Action anthropology was the topic of the panel discussion, “Indian Wars at Cal State Long Beach (1972-2010),” at the Multicultural Center on Tuesday.
Associate professor of anthropology Ronald Loewe and former CSULB lecturer of American Indian studies Cynthia Alvitre spoke to a crowd of more than 25 students on the situation regarding the university’s Puvungna grounds.
Puvungna is a “sacred place of emergence for many Southern California tribes,” Alvitre said.
In 1972, during the excavation for the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden, a body was unearthed, according to Loewe.
The university then helped to declare Puvungna, a 22-acre site sacred to local tribes, a federally recognized historic site and posted a sign saying that members of the Tongva-Gabrielino tribe once inhabited the site.
“[The body] was stored on campus. Then, during the presidency of Steve Horn, it was reburied on South Beach Drive,” Loewe said.
However, in the early 1990s, university administrators had a change of heart and revealed plans to build a strip mall on the site. Tribal members occupied the site for several months and a coalition of tribal members, students, faculty and community activists were able, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, to obtain an injunction barring construction of the site. The tribes in question and the university have since remained at an impasse.
When former University President Robert C. Maxson came to CSULB in 1995, he abandoned all plans for commercial development and pledged to preserve the Puvungna site as an open space for the duration of his presidency, according to the CSULB website.
“Puvungna is the Jerusalem for Tongva people and most Southern California tribes,” Alvitre said.
Despite Puvungna being on the national register of historic places, it is not guaranteed protection, Alvitre said.
“Action anthropology is a concept developed by Sol Tax at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, and it differed importantly from other applied anthropology being conducted at the time,” Loewe explained in an e-mail.
“Rather than making a study of a people and giving it to authorities to do with as they like, the action approach involved working more closely with the community itself to understand the issues confronting it. And, then, using one’s anthropological expertise to provide the indigenous community with alternative paths of action that it could choose for itself.”
The focus of this panel discussion centered on what can be done with the land — whether to explore it further or use it for a more community-based purpose.
Alvitre made the proposal for an Indigenous Educational Facility to be built as part of Parking Lot 20. The facility would include native gardens, a repatriation area, ceremonial center and conference center.
Alvitre said that research has merit but must be done with a community support model.
This article was updated at 2:17 p.m. on 5/05/10.
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