The smell of burning sage wafted across four acres of soon-to-be-restored land in the Dominguez Gap Wetlands on Saturday, June 5 in a Native American ceremony held during the Riverpark Coalition’s celebration of World Environment Day.
“I treasure this four acres, I know it doesn’t look like much right now, but it’s the first four in 70 [acres], and then that 70 [acres] is going to become 100 and then we’re just going to keep expanding if you’ll let us,” Amy Valenzuela, President of the Riverpark Coalition, said.
The Riverpark Coalition envisions a stretch of natural habitat extending uninterrupted along the LA River from South Gate to the ocean.
“It’s a big job but the time is right to make it happen,” Valenzuela said.
The Riverpark Coalition has also received tentative approval for the restoration of 11 additional acres, according to Valenzuela.
“Building this park is a really important first step, especially in Long Beach. We don’t have a lot of open spaces that are devoted to native ecosystems. Most of our open spaces are parks where it’s a monoculture with like two or three imported types of trees,” Jason Steinhauser, a horticulture student at Long Beach City College, said.
Long Beach uses 8% of land within its borders as parkspace, compared to an average of 15% in United States cities overall.
According to The Trust for Public Land, Long Beach’s white and wealthier neighborhoods are allocated more parkspace than neighborhoods populated by working class people of color. The East side of the city has the expansive 365.6-acre El Dorado Regional Park while there is no public green space of comparable size in the West side of Long Beach.
On average, Long Beach neighborhoods populated mostly by people of color had 47% less park space than the city average, and 90% less park space than in majority white neighborhoods, according to the report by The Trust for Public Land.
The report also stated that low income neighborhoods had 60% less park space than the city average, and 89% less park space than high income neighborhoods.
“A space like this is beyond important. It’s necessary to save. It’s necessary to keep California what it is for future generations,” Steinhauser said.
Through the Riverpark Coalition, Valenzuela is trying to protect what’s left of her ancestral lands surrounding what is now known as the LA River.
“I tried [for] many years [to] turn my back on the river, but she just kept calling me, and I just couldn’t– it was too hard to ignore. And so here I am now doing the work that I inherited,” Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela’s family belongs to the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, who lived in symbiosis with the river for millennia, using its currents for trade and building homes from the reeds that grew along its muddy banks.
White settlers eventually forced them off the land.
“When the conquerors came, they would just push out [the villages] because that was the good place to live,” Valenzuela said.
The population that displaced the Tongva were less interested in working with the river and more focused on being able to control it, turning it into the polluted stream running between concrete slopes that it is today.
“[In] our worldview, we’re related to the land. This is our church, we don’t go inside a building to pray. We come out here and we connect with the plants, the animals, the water. It’s in our DNA. It’s part of us. So whatever you’re doing to the earth you’re doing to yourself,” Tahesha Knapp-Christensen, a member of the Omaha Tribe, said about the relationship Indigenous people have with the land.
The Riverpark Coalition seeks to rekindle the connection between the river and those who live around it, encouraging locals to protect the land it runs through.
“People have been working to be in community with the river since people were on the river, because the river is something that, although we try to make concrete and tame, it lives in us and we live in her. So we’re here today to […] rematriate some of the land that could be alive again, and helpful to the plants, and the animals, and the river, and the people.” Valenzuela said.
