Cal State Long Beach is two years behind schedule on appointing a caretaker for the sacred Puvungna land it rests on, and local tribes are struggling to obtain answers on when it will make a decision.
Friends of Puvungna and the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy (TTPC) were the lone applicants when the California State University (CSU) leadership attempted to find a group to steward the cultural site. Though Friends of Puvungna has been caring for the land for over 30 years, the CSU denied them for lack of funds and experience, and cited conflict of interest as another concern.
“It adds insult to injury,” said Joyce Perry, cultural resource director for the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nations-Belardes.
Perry represents one of several tribes that have been fighting for decades to protect and preserve the remaining 22 acres of the sacred site known as Puvungna, which the Acjachemen and Gabrielino/Tongva nations traditionally believe to be the birthplace of creation.
Significance of Puvungna Land
According to anthropologist and former CSULB professor Eugene E. Ruyle’s website on Puvungna, the Puvungna land was once 500 acres of territory. The 22 acres that remain are significant to Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nations-Belardes as well as the Gabrielino/Tongva people and several other Native groups that used to live in the area that is now Southern California.
Perry told the Signal Tribune in a 2020 interview that according to their tribe’s origin stories, the site is the place where the ancestral beings Wiyot and Chinigchinich established the ceremonies, rites and moral codes that guide the Acjachemen people. It’s where the first people gathered when Wiyot died and awaited his return.
Instead, Chinigchinich arose and recreated people in their physical form.
Rebecca Robles, president of Friends of Puvungna and Acjachemen culture bearer, told the Signal Tribune in 2020 that the site is now a sacred gathering place for many Indigenous people, as most tribes have had their land taken from them.
“Indigenous people that I know, they always tell me, ‘I’m a Lakota, but I can’t go back to my sacred site, I come here and I pray,’” Robles told the Signal Tribune via Zoom in 2020. She noted that although this may not be the sacred site of many Indigenous people she speaks to, they go there and receive comfort.
A Lawsuit Forces CSULB to find a Caretaker for Puvungna Land
The Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nations-Belardes (tribes) and California Cultural Resources Preservation Alliance (CCRPA) sued Cal State Long Beach (CSULB) in 2019 after the university dumped 6,400 pounds of debris onto the sacred land.
The university entered an agreement to find a steward for the 22 acres of land as part of its restrictive land covenant, which was one factor in a lawsuit settlement that took place in 2021. CSULB had been maintaining the land by mowing the grass twice a year, according to documents from Friends of Puvungna.
In 1990, the university took down the borders around Puvungna to build the Miller Japanese Garden. In 1992, the university attempted to build on the land again, proposing the “West Village Project.” Protests against this development sparked the creation of the Save Puvungna Coalition, a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and the university spending $2.3 million to fight the lawsuit.
CSULB abandoned the project, and Friends of Puvungna has been taking care of the land since to “protect, restore, and maintain Puvungna as a place for Indigenous tribal groups to conduct religious and cultural activities.”
The settlement reached in September 2021 required CSULB to make a “good faith” effort to establish a conservation easement on Puvungna, which includes finding a group to steward the land. In the agreement between the tribes and university, two years was written in the settlement as the timeline for “good faith.”
CSULB is now two years behind schedule, and the dirt which came from a dormitory construction project that it dumped on the site remains.
“They can’t honor their commitment,” Perry said. “What’s being lost over the years is that the university isn’t taking any action, so there’s still debris and construction dirt sitting on our sacred site … every year and every month that the university continues to stall, they continue to signal disrespect towards us. This behavior is insulting and also degrades the framework of respect and trust that we thought we were building with them.”
Following the settlement, Perry said she and representatives from CCRPA began having recurring biweekly virtual meetings with the university. These meetings spanned the time CSULB was crafting the Request for Proposal, a document that agencies publish inviting organizations or companies to submit a proposal for a specific project.
According to a letter from Sarah Lucey, an attorney who represents the tribe and CCRPA, tribe members and CSU employees worked together on the RFP draft for months during their regular meetings. CSULB released its RFP for a land steward in April 2024, already a year past its “good faith” agreement timeframe.
According to the same letter, CSULB did not notify the tribe and CCRPA when they published the RFP “despite numerous promises that it would.”
Longtime Caretaker Friends of Puvungna Denied, Confusion Sparks
Although the 22 acres of Puvungna land legally belongs to CSULB, a nonprofit made up of Hahjchemen and Tongva people called Friends of Puvungna have been taking care of the land since 1993. The university mows the grass in Puvungna twice a year, while Friends of Puvungna conducts weeding, tumbleweed clearing, mulching, mowing and tending to the native plants.
They also hold a variety of educational, cultural and outreach programs attended by the Long Beach community and beyond. Since 1997, Friends has hosted the Ancestor Walk, attended by Native groups throughout Southern California. The day includes a pilgrimage to local sacred sites, the sweat lodge ceremony, the Bear Dancers healing ceremony, the Eagle Dance and communal meals.
Throughout the year, Friends also hosts poetry readings, basket weaving workshops, prayer runs, children’s storytime and food distributions. These events are open to the community and free.
Friends of Puvungna and the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy (TTPC) submitted a joint proposal to steward the land they’ve already been caring for for more than 30 years. The goals they laid out in their proposal for Puvungna include:
- Protecting, preserving, and enhancing Puvungna as open space, and restoring it to its natural historic state to the greatest extent possible.
- Protecting Puvungnan’s spiritually, historically, and archaeologically significant cultural resources.
- Promoting public education and interest in cultural resource preservation and Native American traditional, religious, and spiritual knowledge through outreach programs to CSULB and the community.
- Promoting stewardship programs for the land and cultural resources on Puvungna, including programs to educate the public regarding Puvungna’s cultural and spiritual significance and tribal community programs to celebrate Puvungna as the cultural and spiritual place of the ancestors.
- Providing cultural resource preservation input to local, state and federal agencies as needed.
- Obtaining long-term funding for the protection and preservation of Puvungna and its cultural resources through grants and other fundraising activities.
In July 2024, CSULB announced via letter that “all prospective bidders” had been rejected, and a second RFP would be required. The Friends of Puvungna and TTPC’s proposal was the only one submitted, the CSU has since said.
The university’s letter stated that their original RFP didn’t adequately address “conflict of interest restrictions.” The letter said they also left out other requirements such as years of experience, funding and “existing deeds of conservation of similar property” to demonstrate experience.
Although Friends of Puvungna don’t have experience stewarding a land trust, Perry pointed out that the other half of the joint proposal, TTPC, does have prior experience.
At the same time, Lucey said their recurring virtual meetings with the CSU and CSULB representatives stopped. She said their last meeting occurred shortly before the RFP came out. They had a standing calendar invite for every other Monday, “then they were just gone,” she said.
CSU representatives have since doubled down on their stance, adding that they can’t conduct a second RFP until they secure long-term, permanent funding to maintain the land. In November 2024, they agreed to continue meeting with the tribe representatives only “with non-attorney Tribal representatives,” but the tribe said they have been unsuccessful in getting a meeting with the CSU.
“The fact that the Hahjchemen nation and Gabrielino communities have sanctioned the Friends of Puvungna — the two tribal entities that hold this space sacred — I don’t think they can ask for a better situation frankly, so I’m perplexed,” Perry told the Signal Tribune. “We’re kind of right back to where we always have been.”
