By Acsah Lemma
Three years after a settlement between the tribal nations and Long Beach State was reached, Puvungna still has no official steward.
The settlement came out of a lawsuit filed after CSULB dumped “6,400 yards of construction dirt and debris” on the site in 2019.
The suit was filed by the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation – Belardes and the California Cultural Resources Preservation Alliance, Inc., according to a settlement update from Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger, an environmental public interest law firm.
The lawsuit was eventually settled in September 2021 and requires the university to document a Declaration of Restrictive Covenant, which prohibits them or any future landowners from developing on or damaging the land.
The covenant also allows the Tribal groups to continue to use the land for their ceremonies and other traditional activities.
The settlement agreement additionally requires CSULB “to use best efforts to establish a conservation easement over the site in the future.” This would replace the restrictive covenant and “shift care of the land to a manager agreed upon by the settlement parties.”
According to Joyce Perry, the cultural resource director for the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation – Belardes, the university entered a good faith agreement that a land manager would be chosen in two years, but three years have passed and none has been chosen.
Friends of Puvungna, an Indigenous-led organization, has been dedicated to caretaking Puvungna since its formation in 2019, according to the organization’s president Rebecca Robles.
Friends of Puvunga hosts regular clean-ups, traditional ceremonies, food basket drives and more.
Robles was born and raised in north Long Beach and said her family has been working to protect Puvungna since the 1990s.
Friends of Puvungna President Rebecca Robles said she wants to eventually add a walking path and meditation area to the site. Photo credit: Linsey Towles / DIG Magazine
Puvungna is the sacred site for the Acjachemen, Gabrielino-Tongva and several other Southern California tribal groups, located on the edge of campus near the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden.
Enveloping the entirety of the university, Long Beach and other parts of Southern California, the designated area on campus is what’s left of Puvungna since the development of the city, campus and more.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974, Puvungna is seen as the place of creation for the tribes and where all living things transitioned from spiritual form to physical form, according to Robles.
“We became bodies at that place, and we see new instructions on how to proceed as humans,” Perry said. “It is our Mecca, our Jerusalem.”
Robles said if Friends of Puvungna get awarded the easement, the organization would be the official stewards. As of now, they are considered voluntary caretakers.
When the university released a Request for Proposal last spring for the stewardship of the site, Friends of Puvungna submitted a proposal and were denied for conflict-of-interest reasons.
The one-paragraph response gave no other reason.
When asked to elaborate on this, Associate Vice President of University Relations Christopher Reese said, “An RFP released earlier this year did not proceed with any bidders. We are now in the process of redrafting the RFP to better describe necessary qualifications and will release a new version when the language is ready.”
When asked for a response, Jeff Cook, associate vice president of Strategic Communications said, “That is the extent to which the University would have something to share at this time.”
According to Perry, Friends of Puvungna went above and beyond to meet the requirements of the RFP and said she wants the university to keep its word.
“We had to sue them and we’ve been very patient, we’ve been very respectful. We have worked diligently to work within their system, but for some reason, their system is not working well. And so, we’re just hoping to put some kind of pressure and get some answers and get this completed,” Perry said.
If eventually awarded the stewardship, Robles said Friends of Puvungna wants to restore the sacred site to “a place of healing, a place of learning, a place of sharing our culture and a place of justice.”
