Mondo's NAT #200 - Gabrieleño

Native American Tribe series.

Gabrieleño

Historically known as The San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians recognized by the State of California as the aboriginal tribe of the Los Angeles Basin. Today there is a growing awareness of the enormous debt that Los Angeles owes the Gabrieleño. Although the city traditionally traces its cultural heritage to Spanish and American roots, it was the Gabrieleño who built and supported the missions, Pueblo, and ranchos. It was the Gabrieleño who provided the goods and labor that enabled the first settlements to survive and prosper; without them the history of Los Angeles would be very different indeed.

The Mexican-American War was settled by the Treaty of Guadalupe, which ceded California to the United States. Section 1 of the protocol attachk, I'm makign a change to a page that hasn't been touched to the Treaty required the United States to maintain and protect California Indians, including the Gabrielino Tribe recognized to inhabit the geographic area of the Los Angeles Basin, in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and religion.

In 1851-53, three U.S. Government Treaty Commissioners appointed by President Fillmore signed the 18 "lost treaties", setting aside 8.5 million acres in California for Indian reservations in return for the Indians' quitclaim to 75 million acres of California land. After lobbying by California business interests, the U.S. Senate refused to ratify any of the Treaties, instead placing an "injunction of secrecy" on the documents for 50 years. They were discovered in a locked desk drawer in the Senate Archives in 1905.

The approximately 1.2 million acres promised to the Gabrielino Tribe and other Mission Indians included 50,000 acres on the San Sebastian Reserve at the Tejon Pass at the edge of Los Angeles County, a temporary reservation to which a number of Gabrielino families had been relocated. This 50,000-acre reserve was never officially taken into trust, but instead ended up as the private property of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Edward Beale, who incorporated it into his newly named "Tejon Ranch".

In 1959, the Court of Claims entered a final order recognizing the aboriginal title of the Gabrielino Tribe and other California tribes to 64 million acres west of the Sierra Nevada Range. The Tribe's title was recognized and $633 was paid to each Gabrielino in 1972. As part of the efforts to adjudicate the two land claim payments in 1944 and 1972, hundreds of Gabrielino tribal members were recognized as "Gabrielino Indians" on each of the BIA California Indian Rolls of 1928, 1950 and 1972.

The lands claim settlement effort begun in 1946 was incorporated into the "assimilation policy" of the Eisenhower Administration, expressed legislatively as House Concurrent Resolution 108 of 1953. Unfortunately for the Gabrielino Tribe, the US Government decided to pay cash to individual Gabrielino Indians, in lieu of granting a land base to the Gabrielino Tribe. This "assimilation policy" also led to the termination of 53 Indian rancherias, some of which were eventually restored by a federal judge in Hardwick v. United States in 1983.

The Eisenhower policy of "assimilation" also lead to the adoption of over 50,000 Native American children into white, often suburban households (until the practice was ended by the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978). The settlement of Gabrielino land claims and the "assimilation" of Gabrielino Indians was administered by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dillon S. Meyer. Mr. Meyer had previously distinguished himself as chief administrator of the Japanese internment camps in California.