AN
GELES NATIONAL FOREST
At 1 p.m. Sunday motorists and
cyclists speeding along Angeles Crest (2) Highway were
greeted by the sight of Native Americans dancing and
chanting at the Hahamongna Cultural Center, welcoming the
first day of fall. Autumn begins today.
The ceremony at what was formerly
the Red Box Station also featured performances by the
Southern California Native American Flute Circle, their
first at a public venue.
Glenn Miller, with the Griffith
Park Observatory and a Tongva Indian, calculated that high
noon on Sunday would actually take place at 1 p.m., and
that's when the ceremonies began.
Kat High, a member of the Hupa
tribe of Northern California, said most of their rock
gardens, equinox and sacred sites are private and they want
to keep them that way. But they wanted to share this
tradition with the public in a public place.
"We are using this flagpole as
our marker, to mark the changing of the season, and we're
using the flagpole because its a visible symbol and it's in
a public place.
"We base all of our
ceremonies, happenings, plantings, gatherings and our
restings on the seasons and the turning of the Earth. So
we're going to mark that, and the Tongva Nation Dancers and
the Tongva people, who are the first people of this land,
are going to come and dance and perform and do some songs
for us,' High said.
Anthony Morales, introduced as
chief of the Tongva Nation, said his people built the San
Gabriel Mission and used to occupy an area from Santa Monica
on the west, the San Gabriel Mountains on the north, El
Cajon Pass on the east and Orange County on the south.
He led a group of about 15 dancers
dressed in leather, beads, shells, skins and feathers and
said the clothing is called regalia, not a costume, a term
Indians find offensive.
The dancers, based in San Gabriel,
used gourds, clapper sticks and seed pods as instruments.
They performed a blessing dance,
called on the deities to join them in another, sang a
creation song, performed a circle of life dance and others
dedicated to women and children, and ended by inviting
spectators to join them as they danced in a large circle.
At one point Andrew Morales,
Anthony's son, performed a purification ceremony in which he
used a feather to bathe people in aromatic smoke.
Guillermo Martinez, a Tarascnan
Apache, makes beautiful wooden flutes, which he said are
easy to play, and organized the flute circle.
"There are traditional songs
that haven't changed over a period of time. Then there are
spirit songs, where you play as you feel, they're improvised
and come out of the thin air,' he said.
Jamila Dawson of Northridge was one
of scores of spectators who watched the solemn ceremonies in
respectful silence.
"I find it kind of strange and
wonderful actually to be part of something I really know
very little about. Celebrating the equinox, that I can
understand. But to see how another culture celebrates it, is
like I said, very eerie and wonderful,' she said.
Emanuel Parker can be reached at
(626) 578-6300, Ext. 4475, or by e-mail at emanuel.parker@sgvn.com
.
