Native LAnd is Burning

Hello relatives, Tigreetseed for being with us here on All My Relations. You know, at the beginning of the year, there was a catastrophic wildfire that resulted in the death of 29 people in the burning of over 50,000 acres of land and the destruction of countless buildings. Through traveling and connecting with indigenous people for Project 5-6-2, I learned that Los Angeles, what is now known as Los Angeles and what is now known as California, is actually Indian land. You know, there are over 109 federally recognized tribes in California and Los Angeles has the largest population of urban natives out of anywhere in the country, right? So in the wake of the fire, we know that Los Angeles is home to thousands of our relatives to native peoples and we heard small stories here and there about tribes sending relief, Navajo Nation, Milax, even my own tribe, Tulalip, we sent fire trucks down to LA and we had that, but we really, while this was all unfolding, we're looking at national news outlets and we're asking ourselves, how is Indian country and how are native people responding to what's happening in Tovongar? Yeah, Tongvalan, Chumashlan, I know native people who live down there, I went and studied at UCLA, and we really got to center the voices of Tongva people, of Chumash people, of so many California Indians, there are like 250 plus native languages in California alone. And that's probably an undercount, let's keep it real. So yeah, now Los Angeles is one of the great urban epicenters, not just for native people, but around the world. And it stands as a beacon broadcasting this American dream globally, but long before there was ever Hollywood, before there was Venice Beach, Marina del Rey, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, countless iconic places that are part of the fabric of LA, Los Angeles was and still is native land. But we have seen very little constructive journalism, telling the story of how native peoples, our relatives have been tragically impacted and affected by these fires. Besides, of course, the ridiculous comments by Agent Orange and Fox News about how these fires are somehow related to the restoration of the salmon habitat in the Klamath river, but we'll get to that later. Well, exactly, in times like these, right? More than ever, we are all wondering how our relatives are being impacted, and we can all benefit from thinking about fire, from an indigenous perspective, and really situating ourselves in the indigenous perspective around how these fires came to be, why we continue to have wildfires in Southern California, how, and since really, our relationship was with fire, and what we might do to get back to a place of those traditional relationships that really sustain our colleges. Right. Let's just stop and think about what makes us uniquely human as two-legged beings. Unique, unlike any other animal that we, as human beings, have an integral relationship with fire. I just have to stop and pause because there's a song that my son loves on the jungle book about King Louis saying, I want to be like you, like just teach me the ways of the man, teach me how to make fire. Right. Because we know it's in our ancestral ways, it's part of what Creator gifted us, and the relationship and knowledge has been key to our survival and stewardship since our beginnings in all of our indigenous cultures. And today, with climate change, the crisis that we're facing, urbanization, those relationships have been forced way out of balance. Right. And like so much else, largely lost. So these intrinsic knowledge ways were rarely if ever considered during historic expansion and development. And so here we are today, collectively feeling the effect manifest in every real life-altering way, the impacts of losing that relationship with fire, the ecosystem with the land, with the plants. What was so shocking about a lot of those fires is that they reached the very edge of the ocean. Right. The all of the along PCH Pacific Coast Highway. We used to drive to drive up and down there. I remember thinking, like, well, at least these ones won't get impacted, because they're not a lot of foliage. Wrong, wrong. Native people knew that the plants that we're growing there are, like, kindling. Right. So we're going to learn more about that today. Mm-hmm. And to get some indigenous perspective on the matter, we sent Pancho. Our friends let's go Sanchez to Tovangar to tell the real story. And we are so excited to have him in the studio with us today. He's been with us here at Tardlands and working with us on all my relations since the beginning of this season. Emmy Award-winning social justice filmmaker at that. Welcome, Pancho. Yo, yo. I'm Pancho, or Francisco Sanchez. And I'm Chicano. I'm also from the Ryan clan of Ireland. And yeah, I'm a filmmaker and journalist. You know, I moved out here to the Pacific Northwest and was just, you know, really welcomed, you know, into the space, really. And I just want to thank both you, Timris and Matika for inviting me in, you know, initially, even before I started working here. And now inviting me to play this, this kind of role. Well, we love having you on the team, Pancho. You know, so lucky. We're so glad that you're here and you're joining us and that you were down, that I was like, hey, go to LA and you're like, yeah, I'm down. And that's really great because I think that that means that we can do more stories like this. And I think that makes our storytelling capacity so much larger. And so it's really exciting. So, you know, tell us about some of the big realizations that you learned from this process, from going down and looking to find, you know, some indigenous perspective on the matter. Yeah. So we're really living within the climate catastrophe, you know, it's it's unfolding on every front all around us. And like Matika and Timris were saying, this was really happening in native land all over the world. And for it to be happening now in LA, it's finally now getting the spotlight. So we wanted to see how are native people who are being impacted by these fires all over the world being impacted now in this urban center that's getting this humongous media attention. How are they responding? And, you know, trying to move forward in a good way. So set the scene for us. You fly down to LA. A lot of people have, you know, you set it earlier. Matika, you know, tribal nations have sent support. The city of Seattle, my partners of firefighter medic. I know they sent support. Everybody set in trucks down. Set the scene when you arrived. What was it like when you arrived in LA? Yeah, yeah. I expected really to come into LA as I've seen it before where it's really smoggy. It already kind of looks smoky. It was kind of surreal coming in for it not to look like that. And it didn't look like that because it had just rained. I learned later on that that was the first time it had rained since May, the year before, which was super, super wild. So from May 2024 to January, there had been zero rain so wild. Much different than our lives here. Usually winter there means it rains just a few days every month. Yeah. And those are like blessing days. Yeah. Anyway. This was this has been a really important wake up call for me to start, you know, living in a good way with those those things that maybe I hadn't thought of as relatives like fire. And I hope that this can be a wake up call for all of our listeners as well, you know, to kind of start living in the same way. Well, we're so grateful that you went down there and got to speak with some of our relatives and get their perspective on the ground, help us better understand what their needs are right now. And really, this is just a shift, a shift for all of us. And a wake up call, as you say. So let's jump right into it. Take it away. Take us down to L.A. Pancho. Okay, yeah, let's get into it. First we're going to hear from Jessica Alderrone, from the Schummach and Tongva nations of Southern California. She's a musician, poet, author of sisterhood, as well as the director of land, water, and climate justice for sacred peoples, institute of indigenous peoples. Jessica explains that the Tongva have always been stewards of the land and have lived in relationship with fire and used it in a good way. My name is Jessica Alderrone. I am Tonguei or also known as Tongva, Gabrielino, as well as Schummach and Yaki. The original peoples of this land, they were always in relationship and stewarding the land and had practices that would maybe have mitigated this fire damage. Yeah, and that, you know, consisted of knowing where to set up homes and knowing how to understand fire. I mean, there are times where a fire is going to happen naturally with, you know, maybe a lightning strike. But when it came to our loved ones, our relatives who are now ancestors, when they were tending to the land, everything was with intention. And so it's with knowledge that when you set fire to the land, you're going to put balance in the land. You're going to eliminate disease and prevent disease. You'll allow fresh new shoots to come and so it was a way of life to keep that balance throughout our communities, really, so that we would always have clean healthy foods and a clean healthy environment. And then how was the settlement of Los Angeles disrupted those practices? The very first interruption comes with the mission era, with the Spanish. And in those times, people were being separated from culture, being separated from what they know life to be. And so this major disruption used the doctrine of discovery in a way to keep people from their culture and traditions and force them into slavery, basically. And so when that happened, you have people that came from a whole other place in the world who, without getting to know the people, without getting to know their way of life, without joining in on their way of life, they just came and said, no, it's going to be like this. And so when that happened, you had people who were being told they were not allowed to speak their language. They were not allowed to tend to the lands the way they traditionally did. That did include fire because the European invaders, when they seen people utilizing fire in the way of taking care of the land, they seen it as a threat. What I understand today looking back is because they're coming from a very horrific mindset, where I will do horrible things to you. So surely that's your intention, right? And so when these fires are to keep the land safe, these people are taking it as a threat. So it did eventually become illegal. And that brings up such a good point about the way that they were using fires as a means of colonization and they even coined a term for it. They call it scorched earth. They did in their first colonies in Ireland and they continue to do it all the way up until the civil wars that they caused in El Salvador, where they were just going and everything that was living, they would burn in it. Yeah, that is a heavy practice that they have used to eliminate whole villages and just completely devastate families. And then coming back into them being afraid of those types of practices. Yeah, because if I'm implementing these ways of fire, surely you don't have good intentions either. You know, so it's definitely a state of mind. If you come from a way of not having good intentions, you can't understand what good intentions are. How have you seen that that blocking of steering the land, playing out well, first, cal fires has been open to these conversations. I will say that and I have participated in some of these conversations. It's a little iffy for them because they still come from a different perspective, but they're starting to open up to the idea. However, what the problem has been for so long as these conversations are happening is the fire is opening up to the the idea fires opening up to the federally recognized nations. Well, the major parts of Los Angeles County were non federally recognized nation. So the nations in Los Angeles that are non federally recognized, they're not in that bracket. So that is an issue. Then you have the problem of mass building, right? Like there's just so much there in the city. The city is just devastated in apartment buildings and just buildings galore. So it would have to be a way of having understanding with the neighbors where we can go in as communities, including, you know, each neighbor to participate in this with us, but to keep the yards clean, to implement california native plants and knowing, you know, which actually go in each area to to help us to keep Los Angeles County in its most natural state as possible. So there's ways that we're going to have to have conversations as whole county community and be able to understand each other, but we have to listen with our hearts and our minds and not with the fear because a lot of people want to go into immediately going, you know, fire bad fire, you know, with that fear mindset, fires beautiful, fire is sacred, fire cooks our food, you know, fire brings us new life. So there is a lot of beauty. It's just how we maintain a relationship with the fire. A large part of this was also this society's poor relationship with the water. Unfortunately, uh, in Los Angeles, it starts with mahalent who made a comment. He who owns the water owns the people, and it just went south from there. Originally a semi-arid region, Los Angeles has a long contested history of securing water. Central to its growth announced climate vulnerabilities, and they quickly outgrow its local water resources as the population exploded in the early 20th century. In 1913, Los Angeles aqueduct, engineered by William Moholland, diverted water from the Owens Valley hundreds of miles away. This sparked violent resistance from tribes and local farmers and became one of the most infamous water grabs in the US history. These most recent palisades and infires in Los Angeles, fueled by record heat, dry vegetation and poor land management, underscored the connection between systemic water extraction and the ongoing climate catastrophe. Our ancestors are people. We have ancient irrigation systems. All of the water that flowed down from the mountains and the creeks or streams, all of those came into the valley and all of those were irrigated to grow food and for our people in the valley. Manahu Inaniane, Joli Varela, Numunu, Paya Hunaru Yesh, Tuli River, Nukimaru, Ibia, Toni Spunhunter, Imaa, Anita Spunhunter. Soundamati new. Hello, my name is Joli Varela. I come from the place of flowing water and from Tuli River. My mom is Toni Spunhunter and my grandmother is Anita Spunhunter and it's nice to be here with you. I come from Paya Hunaru and Paya Hunaru means the place where water flows. The valley is better known as the Owens valley, but Richard Owens never stepped foot in this valley. This is Paya Hunaru, the place where water flows and my ancestors were ancient irrigators. Not all of them, we all had our different roles in community but we did have like the head irrigator and every one of these streams, creeks that flowed down from the Pamydu Toyobi are the so-called Sierra Nevada, was utilized to irrigate and create food and to just be beneficial not only to us as people, but to the land as well. So this is the place where water flows, but the city of Los Angeles has been extracting or stealing water from Paya Hunaru for over 100 years and this has deeply impacted the land. I think often about what Paya Hunaru looked like pre-colonization and how different that would be and if our ancestors during that time were to come back today, how would they feel and what would what would they be seeing and how different in comparison. I've been out to a very old village site and from what I was told that was a swamp area and you go out there now and it's completely dry, there's no water in sight and then when you see Paxiata or the drained lake, the late Harry Williams actually told me not to refer to Paxiata or the so-called Ones Valley dry lake as dry because that lake was drained so we refer to the lake as a drained lake and to be really intentional with the words that we're using so when you just say Ones Valley dry lake that's like that water that lake just went dry when in reality that lake was drained by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 14,000 years ago the lake was 40 miles larger and we had swamp lands here and it was very green and very different and there's this very old story that my dad's grandpa told him we have this very huge mountain she's our he excuse me is about 13,000 feet tall and the settlers here know that mountain as Mount Tom but that mountain's name is Winneba which means standing tall and there's this certain space in Winneba and where it's the last place at the snow melts and my dad told me that his grandpa told him that a long time ago the water was all the way up on the mountains and that space right there is where the native people lived and this whole valley was full of water just thinking of that story and thinking how far the lake used to come back and how much water monolake had and how this was swamp land and just how abundant food sources and plants once were here I can just imagine a very very different paya hunaru how do they even obtain these rights or power over what's going on with the water okay so back in the very early 1900s 1904 the chief engineer for Tovengar our so-called Los Angeles William C. Mulholland visited paya hunaru so he comes to the land and sees how much water there is and he sees the opportunity to grow Tovengar using water from our homelands and so from there I think in 1905 is when they really started coming in the city of Los Angeles and they started buying these pieces of land and oftentimes they were disguised they were disguised as ranchers coming onto the land to buy it for ranching purposes for cattle purposes but really it was ledwp coming and buying up these areas of land for the city of Los Angeles so they were coming in like oh yeah we're just going to like use the land really but really they were like coming in basically planning on pumping the water out yes they were very sneaky they came in and again saw opportunity and saw the water in paya hunaru and with purpose decided to buy these pieces of land to grow Los Angeles or Tovengar it was very intentional and again they disguised themselves as ranchers are just families coming to the so-called owns valley to live here to create economic opportunities for the valley what has been the result of that to put some more numbers out there William Cimal Holland came in 1904 to look over the land and then in 1905 they started buying up the land in 1908 the construction of the Los Angeles aqueduct began and that was finished in 1913 water starts flowing from paya hunaru and I don't know if you've visited Tovengar but you're coming into Silmar into Tovengar and you will see water from paya hunaru flowing coming down into Silmar and that's where William Cimal Holland on the opening of the aqueduct says there it is take it and he's referring to water that's coming from paya hunaru I feel very sad about what that water extraction has done to our community and I think also that a lot of people don't understand that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and that extraction like they realized that they can't remove native people from our homelands like they tried to remove us and march us to fort to hone and we wouldn't stay there and we always came home and we hidden the mountains and we stayed here on our homelands and they tried to relocate us so they could have more access to this water and of course we became the Indian problem. The land exchange started in 1937 and was completed in 1939 where LADWP exchange I think it was 1,511 acres for 3,000 acres of allotted federal Indian land. The land became bishop, big pine and lone pine reservation to put native people on so the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is responsible for the creation of three of the reservations in paya hunaru. Just to spoke more to this historic relationship with water in regards to the channelization of the L.A. River. When we have people who understand the sacredness of the water and the sacredness of the land, the ocean and all of our relatives that live and thrive in and on these areas including ourselves then we can start to move in the right direction more and more rivers and streams channelized and now when people think of the Los Angeles River they don't think of it as a river. When they see the channels actually that are filled with concrete that are taking the streams to connect to the Los Angeles River to the Bimit Bahite they don't think of it as a natural living relative that concrete just completely disrupts that ideology you know and disconnects us from that ideology. As long as we have people moving in that direction it's only going to get worse. The only hope that we have are agencies and communities and people standing in their power and saying we won't stand for this anymore being the voice for the water and being the voice for the plants and the animals and each other to uplift that sacredness. When we move in that direction we can begin the healing process. Understanding the history and connection between these two waterways is going to be crucial as we try to move forward in a good way. In the valley in Paiahu Nadu there's sometimes bumper stickers that say things like LA sucks the owns valley dry like they own over 95% of the valley floor now. So there's this sentiment that the locals here do not like LA and so I had this relationship to Tobangar or what I knew then is like Los Angeles where I didn't like LA and I didn't like big cities. Then I went to Standing Rock what was happening with the water there and what was happening to the people there. Everything made me realize like we have our own water issues that have been going on for over a hundred years and that I want to go home and learn more and understand more and do work in my community for the benefit of the land and my people. I came home and I joined a group called Walking Water. This is a group that collaborates often with the Owns Valley Indian Water Commission who is Indigenous Women Hikes physical sponsor and we walked from Silmar to Long Beach. Followed the water from Paiahu Nadu, the water from my homeland and followed to where it spills out into the ocean. While I was on this walk I met Anne Marie Mendoza and she's Tongva, excuse me, Dr Anne Marie Mendoza and she was the only Tongva person, the only Indigenous person from Tobangar there on that hike. Listening to her talk about her homelands and talk about the LA River, the way that she spoke about her homelands made me realize that like wow all of this anger that I've harbored for Tobangar is towards her homelands and like I have to remember that these are native lands. This city spring up around the Tongva people and other Indigenous people there and displaced them. It made me realize that the way that I talk about that land even while being a city with skyscrapers, that's my friend's homelands, like that's that's native land and so I'm really careful now like I don't like going to the city but I will never talk the way about the city that I did when I was younger because I've developed that relationship with people from that community and know this is their homelands and it was from the extraction of water from my homelands that this unsustainable city grew and displaced those relatives. It's really hard for you know people to imagine really what it was actually like here during those massifiers can you just you know kind of paint a picture for us of what was going on. Intense winds happening some people are comparing it to hurricane winds so the spread of these fires was inevitable because of the winds and that alone was scary the winds alone were scary a lot of people had bits of pieces of their roof no longer intact it just caused these fires to spread so quickly that as intense as these winds were it was not going to be under control anytime soon. I do send my heart out to everybody who is dealing with the repercussions of these recent disasters but I really truly seen firsthand the way community jumped up immediately nobody waited for outside forces or entities to come in and fix a problem I thought that was the most beautiful site you know everybody checked in on families on loved ones on neighbors and showed up to donation sites whether that was to donate their time or belongings to help others in need it was overwhelming the amount of people that did show up with love where I come from we do call that community very much so that was seen. What were some examples that you saw that they saw spring up? UAI stepped up and and utilized their building for a safe place for urban natives to come in and you know whether it was just a charger phone hang out they collected donations anybody who needed dog food cat food water clothing they did amazing. I woke up and I heard there were fires and we got to work we caught an emergency meeting everyone that was in our programs to figure out are you safe? Is your family safe? Do you know anyone that needs assistance whether they're native or not? We can pick them up we can get them housing we can get them you know hotels we we were there we can get them food and we went into action. Vanessa Antoinette Edwards is the senior director of operations and strategy for urban-american Indian involvement or UAI. Each day stone goal Venetia Edwards. Each day mosquitoes. I am Venetia Antoinette Edwards. I am the senior director of operations and strategy for United American Indian involvement. I am of the Muscogee people and I'm excited to be here today. The interesting thing is we didn't even think about the fact that what if we don't have the funding for it it's not about that this is the people's home and the people will take care of the people we take care of our people we turned our facilities into a shelter we were on the phone with a red cross FEMA I mean we did we needed to be done and we got people into the proper housing and kind of emotional now think about it and we were working around the clock picking people up swiping them into hotels that were you know away from the smoke making sure our elders were okay and we weren't even expecting it but we were able to raise the money that we had already spent to take care of our people but I say that to say is we are people first organization we will do without all the frills to make sure that our people were taking care of. She explains that the urban native population in Los Angeles skyrocketed as a result of the Indian Regulocation Act of 1956 and although Los Angeles has the largest urban native population of anywhere in the US their organization originally found in the 70s remains to be the only organization serving urban natives within a hundred miles. The United American Indian involvement was started by Bropa Cooper and Miriam Zuko. There are two women who saw the devastation that urban natives were having in the downtown Los Angeles area specifically Skid Row where we had a lot of people who were on drugs and who were away from their tribal lands and needed assistance so they actually started our organization 50 years ago and they put together an office and they had you know started giving services it started with just kind of day services where they were giving out food and a place for them to sleep and essentially anyone that came in could have a place to sleep a place to shower and they were cared for. We are still in service 50 years later the only urban Indian organization in Los Angeles and we service the largest portion of Native Americans in United States so we have over 200,000 natives that reside in Los Angeles County in the closest urban Indian organization to us is a hundred miles away. As a result of the Indian Regulocation Act which brought a lot of us out here a lot of us find ourselves not being connected to our land because there are so many generations removed we try to exercise our heritage we find ourselves exercising this pan kind of native way of exercising it the most recent data show that over 70% of Native people live off of the tribal land and live in urban cities the majority of them live in Los Angeles. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like during the fires here? It was dark it was gray there was ash yeah I mean it was like a really bad barbecue you know like the smell of barbecue everywhere but like air you couldn't breathe Amy Strutton was in on the conversation as well they're a member of the Chica homony tribe of Virginia and are in charge of communications for UAI she shared her experience I don't know how some people could go out without a mask I definitely could not you know I've asthma so it was just not good air for me especially it was terrifying it was just you know you think about like you know you grew up in Santa Monica I grew up in playa so we're like neighbors people always ask me like growing up and I like like what did you guys do after school we went to the beach I just remember just looking and being like everything that I enjoyed as a child I cannot now show this to my kids because it doesn't exist now I've lived in only my entire life I've never seen anything like it like we've had fires you know but they weren't this severe anyone in Los Angeles County area had the watch duty app which was like the app that told you where the fires were on at all times they were constantly notifying you when the fire was in your area if you were in yellow it was like get ready you're gonna need to evacuate even if you weren't that close you were just always paranoid that like you might have to move because then people were setting fires and there was like I mean it was just it was madness those people who were also worried about their own homes were leaving to help others so you know yes they were being heroic and helping other people but they were also being heroic and like leaving their own homes to do that our communications team was you know like we had you know we were having to work you know around the clock to make sure that people were informed you know the purpose of communications is not the this whole like tick-tock even I love tick-tock but anyways it's not just this like tick you know it's not just for a show like we're just dancing over here exactly dancing you know it's to communicate to like what is the fastest way that we can communicate to the people of Los Angeles that there is a place that you can go if you can't get into another facility you can most certainly get in here and there are working class families who lost everything families of color families of color so when you think about Malibu people are thinking celebrities but before the rich people moved there you know in like the 1990s or whatever there were working class people who lived there who have homes there who gave their entire lives for their homes and still have those homes you know in the Hollywood area there's also apartment buildings there there's people in businesses there there's domestic workers who no longer have jobs there's working people who are being bussed to their schools they don't have schools anymore it's top to bottom when people think it's just the celebrities who they mention on the news it's not just them that was one of their homes like yes it's sad they lost one of their homes but there was people who lost their entire life savings in their house and then there's people in Altadena who literally lost everything black neighborhoods that are gone my final stop was a food distribution site in West Altadena that sprung up right away after the fire swept through the area honestly I was a little nervous to be coming in right after such a devastating fire they knew I was coming but still I didn't know exactly how much they wanted to share as soon as I walked into the parking lot of Gordy's garage where the food distribution happened every night I felt comfortable and welcomed they had music playing people were hanging out and cracking jokes and I ended up spending about five hours out there talking to people the first person I talked to was Alexia Palemino Cortez her dad's family has lived in the neighborhood for generations and her mom came from an indigenous Puerto Lito in the municipality of Guerla Mexico Alexia talked to me about growing up in West Altadena the systemic racism that results in the city being predominantly black brown indigenous and what it was like and has been like since losing her family home it was such a great place to grow up my dad's family has been here since the 60s and it was always a community it's a type of place where like you still know your neighbors and where the people who grew up next to you are probably living in like their grandma's house or you know their family lives on the other side of the block and so it was a it was a community and it's I would say more of a community even more than just saying like oh Altadena is a town or a city it's a neighborhood and it was the type of place where you knew your neighbors and it changed a lot in the past probably 10 years but it's yeah it was it's a great place to grow up I loved it here hi everyone my name is Alexia Palemino Cortez I use she her pronouns and my family is from Puebla Mexico we are from a little tiny indigenous Pueblo called San Paltasada de Zatela I'm a very very proud daughter of an immigrant and a very proud daughter of an Indigenous woman and Indigenous family born and raised in Altadena we are here at Gordy's Garage on Windsor and Woodbury in West Altadena California we are here passing out food and feeding the neighbors so come on by if you're nearest what are some of those things that you remember it's just like little things you did with your family when you were going up around here you know it's got a funny as the first one that comes to mind for me is Everest which is like it's a burger joint it was on lake um I think the cross street it's like a merposa and it was like the spot where you would go when your mom picks you up from school you go to Everest you get burgers and fries and an orange bang which is a very LA coded if you know what an orange bang is do but it was yeah so we actually lost that spot and that one's really hitting pretty hard you know and there's so many even just like eclectic places like the bunny museum which is weird because it's like a museum for bunnies but we had that here and it's gone now and and that's really unfortunate because we had so many of these small mom and pop shops but to us it was where we went growing up it's comforting it's familiar and then to kind of know that there's a certain privilege of being from Al-Tedina too like it's a gift and I think that especially now when we're having our moment because of what happened here it's also important to know that we have a history of perseverance and we have a history of community and and building and fighting back and you know just being aware of who we are and where we come from mm-hmm cheers walk me through like what it was like we had just had the Santa Ana win storm so it had been kind of chaotic from the jump we already didn't have power and it was a hot mess up here I was driving home I was driving up Lake from being with my best friend and I just kind of saw like this like orange glow it's like the east and so I call my mom and she's just casually like oh they're just fired in canyon doesn't seem concerned no one seems too concerned about it so I go home and my mom and I are you know sitting in the living room and we can start to see like the flames burning the mountains and that's really terrifying you know just like seeing the mountains burn is really horrific kind of traumatic experience because that that's our backyard and we didn't really think that it was going to get to the size that it did mostly because at that point on Tuesday evening there were an evacuation orders for the west side and the east side near in canyon and so east altitude is a lot wealthier and it's kind of even that joke like my best friends from the east side whenever she tells people I'm from this street in this street people are like oh you're on the rich side they all got evacuated really early on and we didn't get any evacuation orders so my mom and I go to sleep on Tuesday just kind of watching it and I'm like watching on like social media people posting like the scanners and I wasn't really thinking too much about it because like I've lived through like the station fire or lived through other fires and it's never happened Wednesday morning probably at 4am we wake up because we hear the sheriff striving down the street and they were like there's a mandatory evacuation order and so I get up I look out the window and you can't even see the fire anymore growing up here the thing you learned about wildfires is that if you can't see it it's probably right on top of you at that point I was like oh our house was just full it was full of smoke and it was also like pitch black you couldn't see anything we drive to I drive to my brother's house and at that point we didn't even grab much because we were like it's we're evacuating because of the smoke like it's it was so bad you couldn't breathe so we were leaving for that not thinking anything of it right so that's why we didn't even take much with us we ended up leaving our house probably around five-ish I want to say and I think our house was gone by six a.m. by like six six thirty chaos just driving down the street trying to drive down Lincoln to get out of here you know people are brand-tick and everyone's scared and I'm driving away like not thinking that I wasn't going to ever go back and seeing it for the first time it was heartbreaking to actually go and step onto the place where you grow up and to just see that it's completely gone it's it's a it's devastating I know people talk about like that like phantom limb syndrome you know and I almost feel like that's a little bit how I feel now I'll feel like I want to drive home still or I'm up here now volunteering and I'm like my house is like half a mile away we're looking at the rubble and there's like no birds singing there's you can't hear any of like the bugs you don't hear any of like the wind blowing it was it sounds like death and it feels like death I've never gone through anything like that and what has life been like since then on one hand going through this horrible terrible experience and losing not just your house but your neighborhood and your neighbors and then also being like those same neighbors show up and people who are from the whole other side of like the city or the country also showing up too I'm sorry I didn't even know I was going to start crying it's a lot more emotional than I think yeah it's really really traumatic and you're literally a survivor and just to hear that they really waited to the last moment to tell you to you know what evacuated just so wild yeah Catherine your former teacher yeah and Catherine is also joining us today she's a high school teacher now Tadina and her students were deeply impacted by the wildfires we had not experienced any sort of moisture or rain since about late May of last year they've been going through our fall season and the week leading up to the fires we actually have negative dew point which is pretty wild I had noticed that you know things are very statically in the air that is just so dry that makes this area very prone then to a wildfire because any spark can just catch it was a perfect storm my name is Katherine Guerrero I am the daughter of Stella Lopez I am the granddaughter of Louise Garcia and I am the adopted granddaughter of Tongva elder Gloria Adianas I am born and raised in a guest on Tongva land my homelands that I am removed from are the Sonora Desert and Baja California I'm an educator I'm a teacher and I was on retreat with my seniors we arrived at Ohio at 3 p.m. by 5 p.m. my seniors were getting phone calls saying that their parents were having to evacuate and by 7 p.m. four of my students found out that their homes were gone we woke up the next morning to more students finding out that their homes were gone or that they were displaced or that they you know essentially didn't have a home to go back to it's California that's we have fire season you never think it's gonna hit homes it's gonna hit neighborhoods it's gonna hit infrastructure and businesses and it happened just so fast I don't want to say annihilation but if you drive through these areas they do look like war zones it's terrible it was shocking we were told that when we came home we had to prepare our students to come home to a space that they would not recognize it's really really affecting the community as a whole and especially a community of color and I think that's something that's like really you know devastating because a lot of people think about Pasadena and Altadena and think that oh well these are wealthy areas like they'll rebuild or whatever but a lot of the homes here these are generational homes these were homes that were bought soon after the civil rights movement these were the only cities that were allowing black and brown people to purchase property I have again an alum lost her home but it was a four-generation home her grandfather had purchased the home and four generations were living in that home and it's gone that's the devastation you know seen that being taken away I think that's a really really important point to bring up the history of redlining all throughout this nation and then you know the area where black people were forced to move into is now on the front lines of this unfolding climate catastrophe Altadena was obviously it's one of the first black mental classes places in the US but specifically here in California in LA black folks were able to come here and buy home because they were redlining not allowed to go anywhere else yeah and in the same way that my family when we crossed over we came to Altadena to because it was the only place that we could have a house and started business and you know what community welcomed us black community wasn't the white folks that's also where I'm like we need to address where we have picked up and we have to address where we perpetuate violence against our block relatives too because if not we're not going to get anywhere we can and we have to yeah we're really not going to be able to move forward unless we all move forward to get exactly Altadena had a very strong communal foundation and a lot of pride a lot of pride in their black roots I think that's why amid disaster right you do see light you do see that community come together and so it wasn't surprising to see yeah places like World Central Kitchen pop up but then also there's a house just a few blocks down that they've been there since day one too they were right on the evacuation line and they set up and they take donations they've had water they've had food they've had meals and it's out of their home you know it wasn't an organization it wasn't a nonprofit it was just the people and there was a lot of that a lot of that without hesitation it was just let's get to work let's let's start cleaning up the city of ours you know I honestly I kind of expected kind of a somber vibe you know coming right in South Azina but as soon as I came in people were smiling people are chatting it up you know I hear multiple languages being spoken and you know community is really alive here it's kind of funny because one of the things that I keep talking to neighbors about is I'm always like you know systems fail but community does it governments fail but community does it because community in whatever definition applies like that's been here we been doing this before the United States was the United States right before we had these borders and nation states and all this imperial bullshit we had communities and we had people and that will be here regardless of what flag is here too that has been kind of the goal moving forward too we know that what happens when disaster strike into you know marginalized communities you have corporate greed you have like you know people trying to come in and we're trying to capitalize on our trauma and we have seen a lot of folks are being made offers on their house and on their like properties and so right now one of the biggest goals is to make sure that all of our neighbors do get to come home I've been a part of some organizing circles right now the slogan like Altenina not for sale right so we're really riding on that and also we have a huge problem with contaminated water up here it's poisonous it's poison and they're trying to tell us if we can drink it and the people can bathe in it and cook in it water is life that's one of the one of the most central parts of the human experience about being alive is that water is life and we don't have that right now so making sure that folks still have access to water have access to food to good food and to make sure that we all have the opportunity to come back home and that we aren't just displaced and that we don't feel like we have to take that offer from that like hedge fund that called Wednesday morning after the house burned also we were already in a crisis like being from LA like it's really hard Venesia from UAI also commented on the ongoing housing crisis in Los Angeles like I remember my friends and I and we we used to kind of joke about it at one point but it became wrote to us when we got in our 30s we couldn't afford to live in the areas that we grew up in and we have better jobs and better degrees than our parents we couldn't take over our parents mortgage if we wanted to and we already were in a place where it was just kind of like hopeless now it's a place where was like I'm trying to figure out you know where to go next you know because that was even more scary to see everything burnt down and we know what's going to happen but we were already being gouged another thing that was scary is that a lot of our community they live in the rent control places you know what I mean and we started getting scared all those places still going to be rent control you know what I mean like because now they've been burnt down yeah they turn around they won't be yes so now we have this thing where the caretakers of this land are being removed from the land even further Julie shared her thoughts on the path moving forward I really have no faith in Los Angeles Department of Water and Power but what I do have faith in is this coalition building we're basically coming together and we're going to start having convert stations and talking about how we can be in solidarity with one another water coming from my homelands has displaced the indigenous communities of Tobangar so the idea of nation building and creating this kind of coalition between us and being in solidarity with one another and have these really important conversations around water how can we help you make the LA river healthier how can you advocate for us for less water extraction in Tobangar like how can we help each other because we are connected forever through this water theft and how can we be there for one another I want them to come to Payahunaru to see the land where their water is coming from to go out on the land to walk on the land to learn about the land and then the idea would be to go to their homelands as well but we want to create these connections and build these relationships but we also want to find solutions for future generations and for the land there is a whole movement with indigenous people and non-indigenous folks to restore the LA river because they should really have enough water there without having to extract water from the Colorado River from here there are even natives that I met at another summit I was at where they're trying to take water from the other side from their homelands and what is enough when is it going to be enough your your they're causing devastation to lands that are 200 300 miles away to sustain this unsustainable city so they need to find a renewable energy in ways to sustain that land without having to extract and create devastation on other people's homelands and we can do it we could dream up a whole new system that will help us in a modern day society but also honor the earth and honor all life on earth we just have to realize that fear equals control so as long as we decide to walk in love and not in fear we can't be controlled and so it's really important for all of us to love ourselves because when you love yourself you know that you're safe you know you're protected you know that you're going to be okay you've got community and it's just it's a world of people loving themselves that is going to pour out a world of people loving each other I am I'm still just overwhelmed with just how just people really showed up for us I mean we had people showing up I remember one guy he called me he's like hey what do you guys need I said we really need water right now I had no idea that he was going to be showing up in a bike and he showed up in a bike and he brought the water and he just kept and we kept bringing and we even offered to be like oh well driving he goes no it's fine like you guys are doing other things that's our community and also this is a multi-generational community so we have 50 years his you know grandparents you know when here his siblings you know came here for services so we showed up how a family shows up for each other as a result of the LA fires we now have the people store just get a bag and you're able to do your shopping and then you can also get whatever services you need and it's free of charge and that it has always been the vision and so I feel at the LA fires really ramped it up for us but we were able to just achieve all of those those little things that we weren't able to polish up at the time and so it's I'm just over just overwhelmed with just like how just incredible our community is it has been the most difficult and most devastating part of my life but it's also when I have experienced the most kindness and compassion so it's kind of a weird kind of like double-edged sword right where it's like on one hand you're losing everything but on the other community has healed me a lot and has kept me from just not being able to get out of bed in the morning or it has really brought me back to myself we're constantly being told that our struggle is different than our brothers and our sisters all to Dina I think is that beautiful example that not like we all we're all in this we're all in this community we're all gonna help each other rebuild we're here for each other there's a quote that says we forget that we belong to each other so yeah like being here for a month and putting heaters out for these folks standing here in the rain sometimes you know that's we belong to each other this is what we do and this idea that if we stay connected to our creation story whatever it is whatever it looks like right if it if it came from mud if it came from the stars if it came from corn whatever it is if we keep that creation story at our heart to kind of catch phrase the dine like we will walk in beauty because we will see that connection we'll see it in each other we'll see it in the water we'll see it in the trees we'll see it there so yeah I guess to circle back to that question if if we kept that at the center then we would be tending to our land in a way that keeps it safe we would be not neglectful of what wires and metal we put into the soil so let's let's do it let's walk this path you know we keep us safe yeah and it's always been true you know it's really been really the only reason you know that we're even here you know they they've done everything they could to try to wipe this out you know we preserved because we keep we keep us safe yep that's exactly right we keep us safe and it's all up to all of us right to be in good relationship with one another to make sure that we're able to continue living and thriving on what we call mother earth right well thank you so much poncho for that work and for everything that was revealed in this episode I know it was a lot of work yeah it turned out to be a lot of work and I learned so so much and I just want to say thanks again to Yuma Tegan and Tamar's too for trusting me to to take this one on and I hope that we can all reflect on what this means moving forward for our communities and the places that we call home well relatives we hope you enjoyed this episode a huge shout out to poncho Francisco Sanchez for your awesome field reporting we're so grateful to be podcasting with all of you right here at our headquarters at tylands big t greetsy to all our patreon subscribers your support makes all my relations productions possible a lot goes in to bringing this podcast to life and we really couldn't do it without all of you so if you'd like to support us and help keep this podcast going please consider joining our patreon community your contributions really make a huge difference you can always find us on instagram at amr podcast don't forget to share like subscribe it really helps us to reach more relatives to be in community uh and to continue to do this work and of course a big thank you to our all my relations team tail our amazing editor caterina who keeps us connected on the socials temeris our brilliant co-host and elisa our rock star assistant welcome to the team everybody and thank you for the beautiful video and production work poncho and of course to sierra sanna thank you for your gorgeous artwork we also want to give a special thanks to jessa jolie vanesia amy elexia and cavern for their incredible support and contributions on this episode you all are so amazing thank you so much for allowing us to share your story for making time to visit with us and finally thank you to all of you our relatives for being here with us in this important moment and for your continued listenership we love you be safe out there sending big love all my relations