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Long Beach grapples with mental health care shortage
By Tess Kazenoff
Long Beach Business Journal
Nov. 2. 2022
About a year and a half ago, Long Beach resident Dawne Iannaci began the process of searching for a therapist.
“I really needed help, and I was not doing well at all,” Iannaci, 55, said. “I have some chronic illnesses that I deal with, and my thoughts weren’t OK.”
After securing a referral from her primary care doctor, Iannaci—a nurse who was on disability due to a recent hip surgery and has Medi-Cal insurance, the state’s health coverage program for low-income Californians—was told that she just had to submit a financial form and she would be contacted within a week.
Instead, Iannaci received no response. When she was eventually able to secure an introductory appointment, the therapist didn’t contact her again for over a month.
Iannaci tried restarting the process, but her luck didn’t improve. After contacting at least seven local therapists’ offices, who all told her they didn’t accept Medi-Cal, Iannaci was ready to give up, she said.
With out-of-pocket costs ranging from $175 to $200 an hour, the process made her feel like a “loser,” Iannaci said.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Iannaci said. “I don’t think (therapy) should be free, but I think more therapists could perhaps work on a sliding scale.”
A spike in need
There is no doubt that the pandemic has exacerbated the need for mental health services, particularly impacting marginalized communities who already have less access to care, said local therapist Junie Abito.
After reopening her practice, Rose Junie Therapy, located in Long Beach and Los Angeles, after the first three months of the pandemic, Abito was inundated with calls, she said.
Since then, the need has only continued to climb; in 2022, Abito’s practice has already received nearly double the amount of referrals in 2021, and she has seen a significant increase in children and couples seeking services, she said.
“We lived in social isolation for so long, and we were living in a state of uncertainty and trauma response,” Abito said. “This anxiety is still looming over people’s lives . . . because we’re still trying to keep our head over water—the trauma, the grief and uncertainty are still lingering.”
Many people using private insurance to connect to services are seeing waits of three months, and many therapists, including those at Abito’s practice, do not accept insurance, as insurance companies typically only pay therapists a small portion of their hourly rates, Abito said.
“The journey to get therapy should be affirming. It should be inspiring. It should be as easy as making a dental appointment, but it isn’t—it’s stress-inducing. It’s costly. It’s confusing to navigate,” Abito said. “If you tie that into a person of color, who comes from a different socioeconomic background, who may or may not have insurance, who already has traumas and troubles, it’s going to be really difficult for them to obtain services.”
According to city data, in 2020, 8.81% of people in Long Beach were uninsured, an increase from 8.5% in 2019. In the same year, 26.6% of people with insurance had Medi-Cal insurance, and 7.7% had Medicare, which covers older adults and people with certain disabilities.
For those on Medi-Cal like Iannaci, who are typically directed by the LA County Department of Mental Health to local nonprofits for mental health services, “those spaces are essentially full right now,” said Long Beach Health Department Director Kelly Colopy.
But the need across populations is widespread, and a stark increase in mental health needs among youth and among the city’s unhoused populations is particularly troubling, Colopy said.
While statistics around mental health vary, according to the National Alliance for Mental Health, in February 2021, 46.1% of adults in California reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, and of those adults, 21.9% were unable to get needed counseling or therapy. Of the 1.56 million adults in California who did not receive needed mental health care, 35.3% did not because of cost.
Cost is a primary prohibitive factor particularly for marginalized communities, who also disproportionately experience barriers such as cultural stigma, language, transportation access and competing responsibilities and stressors.
“Managing mental illnesses is not easy—it is possible, but you need the right levels of service and the right levels of care and support systems,” Colopy said. “We really want to be working toward that, but at this point, there’s not sufficient capacity within Long Beach to be able to meet the needs, nor in the surrounding jurisdictions.”
While the city does not have data regarding the number of mental health care workers, between a rise in need and burnout causing some therapists to leave the field, there’s certainly a shortage of those workers in Long Beach, said Colopy.
‘A marathon,’ not ‘a sprint’ for therapists
Many practices including Rose Junie Therapy currently have a waitlist, and many therapists like Abito have made extensive efforts to expand their services through providing telehealth and increasing sliding scale and pro bono offerings, Abito said.
“We were providing services and preparing for this sprint,” she said. “We needed to prepare for a marathon.”
Meeting the increased need while juggling challenges with insurance and affordability have led many therapists to experience constant feelings of fatigue and burnout, Abito said.
“I felt responsible for meeting the needs of my clients and my community,” Abito said. “Especially as a woman of color, when I’d get referrals in regards to a Filipino family, I felt a lot of guilt in not being able to take on a new client.”
Lack of culturally relevant care
At Abito’s practice, which has expanded from only Abito to a team of six since the pandemic, every therapist is a bilingual woman of color who identifies with a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, Abito said.
“A lot of our clients seek out our services because of the different languages we speak,” Abito said.
Access is even more complicated for people of color who want a culturally relevant therapist, as the majority of therapists are White. In 2015, according to the American Psychology Association, 86% of psychologists in the U.S. workforce were White.
For Abito, who moved to the United States from the Philippines when she was around 8 years old and offers services in Tagalog, it took her 10 months to find a Filipina therapist for herself.
“It’s feeling accepted and feeling like that person across from me is understanding my experiences and trauma, without overexplaining myself,” she said. “A lot of clients who come and seek our services is because we look like them . . . it allows our clients to feel safe and allows them to be vulnerable and allows them to open up a space of healing.”
For Abito, asking herself what she can do to address systemic barriers is a constant question on her mind.
“It boils down to what I am in control of, and that’s how I manage my team, the clinicians I hire, their cultural background, how they can bring that forward in their work—that’s how I’ve addressed it,” Abito said.
Addressing the workforce need
While the number of licensed behavioral health providers in the state increased by 20% between 2016 and 2020, this was no match for the recent increase in need for mental health support, Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, told CalMatters.
As for statewide efforts, Gov. Gavin Newsom hopes to emphasize mental health workforce development in his recent master plan for kids’ mental health, with plans to bring in 40,000 new mental health workers.
While Long Beach is looking toward efforts to build up its mental health workforce, particularly of people of color, it will take time, said Colopy.
“It’s not like by next year, we’re going to have a whole new round of workforce,” she said. “We have to continue to build that workforce over time.”
At Cal State Long Beach, internal discussions are focusing on adding seats to the university’s psychology programs, which have seen an increase in interest since the pandemic, said Bita Ghafoori, chair in the Department of Advanced Studies in Education and Counseling.
“We’ve always had a lot of interest, but since the pandemic, it’s nearly tripled,” Ghafoori said of the master’s degree in counseling psychology program, one of three graduate counseling/psychology programs currently available.
Workforce demand for mental health services is a contributing factor to the rise in interest, and most students in CSULB’s counseling psychology, school psychology or school counseling programs easily gain employment after graduation, Ghafoori said.
The counseling psychology master’s program typically accepts 25 to 30 students a year due to Board of Behavioral Sciences standards, which require a certain level of supervision and faculty available per student, Ghafoori explained.
Apart from potentially increasing faculty numbers, the department is examining the possibility of adding a doctoral program, which is also of high need in California, Ghafoori said.
“We are looking at a variety of different things,” Ghafoori said. “There’s just so many different things to consider.”
Local efforts to meet increased need
Within the city, the Health Department has been working on efforts to expand and streamline access to services, both for people with private insurance, and people on Medicaid, Colopy said.
“COVID really really exacerbated trauma and mental health for people, and the systems just haven’t been designed to manage it yet,” Colopy said. “We are really working on it. We’re paying a whole lot of attention to it for the city of Long Beach.”
Efforts included the formation of a mental health advisory board this year, engaging about 30 people from across higher education institutions, the Long Beach Unified School District, the LA County Department of Mental Health and local nonprofit organizations and hospital systems, Colopy said.
The group plans to have its initial report by the first quarter of 2023, she said.
Of the $3 million in health equity grants from the city as part of the Long Beach Recovery Act, the largest focus of those grants were around mental health, Colopy said.
Among the city’s efforts to meet the increased need include the compilation of a mental health resource guide and the establishment of a bench of Black mental health providers to specifically address the need within the city’s Black population, Colopy said.
The city is also currently in the process of hiring for its community crisis response team, an alternative to police responding to mental health crises, an effort that will be launching as a pilot program early next year, Colopy said.
As local and state officials continue to determine the best course of action, in the meantime, many Long Beach residents like Iannaci are still being left behind.
In July of this year, Iannaci resumed her search to find a therapist—but once again, it was to no avail, and she ultimately decided to stop pursuing therapy at the time.
While she will eventually attempt again to find a therapist, it won’t be while she is still on Medi-Cal insurance, she said.
“It really impacted me, not being able to talk with my feelings, it kept me stuck,” Iannaci said. “The rat-race of calling when you’re so depressed—it’s so hard to keep up with the calls and everything.”
Abito encourages anyone who is able to utilize an out-of-network session to do so, and to ask therapists about offering sliding scale or pro bono services or groups, she said.
“For minorities, it feels like there’s this debt of gratitude, but my advice for them is if you do this: Imagine what you’re showing your partner, your kids,” Abito said. “You just have to be courageous enough to send that email . . . there are providers who really do care about the community and who really want to help as much as we can.”
Awareness, affordability remain challenges for parents of color to access doulas
By Tess Kazenoff
Long Beach Business Journal
Nov. 1, 2022
Stevie Merino didn’t always know what a doula was, but going into her pregnancy, she knew the importance of having an advocate by her side.
Merino, who grew up in Long Beach on Medi-Cal insurance, had experienced firsthand the difficulties in accessing adequate health care that come with poverty—but with a background in activism and an anthropology degree, along with being married, Merino thought things would be different by the time she was pregnant, she said.
“There were all these correlating things I thought would protect me from the experiences I had read and heard about as a woman of color birthing in the United States,” Merino said.
But when it came to finding an advocate to help her through her birthing process, she was shocked by the scarcity of culturally relevant doulas available, she said.
Throughout her birth experience, Merino became the target of numerous microaggressions.
“I ended up having to kick a nurse out while I was pushing my baby out because she was being rude,” Merino said. “I really had to self-advocate in such an intimate and vulnerable time in my life.”
And Merino was far from alone in her experience.
Black people in particular face the largest health disparities and experienced maternal mortality rates three or four times higher than all other racial and ethnic groups in California from 2011 to 2019, according to the California Department of Public Health.
While many factors can contribute to the stark variability in risk of death, some are particularly prevalent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including access to care, quality of care, structural racism and implicit biases.
Based on what she went through, Merino became determined to be a small part of a bigger solution. A few months after she gave birth, Merino was on her way to Oakland for a doula-of-color training, with her 3-month-old in tow.
And a couple of years after that, Merino gathered with other birth workers to create a Birthworkers of Color Collective, an initiative that, while rooted in Long Beach, has trained about 200 people across the country and even internationally, and is currently in its 10th cohort.
Still, for people of color, access to doulas remains limited due to a lack of awareness, a lack of cultural competency and a lack of affordability, even as they can help both to prevent bad outcomes and to ease what’s often an understandable distrust in the health care system.
“Hospitals and medical professionals need to do real community work to improve their relationships and their legacies in certain communities,” Merino said. “That’s criminal that someone can be more at risk because of racism.”
“I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve supported where they’ve been asked the most outlandish, disrespectful things, where in comparison, my White clients, they get so much more leeway, are treated with so much more respect,” she added. “I’ve been to so many births and so many hospital visits and doctor visits, the distinction is not left up to the imagination.”
Need for culturally relevant care
Even as Black people may disproportionately benefit from doulas, studies have shown that the doula community is predominantly White, and primarily serves White middle-class women.
It’s a problem that helped push Toi Nichols to found the Long Beach nonprofit M.O.R.E. Mothers, which provides resources and supplies to people who are pregnant or have children. Part of achieving that mission is ensuring people of color are aware of the service and support that a doula can provide, especially in an experience as vulnerable and overwhelming as childbirth, Nichols said.
“You don’t feel so much like a number,” she said. “We try not to make it a thing of the statistics and just harping on the negative aspects that women of color face when they go into the hospital,” Nichols said. “We try to make sure, ‘OK, we know what this is, but let’s work on tools. Let’s have that close support system of a doula or midwife that you feel comfortable with.’”
Educating mothers about doulas is personal to Nichols; when she gave birth to her first child in 2018, she experienced a traumatic nerve injury—an injury that was preventable, she said.
“I didn’t know how to advocate for myself,” she said. “I’m a strong believer that the support that a doula brings really changes outcomes for women of color and their maternal experience in hospitals.”
Nichols used a doula during her second pregnancy.
“We are the ones dying greater than our counterparts, we want someone who can understand what that means and can tap into … that fear that’s brought on because of the facts of the matter,” she said. “Personally, I wanted someone of color, someone that understands the history, can understand my cultural needs and wants and desires.”
For people with language limitations, a doula can be particularly crucial, said Lidia Medrano, a doula and childbirth educator who has worked in the community since around 2007.
“My mom had seven children. She didn’t speak English. She had to sign things she didn’t know she was signing,” said Medrano, who also offers services in Spanish.
Medical professionals should be receiving more training regarding cultural sensitivity, said Medrano.
“I would love for everybody to step back and see the person and family for them and not categorize them. Everybody has different needs,” she said. “We want everybody to have a birth experience that they feel good about.”
While more community awareness surrounding doulas is certainly needed, medical professionals also need to become more aware of the role doulas can play, Medrano said.
“Sometimes doctors (think) we’re just trying to take away clients, but hopefully in the future, (with) more education, more services, more clarity for doctors, it will change their perspective of how we can walk hand-in-hand to support their clients,” Medrano said.
Challenges with accessibility
Still, awareness only goes so far.
Apart from limited doulas of color available and a lack of awareness, cost is one of the largest barriers preventing marginalized groups from accessing doula services, Merino said.
Medical insurance typically doesn’t cover home births or birthing services, so while interest has increased since the pandemic, people’s accessibility and resources haven’t changed.
Some clients have been able to successfully advocate for themselves with their insurance, but not everyone has the same tools to self-advocate, Merino said.
Recently, a few programs have opened up to help fill in the gaps.
In 2021, for example, the Birthworkers of Color Collective became a nonprofit, and with the help of grants, the organization can now provide fully funded doula services to those in need, Merino said.
But offering affordable services can still be a challenge. While doulas such as Merino and Medrano provide sliding scale services when possible, it is not always sustainable, and birth workers deserve a living wage, Merino said.
“While many of us come into this work because we’re passionate, and we want to be a part of eradicating and minimizing birth disparities, it’s my full-time job, how I pay my rent, upkeep the lifestyle my 7-year-old loves,” Merino said. “It’s not just this hobby.”
Other programs, though, are also available.
Within Long Beach, Black residents can connect to the Health Department’s Black Infant Health program. Organizations such as The Victoria Project and the LA County Department of Public Health’s African American Infant and Maternal Mortality initiative also work to provide free services.
And in January, the state Department of Health Care Services plans to add doula services to the list of preventive services covered under the Medi-Cal program—demonstrating an increase in awareness and recognition of importance, Merino said.
Another way forward
With doula services becoming more accessible, success stories like that of Malinda McWilliams may become more common.
McWilliams, 36, is from the Los Angeles area but was living in Virginia without any family nearby throughout her pregnancy and birth experience. She used a doula to help provide that much-needed sense of community.
Her doula washed clothes, coordinated a maternity photoshoot, helped her mentally prepare for her birth through journaling prompts and even facilitated a birthing ceremony for McWilliams to reclaim her birth experience, she said.
Since losing her mother in 2017, McWilliams had always tried to avoid hospitals, and she had planned on a home birth, until complications arose during labor and she ended up in the hospital, she said.
“You hear a lot about women of color who go into hospital and not coming out,” McWilliams said. “We don’t feel protected … A lot of times Black women—we are viewed as having really high pain tolerance. If we’re really in pain, it’s kind of like it’s ignored, so just having somebody that’ll be there and advocating for you, it makes all the difference.”
Having a doula and midwife by her side helped to reassure her that she was supported, she said.
“You have this village you have for a lifetime. Because of that experience, we’re family now. It all came together like anything that’s meant to be,” McWilliams said.
For Merino, experiences like McWilliams’ should be the rule, rather than the exception—though she recognizes that doulas should not be the only way to achieve better birth outcomes.
“A lot of health disparities are really rooted in systems, and systems need to change,” Merino said. “There’s so much institutional racism, sexism, there’s so many resource allocation issues and so many other things that need to be addressed that were highlighted during this pandemic.”
Although doulas play a role in tackling health inequities, they are only a piece of the solution, Merino said.
While everyone who wants a doula deserves to have access, it is also a shaky space, where doulas are being propped up as the answer to maternal health, Merino said.
“We’re not supposed to do this on our own,” Merino said.
“We truly need community in order to have an optimal experience,” Merino said. “Can we do it alone? Sure, many of us have been. There’s this ‘Supermom’ trope, but we lose a lot from it … hopefully having doulas and having support can truly shift that narrative.”
Members of Tongva tribe denied federal rescue funds after years of fighting for recognition
By Tess Kazenoff
Long Beach Post
August 21, 2021
The federal government’s American Rescue Plan infused $1.75 billion into American Indian and Alaska Native programs in a historic win for the nation’s tribes.
However, more than 100 tribes throughout California, including the 2,000 or so members of the local Tongva tribe, saw none of that funding because they are not federally recognized.
The Long Beach-area tribe has worked for years to attain this formal recognition, but it is tedious—and sometimes impossible due to lack of records. What this means is that these tribes lose out on many benefits and forms of assistance, including financial support included in the massive post-pandemic stimulus bill.
Beyond any tangible resources, tribe members are also left with the feeling that they are not recognized as people.
“You’re saying they don’t exist,” said Cheryl McKnight, director of the American Indian Institute at Cal State University Dominguez Hills.
The Tongvas have lived in the Long Beach area and throughout Southern California for over 2,500 years. In the mid-19th Century they were subjected to violence and enslavement under American occupation, and many died from diseases introduced by new settlers.
Yet tribe members today still consider themselves caretakers of the land, plants, water and air, said Jimi Castillo, 78, a spiritual leader who is a member of the Tongva tribe with Acjachemen ancestry.
“We never once gave up this land,” he said. “It was taken from us.”
Years of frustration
The federal government initially forced Native Americans to assimilate into White, Christian culture, and divided their land up into plots that went to some Native Americans, while much of it was sold. Over the next half-century their land shrank from about 154 million acres to 48 million.
In 1934, however, tribes gained some level of autonomy and the government banned the sale of Indian land.
The government later began a system to determine whether tribes were legitimate according to their history and records, and therefore eligible to receive federal resources. To date there are 574 tribes with this certification.
Four out of five Tongva factions in Southern California have applied for federal recognition, but the process has remained stalled over the decades.
In 1990, one faction, the Gabrielino/Tongva of San Gabriel unsuccessfully filed. In 1997, the Gabrielino/Tongva of California Tribal Council and the Coastal Gabrielino-Diegueno Band of Mission Indians both filed, and their applications remain pending.
Castillo said he thinks the “Tongvas have been at the top of the list,” but there is no guarantee that they will be granted federal recognition any time soon.
Many barriers
The barriers preventing tribes such as the Tongvas from getting federally recognized are vast, expensive and time-consuming, involving years of paperwork and bureaucracy.
Yet, for many Tongvas and other unrecognized Indigenous people, the process is worth the massive undertaking.
Federal recognition would allow enrolled members to have a reservation, providing a place to meet and celebrate their culture. Along with the ability to obtain land, federal recognition also permits a tribe to establish its own tribal government and enter into agreements with the U.S. federal government, just as other countries do.
Native tribes experience disparities across the board, ranging from education to health care, compared to the general American population and other races, in addition to being denied recognition of their identity and existence.
Recognition, while not a solution to these issues, would be a step forward for many Tongvas, according to Castillo and other tribe members.
Around 2,000 Tongva people still live in the Los Angeles area, and they are considered to be one of the two most prominent California tribes without recognition, with 2,800 archaeological sites, such as the sacred site of Puvungna, located on what is now Cal State Long Beach.
Due to years of government relocation, Los Angeles County has the highest number of Natives out of any U.S. county, although no reservations exist in the area, which are only designated to federally recognized tribes.
While the Tongvas were granted state recognition in 1994, state recognition in California is more symbolic than helpful, as there is no formal process nor funding attached. It simply acknowledges historical and cultural contributions, and the tribe’s presence.
In 2004, Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton, introduced legislation that would have allowed a tribe to establish a reservation in California, but the hearing was canceled.
The requirements
Gaining federal recognition is a prolonged, expensive and often unachievable feat that can take decades for tribes that lack the proper documentation and resources. Some tribes’ records were destroyed, or a written record never even existed.
For the Tongvas, their request was initially denied, and the tribe filed a series of appeals, a process made even more difficult by a split among the Tongva people due to disputes over plans for a casino, said Castillo.
According to Castillo, the factions have made the process extraordinarily difficult, and if the Tongvas were to receive recognition, it would only go to one faction, although he is not particularly optimistic.
“That’s the only way that we can recognize ourselves as a people. I think it’s important more so for my children and grandchildren than it is for me. I don’t think I can see it in my lifetime,” said Castillo.
While the requirements for obtaining federal recognition are many pages long full of different caveats, specifications of what can be used as evidence, and legalities, in a nutshell, there are seven central requirements that tribes must meet before beginning a multistep review process that can also take years.
Written evidence must demonstrate a distinct and continuous identity, government and dealings with outside governments since at least 1900. Rules for membership must be specified, and the tribe can have no history of “termination” in which the tribe has been declared extinct, which has disqualified many tribes.
The tribe must also prove that it has lived together in a community continuously, which is a challenge due to genocide and forced assimilation, said Anthony Mojarro, who is part of tribes in New Mexico.
Without a designated community space or reservation, the Tongvas have also struggled with proving a distinct government, which has been further complicated due to weakened leadership due to their splits, said McKnight of Cal State Dominguez Hills. This also inhibits the ability to raise the necessary funds for the process, and reduces the tribe’s strength in numbers.
‘Bad-mouthing’
To further aggravate the process, a tribe’s petition to become recognized can become void if there is any opposition, which can come from state or city-level governments, or sometimes, even other tribes—another factor that has derailed the Tongvas’ path to recognition.
According to Castillo, the government has implied that there would only be the possibility of one faction receiving recognition, so they were encouraged to join together, but this has been to no avail.
At different points, Castillo was attached to a couple different factions, resulting in “bad-mouthing,” from the other factions.
“I ended up saying, you know what, I’m not gonna attach myself to any of that. I’m Tongva, and that’s it,” he said.
Mojarro, the tribe member from New Mexico, said: “You would think that tribes would help other tribes, they know the struggle, but the process kind of starts turning even related tribes against each other.”
Given that recognized tribes are underfunded, there’s a “perceived belief between the tribes that adding one more tribe to the mix means your funding is going to get cut even more,” said Mojarro.
Pandemic relief
While data indicates that the pandemic has been detrimental to Indigenous communities, limited information exists as to the impact on unrecognized Natives such as Tongvas.
“No one is keeping data, and no one is keeping records,” McKnight said. “(Tongvas) are all over the place. That’s the problem; no one cares.”
Natives have a life expectancy of 5.5 years less than the U.S. population as a whole, and they experience higher rates of death in many categories such as diabetes, assault, homicide and suicide.
In 2019, Indian Health Services health care expenditures per person were $4,078, compared to $11,582 per person for federal health care spending nationwide.
For tribal members who are not federally recognized, the disparities are similar, often due to generational trauma, said McKnight, and for the Tongvas, rather than receiving minimal funding, they receive nothing at all.
According to the CDC, among 23 states with adequate race and ethnicity data, the rate of COVID-19 among Indigenous people was 3.5 times higher than among non-Hispanic White people as of August 2020.
As of December 2020, based on data from 14 participating states, COVID-19-related mortality was 1.8 times higher among Natives than among non-Hispanic whites.
McKnight said she is glad that some people are being helped by the American Rescue Plan, although it is not nearly enough.
“I just wish that this were the country that was by the people for the people, it was a matter of looking at the people who would fall through the cracks. Most of the federally funded Indians, except for the very few that have casinos that are doing well, are in desperate shape,” she said.
‘I’ll always be Indian’
Castillo, who spent years in the throws of the fight for recognition, philosophically opposes the process.
“We’re the only people in the nation and probably globally that have to prove who we are, and prove our blood quantum,” he said.
Castillo recounted an incident from years ago when he applied for a spiritual leader position at a prison and was met with application questions varying from what his blood quantum is to what “breed” he is.
Another time, he had to declare himself “extinct” to receive money from a company that had built property on Tongva land.
After years of having his ancestry invalidated, he no longer wants to prove anything.
Castillo recalled his childhood days, getting bullied for being Native, often arriving home in tears.
With the last name Castillo, he found it easy to fit in with the Mexican community, claiming for a while to have Mexican heritage.
“It finally came to me in my lifetime that I’m Indian, I’ll always be Indian,” he said.
“There’s nothing Mexican about me, there’s nothing Spanish about me, besides my last name, and I’m going to be a Native American and I’m going to be as strong a Native American as I can possibly be, whether the federal government recognizes me or not,” Castillo said. “I’ll never deny being Native American again.”
Tribal leaders urge CSULB to delay soil treatment plan on Puvungna
By Tess Kazenoff
Long Beach Post
April 16, 2023
Tribal leaders and advocates are urging California State University Long Beach officials to delay the university’s implementation of a soil treatment plan on Puvungna, which is expected to begin this week, citing concerns over causing further harm to the indigenous site.
The soil treatment plan has become yet another point of contention in a years-long saga involving local Native American tribes and CSULB. The current controversy dates back to 2019, when the university dumped dirt on Puvungna, a piece of land on the campus’s western side that is considered a sacred site by local tribes.
While university officials consider the plan to be a necessary step to stabilize the Puvungna land, tribal leaders claim that removing the dumped dirt is a critical goal, and the soil treatment plan would make that removal more difficult.
For local tribes, Puvungna is considered a sacred site of creation, and it’s used as a space for various ceremonies and spiritual gatherings. Numerous burials and important archaeological sites remain on Puvungna.
What led to this point
The university’s decision in 2019 to dump dirt from a nearby student housing project, without conducting prior consultation with affiliated tribal governments or obtaining authorization from the State Historic Preservation Office, sparked a legal battle between local tribes and the university.
In September 2021, a settlement agreement was reached, which Rebecca Robles, an Acjachemen elder and culture bearer, considered a victory.
The settlement prohibits the university from building on the site and dumping any other construction materials or debris, and it also stated that the land would go to a conservation easement within two years. The petitioners, the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation-Belardes and California Cultural Resources Preservation Alliance, Inc., would work together to achieve the covenant.
Since then, efforts have been underway to preserve and restore Puvungna. Through the formation of the grassroots group Friends of Puvungna, which became a nonprofit last year, tribal leaders and advocates have been working to fundraise, hold clean-ups and apply for grants.
Soil treatment vs. removal
To Robles, there is no question that the soil must be removed—testing of the soil indicated potentially hazardous levels of arsenic, plus, according to the State Historic Preservation Office, the weight of the soil was damaging the archaeological site—but it was a matter of finding the funding to do so, she said.
According to Robles, local tribes were not notified of the upcoming plans until receiving an email on April 6, despite having biweekly meetings with university officials regarding Puvungna.
“We were somewhat blindsided by this treatment plan,” Robles said. “We don’t really understand why the university is doing this at this time.”
According to Jeff Cook, a spokesperson for the university, the “long-planned implementation of the treatment plan” is in accordance with the settlement agreement reached in September 2021 and memorialized in a Notice of Exemption filed at the time, and it will be conducted under the supervision of Native American monitors and archeologists.
Permitted activities on the “Restricted Parcel” include necessary landscape maintenance and shaping of soils stores on the site in and prior to 2019 to “stabilize and blend them into the existing landscape,” Cook said in an email.
“The University continues efforts to identify a long-term conservation easement manager and remains committed to the perpetual protection of Puvungna,” said Cook.
According to an online petition, the university’s remediation plan was negotiated with the State Historic Preservation Office, but without a supplemental Environmental Impact Report, and it’s expected to include “feathering” out of the soil, which would make removal of the soil more difficult, further damaging Puvungna.
“We want to remove it, they want to hide it and cover it,” said Michelle Castillo, an Acjachemem tribal descendent and vice president of Friends of Puvungna.
What local tribes want
The petition requests a one-year delay of the university’s treatment plan, allowing for enough time and resources to carefully remove the soil. According to the university website, the treatment plan will commence on April 18, although Castillo said she believed that the setting of the soil is not expected to begin until April 25.
“(The settlement) was one of our wins, and so to lose that, or to potentially lose, that is very disheartening,” Robles said. “It also seems like the university is sugarcoating it, you know, and not really taking responsibility for the actions that they’ve caused for the disharmony in the Native American community and the further disruption to the land, to a very important sacred site.”
Robles said she had hoped that the soil removal would be taken care of this fall, when the conservation easement will go into a land trust, based on the settlement agreement.
“It’s the most beautiful time of the year, it’s spring … It’s a beautiful meadow,” Robles said, noting that even aside from other impacts the soil treatment plan would have, the current timing is not ideal. “We feel like this is a very damaging time to do it, that it would be less damaging to do it at the end of the summer.”
Robles hopes that the land will go to a Native American land trust, and that through restoring Puvungna, it will allow for the healing of both Native American communities and of the university. In addition, Robles hopes that the university will begin to truly understand the importance of Puvungna to Native communities, she said.
Robles envisions a Puvungna that, with the help Native communities and allies, will someday grow into a “beautiful garden,” serving as a place for ceremonies and for people to pray and learn about the struggles that Native communities have gone through to establish a restored sacred site, she said.
“I don’t think that people realize how important it is to the Native American people,” Robles said. “It’s something very precious. … It’s our history, but it’s California’s history, and it’s American history. A developer wouldn’t do this to a Civil War battlefield. And so there’s a certain tinge of unfairness and not acknowledging Native American history.”
A history of loss
There has already been much loss of California cultural sites, Robles said.
“It’s like California Indians are almost invisible,” she said. “To see all of this going on is heartbreaking.”
While the entire university campus is built on Puvungna, which has served as a ceremonial center for thousands of years, and is recognized as a sacred site by the Tongvas, Acjachemans and other Southern California tribes, the remaining 22 acres of undeveloped land are used to this day for ceremonies and spiritual gatherings. In 1974, the land was listed on the California State and National Registers of Historical Places, which protects the site from “arbitrary destruction.”
Despite the existing protections, Castillo pointed to four different sites across Puvungna where the university had dumped debris throughout 2019. In the fall and winter, PVC can even be seen poking out, said Castillo. A visible hill stretching along the border of Puvungna is made entirely of contaminated soil, she said.
According to Castillo, the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden as well as the nearby parking lot had been built without consulting with local tribes, infringing on the protected 22 acres.
Castillo estimated that about 3.5 of the 22 acres have been lost, and she noted that the conservation easement only protects about 10 to 12 out of the 22 acres.
Caretakers of the land
“We are caretakers, but we have to be caretakers on paper,” said Castillo.
About three times a month, Puvungna caretakers tend to the land, which can include cleaning and maintaining the site, preparing for ceremonies or ensuring that there is a walking path, particularly for elders. A couple of times a month, tribal members will walk around the site, dropping tobacco to strengthen their prayers and intentions.
“Our spirituality and our prayers and our ceremony are very important to us—we don’t have a church. This is our church,” Castillo said. “This is where we come to mourn, where we come to celebrate, and say goodbye to a season … It’s a beautiful site for us, but of course for developers and the university, they’re losing money every day.”
Throughout the year, Puvungna is a space for numerous ceremonies. This past January, over 200 people gathered at Puvungna for a 5K run/walk in honor of Puvungna and all sacred sites, Castillo said.
“There’s magic here, there’s history here, there’s tears here, blood,” Castillo said. “We’re fighting to preserve it, we’re fighting to keep it just like this, with the exception of a few changes.”