), of the same village (Johnson 1988:3, 8, noyo, whose parents were from Santa Rosa Island, both told him
about reincarnation and the soul’s westward or sunward route of236, 238, 239).
22. Gallego worked as a ranch hand with Fernando Librado near travel. An unspecified old man, presumably at Ventura, who used
to administer Datura had explained the shrines of the dead to him,Point Conception and is the ancestor of contemporary individuals
who identify themselves as Chumash (John Johnson, personal com- and Carlos Teodoro (1764–1849; Johnson, personal communica-
tion, 1994) of San Buenaventura Mission may have, too.munication, 1996).
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 775
(95/0093). A cursory examination of secondary sources to Inesen
˜o- and Barbaren
˜o-speakers, but there is no way
of knowing how widespread it may have been amongon Harrington’s notes finds six other shrine-hills or
shrine-mountains, another hill at Santa Barbara also them. At one extreme, it might conceivably have been
confined to Solares’s paternal grandfather—or perhapscalled ’Anapamu (Applegate 1975), and a number of
other feathered-pole shrines (Hudson and Blackburn to residents of his village. Or perhaps it is a merging of
Inesen
˜o Chumash and Yokuts beliefs. Judging from the1986:84– 90, 93–98). Librado believed that the shrine
Chwashtiwil that he had seen in 1869 was the last of dates of birth of Harrington’s informants, the use of any
shrine that might have existed at Point Conception wasits kind. A pole serves as a bridge that the soul must
cross to reach the land of the dead in Solares’s Yokuts probably discontinued by the 1830s at the latest,
whereas other shrines that are said to have served themyth and her Point Conception story. According to So-
lares, this mythical pole and poles used to mark graves same purpose were observed and in use as late as the
1860s.were both called sq’oq’om (Harrington 1986:07/0201).
Librado, who had told Harrington that the soul went
west to the sun (69/0889–0890), called the feathered
poles marking shrines spon kaqunupmawa, ‘‘sun pole’’
Discussion
(79/0562). Thus, the imagery of a pole seems to link
myth, grave marker, and shrine in Solares’s and Li- For better or worse, people have filled in their gaps of
knowledge about the aboriginal past with their own cre-brado’s otherwise contrasting testimony.
The shrines that Librado, Pico, and Olivas described ativity and assumptions, shaped by popular and schol-
arly images of an enduring traditional Indian as well asmust have been associated with the brief revitalization
movement among the elderly at the postsecularization the circumstances of the moment. The use of Marı
´a So-
lares’s story of Point Conception to provide tradition toIndian settlements in these localities (Johnson 1993:
145). Most of the elderly Chumash who conducted this contemporary Chumash identities illustrates one way
in which knowledge of the past reaches and is used byrevival were deceased by 1870 (p. 146). According to
Craig (1979), Marı
´a Solares knew the ’Anapamu near the public. Given the publication of Harrington’s notes
in microfilm in 1986, it is likely that the volume of rev-Santa Ine
´s Mission as Napa
´mu’u, translated as ‘‘as-
cending place’’ in Applegate (1975:37), and described it elations from Fernando Librado, Marı
´a Solares, Luisa
Ygnacio, Juan de Jesu
´s Justo, Lucrecia Garcı
´a, Simplicioas the site of a type of shrine called an ’ush’akm’u,
which remains untranslated. Pico, Jose
´Juan Olivas, Rosario Cooper, and other Chu-
mash with whom Harrington consulted in the 1910sLibrado’s testimony cannot be easily dismissed. He
was Harrington’s primary source on place-names and and 1920s will increase for a time, producing more con-
tradictions and opportunities for Chumash Traditonal-aboriginal village politics for the Point Conception re-
gion, where he had long served as a ranch hand (see ists.
Anthropologists’ remembering, forgetting, and imag-Blackburn 1975:18; Johnson 1982; 1988:232). He pro-
vided the Cruzen
˜o names Kunuq’aq’ (Harrington 1986: ining shapes the interpretations of the Chumash past
that the public comes to use. Powell, Kroeber, Harring-12/0153, 74/0450) for Point Conception and Nimalaqo-
pok for the land of the dead (68/0499). He also provided ton, and Olson named the Chumash, defined their cul-
ture on the basis of a particular epoch, and set theirdetailed descriptions of how the shrines to the dead near
San Buenaventura Mission were used and what they boundaries in time and space. Subsequent anthropolo-
gists forgot the arbitrary origins of the category ‘‘Chu-looked like (69/1024–1025, 79/0543).
The larger corpus of Harrington’s data therefore sug- mash’’ and constructed an image of a bounded, continu-
ous, and persistent culture culminating in today’sgests that there were various exit points from this world
for the souls of the dead, consistent with the regional Chumash Traditionalism. These same scholars pro-
mote Chumash Traditionalism through an assumptioncultural differences and identities known to have ex-
isted among aboriginal and mission-era Chumash- of persistence, the use of primitivist imagery, and the
practice of archaeological monitoring for the sharedspeakers.
25
From the testimony of Harrington’s consul-
tants we also see that distinct identities associated with purpose of achieving a higher standard of archaeological
heritage preservation. Harrington recorded Solares’sparticular missions and other places were maintained
into the 20th century. The assertion of anthropologists Point Conception story and the evidence of its limited
distribution and apparently never mentioned it again.(Craig, King, and Staff 1978:1– 2) during and following
the LNG resistance of 1978–80 that Point Conception Subsequent scholars brought Solares’s story back to
light in the 1970s, misinterpreted it, embellished it, andwas the ‘‘only passageway’’ to the land of the dead is
incorrect. If the Point Conception story had pre-mission in the process helped to translate Point Conception into
the Western Gate and the Chumash into its Keepers.roots, it appears to have been confined in distribution For nearly two decades thereafter, anthropologists
25. However, the testimony of Harrington’s consultants regarding
helped to reify and disseminate the Point-Conception-
what happens after death is in conflict with other sources on Chu-
as-the-Western-Gate story through either silence re-
mash eschatology. In 1884, H. W. Henshaw spoke with two Santa
garding their doubts or repetition of the story in their
Cruz Island women about mortuary practices: ‘‘Two old women
writings. Other anthropologists, outside our area, pro-
assured me that they knew nothing of a future. When they died
that was the end of them’’ (quoted in Heizer 1995:157).
duced the guidelines by which the age and authenticity
776 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
of Point Conception as the Western Gate would be eval- new roles for the Chumash. And it is not coincidental
that some of the scholars who have taken Chumashuated, and with our work that evaluation has resur-
rected more of the ‘‘forgotten’’ elements of Chumash area research in sometimes productive new directions
within contract archaeology have worked closely withand anthropological co-histories. The result is a story of
Point Conception and the Western Gate that conflicts Chumash Traditionalists. Unfortunately, anthropology
and Chumash Traditionalism are now so closely inter-sharply with Chumash Traditionalist beliefs and previ-
ous anthropological representations. twined that it is impossible for us to correct the errors
of our predecessors without also proposing a historyAnthropologists have helped to construct and authen-
ticate Chumash Traditionalism for the purpose of pre- which conflicts with Chumash Traditionalist beliefs
and representations. Thus, our own work and that ofserving archaeological sites. The Point Conception
story is employed in archaeological reports to demon- others we have cited pose challenges for many of the
beliefs some Chumash hold dear. Hence, there is a con-strate a ‘‘persistent traditionalism’’ that buttresses
claims of an ‘‘indigenous’’ cultural logic of heritage tinuing motive for Chumash people to contest particu-
lar areas of research, sources of data such as Harring-preservation. Lobbying by individual archaeologists for
certain groups as monitors because they ‘‘know more’’ ton’s notes, and researchers. This need is, at present,
greatest for Traditionalists, for they most strongly as-archaeology or are more favorably inclined toward pres-
ervation similarly promotes particular Chumash groups sert a version of Chumash tradition which conflicts
with ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence, andas more authentic than others. Every hiring choice of a
Native American archaeological monitor—usually their cultural identity and social position are most de-
pendent upon being accepted as culturally similar to—made by the archaeologist—is a validation of that per-
son’s identity as Chumash. The use of the term ‘‘Chu- and continuous with—the past.
We suspect that this problem applies to all researchmash’’ to designate people separated by thousands of
years and vast cultural differences implies a sameness that attempts to depict the Chumash past, including ar-
chaeology, since that dominates local research and isdesired by and useful to a Traditionalist but sometimes
harmful to Chumash who are not so inclined. It also the main point of articulation between researchers and
Chumash. Relations between archaeologists and con-verges on equating race with culture. Berkhofer’s (1978:
196) warning that the white man will continue to imag- temporary Chumash have varied over time, and a major
reason for this, we suggest, is that the manner of theine the Indian as he wants to for his own purposes is
borne out by this behavior, and even those who con- past’s portrayal is crucial to people’s identity and liveli-
hood in the present. Every depiction of the past—ofsciously sought to do otherwise are implicated. We sug-
gest that there is no neutral ground on which anthropol- Chumash heritage—is potential ammunition which
may need to be contested.ogists can take refuge. Every researcher in this region
becomes to some degree a participant in the ongoing au- The traditional-cultural-property evaluation process
potentially magnifies this challenge to Chumash Tradi-thentication of heritage, objectification of tradition, and
negotiation of Chumash identities. tionalism: it grants greater authority to earlier sources
on tradition such as Harrington’s field notes and fails toYet we must not deny Chumash agency in this mat-
ter, either. What has sometimes been characterized as comprehend how living people claim and use the past.
This makes it difficult for researchers to find a balanceanthropologists’ appropriation of a collective product of
their work with native consultants (Richer 1988) fre- between their data and the political use of them and
people’s desire to define themselves. Point Conceptionquently seems the reverse in this case. Nearly all Chu-
mash now selectively appropriate (or reappropriate) the has gained its current sacredness more because of its in-
strumental value in 1978–80 as the Western Gate thanproducts of anthropological inquiry, along with the
transformations that anthropological remembering, for- because of any persistence of ancient traditions. Yet
contemporary belief in the Western Gate cannot be re-getting, and imagining have begotten. They add or for-
mulate their own interpretations of these materials and duced to simple spuriousness, even if one were to inter-
pret its use during the LNG resistance exclusively indevise new meanings and uses for what they have
claimed. Two decades of outside recognition despite nu- such terms. Not all Chumash are aware of these origins,
and even for those who are, Point Conception’s impor-merous public challenges testify to their creative skills
and the power of the symbols they employ. tance as the Western Gate has grown beyond the point
of being completely negotiable.If contemporary traditionalism and nostalgia for a
premodern past are global-systemic products of the un- Still, merely documenting the differences between
past belief and that of Chumash Traditionalism is to saycertainties of modernity, as Friedman (1994) argues,
then surely the development of Chumash Traditional- that the latter is not what it is claimed to be. Yet even
this does not mean that such beliefs must be cast asism and local anthropology are interrelated. It is no ac-
cident that Chumash Traditionalism and local archae- spurious, inauthentic, made-up, or otherwise invalid.
Indeed, O’Meara (1981:10, 14, 53–54) insists that Tradi-ology and ethnohistory accelerated at the same time in
the late 1960s and 1970s, as environmental and heritage tionalist beliefs must be granted validity even though
he distinguishes them from beliefs and practices of thepreservation laws and regulations came into effect and
created a contract archaeology that has produced a past. We agree with O’Meara: newness is not falseness
in our opinion, though it seems to be under the tradi-wealth of new information about the past as well as
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 777
tional-cultural-property guidelines. In this sense Chu- historical processes of identity formation and serves to
conceal the participation of anthropologists, as well asmash Traditionalists are not fakes. They constitute a
distinct group, sincere in its beliefs, which, like others, other non-Indians, in these processes. Thus, indigenous
resistance becomes part of the rhetorical weaponry em-has a selective memory of its past.
During a previous controversy, a Traditionalist spiri- ployed in a bid for privilege and social position. As Fox
(1995) might have anticipated, from the point of viewtual leader stated, ‘‘We are the only people who have to
prove or document our religion. . . . Whether that reli- of many nontraditionalist Chumash the Traditionalists
and their anthropologist allies are the current hege-gion is 10 minutes old or 10,000 years is immaterial’’
(Sollen 1983). We accept this, yet we also recognize that monists. The concept of a strictly indigenous self-
determination or ‘‘freedom of imagination’’ is alsocompetition over who is Chumash and what is tradi-
tional are the real points of conflict. The desire of many somewhat misleading in this case, given the origins of
Chumash Traditionalism and Traditionalists and theparticipants in the region’s identity politics to make
judgments of authenticity is promoted by the fact that participation of non-Indians in so many aspects of its
creation and use. Likewise, Chatterjee’s (1993) sugges-descendants and nondescendants, nontraditionalists
and Traditionalists alike compete for the same identity tion that the spiritual domain remains under indige-
nous control is in this case nothing more than a rhetori-as the region’s true indigenes and the same limited set
of roles and opportunities it offers. Differing perspec- cal device which plays upon popular primitivist
expectations to facilitate the rise of Chumash Tradi-tives on the past and what is traditional are important
elements disputed by contemporary Chumash groups, tionalism and its claim to ‘‘authenticity.’’
Although we remain sympathetic to the ideal of self-similar to the competing versions of the past that Ger-
ald Sider (1993) found to be essential elements of determination and the protection of Native American
sacred places and heritage sites, the degree to whichLumbee factionalism. Differing opinions on Point Con-
ception and the Western Gate are a part of this dispute. Chumash identity and tradition are jointly constructed
and negotiated with anthropological and other non-Tradition and genealogy are the principal weapons
which Traditionalist and nontraditionalist Chumash Indian participants suggests to us that neither self-
determination nor traditional sacred places can exist ingroups employ against each other in their battle for au-
thenticity. Each side is perceived as ‘‘having its anthro- this setting in anything near the manner in which ei-
ther is popularly conceived. Many anthropologists needpologists’’ to call upon for supportive testimony, and
professional disagreements between scholars them- to refresh their memories of the discipline’s historical
role in making bounded, persistent, and essentializedselves are sometimes interpreted as mere extensions of
the factions. Anthropologists help to construct and pro- identities and traditions and recognize its continuation
in contemporary efforts to shoehorn populations andmote the Traditionalist/nontraditionalist conflict be-
tween Chumash groups while posturing over who cultures into an essentialized indigenous/Western or
similar dichotomy. Anthropologists might wish to ap-among them is really defending the rights of the true
indigenes. proach more obvious gatekeeping roles like traditional-
cultural-property evaluation warily, considering thatThe Chumash case speaks to the ultimate unreliabil-
ity of the oppositions of indigenous versus Western, tra- the cultural units of such analyses frequently began as
what Leach (1965 [1954]:291) justifiably called ‘‘ethno-ditional versus modern, etc., and just as well of the con-
struction and use of these social categories by self- graphic fictions.’’ These and perhaps other anthropolog-
ical practices deserve wider recognition—and more ac-interested or naive parties. Although no Chumash fits
neatly on just one side of this opposition, Traditional- curate reporting—as important sources of constraint
and opportunity operating on identities and traditions.ists represent themselves quite successfully as indige-
nous and traditional. Nontraditionalist Chumash have
until recently had far less success or interest in promot-
ing themselves as indigenous and far less help in doing
so from anthropologists. But Chumash Traditionalists
Comments
most decidedly are not the end product of a historical
process of subaltern indigenous resistance to Western
hegemony as they have now often been represented. michael f. brown
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, WilliamsThey are created within and emerge from a population
which lacked a significant indigenous presence—or at College, Williamstown, Mass. 01267, U.S.A. 2vi97
least one deemed worthy—yet found a number of needs
for one, especially in environmental affairs. ‘‘Persistent The essay by Haley and Wilcoxon makes a valuable
contribution to current debates about social identities,indigenous’’ Chumash Traditionalists emerge with the
approval, support, and assistance of many anthropolo- the status of the concept of culture, and the ethical am-
biguities of applied anthropology. Parallel to their anal-gists, persons entrusted by the public with expertise in
both the traditional and the indigenous (Dirks 1990). ysis of the Chumash case (an assessment of which I
leave to colleagues who know the California situationDrawing an indigenous-versus-Western dichotomy in
the Chumash case—whether to distinguish actors, cul- better than I), Haley and Wilcoxon call attention to one
of the great ironies of contemporary anthropology: thattural domains, or approaches to history—mystifies the
778 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
having convinced the world at large that culture has a are likely to appropriate this romantic vision for their
own purposes as they forge strategic alliances with sym-stable, ontological reality, many anthropologists are
now abandoning the traditional culture concept in favor pathetic outsiders.
If the primordialism inherent in this vision of eth-of processual and constructivist models (see, among
many others, Abu-Lughod 1991, Gupta and Ferguson nicity is out of step with current theoretical fashion,
why shouldn’t practicing anthropologists reshape their1992, and Rosaldo 1989).
My sole quibble with Haley and Wilcoxon’s analysis public testimony to reflect today’s thinking? Why not
talk openly about the fluidity of culture and the contin-is that it pays insufficient attention to the legal context
in which claims of Chumash identity take place. If the ual process of invention that underwrites life in ethnic
groups? The answer is that such visions of cultureChumash aspired to recognition as anything other than
an American Indian tribe, few outsiders, anthropolo- threaten the legal basis of indigenous claims. As the
voters of California recently declared in their repeal ofgists included, would object to how they chose to ‘‘rein-
vent’’ themselves. The Chumash could define their eth- affirmative-action policies in state government, sys-
tems of special rights based solely on ethnic identity arenic boundaries as they pleased, name sacred places by
the score, and rewrite their official history every week. extremely unpopular among the American majority.
(Paradoxically, Americans continue to accept the legiti-But Native Americans have a status unlike that of other
ethnic groups. As formerly sovereign peoples incorpo- macy of special rights based on wealth, but that’s a dis-
cussion for another day.) Without the primordialistrated into an expansionist state against their will, they
occupy a place in the emerging Euro-American social framework that underlies the unique legal status of
American Indian tribes, Indians become just anotherorder that has generated complex legal dilemmas since
early colonial times. Their special status—first as sub- ethnic group whose claims for special treatment can be
denied summarily on egalitarian grounds.ject foreign nations, later as what Chief Justice John
Marshall defined as ‘‘dependent domestic nations’’—is Therefore, while I applaud Haley and Wilcoxon’s call
for anthropology to historicize its relationship to pro-ratified by innumerable treaties and a vast body of legal
precedent, all based on the assumption that Indian cesses of identity formation among Native Americans
and, for that matter, among other ethnic groups, I wouldtribes partake of enduring qualities of nationhood, how-
ever partial or contested. While acknowledging that In- also insist that anthropologists are little more than bit
players in a much larger political struggle. The historydians can and must change if they are to survive,
Charles F. Wilkinson (1987:121), an expert on American of this struggle and the legal codes that it has created
severely limit the range of approaches deemed relevantIndian law, observes that the Supreme Court ‘‘has re-
fused to allow American Indian tribes to be engulfed by to the adjudication of land claims or requests for federal
recognition. Such realities do not, of course, excusethe passage of time.’’ A certain timelessness has thus
become a central feature of how Indians are understood shoddy research or even professional naivete
´, but they
should be acknowledged as exerting a powerful con-in American law.
Unrecognized groups claiming to be Indian tribes straint on how anthropologists talk about American In-
dian cultures in public arenas.thus find themselves in a difficult position. Because the
links between Indian identity and race were largely sev-
ered by legal decisions such as Morton v. Mancari
(1974), which identified tribes as political rather than jonathan friedman
Department of Social Anthropology, University ofracial entities (Wunder 1994:167), genealogical ties to
Indian ancestors are insufficient to make a case for legal Lund, Box 114, Lund, Sweden.
(jonathan.friedman@soc.lu.se). 12 vi 97recognition. Denied an unbroken history of self-govern-
ment by the vagaries of history, groups such as the
Coastal Chumash are likely to assert an enduring cul- This article represents a serious attempt to demonstrate
the way in which the category ‘‘Chumash’’ was con-tural connection with the past—hence the attraction of
defining one’s group as ‘‘traditionalist’’—even if that structed by ‘‘Traditionalists’’ and by anthropologists
who are designated in this article as experts on Chu-means ‘‘rediscovering’’ a culture once ‘‘lost.’’ The
stakes in this struggle over authenticity are high. The mash tradition. There are several ‘‘actors’’ involved: old
anthropological texts containing interviews on tradi-principal issue is one of collective pride and self-vindi-
cation, of course, but land claims, environmental moni- tional objects from the past, modern Traditionalists
who seek to establish historical continuity in their con-toring contracts, and the huge potential profits associ-
ated with Indian gaming concessions have added new struction of their identity, anthropological experts, and
nontraditional Indians, about whom we know littleelements to the equation.
Complicating matters still further is the mirroring from this discussion. It is to be appreciated that a great
deal of work was put into this careful discussion, com-that takes place between Indians and American society
as a whole. Religious seekers from the non-Native paring texts from different quarters. Yet, if we step back
from this situation and try to understand it as socialworld see in American Indian peoples the spiritual val-
ues and deep connection to place that they apparently process instead of as a question of ‘‘the truth’’ about
Chumash culture, we see another issue. We are facedlack in their own lives (Brown 1997:161–67). For better
or for worse, groups seeking recognition as Indian tribes here with a social phenomenon, a social movement or
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 779
cultural movement in which an identity is being estab- certain organization of experience and of general life
strategies. There is a continuum of phenomena here,lished that appears to be very successful in demographic
terms. Now, if there were no anthropologists involved from potlatching with sewing machines to Trobriand
cricket to the strategies of accumulation of power inin this social field to challenge the credentials of those
identifying, the situation might be somewhat different. Central Africa, in which the way people relate to the
consumption of foreign goods and the way clientshipsOf course there might be lawyers and locals from the
other side who opposed the effects of this identification are constructed reveal strong similarities with strate-
gies that organized very different kinds of relations inprocess, but if there were no such ‘‘scholarly’’ identities
involved the kind of issue raised here might not exist. kinship-based and prestige-good-dominated societies.
The continuities in social life are closer to what someThe translation of what seems to be a reconfiguration
of a social identity in a social movement into a question have called ontologies, as opposed to more variable and
superficial cultural products such as particular objects,of ‘‘which Chumash is the real one’’ is a result of a con-
flation of the anthropologist’s own identity as guardian rituals, and texts. And, I would argue, it is such continu-
ities that make movements for the establishment ofof authenticity and of his duty to understand social pro-
cess from a distance. It is what seems to be the virtually cultural identities successful—the degree to which peo-
ple can harness representations of the world, howevertotal absorption of the authors in the cultural verifica-
tion problem that makes it difficult to see the actual contestable, to their ordinary experiences, their existen-
tial conflicts. And it this that lies behind the formationsocial processes involved. The formation of this tradi-
tionalism is not investigated, nor are the so-called non- of traditionalisms, even by those so-called entrepre-
neurs who exploit them in their own interests.traditionalists, nor for that matter the anthropologists
themselves. This leads to a loss of understanding of the
nature of the identity contest itself. It is one thing to
say that anthropologists play an important role in the richard handler
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia,process of essentialization of tradition. It is another
thing to account for how this occurs and why it works. Charlottesville, Va. 22903, U.S.A.
(rh3y@faraday.clas.virginia.edu). 2vi97This, as I see it, is the primary weakness of this other-
wise serious investigation.
Apart from this I have a few comments on arguments Haley and Wilcoxon assert that in arguments over au-
thenticity and identity ‘‘there is no neutral ground onthat directly involve my own work. The argument
against the charge of inauthenticity on the ground that which anthropologists can take refuge.’’ I agree, but I
must add that I find their description and analysis ofit is politically incorrect may fit what Nick Thomas has
said, but my own approach to this issue is quite explic- this particular case, if not ‘‘neutral,’’ certainly exem-
plary. They portray the interactions of a heterogeneousitly different. It is based on the contradiction in terms
involved in the inventionist discourse. If, as inven- bunch of players—Chumash Traditionalists, nontradi-
tionalist Chumash, wealthy local landowners, environ-tionists and creationists claim, there is no such thing as
a baseline tradition, then the notion of inauthenticity mentalists, New Agers, journalists, archaeologists, and
anthropologists—without pulling their punches con-is meaningless. If everything is inauthentic, then the
word has no distinctive value. If invention goes on all cerning the inventedness of much Chumash tradition
but, at the same time, without pretending to be able tothe time, then no dichotomous position can be taken.
Nor can one argue that some forms of invention are tell the good guys from the bad, the authentic from the
spurious.more authentic than others, not at least without a more
complete theoretical basis. I have taken this up in rela- Haley and Wilcoxon argue that Point Conception was
never a religious site for a unified culture group that istion to Hawaiians. The latter live in a social world that
generates a certain kind of cultural creativity that is continuous with people today who call themselves
‘‘Chumash’’ (though it may well have been sacred forvery different from that of precontact Hawaii. This im-
plies that the invention process is similar in some ways some individuals at some times). They also show how
some Chumash today use ideas about that site andto our own rather than to previous forms of cultural
transformation. But the former is not more inauthentic about traditional religion to buttress their claims to cul-
tural authority—and how those claims in turn have po-than the latter. Otherwise there is no such thing as
France. The question is not one of being ‘‘charitable’’ litical and economic payoffs. And they show how other
people who, though nontraditionalist, also claim Chu-but one of understanding social process, something that
seems to have been difficult for anthropologists, per- mash identity are materially harmed or at least outma-
neuvered by the Traditionalists, who have succeeded inhaps because we are so prone to substantivize culture,
in spite of our ravings to the contrary. garnering for themselves ‘‘the vast majority of the mil-
lions of dollars paid in monitoring wages.’’ In the end,The question of cultural continuity, to which the au-
thors link my approach, is not, in my view, a question then, Haley and Wilcoxon have given us an ethno-
graphic description of the politics of identity construc-of cultural things, objects, reified traditions. This no-
tion is related to the notion of culture as product, as a tion in relation to various actors’ self-interests and be-
liefs. But while they have drawn our attention to theconcrete social and cultural form. The continuity of
which I speak is not merely of cultural form but of a unsavory or at least problematic aspects of such pro-
780 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
cesses, they have refused to deny the validity of any of U.S.A. They have consulted an impressive amount of
theoretical literature on ethnic identity and the conceptthe actors’ identity claims. Their evenhandedness
ought not, moreover, to be confused with noninvolve- of culture. Especially valuable is their analysis, accom-
panied by concise, detailed information, of anthropolo-ment, for they have taken a public stand (with political
consequences) on the status of the site with regard to gists’ roles in an ongoing struggle over who is to define
and maintain Chumash identity.federal cultural preservation laws.
There are several important lessons, or at least sug- The role of the state has been crucial in determining
indigenous identity in the western hemisphere. It is thegestions, to be taken from Haley and Wilcoxon’s essay.
First, the language of ‘‘authenticity’’ is bankrupt for an- state that determines what collectivities are Indian and
how these collectivities are to be differentiated (the his-thropological analysis of identity politics. The politics
of authenticity is always about who in a field of compet- tory of the name ‘‘Chumash’’ is telling). And the state
determines what counts as traditional cultural prop-ing players is ‘‘real’’ (or more real than others). It seems
to me that anthropologists have to take all individuals erty—not without input from the interested parties, of
course, and not without challenges that, over time, canand their culture-making activities seriously—we can-
not assume that any are less or more real than others. effect significant change. But ‘‘the political ramifica-
tions of traditional-cultural-properties evaluation’’ areAs a corollary, we must always be sensitive to (and po-
tentially critical of) the terms in which authenticity is very real, and, given the discourse of authenticity
within which the evaluations take place, these ramifi-defined. At least as ‘‘outside’’ analysts or observers, it
is more important for us to explore the ways in which cations render any such evaluations suspect when such
evaluations are contested.authenticity is culturally constructed than to ‘‘buy
into’’ the discourse by awarding authenticity merit The article nicely illustrates the difficulties of estab-
lishing criteria for ethnic identity useful for adjudicat-badges to some, demerits to others.
But of course we are not always neutral observers; in ing conflicts and formulating legislation. Similar dilem-
mas can be found in many other countries, in particular,some situations we will be required, as Haley and Wil-
coxon were, to make judgments about authenticity. of course, those with Native American populations.
Historical criteria seem to self-destruct upon close ex-The discourse of authenticity is hegemonic: our cri-
tique of the concept has not made it any less powerful amination: the authors demonstrate how research by
Harrington, Heizer, and Kroeber shoots holes in someas a standard of value in political and legal arenas—for
example, in Native American land claims cases. We Traditionalist claims but also point out that ethnohis-
torical sources will continue to be used to bolsterneed, therefore, to use our best judgment in deciding
when it is wise to make such authenticity judgments. claims and counterclaims because such sources are in-
complete and selectively used. Cultural criteria are fineAt times, presumably, there will be people we wish to
help in supporting their claim to cultural authenticity; if one is looking at a single slice of time, but if one ex-
amines cultural processes over time, as one should, abut in other situations we may find it more useful to
challenge the discourse of authenticity—to refuse to paradox results: the more one pins down the features of
the painting, the more the pentimento emerges. Thatplay the game by its rules.
Situations in which we are called on to take sides sug- linguistic criteria cannot be used as authoritative proof
of ethnic differentiation is strikingly illustrated. Norgest that anthropology is always or often cultural cri-
tique as much as disinterested science. Issues about can we depend on assertions by ‘‘the natives,’’ for such
assertions, when challenged, depend on establishingwhen and how we become critics vex our discipline to-
day. To be critical of ‘‘the natives’’ is not a stance we that the natives are authentic natives, which brings us
back to where we started. Indeed, the basic point of thehave been professionalized to assume comfortably. Ha-
ley and Wilcoxon’s essay suggests at least one type of piece has to do with challenge. Whenever ‘‘culture’’ is
attached to an actual population, we are forced to re-critical responsibility that we should assume without
hesitation: that aimed at the manipulators of authentic- member that such populations have two genders, at
least three generations, differing ideas about traditionity within our own discipline (in their essay, our col-
leagues who ‘‘have helped to . . . authenticate Chumash and progress, etc. Seeing a culture and a group as iso-
morphic is fine until land claims or lucrative contractsTraditionalism for the purpose of preserving archaeo-
logical sites’’). But there is no easy way out, for often become involved. Going beyond the orthodoxies out-
lined by the authors—the genuine/spurious, Western/our colleagues are ‘‘natives,’’ too—as, of course, are we. Other, traditional/modern dichotomies—is essential,
but there is a long way to go after that. It requires our
acknowledging our own vested interests in seeingjean e. jackson
Anthropology Program, M.I.T., Cambridge, Mass. things a certain way as professional anthropologists (in
particular if we participate in policy making) and as02139, U.S.A. 6vi97 members of late-20th-century capitalist society: we ‘‘re-
ify’’ or ‘‘essentialize’’ a culture or we build careersHaley and Wilcoxon provide an instructive case study
which contains many of the thorny issues arising in pointing out the folly of such perspectives.
Unfortunately, Haley and Wilcoxon will indeed bescholarship and activism concerned with indigenous
identity, in particular that of Native Americans in the seen by some as denigrating those who hold a Chumash
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 781
identity; their endeavors, being highly politicized, take thropologists who are reductionists and make inappro-
priate decisions that impact others. The authors’ con-us into ethical and moral gray areas where the faint of
heart should not presume to tread. What of their author- clusion is poignant that it is ‘‘impossible for us to
correct the errors of our predecessors without also pro-ity to speak? Will it continue? While they speak author-
itatively, we must acknowledge that they employ the posing a history which conflicts with Chumash Tradi-
tionalist beliefs and representations. Thus our ownrhetoric and argumentation characteristic of classic
Western scholarship—so perhaps this is just another ex- work and that of others we have cited pose challenges
for many of the beliefs some Chumash hold dear.’’ample of modernist hegemony denying the right of self-
representation. Given that the origin of a belief is not The motivations that determine attitudes and ac-
tions—genuine and spurious, political, a sincere searchthe same thing as what maintains it, contemporary be-
lief in the Western Gate’s location at Point Conception for identities and cultural roots, the pursuit of a passion,
among others—are worrisome when they are devious,cannot be reduced to simple spuriousness. Yet when or-
igins and authenticity (who is traditional here?) are the self-serving, unjustifiably exclusionary and manipula-
tive. I find it especially upsetting when professional an-fundamental basis of the discourse, we have no recourse
but to draw conclusions about inauthenticity and new- thropologists ignore the canons of ethics or become so
myopic that they abandon attempts to search for theness—and bemoan the participation of anthropological
consultants in perpetuating such fakery, inadvertently truth no matter how elusive or how unaccommodating.
We cannot anticipate or account for the variety of peo-or complicitly.
Who is entitled to represent indigenous peoples? ple and situations outside of the discipline. We can,
however, try to polish the discipline. Many anthropolo-When there are disputes, who adjudicates them? We
have anthropologists in the past creating (‘‘Chumash’’) gists have addressed these problems, and there is an im-
portant literature about them.and making unwarranted assumptions (that racial and
linguistic criteria should determine ethnic distinc- The further contribution of this article, beyond its
evaluation of the Chumash situation, is the clear delin-tiveness) and anthropologists continuing to do so in the
present. Because speakers present different kinds of cre- eation of the dilemmas faced by anthropologists. The
article spotlights old problems in a contemporary light,dentials and present them in different kinds of fora,
there are no easy answers. We have ‘‘insider’’ natives ideally inspiring its readers to reflect on how such prob-
lems can be avoided or addressed. It is a cautionary tale(some with ‘‘indigenous DNA’’), ‘‘recent’’ natives (those
who have moved from Chicano to Chumash identity), about the excesses of being politically correct, the need
to expand our objectives to include good judgment‘‘outsider’’ anthropologists, and ‘‘insider’’ anthropolo-
gists (the authors draw upon 45 years of familiarity with along with our need to get the job done, the concern
about being pawns in the games that other people play,the Chumash). Yet despite excellent credentials, their
work, as they themselves point out, has not been, can- and the challenge to be exemplars of the most idealistic
goals of the discipline.not have been, disinterested.
In sum, this candid, very worthwhile essay gives us There is no panacea for the problems so clearly exem-
plified by the Chumash case study. At first one mightmuch to ponder. become discouraged enough to give up on being an an-
thropologist, but that is not the answer, of course. If an-
thropologists didn’t go into the field and record andjoann kealiinohomoku
518 Agassiz St., Flagstaff, Ariz. 86001, U.S.A. 6vi97 evaluate ethnographic materials, the consequences
could be even more disastrous. In my opinion the disci-
pline of anthropology, at least in America, has an admi-This important article draws together published cri-
tiques of revisionist history about inventing or imagin- rable track record for promoting the holistic under-
standing of peoples and nonjudgmental relativism.ing identities and traditions. Some of the examples
shared by the writers about the breach of historicity are There are two specific requirements for the discipline
of anthropology, as I see it—ethics and research toolsso outrageous that I laughed out loud, but ruefully. One
cannot account for outside influences, but, as always, that extend beyond the obvious professional skills.
As we know, it is easy to champion the principle ofwe must acknowledge the influences of anthropologists
for better or for worse. Some obvious problems thus en- ethics in the abstract, but it is quite a different situation
when faced with the real complications, competing de-gendered are ethnographies that set cultures in stone
and those created by contract archaeologists and applied mands, inadequate information, varying opinions, and
more. Anthropology departments should be required toanthropologists. The issues analyzed here are compli-
cated and have serious consequences. Haley and Wil- include a course on ethics. The topic has been given
much attention in the discipline for decades, but I be-coxon perform a fine service in demonstrating them
clearly and framing them in a specific case study. lieve a course devoted to it is not universal. Second,
some kind of mentoring system should be made avail-Doubtless all of us have been involved in situations
in which there are factions—internecine, intercommu- able to anthropologists in the field. Perhaps a team ap-
proach with regular meetings for group and peer evalua-nity, among special interest groups, and professionally.
I have seen the young generation take a stand on issues tions might be useful to head off problems before they
arise or deal with them after they arise.without knowing the historical background. I know an-
782 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
No one person can become the complete scholar, but about Point Conception’s significance in this article il-
lustrates such a stripped look at processes of diffusionsomehow that should be the ideal, no matter how unat-
tainable. Modern arguments aside, the tried-and-true through synthesis. It also illustrates how ethnic essen-
tialism ironically obscures the synthesizing process soapproach still has relevance. It has long been impossi-
ble, however, for the discipline to produce Renaissance as to validate its result.
Other examples from the Southwestern United Statespersons who have wide interests and are experts in sev-
eral areas. As we have become more and more special- show how anthropologists who essentialize ethnicity
either distort indigenous oral tradition/cultural historyized we have eliminated some of the studies that are
critical to the discipline. There is still need for a com- or ignore it altogether. Assuming a single origin and his-
tory for each modern ethnic group, they cannot acceptfortable competence in all of the four fields. The hu-
manities of anthropology must also interface with the variant versions of culture history among members of a
group. If they do not dismiss oral tradition entirely asscience of anthropology.
I suggest that this article be required reading for all metaphor without geographical/temporal sense, they
must first transform variant traditions into a single syn-anthropology students and that the reading be followed
by serious discussion. thetic account (Ferguson and Hart 1985:21). They ig-
nore clear statements in the stories that different con-
stituents of the present group had different histories
before they came together. Both anthropologists whoklara b. kelley
P.O. Box 2536, Window Rock, Ariz. 86515, U.S.A. essentialize ethnicity and those who do not may take
these positions, encouraged by Indian communities and15 v 97 governments, which naturally choose anthropological
consultants with sympathetic preexisting views.Like the authors, I am an anthropologist working with
an American Indian group (Navajo) on historic preserva- No matter how sincere, ethnic essentialists cannot
apply variant oral histories directly to material evidencetion issues. The hot historic-preservation question
about Navajos today is whether Navajo forebears were of the past. Ethnic essentialists may object that the dif-
ferent accounts have many events, names of beings, andin the Southwestern United States in pre-Columbian
times. (At stake is whether federal land-managing agen- place-names in common. They believe that variants re-
sult from flaws in the transmission process. But admit-cies recognize Navajos as ‘‘stakeholders’’ in managing
pre-Columbian cultural resources.) On both sides of ting that diverse origins are possible encourages one to
look more closely at lines of transmission to accountthis question can be found Navajos and non-Navajos,
anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnic essentializers for the differences. Different versions may correspond
to different clans or ceremonial organizations, each ofand their opponents. Reading this article against this
background prompts the following comments: which may have started as a remnant of an earlier com-
munity and conserved some of its predecessor’s oral tra-If they essentialize ethnicity, anthropologists and In-
dians both incorporate the ideology of imperialism. The dition from synthesis with those of its current coresi-
dents.‘‘time immemorial’’ and ‘‘exclusive occupancy’’ stric-
tures of the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 are Names/events in common are a hemisphere-(even
world-)wide phenomenon recognized as the wide distri-rooted in ethnic essentialism. These strictures have pit-
ted Indian groups with overlapping land claims against bution of mythic elements. Anthropologists explain
these distributions by human psychic unity and diffu-each other and reinforced ethnic essentialism among
both Indians and anthropologists. Where the Indian sion. I think that some shared material may trace dif-
fused supraethnic cosmological models. Societies reen-Claims Commission recognized joint use or occupancy,
no claims were paid (Manners 1974:19). Admitting that act these models in ritual dramas. Eventually they
attach the events and sacred names of the drama to thenot all modern ethnic groups have ‘‘persisted’’ from
‘‘time immemorial’’ opens the possibility that modern places where these dramas are performed. Shared proto-
type myths become attached to different terrestrial lo-groups may have common ancestors who shared a land
base. cations by different communities (ethnic and other)
depending on where their forebears reenacted theseFar from every Indian who represents his or her tradi-
tion to outsiders incorporates anthropological perspec- prototype dramas. Not only may separate versions of a
story coexist within a group but different versions maytives. Many older Navajos are monolingual and never
went to school and are therefore largely innocent of be synthesized. A story may disappear from one group
only to reappear in variant forms as newcomers join oranthropological discourse. However, many younger,
schooled Navajos use anthropological studies to supple- supplant the first group, as with Point Conception.
A subtext of this article seems to be that New Agersment their elders’ teaching and national mass culture.
The anthropologists’ apple can nourish or poison, de- also distribute anthropological information, which they
spin with mysticism that makes anthropologists un-pending on what one mixes it with. For example, cross-
cultural knowledge stripped of ethnic essentialism and comfortable. Yet New Ageism may be yet another chap-
ter in the global recycling of already widespread mythicmystical notions of human psychic unity invites reap-
praising now-disdained cultural ‘‘diffusion.’’ The debate elements in new combinations and interpretations.
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 783
This article shows how we anthropologists act within the result of an invention and a historical process. Thus
it seems very probable that most or all persons whocultural processes beyond our control. Awareness of
these processes can help us control at least our own identify themselves as Chumash also sometimes iden-
tify themselves as Chicano or something else seeminglyinvolvement in them. incompatible, depending on external circumstances.
Consequently I find a more comprehensive understand-
ing of the fluidity of identities useful. Not only are iden-anders linde-laursen
Department of Ethnology, Lund University, tities fluid historical products but the processes through
they are represented and demanded contain competingFinngatan 10, 223 62 Lund, Sweden, 6vi97 elements, for instance, Chumash or Chicano. In addi-
tion, the processes through which these elements be-In retrospect 1983 turned out to be a banner year for the
development of theories in the sociocultural sciences. come important are affected by other signifiers of iden-
tity such as gender, age, generation, class, and race.That year three books—Benedict Anderson’s Imagined
Communities (1991), Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Na- Thus, an understanding of the complexity of Chumash
identity formation might very well demand an exten-tionalism (1983), and the volume edited by Eric Hobs-
bawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition sive discussion of associations between Chumash indig-
enous identity and, for instance, generation and class is-(1983)—appeared that, taken together, underscored the
importance of linkages between modernity, invented sues.
This more comprehensive understanding of the flu-traditions, and imagined objects for feelings of belong-
ing. Since then many scholarly works have repeated idity of identities would ensure that no one is privileged
as a representative of any group. Thus, more percep-that ethnic groups and nations are all modern, invented,
and imagined. However, empirical studies that demon- tions of being part of the group would necessarily be
presented. Accepting a single group identification as thestrate exactly how processes of inventing and imagining
are associated with and conducted within modern soci- basis for our study makes it difficult if not impossible
to understand and gather information about opposi-ety are more difficult to find.
Haley and Wilcoxon nicely demonstrate how anthro- tions. A single group identification consequently ex-
cludes the nontraditionalist perspective on being Chu-pological writings beginning in the 1880s invented the
Chumash. They argue that the efforts of anthropolo- mash. By focusing on the Traditionalists as ‘‘more’’
Chumash we preclude full understanding of the politicsgists since then have played an important role in the
cultural processes that have resulted in the formation and economics of identity formation in the area.
Another general predicament for the study of identityof an indigenous Chumash group and identity within
modern society. From the 1960s and ’70s this invention formation processes is a lack of a comparative perspec-
tive (see Linde-Laursen 1995). The literature on thewas adopted and promoted by a family of Chumash Tra-
ditionalists. Drawing from current discussion about the modern, invented, and imagined contains subdivisions.
One important one is the genre ‘‘Peasant intofluidity of identity, Haley and Wilcoxon challenge and
contradict established assumptions and knowledge Frenchmen . . . Swedes, Danes,’’ and so on (Weber 1976,
Ehn, Frykman, and Lo
¨fgren 1993, Østerga
˚rd 1984).about the Chumash. They recognize that a group of peo-
ple exists today that is identified as Chumash and at Another, of which the article by Haley and Wilcoxon
is a very good example, might be called ‘‘Indigenousleast partly identifies itself as such. Thus, the purpose
of their study is not to deprive the Chumash of tradi- into. . . .’’ Comparisons among these subsections might
be fruitful. For instance, Haley and Wilcoxon refer totions and authenticity but to discuss how the new un-
derstanding of identities within anthropology chal- Friedman’s work (1994) on contemporary traditional-
ism and nostalgia for a premodern past as global-sys-lenges the indigenous Chumash identity invented on
the basis of earlier scholarly work. temic products of the uncertainties of modernity. How-
ever, processes of similar kinds have been going on atThis article exemplifies some predicaments common
to studies of identity formation processes. How can we least since the invention of the nation-state as a proper
object for feelings of belonging. In Denmark, for in-write about these processes with regard to a specific
group without reifying the group and its identity? When stance, Bronze Age burial places, appearing as barrows
in the landscape, were in the 19th century invented aswriting about a group identity we must examine the
particular criteria by which the group is defined—as signifiers for the continuity among the free peasants of
the past and the free (after agricultural reforms from thewell as, perhaps, the interest of the people included in
or excluded from the group. Therefore our work must 1780s) farmers of the present. Thus, farmers who did
not clear barrows off their lands but maintained themtreat the criteria chosen to demarcate the group as more
important than alternative criteria. However, by choos- nicely were from the early 19th century awarded cer-
tificates identifying them as the keepers of the nation’sing only one group-signifying criterion we lose sight of
the fact that identities are fluid, established through past. A comparative perspective, thus, might have indi-
cated that nostalgia is not necessarily limited to andprocesses in which now one, now another criterion (per-
haps contradictory) compete for prominence. This is the maybe not even typical of the present. With regard to
the Chumash we might alternatively ask what is spe-case even when we recognize that an identification is
784 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
cific to modernity since the 1960s and ’70s. Since that tion.’’ Distinguishing the acts of believing and the rea-
sons people have for believing from what their beliefstime many particularistic and separatist movements
have emerged as the representatives of indigenous assert, we see that while much of the Traditionalists’
believing and many of their reasons for believing are (orgroups, micro-nations, or whatever else we label them
when confirming their existence. have become) sincere or ‘‘genuine,’’ many of those be-
liefs make claims concerning ancestral people and prac-Haley and Wilcoxon provide us with a very good and
illustrative study of some of the dilemmas involved in tices and the Traditionalists’ own connections to those
ancestral people and practices that are empirically false.the anthropological study of traditions and collective
identities. They show that it is not only peoples that The same distinction is central to the relevant U.S.
laws, and closer attention to those laws will help clarifyneed to remember, forget, and imagine in order to con-
struct for themselves traditions, authenticity, and the differences between our arguments.
My 1981 report uses the terms ‘‘valid,’’ ‘‘genuine,’’senses of belonging. As their work clearly demon-
strates, anthropologists also forget and imagine while and ‘‘spurious’’ to indicate the legal status of claims
that derive from sincerely held beliefs—not the gestaltpartaking in these processes as the inventors and de-
fenders of groups and cultures. Our memory might im- status of a holistic tradition or a relativistic notion of
falseness. I note (1981:3–4) that several recent laws re-prove if we recognized that no group has only a single
identity. Chumash or any other invented and histori- quire government agencies to take a more active role in
protecting the minority rights of American Indians.cally changing sociocultural formation must be re-
garded as possessing a complexity of compounded, con- Most significant is the American Indian Religious Free-
dom Act of 1978, which states that ‘‘henceforth it shalltested, and contradictory identities. be the policy of the United States to protect and pre-
serve for American Indians their right to believe, ex-
press, and exercise the traditional religions of Americanj. tim o’meara
Anthropology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Indians.’’ The National Environmental Policy Act of
1970 directs agencies preparing environmental docu-Victoria 3052, Australia. 26 v 97 ments to consult with ‘‘any affected Indian tribe.’’ The
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and itsLast year the developers of a small marina complex in
South Australia were bankrupted when the federal min- Amendments of 1980 direct federal agencies to identify
sites that could be included on the National Register ofister halted construction of the Hindmarsh Island
bridge largely on the basis of a consulting anthropolo- Historic Places. The National Forest Management Act
requires each national forest to complete an overviewgist’s impact report, which concluded that Hindmarsh
Island was a traditional Aboriginal site of sacred-secret of cultural resources as part of its land management
plan. Local Indians can make legally valid claims underwomen’s business. A subsequent Royal Commission
concluded, however, that the women’s business was any of these statutes, but not every claim is valid under
every statute. Claims for protection of newly created re-fabricated by activists for the purpose of halting bridge
construction. The anthropologist who authenticated ligious sites would be legally invalid under the Historic
Preservation Act, for example, but legally valid underthe story in her report is now being sued for negligence
by the developer (Adelaide Advertiser, May 29, 1997).
1
the other three laws.
The primary goal of my work for the Forest ServiceSuch affairs show that Haley and Wilcoxon’s honest and
insightful paper bends over backwards too far in arguing ‘‘was to satisfy the American Indian Religious Freedom
Act by determining if Forest Service policies or activi-that adopting a 50-year standard for eligibility of tradi-
tional cultural properties shows a ‘‘failure to compre- ties infringed upon the First Amendment rights of local
Indians’’ (1981:5). Since there had been no court deci-hend tradition and ethnic identity as modern products.’’
It shows instead an acute appreciation that ideologies sion on the importance of the term ‘‘traditional’’ in the
Act, I assumed that although it ‘‘refers only to ‘tradi-are continually revised as new opportunities and new
opportunists arise. tional’ religions, its purpose was to emphasize a particu-
lar problem rather than to elevate traditional Indian re-Haley and Wilcoxon incorrectly cite my 1981 report
as supporting their conclusion that because ‘‘tradi- ligions to a protected status above other religions. . . .
In short, the Act merely intends to insure that Indianstions’’ are constantly under construction, they cannot
be ‘‘thought of as simply either genuine or spurious,’’ receive the same constitutional guarantee of freedom of
religion as other citizens’’ (1981:10). I argued furtherand even though ‘‘Chumash Traditionalism . . . is not
what it is claimed to be . . . this does not mean that such that ‘‘our Constitution requires the government to pro-
tect all religions, but it also prohibits the governmentbeliefs must be cast as spurious, inauthentic, made-up,
or otherwise invalid. . . . newness is not falseness.’’ This from supporting any religion through the enactment of
laws which require one person to act in a way that isignores the distinction between the empirical and the
nonempirical claims that together make up a ‘‘tradi- consistent with the beliefs of another,’’ which means
that ‘‘once the right of the people at [X] to believe, ex-
press, and exercise their religion has been guaranteed,
1. Outside Australia, the most accessible references to the Hind-
marsh Island affair are Weiner (1995) and Brunton (1996).
their concerns which result from other people not abid-
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 785
ing by those beliefs will be considered [only] in the as- have undertaken a deconstructionist exercise or why
they choose to offer it to the academic readership ofsessment of social and cultural effects of a project’’
(1981:14). In other words, none of the relevant laws re- current anthropology rather than to people who
identify themselves as Chumash, whether as ‘‘Tradi-quire beliefs to be true or reasons for believing to be
good reasons, but the Constitution also prevents the tionalists’’ or not. If we anthropologists are to take seri-
ously our commitment to protecting participants in ourgovernment from applying the First Amendment to pro-
tect sites merely because someone considers them to be research activities (particularly if they are oppressed),
surely our first obligation is to reinforce their own often‘‘sacred.’’
While Haley and Wilcoxon’s analysis focuses on quite astute understanding of the historically specific
and strategic nature of the ways in which they representshowing that ‘‘notions of indigenous tradition and heri-
tage can be employed as effective means of negotiating themselves, their culture, and their traditions.
It is all very well, as Haley and Wilcoxon have done,relative social positions,’’ it is also useful to ask why
such notions are effective. One reason is the psychologi- to berate contemporary anthropologists who refuse to
come to terms with the fluid and flexible nature of cul-cal tendency people have to conceive of social aggre-
gates as holistic entities, to attach that collective iden- ture, tradition, and identity. It is also important to look
for ways to convey understanding beyond the academytity to its individual members, and thus to hold
members responsible for each other’s behavior (past, of the social constructedness of culture, tradition, and
identity, particularly if that will help to break stereo-present, and future).
2
This human psychological ten-
dency provides an opportunity for Traditionalists to at- typical imagery.
As a South African social anthropologist, I have foundtempt carrying forward the massive injustices of the
past for added moral leverage in their own more limited both very worthy objectives in a context in which apart-
heid ideology and legislation led to representations ofand mundane struggles today, just as it allows members
of the wider public to attempt reaching across expanses cultures and peoples as neatly bounded and timeless,
representations that were created and perpetuated byof time and space to atone for the misdeeds of their own
mythic ancestors. some anthropologists/ethnologists even as others (so-
cial anthropologists) were attempting to deconstruct
them. But with the fall of the apartheid regime, we
South African social anthropologists have also come toandrew d. spiegel
Department of Social Anthropology, University of recognise the potential that such constructions may
have, particularly in a global context in which legiti-Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. 5vi97 mised claims to First Nation status can bring many ma-
terial returns. Moreover, we have also had to recogniseIt is sometimes very useful to juxtapose hegemonic in-
ventions of tradition and those constructed in processes how astutely some such people read the contexts in
which they find themselves and perform their cultureof resistance by oppressed groups, but recognising the
usefulness of that dichotomy does not allow anthropol- and traditions in situations where doing so brings them
appropriate recognition and returns. In such circum-ogists to relinquish a critical analytical perspective
when dealing with the latter. Indeed, anthropological stances our role can hardly be to deconstruct the perfor-
mances by pointing out to their audiences that they areadvocacy that fails to apply deconstructivist insights is
not only intellectually dishonest—a point implicit in contingent rather than continuous. If we anthropolo-
gists have a role to play here, it is merely to assist inHaley and Wilcoxon’s argument—but also disingenu-
ous, as it may work against the interests of those it is maintaining, even sharpening, such people’s ability to
recognise which strategies work and in which circum-intended to support by leaving them open to critical de-
construction without the means to defend the fictions stances, even if one of those strategies may be to repre-
sent a continuous culture from an immemorial con-of their position.
Haley and Wilcoxon provide a detailed description of structed past.
That surely is where the intellectual honesty that Ha-the constructedness of Chumash traditionalism and
identity. They show how legislation that is built upon ley and Wilcoxon seek can be found, rather than in de-
construction for its own sake—as if by deconstructingoutdated anthropological premises provides a frame-
work for the particularities of its construction as we could occupy some authentically objective position.
True, we cannot now abandon or ignore the critical in-bounded and almost timeless. They show too that vari-
ous contemporary anthropologists have participated in sights of deconstructionism. But if we are to ‘‘resolve
the problems that arise from study of the use and cre-creating the fictions that are Chumash tradition in the
late 20th century and that those fictions ‘‘work’’ in the ation of culture’’ we will have to go beyond merely
juxtaposing ‘‘hegemonic invention with inventionscontemporary milieu. But they do not explain why they of indigenous resistance . . . implicitly or explicitly
disparag[ing] the former while applaud[ing] the latter.’’
2. For a clue as to why evolution by natural selection might result
We will also have to recognise ourselves as social actors
in people’s having such a psychological tendency, see Axelrod’s
with a particular kind of authority and locate ourselves
discussion of ‘‘discount parameters’’ in what he calls the ‘‘evolu-
tion’’ of cooperation (1984: esp. 15–16).
by making our own strategic choices and applying our
786 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
critical insights in ways that help reinforce the causes achieve what Haley and Wilcoxon set out to do,
namely, demystify and reveal the historical process ofwe have chosen to support. identity formation among the people who are the sub-
jects of their research. It might also allow them to clar-
ify whether there is any sense at all of cultural continu-david s. trigger
Department of Anthropology, University of Western ity and persistence of identity that should be recognised
in this case. Given the historical and ethnographic ma-Australia, Nedlands, W.A. 6097, Australia
(dtrigger@cyllene.uwa.edu.au). 6vi97 terial discussed in the paper, it would seem less than
adequate to suggest that Chumash identity is a com-
pletely new phenomenon since the 1960s. The originsHaley and Wilcoxon address an issue of importance in
many settings across the world where people struggle of Chumash identity may well be quite ‘‘arbitrary’’ in
the sense that it was historically labelled and carved outwith the legacy of a colonial history. Their paper deals
with the politics of ‘‘indigenous’’ identity: Who claims from amidst a complex sociogeographic field that could
have produced a different type of bounded group; how-such a status and on what basis? What are the stakes?
And, most crucial in this paper, how is anthropology ever, whether any people who now call themselves
Chumash should appropriately be recognised as main-embroiled in the emergent politics of indigenism which
during the past few decades has challenged the author- taining aspects of traditions once practiced by their ear-
lier generations remains somewhat unclear to me.ity with which researchers analyse these matters?
The authors depict the now commonplace recogni- A second set of questions flows from the discussion
of the role of anthropology. If the constructionist per-tion within anthropology that culture and tradition are
‘‘constructed.’’ Thus, Chumash identity is used ‘‘as a spective is so widespread in anthropology of the 1990s,
how is it that some practicing professionals mystifyweapon of or for power.’’ In the process of asserting
their identity it would seem that some Chumash draw their role in the negotiation of Chumash identity? Is
this a case in which those working as applied anthropol-selectively on available anthropological and historical
documentation. Haley and Wilcoxon make the case ogists and archaeologists remain distant from current
theoretical approaches? Do they lack theoretical sophis-that some anthropologists and archaeologists promote
a primitivist traditionalism among a particular group tication and thus ignore the politics of culture out of
naivete
´? Or are Haley and Wilcoxon suggesting a sys-within the wider Chumash population.
My questions concern what might be articulated tematic and deliberate complicity in fabrication?
Perhaps what would help here is a more frank andmore clearly in this paper: In what ways do the Tradi-
tionalists obtain ‘‘power’’ through identity politics? I open discussion of the politics of obligation that often
develops between anthropologists and communities as-would have preferred a clearer discussion of just how
this ‘‘power’’ is constituted. Certain payments, employ- serting indigenous identities. Allegations that bias and
self-censorship have been driven by the committed ad-ment, and perhaps influence over land use are men-
tioned, but do the Chumash Traditionalists achieve vocacy positions taken by anthropologists in both Can-
ada and Australia have been discussed in recent yearspower in the sense of a general dominance in relation
to other Chumash? My sense of unease here is a re- (Dyck and Waldram 1993, Tonkinson 1997). Haley and
Wilcoxon lean towards a similar critique; however, Isponse to the unproblematic fashion in which Haley
and Wilcoxon present a dichotomy between Tradition- would prefer a more comprehensive recognition of the
difficulties facing the applied anthropologist who mustalists and nontraditionalists, despite their apt cautions
against essentialist oppositions of traditional versus write against what his or her clients regard as their in-
terests. This raises the question of the extent to whichmodern or indigenous versus Western.
It would be helpful to know more about the relation- applied anthropological research increasingly resembles
the practice of lawyers seeking ‘‘instructions’’ from cli-ship between these two apparently separate groups.
While we learn that the core of the Traditionalist move- ents rather than that of social science investigators
searching for description and analysis that are best sup-ment is a group of extended kin whose ancestors came
as Spanish soldiers and servants, we are told little if ported by all the available ‘‘data.’’
anything about the ancestry of other Chumash. Do Ha-
ley and Wilcoxon regard the latter as more authenti-
cally connected with an identity linked to the once in-
digenous inhabitants of the area? And on what basis do
Reply
the ‘‘nontraditionalist’’ Chumash reject the constructed
culture of the Traditionalists? Similar settings in other
parts of the world might prompt us to speculate that the briand.haleyandlarryr.wilcoxon
Goleta, Calif., U.S.A. 25 vii 97basis of such a rejection might include factors such as
Christianity, a moralistic opposition to features of the
New Age social movement, or perhaps a more conserva- Since this article was accepted for publication, the City
of Santa Barbara has revised its list of approved Nativetive position in the regional political economy.
An adequate depiction of those with whom the Tradi- American archaeological monitors to include only Chu-
mash who have demonstrated descent from the region’stionalists compete for Chumash identity would help
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 787
aboriginal population. Anthropologists were among vative nontraditionalists object to Traditionalists’ ‘‘hip-
pie’’ philosophy and demeaning depictions of Catholi-those who lobbied for this change. Concurrently, some
nondescendant Traditionalists have started an archaeo- cism. They protest that Traditionalists are not part of
their historical social networks and therefore have nological contract firm in which the professional creden-
tials are supplied by their long-standing archaeologist right to represent their interests. Even so, over the past
decade more and more nontraditionalists have adoptedallies. These events indicate that nontraditionalists
(and their anthropologist allies) are reversing the Tradi- once distinctly Traditionalist markers such as the
‘‘Western Gate,’’ ‘‘Mother Earth,’’ and ‘‘elder,’’ burningtionalists’ dominance of Chumash identity. Mean-
while, the Traditionalists have become archaeologists, sage, and jewelry of abalone shell, beads, and feathers.
Most Chumash are working-class and urban or col-revealing once again the importance of this link to the
formation of their identity. To the best of our knowl- lege-educated professionals. Formal groupings have
been in flux since the 1970s. The federally recognizededge, our research on Point Conception has played no
role in these matters so far. Santa Ynez Reservation was a poor, small, and factiona-
lized population until federal housing spawned growthWe thank the commentators for their contributions.
Handler, Jackson, and Kealiinohomoku especially are in the late 1970s and ’80s and a casino brought prosper-
ity in the 1990s. In two months last year this newfoundgenerous with their praise, but we appreciate Spiegel’s
criticism equally. We welcome Friedman’s correction of prosperity brought roughly 75 applications for enroll-
ment to the reservation of fewer than 200 enrolledour misunderstanding and misrepresentation of his po-
sition and O’Meara’s clarification of his use of ‘‘valid,’’ members. Few people on the reservation are Tradition-
alists, and we detect a slight decline in interest in heri-‘‘genuine,’’ and ‘‘spurious’’ in his 1981 report. Unfortu-
nately, Friedman misconstrues our purpose, but turn- tage matters as the casino has prospered, even though
symbols of tradition are emerging in the casino’s adver-about is fair play. We accept the validity of Chumash
Traditionalism for reasons similar to O’Meara’s, but our tising. Federal recognition applications are pending for
two other groups. One was submitted in the early 1980sstatement was meant to equate Traditionalist beliefs
with those of other religious faiths more on philosophi- by a Traditionalist organization. The other was submit-
ted several years ago by a recently formed organizationcal grounds than on legal ones. Of course, we do not
care to judge the empirical validity of anyone’s soul’s representing part of the nontraditionalist core.
Traditionalists never achieved a ‘‘general domi-passing to a land of the dead via Point Conception, nor
would we know how to go about doing so. nance’’ over nontraditionalists (Trigger) but did domi-
nate the Indian niche in the political economy thatTrigger and Friedman point out shortcomings in our
presentation of who the nontraditionalists are and how emerged in the 1970s—environmental and heritage
management. This niche quickly became definitive ofthey relate to the Traditionalists. Jackson, Linde-
Laursen, and Trigger raise other possible factors in the Chumash identity itself and gave Traditionalists domi-
nance over Chumash self-representation. There was noconstruction of Chumash identity, including gender,
generation, competing ideas of tradition and progress, distinct Indian niche in the local political economy
from the 1950s to the ’70s. When Vandenberg Air Forcepolitical economy, class, Christianity, and moral abhor-
rence of the New Age, that reflect on the Traditionalist/ Base officials decided in the mid-1980s that Chumash
archaeology monitors hired for work on federal lands ornontraditionalist relationship. ‘‘Traditional’’ is an iden-
tity to and from which there is movement of individu- contracts had to be federally recognized, the Santa Ynez
Band was able to counter Traditionalist dominance atals and cultural characteristics. Traditionalists identify
themselves as such and their religious philosophy as the base, but the Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Tejon
communities have had more difficulty. One Tradition-‘‘authentically’’ traditional. For our purposes, nontradi-
tionalists are everyone else, including persons who re- alist represented the Chumash in a recent nationally
broadcast documentary series on Native Americans,main Catholic but have publicly promoted Chumash
identity and heritage through basketmaking, storytell- lectures periodically on Chumash tradition at the Uni-
versity of California, Santa Barbara, and has beening, and dancing. These people consider Traditionalists’
portrayals of Chumash tradition ‘‘inauthentic.’’ No one granted control over access to some of the region’s most
famous pictograph sites by a Bureau of Land Manage-identifies as ‘‘nontraditional,’’ but Chumash who dis-
tance themselves from Traditionalism are so designated ment administrator.
Most of the commentators recognize that our intentby Traditionalists. There is a nontraditionalist core of
families that, unlike most Traditionalists, have empiri- is to draw attention to problems and implications of an-
thropological practice, not to engage in ‘‘deconstructioncally strong social and genealogical links to the aborigi-
nal occupants of the region. They are descendants of the for its own sake’’ (Spiegel) or to determine ‘‘which Chu-
mash is the real one’’ (Friedman). Anthropologists areCatholic Indian communities in San Luis Obispo, Santa
Ynez, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Tejon. Until the an appropriate audience for this presentation because
they/we are native participants in the construction, ne-1960s, successive generations of these families identi-
fied themselves as Mission Indians from these localities gotiation, and contestation of indigenous identity and
traditionalism who need to know ‘‘which strategies(e.g., Santa Barbara Indian or Barbaren
˜o). The nontradi-
tionalist core tends to reject newcomers to Chumash work and in which circumstances’’ (Spiegel). Lest there
be any misunderstanding, we believe that our findingsidentity who lack firm genealogical credentials. Conser-
788 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
and interpretations should also be discussed with Chu- the rewards for having been oppressed accrue to a third
party? Perhaps the answer is yes to both questions inmash people. We began sharing our work on Point Con-
ception with Traditionalists and nontraditionalists in some case, somewhere. But faced with a Chumash Tra-
ditionalism that is as hegemonic as it is oppressed and1994, but we have much more to do on this. The two
tasks overlap, thanks to the nature of ties between Chu- a mixed bag of Traditionalists and allied non-Indians for
whom the appropriateness of rewards is ambiguous atmash and anthropologists, but no one should expect in-
dividuals who zealously embrace Chumash Traditional- best, we have opted not to misrepresent or withhold our
findings. We do so with the explicit understanding thatism to discontinue wielding it politically on the advice
of an anthropologist that doing so has become a riskier we very likely have played some role in influencing
whatever happens next—that we are, as Spiegel puts it,strategy.
The commentators disagree about the ethics of our ‘‘social actors with a particular kind of authority.’’ Hop-
ing to diminish some undesirable potential effects,treatment of Chumash identity and tradition. Handler
finds it ‘‘exemplary’’ and ‘‘evenhanded,’’ and Kealiino- we have challenged the language of the traditional-
cultural-property guidelines where we believe it leadshomoku claims that we ‘‘perform a fine service.’’ It al-
most seems as if O’Meara wished we had passed more to pointless and unjustifiable categorization of Chu-
mash Traditionalists’ and New Agers’ beliefs in Pointjudgments on Chumash Traditionalism, whereas Fried-
man implies that we should have maintained greater Conception as spurious. We do so because we agree
with Handler that ‘‘anthropologists have to take all in-‘‘distance.’’ The strongest challenge comes from Spie-
gel, who questions our motives and believes that we dividuals and their culture-making activities seri-
ously.’’should be helping Chumash to maintain and sharpen
useful representations rather than deconstructing them We are very much concerned about the conspiracy of
misinformation that Spiegel’s position seems to call for.in front of an anthropological audience. Spiegel’s argu-
ment projects South African qualities onto the Chu- Even if one could get all anthropologists and indigenes
in a region to join in and maintain such a conspiracy (amash, viewing them as ‘‘oppressed’’ and as receiving
‘‘appropriate’’ rewards from essentialized representa- most unlikely prospect), a clever journalist could easily
penetrate this, causing embarrassment to individual an-tions. Yet it also represents the perspective of some lo-
cal scholars, for whom ‘‘indigenous’’ and ‘‘traditional’’ thropologists and the discipline as a whole (see, e.g.,
Bordewich 1996:204–39). In the long run, this would doequals ‘‘oppressed,’’ and therefore it is helpful that Spie-
gel raises this criticism. anthropological advocacy more harm than good, be-
cause effective advocacy—like anthropological authen-We certainly do not oppose advocacy for the op-
pressed, and we share Kealiinohomoku’s view that an- tication—rests on the public’s trust in anthropology’s
truthfulness. That trust comes from many quarters andthropology’s record in this area is generally good. The
question, as we see it, is how to apply the criterion ‘‘op- does not exclude the possibility of deconstructing some
essentialized indigenous images in the service of indige-pressed’’ to identify the ‘‘appropriate’’ recipients of re-
wards—those whose claims of cultural authenticity we nous advocacy. Though he is known as one of anthro-
pology’s sharpest critics, Vine Deloria Jr. (1991) argueswish to support. Are we to use the tools of anthropology
to make realistic appraisals on a case-by-case basis that anthropology should be used to counter the damag-
ing misinformation of Peter Matthiessen (a major pro-(Handler)? Or do we assign the value ‘‘oppressed’’ to the
statuses of indigenous and traditional and ‘‘appropriate’’ moter of the ‘‘authenticity’’ of the Western Gate) and
Ruth Beebe Hill because its institutionalized self-to the rewards for representing oneself in these terms or
being allied with someone who does? We cannot in correcting mechanisms promote truth in the long run.
Kealiinohomoku endorses this path, and, while we ac-good conscience take the second path. Essences are irre-
ducible, permanent, invariant, and essentializing has knowledge that what constitutes ‘‘truth’’ may be cul-
turally constrained, so do we.long-term consequences that are beyond anyone’s con-
trol. Spiegel’s justification of essentializing requires Friedman’s conception of responsible ‘‘distance’’ is
antithetical to applied anthropology and clearly impos-that members of these categories always are and always
will be the oppressed good guys and that their gains are sible under policies and procedures that seek anthropo-
logical authentication of traditions based on empiricalalways appropriate. Such a position runs counter to
what anthropologists know about the flexibility of evidence. But we may critique his stand further by not-
ing that indigenous and traditionalist identity move-group boundaries and identities and to anthropology’s
humanistic goal of understanding and appreciating hu- ments are based on claims of continuity and are chal-
lenged by claims of recent invention. Researchers whomanity, warts and all. It certainly runs counter to fact
in the Chumash case, where this image of the oppressed disseminate findings of continuities or recent inven-
tions of any sort—be they cultural objects, social ties,good guy attracts former non-Indians to Chumash iden-
tity and Traditionalism because it has rewards. or ‘‘ontologies’’—engage in verification, regardless of
their intent or evidence. The alternatives are not muchIf we do find a claim to privilege framed in terms of
indigenism or traditionalism lacking in some important better. Choosing not to investigate social construction
is abandoning the study of social process, and failure torespect, do we misrepresent the facts because we antici-
pate some benefit either to ourselves or to some ‘‘appro- disseminate one’s findings is tacit acceptance of the sta-
tus quo, acquiescence in the hegemony of the latest ef-priate’’ party from doing so? Is it ‘‘appropriate’’ when
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 789
fective self-representation. From our perspective, Fried- ans, such as the American Indian Religious Freedom
Act Amendments of 1994 and President Clinton’s 1996man is a participant in the authentication of Hawaiian
identity and tradition, just as we are in the Chumash Executive Order 13007 on Indian sacred sites. These
facts suggest that discussing social construction and thecase. Pristine ‘‘distance’’ is simply illusory.
In contrast to the cases in Dyck and Waldram (1993), fluidity of culture is not a uniform threat to Indian legal
status but threatens only a select set. Indeed, some an-clientage is not a constraint on anthropological practice
in the Chumash case (Trigger). Anthropologists’ advo- thropologists use constructivist models to celebrate the
ingenuity in indigenous resistance (see, e.g., Hill 1992,cacy of Chumash Traditionalism has almost always
been against the interests of the client. Craig and King 1996; McGuire 1992).
Indigenous traditionalism cannot be attributed solelybegan their advocacy on Point Conception when their
client was the developer (see King and Craig 1978). Trig- or even primarily to the constraints of law. Friedman
(1994) inspires the kind of research that will be neededger also asks if only applied anthropologists are naive
about constructivist models. We should clarify that the to resolve this issue (Linde-Laursen). In any event, we
do not wish to depreciate the influence of law. Our in-‘‘authenticity’’ of Chumash Traditionalism and Tradi-
tionalists has also been promoted in academic works tent, rather, is to ensure that the sometimes crucial
roles played by anthropologists in constructing and ne-(see, e.g., Wilson 1994) and that naivete
´alone does not
account for all we have described. Some anthropologists gotiating indigenous traditionalism are not lost from
view. Anthropologists often are important agents—orfought to preserve acknowledged misrepresentations
during the LNG resistance for their political utility, agent-interpreters—of the law as Craig, King, and we
have been, but other anthropological roles vis-a
`-vis theeven charging anthropologists who held different views
with ethics violations (Executive Committee 1979, law are possible. Some of the anthropological practices
we have described are replicated well beyond the Chu-1980). We find less awareness of the constructivist
model in the applied sector, but the problem is worse mash case. The Chumash were named as part of the Bu-
reau of American Ethnology’s nationwide efforts, inamong local archaeologists, both academic and applied.
We hope that this is changing with growing attention Powell’s words, ‘‘to produce results that would be of
practical value in the administration of Indian affairs’’in the literature (see, e.g., Dietler 1994) and given the
relevance of constructivist models to archaeological (Hicks and Handler 1987:402). The building blocks of
future traditionalisms were preserved (though incom-practice in the United States since the passage of the
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation plete and out of context) when a generation of Boasian
anthropologists like Harrington recorded Native Ameri-Act. Even so, we agree with Kealiinohomoku that our
experiences signal a renewed need for more well- can traditions while the Bureau of Indian Affairs
worked to destroy them (p. 405). As the primary inter-rounded intersubdisciplinary and ethics training.
Brown, Kelley, Jackson, O’Meara, and Spiegel raise preters of what ‘‘traditional’’ means in the National
Historic Preservation Act, Parker and King (1990) si-the important issue of essentializations in law that con-
strain indigenous identities and anthropologists’ advo- multaneously empowered traditionalism and con-
strained its form throughout the United States and itscacy. Brown points out that ‘‘a certain timelessness’’ is
embedded in federal Indian law and concludes that an- possessions. But whereas environmental politics figures
prominently in the role of anthropology in making Chu-thropologists are mere ‘‘bit players in a much larger po-
litical struggle.’’ He receives support in Kelley’s refer- mash tradition, in other cases it may be anthropolo-
gists’ contributions to primitivism, ethnic tourism, andence to ‘‘time immemorial’’ and ‘‘exclusive occupancy’’
in the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946. Lurie the ethnic arts market that matter more (Dilworth
1996).(1970 [1955]:206) observes, however, that the Act does
not contain the phrase ‘‘since time immemorial’’ and There are legal constraints other than ‘‘timelessness’’
with which anthropologists must contend. The judg-‘‘factors of time and title can be variously construed.’’
We see some of this variation in regard to Chumash fed- ments of authenticity that anthropologists must some-
times make are constrained by modernity’s empirical,eral recognition. The Santa Ynez Reservation Chumash
need not become Traditionalists to preserve their fed- fact-based approach to history. The lawsuit over Hind-
marsh Island (O’Meara) illustrates one of the risks an-eral status because they are a ‘‘political entity.’’ Not
surprisingly, Traditionalism is weak there. The nontra- thropologists face if they fail to adhere to this standard.
The academic anthropologist who supports empiricallyditionalists seeking federal recognition express their
‘‘timelessness’’ in terms of genealogical and social rela- unsound claims of indigenous traditionalism by misrep-
resenting data probably risks only his or her reputation.tionships to the past, not in the cultural terms favored
by the Traditionalists, who cannot demonstrate similar The applied anthropologist, however, also risks law-
suits for fraud or negligence and the possibility of fi-genealogical and social relationships. The nontradition-
alist group appears to meet more federal criteria than nancial ruin. Jackson correctly notes that though this
empirical discursive format could be ‘‘another examplethe Traditionalist group, whatever other weaknesses its
application may have. The cultural timelessness of Tra- of modernist hegemony denying the right of self-repre-
sentation,’’ so too is Chumash Traditionalism con-ditionalists and the social and genealogical time-
lessness of nontraditionalists both have limited utility structed in modernist terms of ‘‘origins and authentic-
ity.’’ The implication Jackson appears to draw may beunder laws that apply only to federally recognized Indi-
790 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
reassuring to anthropologists who evaluate traditional tity construction, negotiation, and contestation. We
explicitly state our concerns about the traditional-cultural properties: modernity’s terms are an appro-
priate framework within which to critique Chumash cultural-property guidelines, including the authority
they grant to anthropologists. We acknowledge the ex-Traditionalism and the behavior of anthropologists who
have promoted it. pertise on various parts or versions of Chumash tradi-
tion of Maria Solares, Fernando Librado Kitsepawit,We believe that Brown overstates the matter when he
says that American Indian ‘‘reinventions’’ uniquely at- contemporary Traditionalists, nontraditionalists, and
others. And we portray all Chumash as equally modern,tract outside objections. These are common aspects of
identity negotiation and boundary maintenance that equally constructed, if of stuff that carries different
weight in particular contexts. Why, then, does Fried-can be seen elsewhere in historical sanctions against
‘‘passing’’ by blacks, resistance to creating a ‘‘mixed man perceive ‘‘what seems to be the virtually total ab-
sorption of the authors in the cultural verificationrace’’ category on the U.S. Census, and the neoconser-
vative critique of multiculturalism. Linde-Laursen problem?’’
The answer is to be found in what he accepts as theraises the issue of situational switching in Chumash
identity, but we have found this to be rare. One descen- ‘‘social processes’’ by which traditionalism is con-
structed. Friedman says he does not find ‘‘how’’ the es-dant of the ethnically mixed Tejon community empha-
sizes his Chumash and Tataviam ancestry alternately, sentialization of tradition occurs and ‘‘why it works’’ in
our description of participants’ various goals and re-depending on which is more pertinent to the specific
setting. A senior member of Family A contacted us dur- wards, exploitation of popular imagery of primitivism,
or anthropological verification. He believes traditional-ing an evaluation of a historic Spanish rancho property
to say that she wanted her descent from the rancho fam- isms work because people are able to ‘‘harness represen-
tations of the world, however contestable, to their ordi-ily documented to establish her as a stakeholder in the
environmental review process. nary experiences, their existential conflicts.’’ This
suffices as a view of the internal or psychological pro-A useful comparative perspective is introduced in
Spiegel’s South African experiences, Kelley’s descrip- cesses behind the formation of social movements
(though it is not unique to traditionalist ones). But fromtion of the Navajo-origins problem, and Linde-Laursen’s
distinct genres in the literature on social construction. the relational perspective we have taken, in the tradi-
tion of Barth and Cohen, the level of contestation doesFrom our own experience, we have considered the Na-
vajo relatively free of the intense impact of anthropolog- affect how much influence and resources members can
obtain, their ability to recruit members, how bound-ical practice on cultural identity that we see with the
Chumash, despite the richer history of Navajo anthro- aries are drawn and maintained, the form, value, mean-
ing, and sources of symbols, and the form traditionpology.
1
The contrast between the Navajo’s large, rural
reservation and the smaller, more urban Chumash pop- takes. In short, the extent to which tradition can be con-
tested affects how the movement succeeds and why itulation seemed to account for this. It is interesting to
see similarities emerging in the past decade, especially works. In his narrow focus on internal processes, Fried-
man declines to recognize group relationships generallyin the prominence of cultural resource management ar-
chaeology and its ability to create stakeholder status in and anthropological verification in particular as equally
relevant social processes. This article is all about socialland management. Several commentators ask how or
why traditionalism works. O’Meara suggests that the processes in the construction, negotiation, and contes-
tation of indigenous traditional identity and addresseseffectiveness of tradition is rooted in a ‘‘human psycho-
logical tendency.’’ Kelley suggests that ‘‘diffusion’’ can ‘‘the cultural verification problem’’ only as one of these.
be resurrected and applied to these social processes. Dif-
fusion has been replaced by the morally tinged ‘‘appro-
priation’’ and ‘‘expropriation,’’ in which culture is ex-
clusive property whose movement usually reflects the
exercise of power. From a constructivist perspective,
References Cited
there are times when cultural transmission may be bet-
ter described as diffusion.
a b u- l u g h o d , l i l a . 1991. ‘‘Writing against culture,’’ in Recap-
One of the indications that Friedman misunderstands
turing anthropology: Working in the present. Edited by Rich-
our purpose is his statement that anthropologists ‘‘are
ard G. Fox, pp. 137–62. Santa Fe: School of American Research
Press. [mfb]
designated in this article as experts on Chumash tradi-
a l b a n es e , c a t h e r i n e . 1990. Nature religion in America.
tion.’’ We make or imply no such simplistic or exclu-
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
sive claim. Instead, we have explored the implications
a n d e r so n , b e n e d i c t . 1991. Revised edition. Imagined com-
of the authority granted to anthropologists and anthro-
munities. New York: Verso.
pological data in order to assess how anthropologists
a p p l e g a t e, r i c h a r d. 1975. ‘‘An index of Chumash place-
names,’’ Papers on the Chumash, pp. 21–46. San Luis Obispo
have used it and how this figures in processes of iden-
County Archaeological Society Occasional Papers 9.
———. 1977. ‘‘Native California concepts of the afterlife,’’ in
Flowers of the wind. Edited by Thomas C. Blackburn, pp. 105–1. Haley conducted ethnoarchaeological research on the Navajo
Reservation and in the former Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area at Black 19. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers 8.
a r n o l d, j e a n n e e. , a n d j o h n m . o ’ s h ea . 1993. ReviewMesa, Arizona, in 1980–83.
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 791
of: The evolution of Chumash society, by Chester King (New c o h e n, a b n e r. 1974a. ‘‘Introduction: The lesson of eth-
nicity,’’ in Urban ethnicity. Edited by Abner Cohen, pp. ix–York: Garland, 1990). American Antiquity 58:770.
a x e l ro d , r o b e r t . 1984. The evolution of cooperation. New xxiv. London: Tavistock.
———. 1974b. Two-dimensional man. Berkeley and Los Angeles:York: Basic Books. [jto]
barth, fredrik. Editor. 1969. Ethnic groups and boundaries. University of California Press.
c o n k l i n, b e t h a ., a n d l a u r a r . g r a h a m. 1995. TheBoston: Little, Brown.
———. 1995. Other knowledge and other ways of knowing. Jour- shifting middle ground: Amazonian Indians and eco-politics.
American Anthropologist 97:683– 94.nal of Anthropological Research 51:65–68.
b e r kh o f e r , r o b e r t f. , j r . 1978. The white man’s Indian. co r w i n , m i l e s. 1987. Heritage of Indians questioned: Genealo-
gists cast doubt on background of Chumash group. LosNew York: Vintage Books.
b l a c k b u r n, t h o m a s c . 1975. December’s child. Berkeley: Angeles Times, May 26.
c r a i g, s t e v e. 1983. Native American concerns and the Ham-University of California Press.
b l u, k a r e n i . 1980. The Lumbee problem. Cambridge: Cam- monds Estate: Critique of the adequacy and accuracy of the
Ocean Meadows EIR (83-EIR-16). MS on file at the Archaeologi-bridge University Press.
b o r d e w ic h , f e r g u s m . 1996. Killing the white man’s In- cal Information Center, Department of Anthropology, Univer-
sity of California, Santa Barbara.dian: Reinventing Native Americans at the end of the twenti-
eth century. New York: Doubleday. ———. 1979. ‘‘Inesen
˜o Chumash placenames of the Alisal Ranch
Area, near Santa Ynez, California,’’ in A cultural resources sen-b r a c h e r, k a t h e r i n e. 1984. ‘‘Comments on celestial repre-
sentations in rock art at Indian Creek,’’ in Papers on Chumash sitivity assessment for Alisal Ranch, Solvang, California. Com-
piled by Larry R. Wilcoxon. MS on file at the Archaeological In-rock art, pp. 91–100. San Luis Obispo County Archaeological
Society Occasional Paper 12. formation Center, Department of Anthropology, University of
California, Santa Barbara.b r a n d, s t e w a r t. 1988. ‘‘Indians and the counterculture,
1960s–1970s,’’ in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. craig, steve, chester king, and staff of the
s a n t a b a r b a r a i n d i a n c e n t e r. 1978. The religious and4, History of Indian-white relations. Edited by Wilcomb E.
Washburn, pp. 570–72. Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institu- historical significance of the Point Conception-Shishilop area
to Native Americans. MS on the file in Special Collections, Da-tion.
b r a n t i ng h a m , b a r n e y . 1985. Chumash leader: Nobody vidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.
d a r i a n- s m i t h, e v e . 1993. ‘‘Aboriginality, morality, and theowns mountains or ocean. Santa Barbara News-Press, Febru-
ary 1. law: Reconciling popular Western images of Australian Aborigi-
nes,’’ in Moralizing states and the ethnography of the present.breschini, gary s., anna runnings, and trudy ha-
v e r s a t. 1992. Cultural resources reconnaissance of the new Edited by Sally Falk Moore, pp. 55–77. American Ethnological
Society Monograph Series 5.Los Padres Dam and Reservoir Project, Carmel Valley, Monte-
rey County, California. MS, report prepared for Henrietta d e l o r i a, v i n e, j r. 1991. Research, Redskins, and reality.
American Indian Quarterly 15:457– 68.Stern, Monterey Peninsula Water Management District.
b r i g g s, c h a r l e s l . 1996. The politics of discursive authority ———. 1992. Comfortable fictions and the struggle for turf: An
essay review of The invented Indian: Cultural fictions and gov-in research on the ‘‘invention of tradition.’’ Cultural Anthropol-
ogy 11:435–69. ernment policies [edited by James A. Clifton (New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers, 1990)]. American Indian Quarterly 16:b r o w n , d. e. 1973. Hereditary rank and ethnic history: An
analysis of Brunei historiography. Journal of Anthropological 397–410.
d e l o ri a , v i n e , j r ., a n d c l i f f o r n l y t l e. 1984. The na-Research 29:113–22.
b r o w n, m i c h a e l f. 1997. The channeling zone: American tions within. New York: Pantheon.
d e v o s , g e o r g e, a n d l o l a r o m a n u c c i - r os s . 1995. 3dspirituality in an anxious age. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press. [mfb] edition. Ethnic identity. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Alta Mira Press.
d i e t l e r, m i c h a e l. 1994. ‘‘Our ancestors the Gauls’’: Archae-b r u n t o n, r o n. 1996. The Hindmarsh Island bridge and the
credibility of Australian anthropology. Anthropology Today ology, ethnic nationalism, and the manipulation of Celtic iden-
tity in modern Europe. American Anthropologist 96:584–605.12(4):2–7. [jto]
b u r e au o f t h e c e n s u s. 1994. 1990 census of population: d i l w o r t h , l e a h. 1996. Imagining Indians in the Southwest:
Persistent visions of a primitive past. Washington, D.C.: Smith-Characteristics of American Indians by tribe and language.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. sonian Institution Press.
d i r k s, n i c h o la s . 1990. History as a sign of the modern. Pub-c a l i f o r n ia s t a t e l a n d s c o m m i s s i on . 1982. Leasing, ex-
ploration, and development of oil and gas resources on state lic Culture 2(2):25– 32.
d u n d e s, a l a n. 1989. Folklore matters. Knoxville: Universitytide and submerged lands, Point Conception to Point Arguello,
Santa Barbara County, California: Technical appendices. MS on of Tennessee Press.
dyck, n., and j. waldram. Editors. 1993. Anthropology,file at the Archaeological Information Center, Department of
Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara. public policy, and native peoples in Canada. Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press. [dst]c a s t i l e, g e o r g e p i e r r e . 1996. The commodification of In-
dian identity. American Anthropologist 98:743– 49. e h n, b i l l y, j o n a s f rykman, and orvar lo
¨fgren.
1993. Fo
¨rsvenskningen av Sverige: Det nationellas fo
¨rvand-c h a r s l e y , s . r . 1974. ‘‘The formation of ethnic groups,’’ in
Urban ethnicity. Edited by Abner Cohen, pp. 337–68. London: lingar. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. [al]
e r i k s en , t h o m a s h y l l an d . 1993. Ethnicity and national-Tavistock.
c h a t t e r j e e, p a r t h a. 1993. The nation and its fragments: ism. Boulder: Pluto Press.
e x e c u t iv e c o m m i t t e e. 1979. SCA Executive CommitteeColonialism and postcolonial histories. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. minutes. Society for California Archaeology Newsletter 13(1):
26– 27.c h u r c h il l , w a r d . 1988. Sam Gill’s Mother Earth: Colonial-
ism, genocide, and the expropriation of indigenous spiritual tra- ———. 1980. SCA Executive Committee minutes. Society for
California Archaeology Newsletter 14(4):17–19.dition in contemporary academia. American Indian Culture
and Research Journal 12(3):49– 67. f e r g u s o n , t . j ., a n d e . r i c h a r d h a r t . 1985. A Zuni
atlas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. [kbk]clifton, james a. Editor. 1990. The invented Indian. New
Brunswick: Transaction. f l y n n, j o h n n y p. 1991. From three worlds to one: An analy-
sis of Chumash religious history. Ph.D. diss., University of Cal-c l i f f o r d , j a m e s . 1988. The predicament of culture. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press. ifornia, Santa Barbara, Calif.
———. 1995. Defense of the Western Gate: Environmental lawsclifford, james, and george e. marcus. Editors. 1986.
Writing culture. Santa Fe: School of American Research. in the protection of Indian sacred lands. Lecture presented at
792 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
the Department of Environmental Studies, University of Cali- h a n d l e r, r i c h a r d , a n d j o c e l y n l i n n e k i n . 1984. Tra-
dition, genuine or spurious. Journal of American Folklorefornia, Santa Barbara, February 13.
f l y n n, j o h n n y p ., a n d g a r y l a d e r m a n. 1994. Purga- 97(385):273 –90.
h a n s o n, a l l a n. 1991. Reply to Langdon, Levine, and Lin-tory and the powerful dead: A case study of Native American
repatriation. Religion and American Culture 4(1):51–75. nekin. American Anthropologist 93:449–50.
h a r d y, d a v e. 1978. Foes of LNG open ‘‘call Brown’’ cam-fox, richard g. Editor. 1990. Nationalist ideologies and the
production of national cultures. American Ethnological Soci- paign. Santa Barbara News-Press, May 18.
———. 1979. Chumash culture making comeback. Santa Bar-ety Monograph Series 2.
———. 1995. Urban poor and immigrant pure: The violence of bara News-Press, June 17.
h a r r i n gt o n , j o h n p. 1942. Culture element distributions,hi-rise heritage in India. Paper presented at the Department of
Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 19, Central California Coast. University of California Anthro-
pological Records 7(1).19.
f r i e d, m o r t o n. 1975. The notion of tribe. Menlo Park, Calif.: ———. 1986. The papers of John P. Harrington. Vol. 3. Southern
California/Basin. Milwood, N.Y.: Kraus International Publica-Cummings.
f r i e d la n d e r , j u d i t h . 1986. The National Indigenist Insti- tions.
h e i z e r, r o b e r t f. 1952. California Indian linguistic records:tute of Mexico reinvents the Indian: The Pame example. Amer-
ican Ethnologist 13:363–67. The Mission Indian vocabularies of Alphonse Pinart. Univer-
sity of California Anthropological Records 15:1– 84.f ri e d m a n , j o n a t h a n. 1994. Cultural identity and global
process. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage. ———. 1955. California Indian linguistic records: The Mission In-
dian vocabularies of H. W. Henshaw. University of Californiag a y to n , a . h . 1930. The Ghost Dance of 1870 in South-
Central California. University of California Publications in Anthropological Records 15:85–202.
———. 1968. The Indians of Los Angeles County: Hugo Reid’sAmerican Archaeology and Ethnology 28.
g e e r t z, a r m i n w . 1994. The invention of prophecy. Berkeley Letters of 1852. Southwest Museum Papers 21.
h e n s h a w, h e n r y w. , a n d a . l. k r o e b e r. 1907. ‘‘Chu-and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
g e l l n er , e r n e s t . 1983. Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Ba- mashan,’’ in Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico.
Edited by F. W. Hodge, pp. 296–97. Bureau of American Ethnol-sil Blackwell. [al]
g i b s o n, r o b e r t o . 1991. The Chumash. New York and Phila- ogy Bulletin 30, pt. 1.
h i c k s, g e o r g e l ., a n d m a r k j. h a n d l e r . 1987. ‘‘Eth-delphia: Chelsea House Publishers.
g i d d e ns , a n t h o n y . 1990. The consequences of modernity. nicity, public policy, and anthropologists,’’ in Applied anthro-
pology in America, 2d edition. Edited by Elizabeth M. EddyStanford: Stanford University Press.
gilbar, steven, and dean stewart. Compilers. 1994. and William L. Partridge, pp. 398–432. New York: Columbia
University Press.Tales of Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara: John Daniel.
g i l l, s a m. 1987. Mother Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago h i l l , j o n a t h a n d . 1992. Contested pasts and the practice of
anthropology: Overview. American Anthropologist 94:809–Press.
———. 1988. The power of story. American Indian Culture and 15.
———. Editor. 1996. History, power, and identity: EthnogenesisResearch Journal 12(3):69– 84.
———. 1990. ‘‘Mother Earth: An American myth,’’ in The in- in the Americas, 1492 –1992. Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press.vented Indian. Edited by James A. Clifton, pp. 129–43. New
Brunswick: Transaction. h o b s b aw m , e r i c j. 1992. 2d edition. Nations and national-
ism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.g l a s s o w , m i c h a e l a. 1978. An archaeological survey of U.S.
Coast Guard Property at Point Conception, Santa Barbara hobsbawm, eric, and terence ranger. Editors. 1983.
The invention of tradition. New York: Cambridge UniversityCounty, California. MS on file at the Archaeological Informa-
tion Center, Department of Anthropology, University of Cali- Press.
h u d s o n, t r a v is . 1979. A charmstone from the sea off Pointfornia, Santa Barbara.
g l a s s o w, m i c h a e l a ., a n d l a r r y r . w i l c o x o n. 1988. Conception, California. Journal of California and Great Basin
Anthropology 1:363–67.Coastal adaptations near Point Conception, California, with
particular regard to shellfish exploitation. American Antiquity h u d s o n, t r a v i s, a n d t h o m a s c. b l a c k b u r n . 1982.
The material culture of the Chumash interaction sphere. Vol.53:36–51.
g r a n t, c a m p b e l l. 1978. ‘‘Chumash: Introduction,’’ in Hand- 1. Food procurement and transportation. Ballena Press Anthro-
pological Papers 25.book of North American Indians, vol. 8, California. Edited by
Robert F. Heizer, pp. 505–8. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian In- ———. 1986. The material culture of the Chumash interactions
sphere. Vol. 4. Ceremonial paraphernalia, games, and amuse-stitution.
g r e e le y , a n d r e w m. 1974. Ethnicity in the United States. ments. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers 30.
h u d s o n, t r a v i s, a n d k a t h l e e n c o n t i. 1984. ‘‘The rockNew York: John Wiley.
g r e e n, r a y n a. 1988. The tribe called Wannabee: Playing In- art of Indian Creek: Ritual sanctuary of the gifted Chumash,’’
in Papers on Chumash rock art, pp. 47–88. San Luis Obispodian in America and Europe. Folklore 99(1):30–55.
g u p t a, a k h i l, a n d j a m e s f e r g u s o n. 1992. Beyond ‘‘cul- County Archaeological Society Occasional Paper 12.
h u d s o n, t r a v is , a n d e r n e s t u n d e r h a y. 1978. Crystalsture’’: Space, identity, and the politics of difference. Cultural
Anthropology 7(1):6–23. [mfb]in the sky. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers 10.
j a c k s o n, j e a n. 1989. Is there a way to talk about making cul-h a l e y, b r i a n, a n d l a r r y r. w i l c o x o n. 1996. The impli-
cations of revision: Point Conception’s sacredness revisited. Pa- ture without making enemies? Dialectical Anthropology 14:
127–44.per presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Califor-
nia Archaeology, Bakersfield, Calif., April 4. ———. 1995. Culture, genuine and spurious: The politics of Indi-
anness in the Vaupe
´s, Colombia. American Ethnologist 22:3–h a ll o w e l l , a . i r v i n g. 1963. American Indians, white and
black: The phenomenon of transculturalization. current an- 27.
j o h n s on , j o h n r . 1982. The trail to Fernando. Journal of Cal-thropology 4:519– 31.
h a n d l e r, r i c h a r d. 1985. On dialogue and destructive analy- ifornia and Great Basin Anthropology 4(1):132 –38.
———. 1988. Chumash social organization: An ethnohistoric per-sis: Problems in narrating nationalism and ethnicity. Journal of
Anthropological Research 41:171–82. spective. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara,
Calif.———. 1988. Nationalism and the politics of culture in Quebec.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 1993. ‘‘The Chumash Indians after secularization,’’ in
The Spanish missionary heritage of the United States. Edited———. 1989. ‘‘Ethnicity in the museum,’’ in Negotiating eth-
nicity. Edited by Susan Emley Keefe, pp. 18–26. NAPA Bulle- by Howard Benoist and Marı
´a Carolina Flores, pp. 143– 64. San
Antonio, Tex.: National Park Service.tin 8.
haley and wilcoxon The Making of Chumash Tradition 793
———. 1994a. ‘‘Chumash,’’ in Native America in the twentieth m a n n e r s , r o b e r t a . 1974. ‘‘Introduction to the ethnohistori-
cal reports on the land claims cases,’’ in Paiute Indians 1:century. Edited by Mary Davis, pp. 112–13. New York: Gar-
land. Southern Paiute and Chemehuevi, an ethnohistorical report,
pp. 17–19. New York and London: Garland. [kbk]———. 1994b. ‘‘Kitanemuk,’’ in Native America in the twenti-
eth century. Edited by Mary Davis, pp. 290–91. New York: Gar- m a s o n , j . a l d e n. 1912. The ethnology of the Salinan Indians.
University of California Publications in American Archaeol-land.
k c e t. 1987. Chumash—The glowing ember. (Video.) Los ogy and Ethnology 10:97–240.
m a t t h i e s s en , p e t e r . 1979. Point Conception: ProgressAngeles.
keefe, susan emley. Editor. 1989. Negotiating ethnicity: storms the ‘‘Western Gate.’’ Los Angeles Times, November 4.
———. 1983. In the spirit of Crazy Horse. New York: VikingThe impact of anthropological theory and practice. NAPA Bul-
letin 8. Press.
———. 1984. Indian country. New York: Viking Press.k e h o e, a l i c e b . 1990. ‘‘Primal Gaia: Primitivists and plastic
medicine men,’’ in The invented Indian. Edited by James A. m e a d , m a r g a r e t . 1975. ‘‘Ethnicity and anthropology in
America,’’ in Ethnic identity. Edited by George DeVos andClifton, pp. 193–209. New Brunswick: Transaction.
k i n g, c h e s t e r. 1976. ‘‘Chumash inter-village economic ex- Lola Romanucci-Ross, pp. 173–97. Palo Alto: Mayfield.
m i n e s, m a t t i s on . 1975. Islamisation and Muslim ethnicitychange,’’ in Native Californians. Edited by Lowell J. Bean and
Thomas C. Blackburn, pp. 289– 318. Ramona, Calif.: Ballena in South India. Man, n.s., 10:404– 19.
m i t c h e l l, j. c l y d e . 1956. The Kalela Dance. Manchester:Press.
———. 1990. The evolution of Chumash society. New York: Gar- Manchester University Press.
n a b o k o v, p e t e r . 1980. Chumash, the rediscovery of a Califor-land.
k i n g, c h e s t e r, a n d s t e v e n c r a i g. 1978. Cultural re- nia Indian nation. Santa Barbara Magazine 6(3):42 –53, 56 –57,
67–69, 77–79.sources technical report no. 8in support of Point Conception
LNG Project Environmental Impact Report. MS on file at the o ’ br i e n , j a y . 1991. ‘‘Toward a reconstitution of ethnicity: Cap-
italist expansion and cultural dynamics in Sudan,’’ in GoldenArchaeological Information Center, Department of Anthropol-
ogy, University of California, Santa Barbara. ages, dark ages. Edited by Jay O’Brien and William Roseberry,
pp. 126–38. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Californiaking, chester, robert gibson, jack hunter, m. kay
m a r t i n, l o i s r o b e r t s , a n d l a r r y w i l c o x o n. 1985. Press.
o’ c o n n o r , m a r y i . 1984. ‘‘Native American concerns,’’ inUnion Oil Project/Exxon Project Shamrock and Central Santa
Maria Basin Area Study EIS/EIR, Technical Appendix G, Cul- Point Arguello Field and Gaviota Processing Facility Area
Study and Chevron/Texaco Development Plans EIR/EIS, Tech-tural Resources. MS on file at the Archaeological Information
Center, Department of Anthropology, University of California, nical Appendix K, Cultural resources (pt 2) Public draft. MS on
file at the Archaeological Information Center, Department ofSanta Barbara.
k i n g, t h o m a s f . 1993. ‘‘Beyond Bulletin 38: Comments on Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara.
———. 1989. ‘‘Environmental impact review and the construc-the Traditional Cultural Properties Symposium,’’ in Tradi-
tional cultural properties. Compiled by Patricia L. Parker, pp. tion of contemporary Chumash ethnicity,’’ in Negotiating eth-
nicity. Edited by Susan Emley Keefe, pp. 9–17. NAPA Bulletin60–64. CRM 16.
k r o e b er , a l f r e d . 1907. Indian myths of South Central Cali- 8.
østerga
˚r d, u f f e. 1984. Hvad er det ‘‘danske’’ ved Danmark?fornia. University of California Publications in American Ar-
chaeology and Ethnology 4:167–250. Tanker om den ‘‘danske vej’’ til kapitalismen, grundtvigianis-
men og ‘‘dansk’’ mentalitet. Den Jyske Historiker 29–30:85–———. 1910. The Chumash and Costanoan languages. Univer-
sity of California Publications in American Archaeology and 137. [al]
o l s o n, r o n a ld l . 1930. Chumash prehistory. University ofEthnology 9:237– 72.
———. 1953 (1925). Handbook of the Indians of California. California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnol-
ogy 28:1–21.Berkeley: University of California Press.
l a c y, m a r c . 1995. Bid for tribal status divides Chumash. Los o’ m e a r a , j . t i m o t h y. 1981. American Indian concerns on
Los Padres National Forest. MS on file at Los Padres NationalAngeles Times, October 29.
l a m e d e e r , a r c h i e f i r e , a n d r i c h a r d e r d o e s . 1992. Forest Headquarters, Goleta, Calif.
o r s o, e t h e l yn g . 1974. ‘‘Folklore and identity,’’ in SocialGift of power. Santa Fe: Bear and Company Publishing.
l a n d s m a n, g a i l h . 1988. Sovereignty and symbol. Albuquer- and cultural identity. Edited by Thomas K. Fitzgerald, pp. 24 –
38. Athens: Southern Anthropological Society/University ofque: University of New Mexico Press.
l e a c h, e .r . 1965 (1954). Political systems of highland Burma. Georgia Press.
p a r e d es , j . a n t h o n y . 1974. ‘‘The emergence of contempo-Boston: Beacon Press.
l e o n a r d, k a r e n. 1992. Making ethnic choices. Philadelphia: rary Eastern Creek Indian identity,’’ in Social and cultural
identity. Edited by Thomas K. Fitzgerald, pp. 63–80. Athens:Temple University Press.
l e v i n e, f r a n c i s, a n d t h o m a s w . m e r l a n. 1993. ‘‘Docu- Southern Anthropological Society/University of Georgia Press.
parker, patricia l. Compiler. 1993. Traditional culturalmenting traditional cultural properties in non-Indian communi-
ties,’’ in Traditional cultural properties. Compiled by Patricia properties. CRM 16.
p a r k e r, p a t r i c i a l ., a n d t h o m a s f . k i n g. 1990. Guide-L. Parker, pp. 55– 59. CRM 16.
l i n d e- l a u r s e n, a n d e r s. 1995. Det nationales natur: lines for evaluating and documenting traditional cultural prop-
erties. National Register Bulletin 38.Studier i dansk-svenske relationer. Copenhagen: Nordic Coun-
cil of Ministers. [al]p e a r c e, r o y h a r v e y . 1988 (1953). Savagism and civiliza-
tion. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Californial i n n e ki n , j o c e l y n . 1991. Cultural invention and the di-
lemma of authenticity. American Anthropologist 93:446–49. Press.
p o w e l l, j o h n w e s l e y. 1891. Seventh annual report of thel i t t l ef i e l d , d o u g l a s r ., a n d t a n i s t h o r n e . 1990.
The spirit of enterprise. Los Angeles: Pacific Enterprises. Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution 1885–86. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printingl u r i e , n a n c y o e s t r e i c h. 1970 (1955). ‘‘Anthropology and
Indian claims litigation: Problems, opportunities, and recom- Office.
r e n a n, e r n e s t. 1990 (1882). ‘‘What is a nation?’’ in Nationmendations,’’ in Applied anthropology: Readings in the uses of
the science of man. Edited by James A. Clifton, pp. 199 –212. and narration. Edited by Homi Bhabha, pp. 8– 22. New York:
Routledge.New York: Houghton Mifflin.
m c g u i r e, r a n d a l l h . 1992. Archaeology and the first ri c h e r , s t e p h e n . 1988. Fieldwork and the commodification
of culture: Why the natives are restless. Canadian Review ofAmericans. American Anthropologist 94:816–36.
m a l i n o ws k i , b r o n i s l a w. 1960 (1944). A scientific theory of Sociology and Anthropology 25:406– 20.
r o g e r s, d e n n is b a n k s . 1929. Prehistoric man of the Santaculture and other essays. New York: Galaxy Books.
794 current anthropology Volume 38, Number 5, December 1997
Barbara coast. Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Natu- s t r o n g, p a u l i ne t u r n e r. 1994. Review of: The invented
Indian, edited by James A. Clifton (New Brunswick: Transac-ral History.
r o o s e ns , e u g e e n e. 1989. Creating ethnicity. Newbury tion Publishers, 1990). American Ethnologist 21:1052– 53.
t o n k i n so n , r . 1997. Anthropology and Aboriginal tradition:Park, Calif.: Sage.
r o s a l d o, r e n a t o. 1989. Culture and truth: The remaking of The Hindmarsh Island bridge affair and the politics of interpre-
tation. Oceania 67 (4). [dst]social analysis. Boston: Beacon Press. [mfb]
r o s e be r r y , w i l l i a m , a n d j a y o ’ b r i e n. 1991. ‘‘Introduc- w a g n er , r o y . 1981. Revised edition. The invention of culture.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.tion,’’ in Golden ages, dark ages. Edited by Jay O’Brien and
William Roseberry, pp. 1–18. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni- we b e r , e u g e n. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen. Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press. [al]versity of California Press.
s a i d, e d w a r d. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon w e i n e r , j a m e s f . 1995. Anthropologists, historians, and the
secret of social knowledge. Anthropology Today 11(5):3–7.Books.
s a n d o s, j a m e s a . 1991. Christianization among the Chu- [jto]
w e s t e c s e r v i c e s, i n c . 1982. Environmental report for themash: An ethnohistoric perspective. American Indian Quar-
terly 15(1):65–89. Point Arguello Field, appendix 3, Ethnographic overview and
considerations: Native Americans of the Santa Barbara Chan-s c o t t, c o l i n h . 1993. ‘‘Customs, tradition, and the politics
of culture: Aboriginal self-government in Canada,’’ in Anthro- nel Region. MS on file at the Archaeological Information Cen-
ter, Department of Anthropology, University of California,pology, public policy, and native peoples in Canada. Edited by
Noel Dyck and James B. Waldram, pp. 311–33. Montreal: Santa Barbara.
wilcoxon, larry r., rebecca conard, kay martin,McGill–Queen’s University Press.
s c o t t, d a v i d. 1991. That event, this memory: Notes on the p h y l l i s o l i v e r a , a n d j u l i a g. c o s t e l l o. 1986. Draft
Cultural Resource Technical Report: An evaluation of prehis-anthropology of African diasporas in the New World. Diaspora
1:261–84. toric, historic, and contemporary cultural resources at Las
Cruces for the permanent Vista Del Mar School, Santa Barbaras e b a st i a n , l y n n e. 1993. ‘‘Protecting traditional cultural prop-
erties through the Section 106 process,’’ in Traditional cul- County, California. MS on file at the Archaeological Informa-
tion Center, Department of Anthropology, University of Cali-tural properties. Compiled by Patricia L. Parker, pp. 22– 26.
CRM 16. fornia, Santa Barbara.
w i l k i n so n , c h a r l e s f . 1987. American Indians, time, ands i d e r, g e r a ld m . 1993. Lumbee Indian histories. New York:
Cambridge University Press. the law: Native societies in a modern constitutional democ-
racy. New Haven: Yale University Press. [mfb]s o l l e n, r o b e rt h . 1978a. Point Concepcion: Environmental-
ists may join Bixby Ranch in LNG fight. Santa Barbara News- w i l s o n , d i a n a. 1993. When worlds collide and you can’t go
home again: Field work ethnographies in the Wild West of LosPress, March 6.
———. 1978b. LNG port at Concepcion: Chumash archaeologi- Angeles. Anthropology UCLA 20:27–42.
———. 1994. Understanding misunderstanding: American Indi-cal sites would be ruined. Santa Barbara News-Press, March
20. ans in Euro American museums. Ph.D. diss., University of Cal-
ifornia, Los Angeles, Calif.———. 1983. Group of Chumash defend Hammonds Meadow’s
value. Santa Barbara News-Press, October 28. ———. 1996. Inventory of Native American human remains and
associated funerary objects in the possession or control of thesollors, werner. Editor. 1989. The invention of ethnicity.
New York: Oxford University Press. Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, and determined
by reasonable belief to be culturally affiliated with Santa Ynezsp i c e r , e d w a r d h . 1971. Persistent cultural systems. Science
174(4011):795–800. Band of Mission Indians (Chumash). MS.
w o l f, e r i c r . 1988. Inventing society. American Ethnologists t e w a r t, o m e r c. 1978. ‘‘Litigation and its effects,’’ in Hand-
book of North American Indians, vol. 8, California. Edited by 15:752–61.
w o l f, f r e d a l a n . 1991. The eagle’s quest. New York: Sum-Robert F. Heizer, pp. 705– 12. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution. mit Books.
w u n d e r, j o h n r. 1994. ‘‘Retained by the people’’: A historyst o l c k e , v e r e n a. 1995. Talking culture: New boundaries,
new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. current anthropology of American Indians and the Bill of Rights. New York: Oxford
University Press. [mfb]36:1–24.
s t o l l, i r a e . 1994. Census finds odd boom in Chumash popu- y g n a c i o- d e s o t o , e r n e s t i n e. 1994. Last Chumash speak-
ers: The Ygnacio family. Alolkoy 7(4):8.lation. Los Angeles Times, November 4.
