According to figures released by CSULB administrators, $412,033 were allocated to "Cultural Resource Management Expenditures" in 1992-93 including contract expenses related to new construction of the Pyramid, Parking Structure, and Infant/Toddler Center. All of these sites have yielded artifacts further confirming what is already known, historically and archaeologically, that the entire campus sits atop an ancient and long-inhabited Native American village. The university currently projects an expenditure of $263,000 for 1993-94.
Persons interested in joining the Coalition to Save Puvungna which seeks to conserve the Puvungna remnant of land along Bellflower in a natural state are invited to attend Tuesday meetings which have been moved indoors since the advent of chilly nights. Meetings start at 7:30 p.m. and are held at Stanford Junior High School. From Bellflower take 23rd Street (just north of Target) which dead-ends at the school; drive around the campus to the opposite side and into the parking lot by the bungalows. Meetings are in bungalow room 904.
The community is also invited to attend a California Native American Heritage Commission meeting on December 3 at the Long Beach Public Library auditorium, 101 Pacific Avenue. Puvungna is on the agenda for 5:30 p.m. This will be the second such hearing by the commission which decided after its June meeting that the university should not develop the land in question. Currently the restraining order issued in Superior Court still prevents CSULB administrators from proceeding with their development plans; their court appeal is scheduled for later in December.
We continue our series of sketches with Lillian Robles who has become familiar to Long Beach residents through Los Angeles Times stories and television coverage as the 77-year-old Juaneno elder who initiated and maintained the round-the-clock prayer vigil for several weeks in June at the Puvungna site. She continued walks around the perimeter almost every evening throughout the summer and later returned to camp on the site for the duration of the temporary restraining order to document the university's actions there. Currently she walks at the site every morning.
One of the plaintiffs represented by the ACLU in the Native Americans' battle against CSULB, Lillian has spoken at many hearings and gatherings explaining the Native American side of the issue and describing the ungracious treatment she has received from university administrators.
Lillian and her husband, Louis, live in Long Beach and raised their four children here. They always valued education very highly and all of their children are college graduates; one daughter holds an advanced degree. Their son, Louis Jr., is an alumnus of CSULB and has joined his parents in the coalition and in speaking at some hearings.
The Robles also provided foster care for 300 children in their home over a period of 30 years. They were recognized by the county for the important work they had done by taking youngsters with the most problems whom no one else wanted to help. After her own children were grown and she had given up her foster care license, Lillian went to work at McKinley elementary as a bilingual school-community worker. There she continued helping youngsters, encouraging them to stay in school and to study hard by using a variety of methods including "bribery" of small monetary rewards for "A"s!
In order to better communicate, especially with younger immigrant families whose children attended McKinley, she returned, at age 62, to Long Beach City College to improve her Spanish. Since her retirement she has enjoyed world travel and researching more of the history of her family. Always an involved person, Lillian said she felt the call very strongly to help save the Puvungna site. In fact, she cut short a visit with her daughter in Wyoming because she felt drawn to come back to the land and begin the prayer vigil.
At the outset of her vigil at the Bellflower site, Lillian was supported by another Juaneno descendant and Long Beach Resident, Richard Silva. He has walked the Bellflower site perimeter every evening since the prayer vigil began even though he has a long daily drive to and from work in Los Angeles.
Richard was born in Sunset Beach in 1941; his father ran a dairy on Signal Hill in the 1920s. As an adult Richard has been very active with the Capistrano Indian Council and other Juaneno functions, especially those involving craft activities and cooking for the old people whom he notes it is very important to keep together.
Richard was a very active protester of the toll road in Laguna Canyon two years ago. He also shoulders the sad responsibility of helping rebury ancestors unearthed in San Juan Capistrano and at Camp Penelton. Most recently he helped rebury two persons on a five acre site designated for such use at Penelton (The Juanenos are charged annual fees for the burial area, however). One he described as a young woman whose skeleton revealed the "slave" formation--deformed bones from having to carry heavy loads; the other skeleton was that of a child. Richard said of the proposed CSULB development, "When I heard about this, with the reburial here and everything, I just had to come over and help oppose it."
This document was posted in July 1995
eruyle@csulb.edu