Kuuyam means “guests” in the language of the Tongva, who are the Indigenous and ongoing stewards of Tovaangar, a place now more commonly known as Los Angeles.
The BirdHouse is committed to the work of exploring our responsibility as guests on this land and how we can raise the visibility of its original peoples. Even if organizations like us in the ecological restoration space have good intentions, we must move forward in respectful relationship, especially with Native people in the positions of decision-making and leadership on matters that affect the land and people.
Charles Sepulveda’s essay, Our Sacred Waters: Theorizing Kuuyam as a Decolonial Possibility”, explores this concept by saying, “Indian people had well-established protocols of how to treat visitors as Kuuyam. This concept of Kuuyam can continue to be applied today. Settlers in California, and elsewhere, can be guests on the lands they live on.”
What does it mean to be guests on land that has been inhabited, cared for, and cultivated by the Tongva—who have been here tens of thousands of years before the arrival of the Spanish and the later waves of American settlers who stole their land?
A bird’s-eye view of the Los Angeles basin reveals a once fertile and well managed ecosystem turned into a concrete slab. The Santa Ana and Los Angeles Rivers were manipulated and domesticated into enormous drainage canals, causing animals to be pushed out of their habitat. Missions and ranchos became institutions which perpetrated horrible crimes against Southern California tribes, including the Tongva-Gabrieliño, Acjachemen, Serrano, Cahuilla, Chumash, and Luiseño, for the economic gain of a westward expanding empire
Sepulveda offers, “Kuuyam is an abolition of institutionalized hierarchical conceptions of human difference that separate people by race, origins, religion, gender, and sexuality. Instead, Kuuyam establishes relations beyond difference in a non-hierarchical manner. The concept of Kuuyam is able to abolish hierarchical difference through its purposeful restoration of organic human-land relationships and Peoplehood […]. Specifically, Kuuyam can assist in the abolition of white supremacist logics that demand domestication and submission.”
“Decolonization through Indigenous theory, such as Kuuyam, is not based in going back to a former time, but a decisive resolve for a future in which everyone recognizes our lands and our water as sacred sources of life. […] it is a defiant act of love for our lands; placing them above the needs of humans. An example of settlers showing that they are Kuuyam is their assistance in the recovery of the Santa Ana River—by giving back to the tribes who have been dispossessed.” adds Sepulveda.
We are beyond thankful to Lazaro Arvizu Jr, the Tongva cultural advisor to The BirdHouse, for sharing Sepulveda’s essay with us and bringing Kuuyam to our awareness as a decolonial possibility. It is an honor to walk this path and engage in this work as a way to move forward for the health of all life—which includes the air, the land, and the waters.
Click here to read the full article “Our Sacred Waters” by Charles Sepulveda.
