Celebrating Native American Heritage
Programming
Mon., Dec. 2, 6–7 p.m.
The Huntington and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West present a discussion on the historical and ongoing work to protect natural lands. This talk features Kimberly Morales Johnson, Tribal Secretary of the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians; historian and author Megan Kate Nelson; and Rep. Judy Chu. Huntington curator Josh Garrett-Davis will moderate the discussion.
Using the history of the Wright family on California’s Round Valley Reservation, William Bauer, professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, examines the ability of one family to demonstrate power and vitality in an era where Native peoples saw their way of life undercut by the United States and the state of California.
Stories
In the spring of 2022, Tongva photographer Mercedes Dorame peered down at a tide pool on Santa Cruz Island, roughly 25 miles off the coast of California. Focusing her camera, she captured an image that provides a window into worlds.
The Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, established almost 50 years ago, serves the needs of the largest urban Native American population in the United States. The Huntington’s records related to the commission’s founding reflect some of the complex histories of Indigenous people in Southern California.
In 1864, with the Civil War raging and the fate of the Union undecided, two volunteer regiments ambushed hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho people. For author Ari Kelman, the ambiguities surrounding the Sand Creek Massacre remain unresolved.
Early California Population Project
The Early California Population Project is a database developed by the Huntington Library providing public access to all the information contained in the California mission registers from 1769 to 1850. The database includes baptism, marriage, and burial records of each of the California missions, providing historical information on Native Californians, soldiers, and settlers of Alta California.
In the Galleries
Important Artworks
Charles Bird King, Moanahonga (Great Walker), An Ioway Chief, ca. 1824, oil on panel, 17 1/2 x 13 3/4 in. Purchased with funds from the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation Acquisition Fund for American Art and the Art Collectors’ Council, the Lynn K. Altman Family Trust, the Janis and Rudy Mercado Art Acquisitions Fund, and the Angels Attic Museum Fund for Art Acquisitions, in memory of Jackie McMahan and Eleanor Pitts La Vove. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
In 2021, The Huntington acquired a striking portrait of Moanahonga (Great Walker), an Ioway chief, painted around 1824 by the American artist Charles Bird King.
Important Artworks
Unrecorded artist (Haudenosaunee [Iroquois]), Niagara beadwork hat, ca. 1870, beadwork on black cloth and velvet. Gift of Jonathan and Karin Fielding. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Indigenous artists from the Haudenosaunee, Huron, Abenaki, and Algonquian nations in the Northeast of North America have created beaded masterpieces for thousands of years. These artists used locally sourced materials as well as the materials that their communities traded with other Indigenous communities.
Important Artworks
Cara Romero, American (Chemehuevi), b. 1977, Hermosa, 2021, Archival pigment print. Purchased with funds provided by the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
This intimate portrait of the artist's daughter Crickett Tiger at Hermosa Beach, dressed in the regalia of the coastal peoples of California, evokes the Chemehuevi mythos of Great Ocean Woman (Hutsipamamow) and the oral histories of Los Angeles and the California coast as a place of creation–and as a sacred place.
Important Artworks
Unrecorded artist (Mi’kmaq), Quillwork box, Maine or Nova Scotia, Canada, ca. 1850, wood, birchbark, porcupine quills, and aniline dye. Gift of Jonathan and Karin Fielding. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
This box, made by a Mi’kmaq artist in the 1800s, is a testament to Mi’kmaq cultural traditions persisting over time. The porcupine quills are a traditional material, but the lidded box shape is similar to European boxes from the 1800s. This box shows how Mi’kmaq artists adapted to the tastes and influences of Europeans and Americans, and how Mi’kmaq artists incorporated new styles into their artmaking practices.
Important Artworks
Sandy Rodriguez, YOU ARE HERE / Tovaangar / El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula / Los Angeles, 2021, Hand-processed watercolor and 23K gold on amate paper. Purchased with funds from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and the estate of George and Nancy Parsons. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
This multilingual map of the greater Los Angeles area represents the topography, language, flora, fauna, and land stewardship in the region over time and illustrates the movement and histories of peoples who have called—and continue to call—the area home. YOU ARE HERE is firmly rooted in research about Los Angeles—its communities, history, maps, primary documents—while leveraging diverse intergenerational relationships with scholars and historians, including the late Tongva elder, Julia Bogany.
Ongoing Exhibition
Borderlands
A portion of The Huntington’s American art collection is contextualized with contributions from contemporary artists in “Borderlands,” a new permanent collections installation that explores a more expansive view of American art history.
Photo: Borderlands. Installation view in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art at The Huntington. Photo: Joshua White / JWPictures.com. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
In the Store
Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People
American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science
By Enrique Salmón
The belief that all life-forms are interconnected and share the same breath—known in the Rarámuri tribe as iwígara—has resulted in a treasury of knowledge about the natural world, passed down for millennia by Native cultures. Ethnobotanist Enrique Salmón builds on this concept of connection and highlights 80 plants revered by North America’s Indigenous peoples.
We Are the Land: A History of Native California
By Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer
We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California on the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.