Acjachemen (Juaneño) tribal member Heidi Lucero recalls stories from her grandparents and memories of life on the Santa Margarita Ranch. She also shares her regard for Mission San Juan Capistrano for their accessibility and willingness to share Acjachemen culture and history with the public. Recorded for Indigenous Voices of San Juan Capistrano, A Cal Humanities funded community stories project, Westminster Library.
Transcript
I come from the Ricardas Dios line, I actually descend from the Olivares family, so my lineage comes from my mother and my grandmother and from my great grandmother and they actually grew up in San Juan Capistrano and my grandmother was the first matriarch of San Juan Capistrano. Her name was Viviana Victoria Ricardas. So, she was the first matriarch and my grandfather was the ranch foreman of the Santa Margarita Ranch.
Text: How has San Juan Capistrano changed in your lifetime?
That's a really important topic because a lot of the old building have been lost and the old ranches have been lost. But more recently development have been encroaching on a lot of our more traditional areas including out on Ortega Highway where they are building a lot of new homes and a lot of new communities that are, the one right on Ortega Highway and San Antonio is one of the big ones that, that used to be the old site of the first mission that was built. So they actually encroached on that area and as a basket-weaver and a native foods advocate, those areas are reaching further and further out into our traditional gathering areas. And so, they're diminishing quite rapidly so we have no place to gather our traditional foods and our traditional materials for weaving.
Text: What Changes have occurred in traditional tribal lands since the arrival of Europeans?
I do see change but I think that from the point of colonization that the border created a barrier between tribes and the border created a barrier between one tribe that so half the tribe is on this side of the border and half is on the other side of the border. A lot of the people in Mexico have indigenous ancestry so I think that it was the colonization process that influenced more than the nationality of the people from Mexico. I think that they bring their same indigenous perspectives. Originally, they did so I think that most of them are coming up from economic development now.
Text: What interesting stories from your parents, grandparents, and other ancestors can you tell us?
I remember my grandparents, my grandmother in particular telling me that they had gotten shipped off to boarding school. At Sherman Indian School in Riverside and I remember her saying that her and her brothers, there was thirteen of them, so they all went to boarding school. So, I remember her telling me that the boys said that if they could make it over the mountain range and find the beach, they could find their way home. And so they were pretty skilled hunters, you know, and so they actually made their way over the mountain range and made it all the way home. That's one of the stories of resilience I remember that my grandmother told me, and that her and her sisters they cried so much because they wanted to be back home with their parents that they eventually sent them home.
Text: What sort of work did your family do after the mission period ended?
My Grandfather, he was the head ranch foreman for the Santa Margarita Ranch. From the stories my grandmother and my mother told me that the ranch was a gathering place for everybody. A lot of the people in the tribe were pretty poor but it seemed that just because they were on the ranch and they had so many people, ranch hands, and ranch foremen, and people on the ranch, there was always plentiful amount of food, so it ended up being the gathering place from people. And I can remember her telling me that during the holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving they always had like four or five turkey and two or three hams and everybody came over and it was a gathering place. They were making tamales, and everyone was there together, together.
Text: How do you regard your relationship with the San Juan Capistrano Mission?
I think over the years we've had a pretty good working relationship with the mission I think that they've been pretty open to us being on the mission grounds and having access to places like the old stone church. We have a celebration every year of the anniversary of the earthquake so it's important for us to gather there and remember those ancestors that died in that earthquake and I have been on the mission grounds and we built a traditional house on the mission grounds twice. And as a weaver I know that we have a group of weavers that go every week to the mission and weave at the mission. It's about sharing our culture with the vast number of students that come to the mission in order to learn about the history of the missions. So, I think that they have made it really accessible to the tribe to come in and work with them.
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