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Oral Histories
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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<p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p>
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Linda Kallas
Interviewee
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Diania Caudell
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https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=CaudellDiania_KallasLinda_2022-10-17_access.xml
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5.4 Caudell, Diania. Interview October 27, 2022 SC027-22 1:35:35 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections Oral History Collection CSUSM This interview was recorded as part of the North County Oral History Initiative, a partnership between California State University San Marcos and San Marcos Historical Society & ; Heritage Park. This initiative was generously funded by the Center for Engaged Scholarship at CSU San Marcos. Basket making Education -- Native Americans Luiseño Indians Oceanside (Calif.) Diania Caudell Linda Kallas mp4 CaudellDiania_KallasLinda_2022-10-17_access_redacted.mp4 1:|23(17)|51(14)|74(5)|91(9)|108(14)|129(9)|139(14)|156(6)|168(11)|179(10)|196(9)|215(13)|233(8)|248(2)|265(9)|282(2)|300(17)|312(13)|340(16)|373(13)|399(13)|418(11)|435(5)|458(2)|482(12)|497(4)|513(2)|533(6)|552(8)|567(7)|584(9)|601(8)|626(4)|645(12)|668(10)|684(13)|710(7)|729(7)|751(5)|765(7)|792(7)|816(12)|830(5)|857(12)|875(11)|904(17)|924(12)|947(6)|967(7)|989(14)|1008(8)|1030(2)|1044(10)|1061(14)|1082(9)|1100(1)|1123(13)|1148(8)|1170(9)|1192(9)|1209(1)|1220(1)|1235(15)|1255(1)|1280(9)|1294(14)|1320(7)|1340(14)|1356(3)|1382(10)|1402(4)|1432(12)|1452(9)|1472(6)|1487(8)|1503(5)|1546(12)|1562(15)|1580(16)|1603(4)|1622(9)|1638(6)|1659(2)|1682(6)|1722(3)|1761(12)|1780(1)|1791(6)|1806(11)|1820(8)|1840(16)|1854(2)|1876(3)|1895(7)|1907(7) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/214f3df10b105188751e6d028fef0176.mp4 Other video English 0 Introduction/ Family background Diania Caudell discusses her family’s background. Diania explains that one side of her family is part of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and that goes back nine generations. The other side of her family is French, and her great-grandfather, Hubert Foussat, was one of the founding fathers of Oceanside, CA. She also discusses other family details, such as the fact that she and her parents moved around the West Coast during her childhood due to her father’s career in construction, as well as information about her grandmother who worked at Camp Pendleton. family history ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Luiseño people ; North County San Diego (Calif.) ; Oceanside (Calif.) ; San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians 339 Activism in Indian education reform Diania Caudell discusses her activism in advocating for the Acjachemen and Juaneño people for education reform in San Jan Capistrano, CA. She recalls fighting against Indigenous erasure in her children’s classrooms. She describes the complicated history of school registration files in terms of ethnicity, and how many Indigenous families were taught to select either “Other” or “Caucasian” on school and other legal forms. She explains how this causes erasure in the school system. She recalls surveying the K-12 registration files in the San Juan Capistrano Unified School District and identified 210 Indigenous students. This led to the formation of the San Juan Capistrano Council, which established an Indian Research Center. Acjachemen people ; activism ; education reform ; Indian education ; Indigenous activism ; Indigenous students ; Juaneño people ; San Jan Capistrano (Calif.) ; San Juan Capistrano Unified School District ; students 727 Back injury/ Career in basketry Diania Caudell describes a back injury she suffered. She recounts deciding to undergo back surgery and learning how to walk again. While recovering from the surgery, the Acjachemen people sent her a newsletter about basketry. She describes making the decision to learn basket-weaving in order to learn patience for her recovery, and also to expand her knowledge on Indian education. Acjachemen people ; Back injury ; Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Indigenous education 1167 Indigenous educational programs Diania Caudell discusses the current state of the San Juan Capistrano Unified School District. The Indian Research Center is open to the student population, but she explains that it requires federal funding to remain open. She also explains that the Research Center is also open in Huntington Beach because they have a large Cherokee community in the area. She explains how Indigenous history is not properly taught in K-12 schools. activism ; Cherokee people ; education reform ; Huntington Beach (Calif.) ; Indian education ; Indigenous activism ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous students ; San Jan Capistrano (Calif.) ; San Juan Capistrano Unified School District ; students 1511 The California Indian Basketry Weavers Association Diania Caudell discusses her involvement with the California Indian Basketry Weavers Association (CIBA). She explains that she has been a CIBA board member for at least twelve years. Before joining the board, the CIBA discovered that the traditional materials that are used in basket weaving were being destroyed due to development projects. Since becoming a board member, Diania has advocated towards protecting Southern California native lands. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; California Indian Basketry Weavers Association (CIBA) ; Environmentalism ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Native lands ; Native plants 1968 The foundations of basket-weaving Diania Caudell describes the various types of traditional plants that are used in basket-weaving. She explains that California is home to over 243 tribes, and that each tribe uses different plants. In Southern California, about five different plants are used in basket-weaving, such as the Juncus textilis and yucca. Diania also describes the many different weaving and dyeing techniques that are used in basketry. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Native lands ; Native plants 3030 Pesticide and insecticide effects on native plants and basket-weaving Diania Caudell describes the dangers pesticides and insecticides have on native plants and on the health of the community. This is an important topic that she has brought awareness to as a CIBA board member. Cities and counties often will not provide notice to their citizens when they begin spraying to protect against insects and rodents, and this causes major health concerns to basket-weavers or others who regularly pick native plants and crops. She describes an incident in which she smelled a plant and experienced a chemical reaction. She expresses concern for places like golf courses and hiking trails, where athletes, families, children, and animals frequent regularly. Diania also explains how the chemicals are affecting food and water supplies in Indigenous communities. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; California Indian Basketry Weavers Association (CIBA) ; Environmentalism ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Insecticides ; Native lands ; Native plants ; Pesticides 3584 Local volunteer work Diania Caudell discusses her volunteer work in North County. She has volunteered her time at Camp Pendelton, at Daly Ranch, and at local elementary schools. Diania discusses in great detail her time as a docent at Daly Ranch, where she aided in the “Indian program” and presented on the history of local Indigenous communities. She recalls bonding with one of the rangers and how they made a wiiwish dish together. She also recalls how her role expanded while volunteering at the Daly Ranch, other volunteers with whom she worked, and the school group programs she helped develop. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; California State University San Marcos ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; Daly Ranch ; Escondido (Calif.) ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Indigenous education ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; North County San Diego (Calif.) ; students 3994 Basket-weaving at Mission San Luis Rey Diania Caudell discusses her volunteer work at Mission San Luis Rey. She provided a basket-weaving demonstration to forty-six Franciscans. She describes expecting to see the Franciscan friars dressed in traditional robes, but was surprised to find them dressed in modern street clothes. She recalls the demonstration being a rewarding experience for all involved. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Catholic Church ; Franciscan friars ; friars ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Luiseño people ; Mission San Luis Rey ; Oceanside (Calif.) 4328 Upcoming presentations Diania Caudell discusses the upcoming presentations she has scheduled in North County. She talks about planning to do basket-weaving demonstrations at Pablo Tac elementary school. She also talks about performing at the upcoming Jubilation of the Valley Festival and doing another basket-weaving demonstration at a senior center. She also recounts her recent demonstration at Camp Pendleton, where she discussed the native plants near the area with the audience. Basket-weaving ; Basketry ; Camp Pendleton (Calif.) ; Indigenous basket-weaving ; Indigenous basketry ; North County San Diego (Calif.) ; Schools ; Students 4606 Controversy over working with the Mission Diania Caudell reflects on the criticism she has received from the Indigenous community about her volunteer work at the Mission San Luis Rey. She states that she is not condoning the racist history of the Mission towards their Indigenous community, but she also wants to pay her respects to her ancestors who are buried on the Mission grounds. She explains the complicated history the Luiseño people have with the Mission, especially those whose ancestors helped built the Mission, or who were educated and lived on the Mission’s grounds. family history ; genocide ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Luiseño people ; Mission San Luis Rey ; Oceanside (Calif.) ; racism 5016 Becoming a historian/ The Luiseño language Diania Caudell discusses how she became a historian of Indigenous history. She explains how she attended California State University Riverside to learn the Luiseño language. She then performs a demo language presentation with the interviewer. She uses laminated cards containing illustrations with associating Luiseño words for the demo presentation. Diania also reads a poem that she wrote about the Luiseño people and their creation story that was inspired by a hike up a mountain near Rainbow, CA. California State University Riverside ; historian ; Indigenous history ; Indigenous people ; Indigenous poetry ; Luiseño language ; Luiseño people ; poetry ; Rainbow (Calif.) Oral history Interview with Diania Caudell focused on her Native American ancestry as well as her past occupation as an accountant. Also included is her implementation of Native American education in the San Juan Capistrano School District and how her back injury led her to become a basket weaver. The written transcription of this interview also contains a glossary and poem in Luiseño with English translation, written by Caudell in 2003. DC: Is my lipstick okay? [laughs] Today is October 27, 2022. I am Linda Kallas, and I am interviewing Diania Caudell as part of the North County Oral History Initiative. Thank you, Diania, for being here, and allowing me to do this with you today. Diania Caudell: No $uun Looviq [" ; My heart is good" ; in Luiseno. Our way of saying " ; thank you." ; ] [chuckles] Linda: Miiyu. [" ; Hello" ; to one person in Luiseno.] DC: Miiyu [laughs]. LK: Um, we were--I just wanted to ask you when and where you were born. DC: Uh, where was I-- [redacted] 1948. I was born here in North County, San Diego--Oceanside, California, San Diego County. LK: And was your family an active part of any cultural community, such as religious or ethnic groups? DC: Well [sighs] yeah, we were, uh, part of the first indigenous people here in the Americas or whatever you want to say on that part. Um, we are part of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians, uh, been in the area as far as, uh, the written is concerned, you know, since they were written at the Missions, I would say the 1700s, because after that it was, um, mostly--before that it was all oral. So, um, we' ; ve been here over nine generations. That' ; s on the native side. LK: That' ; s on the native side. DC: Yeah. LK: Which means-- DC: It means that-- LK: On the other side is-- DC: On the other side, the French side came to us, and he landed here in 1868. He was Hubert Foussat. Here in San Francisco. He was one of the founding fathers of Oceanside. LK: Is that why there' ; s a street named after him? DC: Yes. But that' ; s not at a--that' ; s not named after my great grandfather. That' ; s named, really, with--after his brother, Ramon Foussat. LK: Okay. DC: And he' ; s the one that had the ranch in the area up there, by Highland and Oceanside. Faustino Foussat had the land there in the valley, San Luis Rey Valley. LK: And there' ; s also an elementary school named Louise Foussat. DC: Yes. She' ; s--I' ; ve always called her as an aunt, but she' ; s really a cousin. Um, she was--she married a Foussat. Okay. Her maiden name is a Munoa, and her mother was, um, Theresa Gidden, Theresa Giddens, and, um, that' ; s another one that' ; s--she was born at Pala, and, uh,that' ; s another side of our family, my father' ; s side, that had been here a long time. That' ; s another whole side that I could talk about when you get to that point, if you want to, and his grandmother-- LK: Okay. DC: --was born on the Marron Ranch in 1865, so-- LK: So, your family history stretches way back in the North County. DC: Yes. Yes. LK: Um, this seems like a silly question, but how do you like living and working here? DC: [laughs] Okay, it--all I can tell you is that, um, I wouldn' ; t want to live anyplace else, you know, other than--growing up, I lived all over the state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, only because I' ; m, I' ; m a construction brat, let' ; s just put it that way. My father was a heavy construction operator, had his own equipment. So, if you go anywhere here in California for the freeways, he probably helped build those, all the dams here in California, uh, he was probably was working on those, um, also like Parker Dam in New Mexico, you know, even in Arizona, I mean, excuse me, Arizona. You have some of the bigger dams, you know, throughout [breathes in] so, um, my mother kept coming back to North County, because she was born here in San Luis Rey Valley. Her family, her family' ; s from here. My father' ; s family is from Pala. So, we kept coming back and, um, I think she put her foot down from travelling when my brother and I were in junior high. So, I graduated from Escondido High School, and stayed in Escondido until I got married, then I moved up to Orange County, San Juan Capistrano. I was up there for 40 some years, before I came back down here to my home. LK: Wow. DC: [laughs, then bell chimes] Oh-oh. Is that me? LK: Well, so you do feel part of the community, and within that, do you feel like you have a support network? DC: Well, if you' ; re gonna say support network, you' ; re going to have to look at the whole family, okay. Just with my great-grandfather. He had 11 daughters. LK: Wow. DC: And so, one of them was my grandmother, and he raised my mother because her father died when she, when she was a young child. And so, my great-grandfather, Faustino Foussat, raised her. So, when you have a large--just one branch of the Foussat family that had all these sisters and all these children, um, there' ; s a support group on the ones that were close [chuckles] let' ; s just say. My grandmother, um, was born in San Luis Rey Valley, uh, lived there all her life, uh, well not all her--until she retired, and then she went to Hemet. But, she retired from Camp Pendleton. She was one of the first workers there, you know, in the pressing. So, network-wise, yes, we have a good network of family. But, they all kind of seem to travel away, you know, on some things. Still, today, you know, because it' ; s San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians which I' ; m part of, we have good support network, in that, within relatives. I mean we have--I have a lot of cousins, you know, and related on both sides. If we had to talk about that, I' ; m double related on some of them, and people just kind of wonder what--how did that happen? When you try to explain the story, uh, it gets confusing. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: So, um, we just want to do a big picture one day [laughs]. LK: That would be nice. Um, you said that you were in Orange County for 40 years. DC: Mm-hmm. LK: So, tell me about the work you did there. DC: [sighs] Ok. Let' ; s just start that--when I got married, I moved up there and, um, when I was here I was starting in accounting. Okay? I' ; m an accountant by trade. That wasn' ; t really what I wanted to do, but that' ; s how it ended up, you know, going into accounting. Um, so I did a lot of accounting for dealerships. Went back to college to get my degree into Accounting, and then went into accounting, business law, etc. so I stayed--like to work with numbers. I' ; m just good with numbers. And, so, I worked with dealerships, school districts, medical field in the accounting field. I didn' ; t become, later on, the weaver or in, with my cultural until I had to have a back injury. So, for 40-some years, up there in San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, I got involved with the Acjachemen people, the Juaneños there, helping them through Indian education, in the 70s, because that' ; s a story that-- I can go into that, and I think I--it' ; s kind of long but shortly is that I grew up with being native, and the schools not teaching us correctly. Okay? LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You read the books, etcetera, and you hear about how they were dressed, what they were, were they savages? Etcetera. And I would come home from school and saying this is not how we are. And then my mother, my grandmother, and family would say " ; Don' ; t argue, Diania, just let it go." ; And so when I got married, and my two children, my son and my daughter, when they went to school up there in the Palisades, or in Capistrano Unified School District, they came home one day and said they were entitled to something other. It was like a Spanish program, Title II, at that time. And so, I went to the school to find out how my children got tagged into--in the Spanish community, when my last name is French, and it' ; s Caudell. And so, talking with the school principal, um, we found out that I followed that person that was in charge of Title II, and what had happened--how my two ended up coming with that notice is that this person went around the school to the classrooms and asked questions. Now, if you had a surname, with Romero, Sanchez, Alvaros, Valenzuela, any of those Spanish names, she automatically put them down on the list as a Spanish or Mexican. Uh, then, the other question when she got that from the roster, she then would ask " ; how many children here already know that their parents, or grandparents, speak Spanish." ; Well, my two automatically raised their hand because their father spoke Spanish. And he was taught that from his mother and also because of the community of San Juan Capistrano. You' ; ve got to think of the missions. That was the language that was taught to the Indian people. And, um, so that' ; s how my two got on there. And so I challenged that at the school district, at the, you know, with the superintendent, and, uh, they came back at me and saying " ; well, the last Indian person that was living here in San Juan Capistrano died in 1933, and he was the bell-ringer." ; And I go, " ; no, that can' ; t be, because I' ; m here. I' ; ve got relatives that are married into the Juaneño or Acjachemen people. You still have them here, and so, um, I became an advocate [laughs], an activist, or whatever you want to say, and contacted my relatives there, that are--that married into the Acjachemen people, and, identified them. We went back to the school district, and went through all their rosters, because back in the 70s, when you' ; re ethnic, when they ask you that question, when you' ; re enrolling your student, your child, they ask you what ethnic group you are. Well, in those days--I' ; m saying those days, in the 70s, you only had, like, you had Caucasian, you had Asian--not even Asian, really. Mexican, I think. But you didn' ; t have the--what you have today is the Native American/Alaskan ethnic group. And so I always put us under " ; Other" ; as Native American, because I am a registered through the B.I.A., Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I have my certification, that I am who I am, meaning Native American. And, um, so I always made sure that my children would have that, going through there. So, we went through K-12, went to the registry of the school district and got all their cum files, or whatever they call them, those information files, and took home all the ones that were identified as Native American. A lot of them were not, because they didn' ; t want to, because it was passed down to us that you didn' ; t want to register as Native American because it wasn' ; t the best thing to do. So, they always put Caucasian. So, from K-12 in that school district, Capistrano High School District, we had identified 210 students. LK: Wow. DC: And so that kind of put us into the category of challenging the school. Uh, UCI had Kogee Thomas at that time. She was the Director. She heard about what was happening. She came down to become my mentor. With that, because she' ; s really high with the Seminoles and Muscogee people at that, then, and we wrote the first grant. We brought in Title IV, Indian Education Act, Public Law 194, in 1975. [laughs] LK: Wow. DC: So, I' ; ve been through this for a long time. We ended up forming the San Juan Capistrano Council, because they had to reform themselves again. They never left. They just said their leader moved, and they just kind of--in the 60s, or in the 50s, he left, and so they just kind of knew they were there, but they weren' ; t formally formed yet. So we reformed them. So today I can just tell you that in Capistrano Unified School District, they still have Indian Education. They have a Indian Research Center, kind of, for teachers, instructors, and parents, there on the Clarence Lobo Elementary school grounds. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That if you wanted to study any Indian, not just California, any, any native person across indigenous person across the United States, in Alaska and Hawaii, etc., that you can go to that resource center, and that instructor, teacher, parent can pull the correct information that these tribes have handed in. So, that was one of my things that I did up there, other than just being an accountant. LK: Wow, that' ; s impressive. DC: Okay, that was in the community. [laughs] LK: Yes, yes. And then you mentioned you hurt your back and that' ; s what lead you to getting into basketry. Can you talk a little bit about that? DC: [sighs] Yeah, that was, um, a fall I had, okay? I don' ; t want to describe the fall, because it' ; s kind of, you know, it' ; s kind of stupid. I mean, the thing is when you hurt your back, um, I thought I' ; d go to the chiropractor. I went to work, and was working in Huntington Beach at that time, and I drove my car to Huntington Beach, went to sit down at my desk at the dealership, sat down and I couldn' ; t move. They had to literally pick me up, take me to my car. I called my chiropractor in Newport and, uh, he went to adjust it, and he says " ; This isn' ; t that, you know. This is something else." ; And so they took x-rays, and he still tried the adjustment. I--and it got a point where I had to quit. I couldn' ; t--you know, I was losing to walk, etc. And the pain kept going through that, and then finally when they did an MRI on me, you know, they found out that I had―let me see, I' ; m trying to figure out how to describe this, because I' ; m not a medic, medical person-- I was diag--rheumatism arthritis runs in our family on my dad' ; s side, my grandmother' ; s side. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Not too much on my mother' ; s side, but on, through my dad' ; s side. And so, I guess hereditarily, I have that in my system. What are you going to do? So, when I hit the lower back really hard, I accelerated the arthritis rheumatism in my spine. And so when that happened, that' ; s what they found with the MRI. So, they said " ; Diania, if you don' ; t have, do something with it, it' ; s going to get worse, and you' ; re going to lose a lot of functions that you normally can take that you can control of. And, anyway, I put it off a whole year. I didn' ; t want to have my back opened up. And so, I got to a point where I couldn' ; t deal with this anymore. And so, I had to say yes. They opened up 5, 4, and 6 of your vertebraes < ; sic> ; . They opened them up, and all I can describe it was a rotor-rooter job. She went in there, and just tried to scrape out all the rheumatism, or arthritis, away from my spine, inside my spine. And when she did that, she hit one of the sciatic nerves. LK: oh-- DC: And uh, ' ; cuz it, nothing' ; s replaced. They just sealed it back up again. And, uh, so when I came out of surgery, I didn' ; t realize that I couldn' ; t walk because the nurses tried to--they put those belts [gestures tying a belt around her waist] on you when you' ; re going to go and make you go to the restroom, etc., you know, when you' ; re [unintelligible] and when I went to get out the bed, I fell straight to the floor. Thank goodness I had belts on me, because the two nurses and all the surgeons come running in, and I lost everything from the waist down. Had to learn how to walk all over again. It took me--they said " ; Diania, you' ; re going to have to learn patience." ; And I' ; m not one with patience, let' ; s put it that way. I do have patience for other people, but not for myself. So, I didn' ; t know what to do and the Acjachemen people had sent me a newsletter, and my mom brought it up, and on the front cover of that newsletter that was next to the, my bed in the hospital was Lillian Robles. She' ; s an elder. She' ; s passed on before, but she had a basket hat on. And I saw the basket hat and I went " ; Oh, great. I guess to learn patience, I guess I can get into basketry." ; LK: Oh-- DC: And I never was in it. I was more in the Indian education. I was more into the helping with the activities. My mother was a weaver. My aunts were weavers, their jewelry, they' ; re always crafting with their hands. I was not. They always pushed me away, and said " ; Diania, you know, we' ; re need--we need you in education. We need you speaking for our people." ; And so when I called, I looked at that, and I called Teeter Romero who was a top weaver from the Acjachemen people, and she--her and I were really close, worked together for years, with Indian education-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―Inter-tribal Council of California, I mean, the different areas, you know, for the people, Indian people. And I called her, and let her know that, um, I need to become a weaver. Well, she started laughing on the phone, when I called from the hospital, because she didn' ; t know where I was at. LK: She laughed at you? DC: Well, she laughed at me, because she said " ; you' ; re not a weaver, you know, you' ; re just not a weaver." ; And then she says " ; Why?" ; And I says " ; Well, I' ; m in the hospital, and I can' ; t walk, and I need to learn patience." ; So, when she heard that, she says " ; okay, when you' ; re able to get home and sit up in a wheelchair, we' ; ll come to you." ; And, they did. I was with my mom here in Escondido, at that time. And they came down. About six months--let' ; s see, I had the operation in April ; they came down in June. And I was being able to sit up in there. I was still trying to learn to walk. I was with a walker. And, they came! And they started, uh--sat down with me, and the first thing they gave me was raffia in one hand and pine needle in the other, and they had me doing the coiling, just to learn to go round and round and round and round, with basketry. From then on, it took me, you know, work--it took me almost two years to learn how to walk again, by myself. I was with a--I couldn' ; t drive. My mom was driving me all over. I had the walker. I got everything back in my left leg, but on my right leg not everything came through. And so, another six to eight months, I was doing acupuncture at Indian Health Council in Rincon, because I didn' ; t want to open up my back again, okay, have another surgery. So, I don' ; t have a lot of feeling in my right foot, from my calf, I think, down. But, I do think it--people don' ; t realize that, you know, that I don' ; t, but that' ; s what put me into retirement, really. LK: How many years ago was that? DC: Okay. When did 9/11, what year was that? 2001? LK: That was ' ; 01. DC: Okay, ' ; 01. LK: 09. DC: Because, yeah, April of ' ; 01, because I remember I was still in bed and my mom got a call from her sister and my mom come running in to my bedroom, trying to insist I turn the TV on, and what she says--my mom was crying and I looked at that and there it was when I saw the airplane hit. They had that going on the towers and it was like looking at a movie. LK: Yeah. DC: Okay. That was just unbelievable. Okay? So, that was April, September, okay. It was--that' ; s how I can remember. I can never remember the year, but I just think it' ; s the year of 9/11. So twenty-oh-one, right? LK: Yeah, 21 years ago. DC: Yeah, so it was 21 years ago. I was still on--I have been on social security disability, because I can' ; t sit that long. So, if I get up on you guys, and take a break, then I' ; m sorry, you know, but that--My, my job was an accountant, and so that was sitting a lot. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then to get up and sit and get up is one of the things. So, uh, that' ; s how I got into basketry and I' ; m still doing that today, you know, on that. But, it' ; s taken me learning different things, you know, getting--you want me to go into California Indian Basket Weavers Association? LK: Yeah, I― DC: [laughs] okay, okay. LK: I was going to ask that--I--but I wanted to go back, just for a minute-- DC: Okay. LK: --to Indian education. DC: Mm-hmm. LK: So, I think you said it' ; s still going on to this day. You still, they still have that educational program in San Juan Capistrano. DC: Yeah, they still have the Capistrano Unified School District and it' ; s going still strong, but they have to be the parents that have to want it. LK: Ah, okay. DC: It doesn' ; t just stay with the Acjachemen people. And they do have, I think they have a resource instructor there, someone in their administration, that they do go out for. Because it is a fund. It' ; s funding, it' ; s federal funding. All school districts need money― LK: Right. DC: ―and it' ; s a head count. And so, Capistrano Unified School District still has it, so does Huntington Beach, because they have a large community of the Cherokee Indian― LK: Oh! DC: ―outside natives coming in, because a lot of people don' ; t realize, that if they do start researching, you can go into 1963. They had the Relocation Act, of Native Americans. And, this isn' ; t taught in schools. This isn' ; t taught in--you know, for the general public, sometimes, unless you' ; re involved with Native Americans and their--and the different things. Well, 1963 they relocated Cherokee, Choctaw, and a lot of different native groups into California. LK: Oh-- DC: You know, a lot of the Cherokees went to the Anaheim area, Huntington Beach area, and settled there. You had a lot of the Cherokee, Osage, and some coming down to San Diego. The largest Choctaw Relocation is in Bakersfield. LK: I' ; ll be darned. DC: So, yeah, it' ; s a--it was--it' ; s interesting, uh, how they did move native people around to get them away from their " ; homeland" ; and give them incentives at that time that " ; we can move you to California. You know, you can emerge into there" ; and stuff. And so a lot of it is kind of detrimental but with them, they brought their, they brought their culture and their tradition with them, which is good. LK: So, if you could see something change in regard to that educational program, what would it be? Would it be to expand it to San Diego County? Would it be-- DC: Well, San Diego County had a big--has a big Indian education program. They did--they--you just don' ; t hear about it― LK: Okay. DC: ―um, in their school district. What it would be good to expand on there is that, um, to get it more to the public, to the other schools, okay. It takes a school district to want it. I' ; ve notified Oceanside. I' ; ve notified Vista. In Vista alone, a few years ago, they identified another 200, because now they have that on their information form of the child' ; s registers, you know, what ethnic group you are. And 210 had registered as Native American. It doesn' ; t mean they' ; re, you know, San Luis Rey or California. They can be from anywhere in the United States. And most of them that do register for their ethnic group know that they are, or they' ; ve been told that they are. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it gets a parent, it' ; s gotta be a parent to initiate it, to get a parent group together, and that way they can work with the school district. And then they can apply for grants. And then they can get the head count. Then they can get a resource instructor in there, or someone to work with the Indian education, and then it comes in with tutoring. That was one thing I did. I knew for, just for reading and math, at least. Get the children on the tutoring. They have the tutoring. They were pulled out of class or they brought the equipment in, if they needed equipment. There, Capistrano Unified School District, we' ; ll go back to that. It was shown as a need. Getting the general books that they need into the libraries. That' ; s how that resource center started, because the school districts will only go by what the state says, for state books, state history books, they―etc. The Native peoples say " ; No, that' ; s not correct. We will want our own books coming in." ; So that' ; s what we did in the 70s. We brought in records. At that time, you didn' ; t have CDs or you know, what we had, you know, you had-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: LPs. And so we brought in records of the singing of the different groups. They brought in books that the teachers can get through, or parents could check out, you know, and working with that to get the education in there. And you have to have the school district to want to work with you. Um, we--it was a hard thing, with, even with Capistrano Unified School District, to do it. But if I didn' ; t have the help with Kogee Thomas and some of the top people that come from back east, that were very strong in their native cultural, that I don' ; t think that Capistrano would have done it either. ' ; Cuz we challenged them. We challenged them, so-- LK: But, how enriching for the students. DC: It is, but you got to have again, you gotta have a parent― LK: Right. DC: ―who would want that, so their student or their child can get that extra help. LK: There has to be a buy-in for it, with the parent. DC: Yes, and so it' ; s, it' ; s--today, in Capistrano Unified School District, the ones that do use it--I know my grandchildren went through it--they provided the computers at home for the tutoring. You know, they didn' ; t have to go to like a trailer, or be pulled out of class, and be taken, you know, like to a tutorial room like we did in the 70s. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Uh, with the st--with my two children, my daughter used it and they had computers at home. The school district provided these computers, these laptops for the home that they could use and they got tutored every day, since they were in grade school. All the way through high school. LK: Wow. It gave them a really good sense of self. DC: It gave a sense of self, and they--at first it was " ; why do we have to do this for half an hour every day?" ; [laughs] I mean, but as they got older in high school, and then went to college, you know, especially going through all those tests that you have to take for college, they, they were happy because they knew a lot of the questions and were able to answer them. Because of the tutorial they had, um, above and beyond what they normally get in school, in class. LK: Wow. That' ; s wonderful. So, you' ; ve already explained a little bit about your life' ; s path, how it' ; s evolved and changed over the years, so I was going to ask you if you wanted to share a little bit more about the basketry and CIBA, and I see that you have a little sample of one. DC: [laughs] Ok. When you said CIBA, I don' ; t think everybody knows what CIBA is, okay. You' ; re familiar with it. CIBA is California Indian Basket Weavers Association. Um, that' ; s another thing that I have been a member of and I' ; m on the Board for the last umpteen years, I would say--let' ; s just say the last 12 years. I know it' ; s been longer. Uh, but how I got involved in that, again, was going back to when I became basket--learning basketry and the plants, finding out that southern California doesn' ; t have everything that they normally have. If you know the county here, we' ; ve got 18 reservations here in the San Diego County alone and the people--where they were sent--aren' ; t on their homelands. I mean-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It' ; s not where they would have their medi--their medicinal plants, their foods, or their traditional cultural plants like basketry and other things, and so they had--the people had to go off the reservations, and to public lands, which would be your forestries, um, county parks, state parks, etc., even private land, to get the materials that they need for the basketry. Well, I had a problem with that because I didn' ; t understand that, you know, and why did they have the restrictions here in southern California when I found out that in central California, they don' ; t have that. In northern California they don' ; t have the same restrictions. But it' ; s because a lot of these central reservations or rancherias in northern California, too, is that they' ; re on their homelands. They' ; re rancherias. They weren' ; t like taken from one area and moved. Okay. They' ; ve had little rancherias, then. That' ; s what they called them, instead of reservations, up in northern California, spread out. And so they were on their lands and they had the traditional materials. LK: Oh, I see. DC: For example, you' ; ve got the Yuroks and the Hoopas up there. They' ; re in the forest up there. They have the red for--the, the redwoods. They got the forest. They' ; ve got a lot of their plants. And that' ; s their economic development. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But, that' ; s―they don' ; t call them reservations. They call them rancherias. Okay, so, so I started asking questions about that. You know, I' ; d say " ; how come, what for?" ; And I went to a gathering of CIBA, because they have a large gathering once a year for the basket weavers of the state of California, and I started asking " ; how come, what for, why is it that in California we don' ; t have this, when you have it up there?" ; And then I was told by a board member, " ; Well, Diania, you keep asking these questions. Why don' ; t you--we' ; re having a Board election. Why don' ; t you throw your hat in, your name, and we can see what we can do?" ; Well, I got elected. You know, I mean, I didn' ; t expect that at all. And I' ; ve been on it ever since, since 2003. And, uh, so I became an advocate of, for southern California, to get in, our traditional trading, you know, gathering, etc., our traditional materials, you know, on that. And so, if I didn' ; t enjoy what I' ; m doing and have a passion for it, you know, I think learning about my traditional materials that we use for basketry, which is hard to find here in southern California, if you don' ; t get somebody to help you, you know, with that. And, um, so I think being educating people has helped me. LK: Um, the traditional materials are hard to find because of development? They' ; ve all been-- DC: Yes, uh-- LK: --plowed over or-- DC: Um, there' ; s a--[reaching to her left for a brochure with the front cover reading " ; Indian Rock Project" ; ] okay, let me just see, I' ; m just going to go through here. This here, this is Indian Rock Project, okay. This is something that we worked with the Cal St--uh, San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians and Cal State San Marcos worked together with Palomar College to do, to put this book out. This was done in 2003, which was a long time ago. But in here, in this book, let me just--[flipping through pages]--the--when you see what they--when you ask me about, uh--[looking at a particular page]--uh, where is it? [flips through more pages] And then you all--she' ; s probably going to edit this, but that' ; s okay. Because I was asked that question that you were just asking, and [still flipping through pages] LK: About the natural-- DC: I found it. Okay, I had said here, on here " ; preserving tradition" ; and this is, you know― [turning the booklet to Linda to show her the specific pages]--I ended up being in the booklet, okay, okay, on this Indian Rock Project [shows front cover] You could probably go online, you know, and download it, because they don' ; t have any more of these booklets. But, when you asked me that question, I said [she' ; s reading from the booklet] " ; a lot of our things are being destroyed. If you look at our environment around us, we have development, development, development. Juncus and all the plants that we use for actually making the baskets are being destroyed. When we are out driving, we stop, we get out there, and we take pictures. I want to find a spot, notify the nearest reservations, notify the Forestry, notify the developers--" ; Can we go in? Can we pick? Can we transplant? Because if you are going to develop it and destroy it, let us go in." ; That was a statement that I had made, you know, for--for, for, like an interview for this booklet. So-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then it went on [flipping through booklet again] into who I am or whatever. But, um, yes, the development. And so more developers now are finding out that if you do have--if you do identify traditional materials and stuff, they are now trying to hopefully preserve ' ; em, or to have you come in and take them, or use them. But it is. Southern California is, gets hit with a lot of development because you look around here and you' ; re looking at it. I' ; m looking at the Mission San Juan--Mission, excuse me, San Luis Rey Mission. If you ever go by there, and stuff like this, you' ; ll see we had wetlands there right next to it, and through the Lavanderia and right next to the Mission, what' ; s happening now? The Mission leased it out, or sold it, whatever you want to say--99-some years. You' ; ve got this big, huge retirement center going in there. It' ; s like a resort. They are built on the wetlands, and uh, there went something that was natural, native, etc., and it' ; s being developed. You drive around to different places now, here in San Diego County, and you' ; re seeing development. So, it' ; s really hard on-- LK: Everywhere you look. DC: Yeah, and I just don' ; t understand, for me, where they' ; re getting their water from. Because if we have a resource of, of water--that' ; s one of the things that we don' ; t have here in southern California. We have to bring it in from other places. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: How can you develop and, and, and bring in people, more and more people, so how are you going to give them water? Feeding you know--if you' ; re going to feed, you' ; ve got the grocery stores yet, or whatever. You still can' ; t even have farmland any more hardly, but water. Water is essential for all living things. So, where they come, the water? I mean, the lease on the Colorado River is coming up. That was only a 99-year agreement. How are they going to negotiate that, if they want to stop the Colorado River from coming in? You know, I know they' ; re doing desalting plant, but that' ; s not even good for the ocean, you know, and not even good for us as people. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: So, um, that' ; s a big question that I ask. Every time I drive around and see these developments, you know, and it' ; s money. It' ; s politics and money. Okay, we can go on. We won' ; t go into that--[laughs] LK: Well, going back to the baskets-- DC: Okay. LK: Can you tell us some of the natural fibers that you use, natural plants you use in the baskets. DC: Okay. LK: The traditional-- DC: --Traditional plants. In the state of California, we have over 243 different tribes, 26 different dialects of language, and each one of the--in California, it' ; s kind of divided up, like in northern, central, and southern, and we all don' ; t use the same plants. Here in southern California, we basically use about five. And that would be Juncus textilis, which is a green reed that grows near water. It needs water. It' ; s like a tule, if you' ; ve seen tule in― LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―these wetlands, and stuff, or at these lakes, lagoons, but it' ; s not cornered or-- Tule has three--is three-sided. Juncus textilis, is round. It' ; s a round reed, and it grows up straight. It could--If you know how crab grass grows, it has, is that right? How it goes--what do you call that [gestures with her right hand, pointing straight and making curves in a snake-like fashion]-- you know, you pull it out of the shoots-- LK: Uh-huh. DC: --you know, like crab grass-- LK: Yeah. DC: And, anyway, uh, depending on where it' ; s growing at and the materials that are in the--minerals--excuse me--that are in the soil, the bottom of the root type of thing, where the shaft comes out of there, the reed comes out of that shaft, it' ; ll have color on it. And it' ; s either from a deep light brown, mahogany color, to a deep red mahogany color. And, I didn' ; t bring any of those baskets with me. I was going to, okay, but maybe I should have, but I didn' ; t. If you ever notice some of the traditional baskets, you' ; ll see this deep red color or brown color-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That' ; s usually coming from the Juncus on the, on the end of the shaft on there, bottom part, which is in the ground. It' ; s green when you plant--It' ; s green when you collect it. You have to process it. It takes time. It grows with poison oak. That' ; s another thing. We call it--it' ; s our protector. The only time we go and gather the Juncus textilis is when we say the poison oak goes to sleep, and that only means that the leaves are gone. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it' ; s still going to be contaminated, probably, with poison oak. And that' ; s why we don' ; t teach it as much, because some people don' ; t want to be dealt with, with poison oak. That' ; s what, that' ; s the reed that we use for coiling. Okay? And that takes a process, splitting, etc., and getting it ready. It takes anywhere from six months to a year to even get your material ready to do a basket. The next one that we use for our start would be the center, which is the center of the basket, is yucca. And that, again, is that--what is it, yucca--uh, the Whippi? Or they call it the " ; Lord' ; s Candle." ; It think you' ; ve seen it down by the road. You' ; ll see it growing on the hillsides. There' ; s different ways to use that. Some people will take the dead leaves, those great big green ones that they have and they grow pretty, even from the agave-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC:--and the yucca. When you see those dead ones, or dried out, in the desert, etc., you can take those and you can soak them really, really big in a big tub, and then you take that, and you pound it. And you just keep pounding it, when they' ; re--you know, when you' ; re drying them. And they' ; ll--they' ; ll turn fibrous, like string-- LK: Oh. DC:--and that' ; s how you get your yucca sandals, and things like that, that they use in fiber, or your cordage. The other way you can do is with the yucca is you take the center of the new shoots that are coming out, before it becomes a flower in the stalk. [gestures up with an open hand] You take that, and you twist it, and you get about 30 or 40 small, small [gestures to indicate smallness of an object] little leaves, and then you take those and you shred ' ; em with a needle--we do--or pound them, and uh, you don' ; t need to go out there anymore because you' ; re not going to make 30 or 40 bags in your lifetime, as far as I know. I' ; m not going to. But you have enough to where you don' ; t have to go out there and gather them. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Then, deer grass. People use deer grass as a native plant for decoration or whatever, because it' ; s drought tolerant. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But it' ; s not that Pampas grass that you see waving from that Africa--that African one is an invasive plant. I wish people would just take it away, and these nurseries--just take it out, you know get it--because that Pampas grass kills everything on the native plants. It just takes over. And deer grass is similar to it, but it doesn' ; t have that fan on the top. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And, uh, the deer grass, we gather that and we take the shoots or the stems on them, and we gather, and that' ; s what we coil around [gestures in a coiling fashion with both hands] So, the traditional, for the Mission baskets they called here that the Luiseño use, Cahuilla use, Kumeyaay use, the Cupeno use here in southern California, even the Chumash further up, and your Tongva and your different people. We do a coiling technique. Okay? So have you ever seen those baskets in museums, etc., you' ; ll see that one by one, they' ; re coiling. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They' ; re coiling the Juncus textilis. They' ; re coiling around with sticks that they use, which would be deer grass. And the center star that you see in the middle [creates a circle with her fingers on her left hand] is done with yucca. And sometimes it' ; s also done with Juncus on Juncus, or Juncus on Deer Grass. It all depends who the weaver is, etc. Since we have to gather that, and we can' ; t find it all over, you know what we do, we try to really work with the forestries, and private owners, and people. Try and get them to plant. It' ; s not easy to plant the Juncus textilis because it' ; s not going to grow everywhere. So, there' ; s different areas that do have it. If you want to see Juncus textilis, where it' ; s at, you can see it in the public, it' ; s in the public discovery center there in Carlsbad. LK: Oh. DC: They have a good--kind of like a little garden, that they have it growing there. And the deer grass and the yucca. And that was done because we worked with the Discovery Center years ago with Cal State San Marcos and the students. And we did all the planting there, when it was there. So, if you want to see that, I would go there and visit it. And you can see what the Juncus textilis looks like. See, uh--[sighs]--but doing basketry is that--what I have here is samples. I did bring a basket. I just brought these hair pieces that I' ; ve made for my two granddaughters [shows beautiful, small round woven hairpieces]. Can you see them okay?--LK: Yes, yes. DC: Out of Juncus. If you see, this one here is a little bit darker, and the black there [now holding only one of the hairpieces, with a woven black ring in the mid-region of the weave, and gesturing to this area] is dyed Juncus, okay? Now, that Juncus, um, was dyed with--[looking at the hairpiece now, more intensely]--I don' ; t know, this was given to me, [chuckling] the dyed Juncus, so I' ; m assuming they did it with, um, elderberry leaves, okay, and um, put in the Juncus, and in a can, okay, or, or like a coffee can that' ; s all rusty. And what you do--you put the rusted can in there. You have your Juncus already split and put into the weaver, and then you put, um, into a coffee can [gesturing to show the size of the can] and it' ; s all rusty. You put some rusty nails in it at the bottom, and then you start layering it with the Juncus textilis. It' ; s the process. And on top of that you put elderberry leaves, and you keep going ' ; til you fill it. [gestures indicating layers building up] Then you fill it with water. LK: Oh. DC: And then you let the water--and then you put that can somewhere so it can ferment. It' ; s like I tell you, it' ; s got to get all yucky and like, rotten, and what it is is that it probably turns black. And it' ; s--and you' ; re getting the iron--what do you call that? Iron oxide?-- LK: Uh-huh. DC: --from the, from the nails and from the rusty can. Then when you empty it out, your Juncus is black. LK: Wow. DC: Dyed black. And that' ; s also what' ; s coming from the elderberry leaves. Another way that our ancestors did it was that during the creeks they knew where there was iron oxide in the soil, in the sand. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They would get their Juncus, and they would bury it in that sand. They' ; d come back, weeks later or whatever, and dig it out, and it' ; ll be black. Another way they do it, up in northern California, and in here too, is using walnuts, because we had, you know--black walnuts is a native plant of California. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And so they would take the shells, crunch ' ; em up, you know shells, the outside shell, they' ; re called, and if you' ; ve ever picked walnuts, you know that your hands get black? LK: Yeah. DC: Okay, because that--on the hull--because you take that, well they' ; ll take that hull and chop it up, and then put in water, and put your Juncus in there, and with the walnut there, and they' ; ll turn black, too. LK: Wow. DC: That' ; s just one other way. It takes time. And they also use the acorn husk, or the shell of the acorn, and the black acorn, or any of the acorns, crush ' ; em up again and put them in water, put the Juncus in there, and then you have to leave it. So it is a time consuming deal. So these are two headpieces I did. Now, when we get to the schools--when you get to the school-- [holds up a small woven basket] this is a little basket that I' ; ve had for years. But this is not a native material. This material that we use for teaching is from, okay, rattan. Everybody knows what rattan is. Rattan has a pith in it. Rattan and bamboo look similar but bamboo is hollow. Rattan is got the pith. To get the pith out of the rattan, pull it, press it, and make cane. This is how you get cane. LK: Oh. DC: And so what we use here, is that you can buy cane in different rounds, or different sizes or gauges. You can get it flat. You can get it round. Uh, we get the round, and this is called Cherokee Single Wall twine. I call it, uh--we have our own twine, excuse me, but it' ; s not like this one, the Luiseño. And why I use Cherokee is because one of the easiest ones that the kids can use at school. It' ; s the closest thing that I can get to the river cane, from the Cherokee and Choctaw and the people there, in Oklahoma and that area, will use, because they go and pick their river cane. We don' ; t have river cane here in California. If we do have it, I wouldn' ; t want to go down there because it' ; s probably contaminated. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It' ; s got all those other things, and they probably sprayed it a lot with pesticides. And so this is what we teach in school, and I call it " ; Cherokee Single Walled Twine." ; We make the starts. The kids can make one of these [holding up a skein of yarn] within an hour, even the adults, over two hours. And maybe not this size, maybe a little bit bigger. But this way, they don' ; t have any allergies or con― such so far, uh, getting sick from it. Because, I can' ; t guarantee our native traditional plants that we do use aren' ; t--it doesn' ; t have some type of pesticides on it, or some poisons on it that we' ; re not aware of. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And we use our mouth [wipes her right hand across her mouth] a lot for our third hand when we' ; re weaving with our traditional materials. LK: Because you have to keep them-- DC: We have to keep them very moist. LK: Moist. DC: Everything has to moist. It has to be pliable. It has to be moist. If you' ; re going to be weaving with almost anything, even with cloth, even with weeds, even with flowers or stems or, you know, branches. We do use willow, though, okay? Aurora willow, or the willow tree. We make baskets out of that too. If you ever notice the big acorn granaries, they call ' ; em, have you ever seen them on pictures-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --that the tribes had next to their kiichas or their ewaks for here in southern California, even northern California. They have great big acorn granaries. Those are made out of willow. They' ; re woven green, and when they' ; re woven green, uh, then they let―they dry. But do they use willow? Willow is a natural insecticide. It keeps the insects away from the acorns. And that' ; s why they have them high up on a stilt like, or platform, to keep their small animal away from them, or whatever. But if they do―these small animals try to get to the acorn, then they can also plug it up, or whatever. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But those acorn granaries can last for hundreds of years, you know. They' ; ve found, when they' ; ve done research, you know, in the mountains or at their villages, you' ; ll see a granary that is still up. But, it' ; s a natural insecticide. People don' ; t realize that the willow is a natural insecticide-- LK: That' ; s interesting. DC: --to weave with it. LK: So, in traditional weaving, was it always the women, the tribal women, that did the baskets or did men-- DC: I would say-- LK: --create baskets as well? DC: Uh, yeah. Traditionally, mostly it was the women and the girls, okay? Because you' ; ve got to think about--before contact, especially here in California, we' ; re the last native people that were contacted as they came west-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―our baskets were used for cooking, for storage, for gifting, for birthing, for death. And that was our--they were utilized for everything. And that' ; s why they can say that " ; Mission baskets were woven so tight that they can hold water." ; LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Well, yes and no. The only reason why they can hold water is that the deer grass in what they' ; ve coiled around swells. [laughs] LK: Oh. DC: So, but they also had the--and when they cooked in them, they used another plant that we do. It' ; s more fire resistant. And that' ; s your Trius lobata, or your sumac. And that' ; s kind of―it' ; s white. Have you ever seen baskets that have more of a white bottom to it? LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That' ; s because it' ; s usually with sumac, and that one has a resistance to fire. But, only be--resistance, how can I say this--fire tolerant but not to a point. When they cooked in baskets, the cooking baskets, they were done with a stick that they' ; d keep moving [circles her right arm as if stirring], and they were used with river rocks, hot rocks in there. Central northern California used lava rocks a lot, but that had been tumbled in the rivers. But the ones that are here, we would probably get the smooth river rocks, and then you heat them up and then you put them into the basket, and you have to keep stirring them [makes a stirring motion with her right hand] into that food. Men probably did the baskets that were, um, that were for fishing, like the fish traps, or your great big, huge granaries,―LK: Oh, yeah. DC: Okay, on that? And they' ; re made out of the willow. Um, they didn' ; t make them--northern California, they made ' ; em a lot of out of the different plants up there, the branches there. But, almost all of them are made out of willow, you know, because it was pliable to work with. But, that' ; s your bigger gathering baskets or fish traps, etc., you know. But mainly, it' ; s mostly the women. But men did do that. We do have men today that are top weavers, um, so, we even have one in our tribe that' ; s a fantastic weaver [chuckles]. LK: So, it' ; s a form of functional art. I mean, ' ; cuz it is a form of art. That' ; s what-- DC: Well, it didn' ; t become a form of art until it--until I would say, after contact-- LK: Right. DC: --because it was a utility that we had to use, you know. It was something. LK: Right. It was functional. DC: Yeah, and I say, you know, when pots and pans came out, I, I would have been one that threw the baskets away. [laughs] Let' ; s use a pot, too, you know. LK: [laughs] DC: It' ; s just like when you gather your foods, you know. I gather the acorn and I make that wiiwish, we call it, the acorn mush. I use a processor to crack all my--you know, to mix it up, you know, and get the nuts, ground it down. You know, if you ever see these, um,--how can I say these--we call them gathering, gathering spots or metates are these big rocks that have the holes in them--the grinding area, they call ' ; em grinding stones, grinding-- Can you imagine the woman that' ; s sitting there, or a child, or whatever, pounding acorn to get a meal out of it, you know, to get it real fine like a flour. And, and how long they pound it up there to get those holes in there. How old! You can just tell the age of the--by looking at these grinding areas, or grinding rocks that you see, how, how hard they must have done it, so it just--it didn' ; t happen overnight, to make those holes, you know, in those rocks. It had to be― LK: Right. DC: [gesturing in a pounding motion] ―years and years of processing. And, uh, I' ; ve tried it. We have two in our backyard, and I didn' ; t last five minutes. Raising that rock, that pestle, over my head and pounding the acorn, okay? I mean, I couldn' ; t, after that, I couldn' ; t raise my hand after five minutes, or even three minutes. My mom was laughing at me out there― LK: [chuckles] DC: ―you know, and I said " ; Our women must have had--the women must have had shoulders and-- LK: Strong arms. DC: --biceps, strong arms, to do that, daily, every day, to get the acorn to get it ready for the mush because that was a staple for the people, you know, because the acorn--wiiwish, we call it--or the, um, what do they call it, with the Kumeyaay, um--we call it wiiwish, they call it, um, okay, I' ; ve got to think about it. I know it starts with an ' ; s.' ; But anyway, um, everyday. Because, see, that' ; s 100% protein. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The acorn is 100% protein. So, it was a staple and it was also a replacement for when they didn' ; t have any meat, you know, so it was always used. So, when these processors came through, they said " ; Diania, how come you don' ; t do it the traditional way?" ; I said " ; Uh-uh" ; [shaking her head] I said " ; my ancestors would have popped in that, those electrical things to plug in, they would have used it too." ; I said " ; There' ; s no way I' ; m going to go out there and you know, [she and Linda start laughing] and pound." ; I mean it' ; s kind of like a joke but it' ; s, it' ; s, it' ; s, it' ; s--you know, you know, when progress comes, I' ; m sure they, they would have--they wouldn' ; t have stayed with their old ways. That' ; s how I look at it. [chuckles] LK: Circling back, you mentioned a few institutions like Cal State San Marcos, The Discovery Center in Carlsbad, CIBA, and you' ; re part of the Pesticide― DC: Oh, Tribal― LK: ―with the National Parks? DC: Well, I belong also to the Tribal Pesticide Program Council through EPA. And that' ; s because of the pesticides and insecticides and stuff that effect our, our plants. A lot of people don' ; t realize that, when they see our traditional plants, they think they' ; re weeds. LK: Oh. DC: And they' ; ll spray them. Or also, that, um―there' ; s drifts that happen and if you have native plants that are growing near there, and you' ; re not aware of the native plants that are there, and if how they' ; re spraying, and if the wind comes up [she makes a " ; whoosh" ; sound, and waves her hand in a broad sweep to indicate wind over field], the drift will go over there. There' ; s no signs that tell you that " ; Hey, we' ; re going to be spraying today!" ; LK: Mm-hmm. DC: County doesn' ; t even tell you that, I mean, unless they come around, you know. The mosquitoes, like in Central California, Sacramento, they post it, because with all those rice fields that they have up there, they have to. They have to do that, spraying for the mosquitoes. And they do it by helicopter. And I' ; ve been up there when they' ; ve done that, and they' ; ve got notices all over―" ; Shut Your Windows" ; , " ; Shut Your House" ; , " ; Stay in Your House Between This Hour and This Hour" ; ― because they' ; re coming in and just sprayin' ; and it goes all over your cars, etc., out there. In the University of Davis, Woodland, in that area. So, but they don' ; t do that too much down here, okay. So, when you don' ; t know about it, and then you see the plants and you' ; re going to go through it, you don' ; t know if it' ; s been sprayed or anything, or drifted on. And then you pick it, and then you get it, and you put it in your mouth, or whatever, you smell it to see if it is, you get hit. And I' ; ve had, that' ; s how I got into pesticides. I went to pick a plant that I thought that the only way you can identify it is to smell it, so I popped it [gestures breaking a stem open] like you know you see you pop it, and I stuffed it up one nostril and within five minutes my whole side of my face went red [gestures a swipe across right side of her face]. Rushed in to Rincon Indian Health Center. They said " ; Diania, what did you do?" ; I says " ; okay, this is where I was at." ; And, I had a chemical reaction, that it was sprayed, that it somehow got sprayed. And so I was on―the first time I got steroids, and shot with steroids and it' ; s five-four-three-two-one [gestures counting on fingers], you know, you' ; re taking all those pills, five days. Found out that the golf courses are the worst [chuckles] people, or development, or whatever, that use herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, any type of your " ; cides" ; they said, because they want to keep their grass green and they want to keep their flowers beautiful and colorful. They don' ; t want any rodents. They don' ; t want anything upsetting that golf course out there. And if you have any native plants that are near there, uh, they' ; re probably going to get hit with that type of thing. And the golf course is another one that doesn' ; t tell you that they' ; re spraying. I don' ; t, I' ; ve never gone by a golf course that said " ; Hey, we' ; re spraying today. There' ; s a sign." ; And I worry about the people that are out there golfing, okay. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, and I love to watch golf. Don' ; t get me wrong. I mean, I enjoy, I' ; m not a golfer but I love watching the Masters and stuff. And it goes through my head, when these guys are out there, and the women, you know, and they' ; re walking in it, but you don' ; t know if they' ; ve been told about the spraying, or you know, if they have an asthma thing, or, or something like that. So what happened was that I got into pesticide with CIBA. [chuckles, and reaches to her left for a brochure] So then I was working, we worked with a brochure [laughs, and shows for the camera a brochure, then reads the front of it] they call, it' ; s called " ; Pesticides: What Basket Weavers Should Know." ; But, this doesn' ; t just tell you for basket weavers. It' ; s for everybody― LK: Mm-hmm. DC: ―okay? And the contact people [flips the brochure over, and points to the back side of the brochure] like for here in Southern California, you' ; ve got the contact if you' ; ve had this. It just tells you what to look for on native plants, if they look dead, if they' ; re doing anything. [opens brochure and looks inside] I' ; m trying to get EPA right now to try to start making us some more of these, but if I have some more, [turns the inside of the brochure to face the camera] like if I gave you, you know, some handouts that you could make your own, you know. They don' ; t have to be in color. [closes brochure, but still holds it up] But, it' ; s just an awareness about pesticides when you' ; re out there. And it, you don' ; t have to be gathering. You can just be taking a trail ride out there, or hiking. Your animals could come back with pesticides or insecticides on them, and then you have your kids rubbing them [gestures petting an animal], and playing with them, and hugging them, and then you wonder also why your child is coming out with a rash. Why are they coughing? Why are they sneezing? And so, most of the time, it' ; s some type of spraying and it' ; s out there. So I sit on that, that, across the United States, we' ; ve got all the tribes. But the bigger tribes like the, your Black Feet and your Crow, etc. you know, they, they lease their land, because they' ; ve got millions of acres on their reservations. So they lease their lands to Montanyo [sounds unsure]. One of that does soy beans, and corn, and all these big guys. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But they need to have the pesticides, but they' ; re trying to regulate it more so especially on native ground or Indian country, because, um, they don' ; t want to be digesting it. They don' ; t want this corn and everything that is going out to the public to be digested, because if you go on to a lot of your other farms and stuff like this, they' ; re not telling you what the pest―what is being used. But the, in the Indian country, they want to make sure it' ; s safe. They don' ; t want to get sick. They don' ; t want their own families to get sick. So, it' ; s a big political thing. But what had happened in northern California, how this--how CIBA became involved in the 90s, about ' ; 93, is that the weavers in northern California get their―they use a lot of roots. LK: Mmm-- DC: And they use a lot of willow roots. So, during the―on the rivers of northern California, they go high. But when they recede down, that' ; s when the roots stick out from the, from the banks where all the willow trees are growing. And so they go into the water, and they' ; re picking from the banks of the river, all the roots coming out [gesturing pulling something towards her]. LK: Uh-huh. DC: Okay? When you kind of think of, when the water is high [gestures raising up as in water level], this is where the roots are going. They' ; re going to get water for the, for the trees. Well, industry up nor―up, up river, where they call, where they, where it is coming down into the river, they were dumping chemicals into the water-- LK: Hmmm-- DC: --as a dump. You' ; re talking about the lumber mills, some of the uh, other industrial things are doing it. That' ; s what was stuck in the salmon, also. And so the weavers were doing it. Then all of a sudden they were finding their elders the weavers were getting cancer around their mouth [gesturing around her mouth] LK: Oh, no. DC: And they were getting cancer inside. They were losing their teeth [pointing at her teeth]. And they couldn' ; t figure out why. Because it wasn' ; t just happening to just one tribe. It was happening to all the ones that, that were gathering, you know. You' ; re talking the Pomo, the Uroquois, the Hupas, the Kuroks. All the ones that use this type of material. And so in ' ; 93, they found out that, they had EPA come out. They had this whole thing. They wrote a paper on it, a risk assessment, and found out that it was chemicals in the water when they tested the waters on these big ones. And so that started, for CIBA anyway, with the pesticides-- LK: Huh. DC: --to get on there, to be more sort of a―― how can I― a public, you know, awareness. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You can only educate. You can' ; t stop it. You can only, you know. That' ; s why you have all these, um, lawsuits right now, happening in northern California and their waters. Look at the salmon. What' ; s happening, not just in California, but in Oregon and Washington with― because of the chemicals. Uh, you can' ; t, sometimes you can' ; t even eat, you know, some of that salmon because they can' ; t even go upstream, because when they come upstream, they come back sick. And the worst one is in Alaska. LK: Right. DC: See, people don' ; t want to hear about Alaska. But everything that we use down here in, in, in the " ; mainland" ; they call it, the chemicals, anything, okay, it all goes into our atmosphere, right? [points upward with both hands]. I mean, you spray, and it' ; s going to go up. LK: Yep. DC: Okay, when it goes up, where does it go? It goes to the Poles. [gestures as if touching top and bottom of a globe] North Pole, north pole is getting it mostly. South Pole is not as much, because they don' ; t get that drift like they did. But what it did, it collects up here [circles her hand in a rotating motion] in the atmosphere, and what it is, over Alaska in the Arctic area. That' ; s why it' ; s cleaning out too. Because it' ; s just going around, all these chemicals. It, it forms a warmth and a heat. And that why, that' ; s what' ; s, and now when it rains up there, it drops down [laughs, and gestures as if something is falling] into their land and into their trees, and into their plants, and they' ; re contaminated. And it' ; s all because of us down here, meaning, I' ; m saying " ; us" ; , mainland and you know, uh, North, Central, South America, all of us, you know, Europe, that using all these different chemicals and things like this, and drifts up [raises her hands up], collects in that atmosphere up there [circles in the air with her left hand], goes to the North Pole. It' ; s going around and around. It rains, or whatever, and it comes down, [indicates rain coming down, with both hands] and that' ; s why Alaska is having all those problems right now with their food [gestures as if counting on her left hand], climate change, the heating, etc. And, uh, a lot of it is the use of chemicals and pesticides. LK: Well, what started out as a― DC: [chuckles] LK: ―lessons in patience for you― DC: [bursts out laughing] LK: You' ; ve expanded your knowledge to all aspects of basketry and, and working with other organizations. So, I know those aren' ; t the only ones you work with, though, and I can list a couple just to jog your memory. I know you work with Camp Pendleton. DC: Oh, well yeah, well, Camp Pendleton is― LK: And Daly Ranch. DC: Daly Ranch. Well, Daly Ranch was because [sighs] I went to, I went to be a docent. Okay? Because I had to find something to do after, you know, I, and that I, before I had my surgery, I became a docent, and I wanted to do the trails. Okay? The native trails. But when I had, after my surgery, I couldn' ; t do the walking anymore. And so they did have a small " ; Indian program" ; you know, on there. And one of the rangers I, you know, I, I love him dearly, he' ; s still there, we worked together, he was the one that was doing the Native American aspect of the Daly Ranch, what they would give to the public and school district. Fifteen minutes [gestures making air quotes] is all he would have. So I went through his training, on the docents, and he brought in a native person from souther―from Kumeyaay territory, I think, a weaver. I can' ; t think who the weaver is now. She did a display and stuff. And so Ranger Robert, I think I mentioned him, he did a lot, because of his sons were in Boy Scouts, you know, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, and they had to do a lot of the native areas of, on there. So he made a lot of the artifacts that the Daly Ranch uses and I use right now for exhibit. And he learned about the plants, and the foods, etc. Well, he went to serve wiiwish, acorn. And when he served it, it was great. And I just went " ; What?" ; , you know. And it, it was [gesturing as if saying ' ; no' ; with her fingers] I don' ; t know. And I' ; m going asking " ; How did you do this?" ; Well, he used the acorn, but he didn' ; t use the acorns that we normally would use. He used a different type of acorn. And how he fixed it, or whatever. And so, when we had our barbeque when we graduated from the docent class, I went home [laughs] and I made the ______________. This is supposed to look like, okay, you know, our wiiwish does that. And he says " ; well, teach me!" ; So we started working together. Then they asked me if I would come in and do the native American part, you know, with the Daly Ranch. Daly Ranch through the 7th graders and the whole school district, in Escondido School District, they run the 7th graders through there for 6 weeks, in the Daly Ranch, twice a week, like a Tuesday and a Wednesday, from 8 o' ; clock until 2. And we do about two hundred some a day. LK: Wow! DC: I' ; m the native American part of it, and they do plants, and then they do insects, and then they do the large predators, you know, and then they, the tricks. But, I' ; m the native American portion of it. It started out as 15 minutes, and now all of a sudden, now I' ; m doing about 35 minutes, and just expanding it-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --to get them knowing that this was our first―you know, Daly Ranch is on the, one the land of native peoples. There' ; s, there' ; s areas out there on Daly Ranch that the public can' ; t see, that know that they' ; re―they live there. They have artifacts, etc., on that. So, um, and I got asked to, to do that. It' ; s all voluntarily. If I get paid from anything for doing that―I' ; ve been doing that going on 16 years now―it' ; s a surprise for me, because they do it through grants. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: I started out, like I said, volunteering, and it had expanded it to bigger working with Fred Wood, who' ; s a retired school teacher, you know, from a junior high, 8th grade. And I started with my cousin, Kathy Wallace, who' ; s our story teller now, and her son Brandon―he was about 9 or 10 years old―we would do it together. Well, it got to a point to where she expanded out [gestures expansion thrusting her right hand out away from her], you know, he got older. And so, I had Teeter Romero used to come down for me and help me, from San Juan Capistrano. And then, also now, I got it for myself and it' ; s hard to get people to want to take it over. Because the first question they ask " ; Well, how much do you get?" ; And I says " ; Nope." ; I says " ; I can' ; t guarantee you anything on that. If I get paid, it' ; s a surprise for me at the end of the six weeks, depending on how much the grant through--It' ; s through a grant, that they get― LK: Right. DC: ―that. That' ; s to the Friends of the Daly Ranch. Even though the Daly Ranch is owned by the city of Escondido, this Friends of the Daly Ranch and the docents do it because of they want to. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The only ones that really get paid on there is the rangers, because they' ; re employees of the city of Escondido. LK: Right. DC: And uh― LK: But that' ; s not the only institution that you do work. You, you go to elementary schools and― DC: Well, yeah, I have. I did elementary schools. I think, you know, we do―like San Elijo. We' ; ve been doing that for seven years, and that' ; s during that one basket that I just showed you, with the Cherokee style. We do third graders there. [sighs] Before they built that new elementary school, we were doing anywhere from 2 to 300 hundred a day, in well, one day. We had it for 35 minutes, at 70, at the time. And then, because they had a program going. Kathy would be the story teller. They had adobe making. They had―and so these children are going [gestures in a round circle with her right hand] all day, every half hour they' ; re going to another, another thing. I would have four weavers come in to help me. And then we would give a quick 10-minutes, 5-minute thing with parent volunteers, to come in and help to, to and I think you' ; ve even done it before, [chuckles] to just help these students. And so you' ; d have all these third graders in one room, sittin' ; on the floor, on these things, ten, ten to a circle so I know it' ; s seventy, because we had seventy cir―seven circles in there. We' ; d done seventy at the time, forty-five at the time, and then within thirty-five minutes, you know, they' ; re done. If they didn' ; t finish this basket [holds up small basket which can fit in the palm of her hand] in their time, then they would take them with them and complete it in their ar--in their art department students. So we' ; ve been doing that for quite a while. I' ; ve done the thing with Cal State San Marcos with their students up there, giving the demonstrations, etc., given a talk. And then even teaching the students, you know, the basketry. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Same thing with the senior center, in El Corazon [gestures to Linda]. LK: El Corazon. DC: We just did that for three days, and they really enjoyed it. LK: We cannot leave out one other entity, which was the Mission-- DC: --Oh! LK: --San Luis Rey. How could we forget that. DC: [laughs] You know, she' ; s sees, she' ; s getting me into the basketry thing, here. Um, San Luis Rey--people don' ; t understand. San Luis Rey is one of the missions here that is not part of the diocese, or owned by the Catholic Church, per se. They' ; re owned by the Franciscan order of the Catholic Church. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Or, errr, I' ; m not--I' ; m a Catholic, but I' ; m not that kind. I' ; m not a practicing Catholic. Let' ; s put it that way. But, um, so they' ; re owned by the Franciscans. San Luis Rey, Santa Barbara, and there' ; s one more, and I' ; m going to better learn that one too because there' ; s three missions in the state of California that are not part of the " ; Catholic." ; San Juan Capistrano is part of the Orange County diocese. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And they bring in the most money for the missions in the state of California. San Juan Capistrano does, because you' ; ve got to pay to get in, you know, and everything else. But anyway. The friars--well, they' ; re not--they' ; re friars--the Franciscan order, um, are there, at the San Luis Rey Mission. You don' ; t know that they' ; re there, because they' ; re not really public other than when you see ' ; em walking around in their brown robes. They have a retreat there. They live there. They study there. They go through their schooling, sometimes, there at the San Luis Rey Mission. And I was notified by Gwen, the director, and Helena, whose at the museum, that they were having a retreat there. And they wanted a activity, and so Gwen says " ; Contact Diania, and see if they want to do a basketry." ; Well, Father David, or Brother David--he' ; s up at Santa Barbara now--he used to be here at San Luis Rey, and my brother used to work with him. And he knew I did baskets. That' ; s why he probably agreed. But these Franciscans were coming from all over the world. They weren' ; t just coming from the United States. They were coming as novices ; ones that are almost going to graduate into their order ; some that were graduated already into the order ; some that were retiring from the order. Some they didn' ; t speak English. And, um, there was forty, almost fifty of them. LK: Forty-six. DC: Forty-six of them, and they were there for a week [chuckles] And they asked " ; Diania, would you mind doing, you know, a demonstration and talking about the basketry, or people, etc.?" ; My brother videoed it, you know, and I haven' ; t really even seen it yet. I think he gave you a copy, right? LK: It' ; s great. DC: Okay. I have to give Roberta--not Roberta, but Reinette and Ella Sue, I think, also. But, um, I says " ; Okay, I need four weavers, and uh, to do this." ; And we did that in the back of the mission, and here I was expecting--when we were setting up, all of us were expecting--there' ; s Linda Kallas, Ella Sue Snyder (she' ; s a Acjachemen), Reinette (I can' ; t pronounce her last name. My cousin--Reinette Omah, Olvera, but I can' ; t pro--) LK: Olvera. DC: Yeah, but she goes by that Italian married-- LK: Contreras. DC: No, no. It starts with an " ; A" ; [indicates a letter " ; A" ; as if writing in the air]. Anyway. LK: Okay. DC: And you, and me, okay. Linda was--Linda, who was going to interview me, she goes " ; Me?" ; and I says " ; Oh yeah. You know how to do these! You' ; ve been sittin' ; with us for a while. You can come in here." ; And we' ; re going to do the Cherokee style basket. I just gave a talk about our traditional materials, etc. So, we get all set up and here come these men, you know, coming through. You know, I, I was expecting them to come into--with their robes on. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, their brown robes. That' ; s what I was expecting. Here these men come in. They' ; re in shorts. They got T-shirts on that say " ; Surf' ; s Up!" ; you know. All these different things coming home with these hats, sandals, barefoot, you know. I mean, they' ; re coming from the retreat area, you know, tennis shoes on, and all different ages. And it was interesting because I' ; m going " ; Whoa, okay." ; You would have, you would have put them on the street. You would not have known that they were friars, okay. And, uh, like I said, all ages. They had a--we had a good time, laughing, etc. Like I said, we do have that, um, if you knew my brother did with that. They were all anxious. They made beautiful baskets. [laughs] LK: They were so impressed with you, and um-- DC: You know. LK: They were so grateful and so full of gratitude for learning that skill-- DC: Yeah. Well, we took a lot-- LK: They really enjoyed it. DC: Well, we took a picture, a group picture, at the end and then we had all their baskets on top of that one rocker area. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And you can see that these baskets--[turning to her left, and reaching for something] I showed you this [holds up the little basket that she showed previously in the interview] and this is mine. But that doesn' ; t mean that you' ; re going to make the same thing like this. Your basket is, is going to be completely different. Even though they start out the same, your basket will be with what you create with your hands. [puts down basket] And so that' ; s what they were really impressed with, because we had some beautiful baskets. You had some real nice round ones [gestures a round object]. You had flat ones [gestures flat object]. You had long ones [gestures a tall object] and they just had a good time. LK: They cherished them, right? DC: Oh, it was a--it was--it was--it was rewarding, you know, on that. But that' ; s what happens when we do that. We did it with the seniors-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --out there, and they all thought that they were going to be making their own little ba--baskets that we showed them. And then when they finally was looking at it, even the men there, you know, everything was different. And so, that' ; s what I enjoyed about the baskets. Even with the kids, you know, they don' ; t-- No two baskets are alike. LK: Exactly. And, expanding on that, we have the elementary school named Pablo Tac after a Luiseño native that was educated in the Mission. But also, you' ; re--you have an opportunity to demonstrate there coming up, correct? DC: Yes, coming up on November 4th, 2022. I' ; ll be demonstrating and so will Roberta--hopefully Reinette will be there--traditional weaving. We' ; re not going to be teaching. That' ; s probably, hopefully coming up next year. LK: Yes. DC: You know, on that. We just had the demonstration also at Camp Pendleton. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Uh, there. I' ; m a docent for the Santa Margarita Ranch and Lost Forest Ranch, docent there at Camp Pendleton. But I' ; ve been working with the Archaeology department since, uh, ugh, ' ; 90s with Stan Berryman and then Danielle [Page], and now Kelly Bracken is in charge of it so--. Because we have a lot of sites there on ran--on Camp Pendleton. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: People don' ; t realize it, that we' ; ve got over 600 some building sites there, and sites, and sacred sites, etc., on Camp Pendleton, so we' ; re kept close with the--they' ; re kept close with the different tribes. And since I' ; m the weaver in the native plants, I have a different aspect of it. I try to make that, if the plants are out there, please, you know, don' ; t do this with them, and stuff. So, they notify us that if we have native plants there, do you want us to move them. Do you want to collect them, etc. They do have a native garden there that we do collect the deer grass from, which is up there by the pavilion, behind the new hospital. Um, that way I know they' ; re not being sprayed, when we go there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: We just did elderberry tree, um, [chuckles] gathering from the berries, and I made some for your, for you for your husband. I thought I was making jelly, and it ended up being syrup. But he likes, he loves it, you know, ' ; cuz we gathered there at Camp Pendleton, because [chuckles again], because then I know that, um, also those aren' ; t being sprayed. And, so there' ; s different areas by Camp Pendleton. Plus, with the cultural, okay. And why I started with the, the new General, the Commander-in-Chief, there, at --I can' ; t think of it. I just--I worked with her, and um, was--a-- how?--docent there for the Santa Margarita Ranch. They were going to be the ones dealing with the party. She had her fiesta there, a couple weeks ago. And, um, I didn' ; t want to just be the docent dressed in the--how can I say this?-- We dressed in this Spanish shawl. I don' ; t know if you' ; ve seen the docents from center. [gestures to someone other than Linda Kallas, seated to her left] You' ; ve been there, right? And, uh--Tanis. And, uh, we have that costume [still looking to the other person] or the regalia that they use. I' ; m comin' ; in, because I put these on [hold up her necklace] and I' ; m, you know, trying to keep the Native American thing going there. And you heard me [points to person off camera, and continues to talk to him/her] this last meeting, you know, and Larry was over here [points to opposite direction, and laughs]. Uh, it' ; s that, uh, react? That we' ; ve forgotten, you know, on that. And they do think--they kind of forget us. But anyway, and so I says [still talking to the person off camera] " ; I' ; m not going to be a docent. I just--can I come in and do traditional weaving, you know, with our people," ; with her. And she just said [shaking her head]--she says " ; heck yes, please, let' ; s come in" ; and stuff. So, um, I had the drapes on there. I wasn' ; t going to go San Luis Rey Band because we were all San Luis Rey Band members that were going to do this traditional weaving demonstration. But we' ; re all CIBA members also. So, I used this California Basket weavers --uh, weaving drape on our table. They put us up there, you know, with the rest of them, and, um, I had Mark, who is our weaver, one of our top weavers for our tribe. He had--he was demonstrating his baskets. We were all doing a demonstration, and, and appreciating that, you know, on there. That' ; s the last thing we did on the traditional, you know, weaving thing with Camp Pendleton. Then we' ; re going to do this one November 4. LK: And then the Jubilation of the Valley Festival? DC: Oh yeah, we' ; re going to have, coming up in November-- LK: --the Luiseño Day. Mm-hmm-- DC: --Spirit of the Valley-- LK: --Spirit of the Valley. DC: --with Studio Ace. And we' ; re going to be doing baskets there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And I' ; m going to be doing teaching the Cherokee style-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --okay? It' ; s not gonna--it' ; s not Luiseño style. And so we' ; re going to be doing, uh, [sighs] all day [laughs]-- LK: And you' ; ve been invited-- DC: --from 11 to 3. LK: --to do basket weaving at a senior dance at the-- DC: Aw, come on now, [gestures pushing away from herself with her right hand] I know. LK: [laughs] DC: It' ; s just a--thank you, Linda. Um, that' ; s December 15th. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And that' ; s coming in because of the senior center over there. That' ; s just an activity they wanted us to do. Plus, we do basket traditional weaving in front of the Mission, hopefully, every 4th Sunday of the month. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: But sometimes we don' ; t, because we have other things to do. So it' ; s almost a contact--they--a website, or contact one of us to do that. We do it at Rancho Guajome, but we' ; ll kind of travel with our weaving person. Um, one of the things I want to say is that I do get feedback sometimes from our own Indian people--" ; why are you in front of the Mission, Diania?" ; okay, you know. Because they see a pictures of the background where we' ; re weaving, and, um--" ; why are you doing it on the, on the Mission grounds?" ; I mean, you have this animosity with some of our people that have gone through the Mission system and their ancestors were really treated bad, etc. I' ; m not going to say the missions were the best things that happened to the indigenous people in the state of California, or even in the other missionaries throughout the, throughout the different tribal people-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --in Indian country. But, I' ; m trying to tell them " ; I' ; ll let you know. I' ; m not there to, to praise the Mission. Don' ; t get me wrong, okay? I have my aspects with them, too, but I' ; m there--we' ; re there, really, to respect and honor our ancestors that are buried there." ; I' ; ve got a lot of family that' ; s buried there in that old cemetery. I know our ancestors had built that mission and helped it. We' ; ve got a lot of ancestors that are buried in those grounds that aren' ; t in the cemeteries. When you had your epidemics, the pox, the small pox epidemic-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --there' ; s a lot of burials in, on those grounds at the Mission that had to do multiple burials real fast. So, we' ; re there honoring our people. I' ; m not there to honor the Mission. And, I have to let them know that. I mean, don' ; t get me wrong. I was raised with the Catholic there. My mom went to school there. My great-grandfather, he was part, you know. Every Sunday it seemed like the Father was always there in his house at the ranch there in the valley, having dinner. But I don' ; t really have that, um, hatred, or whatever you want to call it-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --to the Mission system. Yes, they know that they' ; ve done wrong. My brother and I sit on the committee for the 225 anniversary that' ; s coming up, honoring San Luis Rey Mission. I' ; m there on it, and so is he, to make sure the indigenous people aren' ; t forgotten. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: They' ; ve got to have something that' ; s, that' ; s still representing, you know, them with the ethnic group. We have our powwow there that' ; s been there for 23 years, you know. We just haven' ; t had it since Covid. And that' ; s another thing that' ; s on the Mission grounds. You have some of the indigenous people who will not come to our powwow because it' ; s on Indi--on mission grounds. But, to me, that' ; s personal for them. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: The Mission has not been at a controversy for us. Yes, we know some of our ancestors were treated wrong, you know. You can walk in that Mission, and, um, you can see different things that, um, and the stories you hear, you know, and the longondria < ; sic> ; that' ; s going down there, where they had to do the washing and stuff. You' ; ve got Pablo Tac. You know, he came from that Mission, and was taught, who can, you know, going back to Barcelona, you know, and Rome also, and is buried over there, and died. But, um, you--we--how can I say this? San Luis Rey Mission, they, the Luiseños around the Mission San Luis Rey weren' ; t as-- LK: It was a-- DC: --progressive as LK: --Luiseño village, correct? DC: Yes, it was a Luiseño village there, but they didn' ; t attempt to burn it down like the Kumeyaay did, at the old--in San Diego. They burned that mission down three times [holds up three fingers]. But it comes with people, and how they took it, um, as a, as a rewards system, or whatever. Okay? They were fed! Can you imagine? I mean, ee were nomads and gatherers and movers. Meaning nomadic, it' ; s not like we moved all over [gestures in a sweeping motion]. It was like we went from ocean to the mountains [points from right to left, indicating movement from west to east] to gather and to the desert [points forward]. You see what I' ; m saying. As being nomadic. We didn' ; t have " ; a permanent" ; village. We knew what village we came from, but if we had to go, you had people that probably stayed there, the elders, and then the rest went out to gather. But we weren' ; t a warring people. Sure, we probably fought with the Kumeyaay and any others that came through. But with the Kumeyaay people, they were warring people. Now, they came from the, from the Colorado area. I mean, you' ; re looking at warriors, you know, came across, and when they were doing that with the missions and stuff, you know, you--they--it was on their land. They, they didn' ; t like it. They, you know, they, and they, to me, with San Diego Mission, um, and you read the history on that, it, it was, it was harsh. Where here, Father Peri --' ; cuz remember, San Luis Rey was the 19th mission. It was the one that--it was at almost the end that it was built. Okay? And San Luis Capistrano really was the 2nd one. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then they come around there [circles her arm] and they built San Luis Rey, 19-what, a number 19, in 1798. Okay? So, you' ; re looking at all these other missions that were built way before that. Father Peri, he--his system was more with the native people. Yes, you could come, but he let ' ; em build around him, also. But it was not the Fathers that were chased in the mission, the Indians. It was the soldiers at the--that' ; s who were supposedly protecting the Fathers. They were the ones that went out and chased the Indians down. They were the ones that did the punishments, when they had their, their, their soldiers--the ones that were in charge--they took it to their head, you know, I mean, to do the punishment, because as far as native indigenous people were below the Mexican people. You had the Indians [gestures making layers, indicating layers of hierarchy], then you had the Mexicans, the Spaniards, you understand, that, that-- LK: Were higher, you know. DC: --hierarchy. So, um, I don' ; t have that too much on there, you know, with that. Everybody has their own. I have it because the missions only because they kept ' ; em down [gestures downward with her right hand], and they did use ' ; em--I wouldn' ; t--I don' ; t use the word slave, but they--I guess, slave labor. They were the laborers, where else they really didn' ; t--they didn' ; t get paid. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: You know, on there. And then when the missions were done, and the secularization, when they did that, they were lost. They cried, you know. I mean, they were starving, because of that--and then what had happened, the ranchers got us here, Picos, the Marrons, the Couts, all of the rest of them--they went and destroyed the mission. They were, they were tearing it apart. They were taking the beams. They were taking all the statues. They were taking the different things, and using them to build. You know, you get some of these ranchers, they have some of the beams on that are from--that are from the Mission. The artifacts. LK: Wild. DC: You know. But you don' ; t hear that side of the story. That' ; s why at Camp Pendleton and Rancho Santa Margarita and them, when it, they hid the stories and that--" ; Come on, you guys, you know. Pico wasn' ; t the best guy." ; LK: Mm-hmm. DC: He, he was really one of those really against the Indians. LK: So, in addition to your passion and your education with the basketry, you are like a historian of your people, and the area, and I see that you brought some other materials. Is there anything you want share? DC: [again reaching to the left] Well, one of the things is that, uh, okay, and I know that for you, you' ; re trying to do this. I did study the language [holds up some leaves of paper], but since I didn' ; t--wasn' ; t able to have--speak to somebody, I went through the Pechanga -- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --and they sent me to Cal State--I mean, to Riverside, also to the international classes that was there. But since I didn' ; t have anybody to communicate with [gestures as if transmitting words to another person], it was hard for me. I can read it, and I can probably understand it when they' ; re--when they start talking to me, you know-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --get the words right. But I' ; m fortunate that I did have that. But this is one [looks at paper] of the things that I' ; m going to share--I' ; m going to be sharing this at the, uh, Spirit of the Valley, once they get over there. But it' ; s like this one here, okay? [turns paper toward Linda. The paper is laminated, and has a colored drawing of a deer, with the word ' ; şúukat' ; ] You hear that one What' ; s that? LK: Soosh-kah? Soo-kah-- DC: Soos-kwaht, okay? LK: Soos-kwaht. DC: Deer. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: Okay. I' ; m just going to be doing that. This is for the children. Ishwoot? [holds up a laminated drawing of a wolf with word ' ; ˈíswut' ; ] What' ; s that? Ishwoot. LK: That is a wolf. DC: Yeah, wolf. Okay? And then this is something that I use with kids [holds up a laminated drawing of a grasshopper with word ' ; wiˈét' ; ]. Whee-uht. LK: Grasshopper. DC: Or cricket. LK: Or cricket. DC: Yeah. Whee-uht. And so, you see in these names--why I use these, because you see in these names, being with the native kids now, that they' ; re being named this. [holds up a laminated drawing of a bear with word ' ; húnwut' ; ] LK: Hunwhat. DC: Hunwhat. LK: It' ; s a bear. DC: It' ; s a bear. Children are being named that now, with these, especially with these names here, with their--for the children. They' ; re proud of being called ' ; hun-what.' ; They' ; re proud of being called ' ; soos-kwaht,' ; called--proud of being called ' ; whee-uht,' ; you know, instead of just being called " ; cricket," ; you know, on there. And so that was one of the things that I found I have been proud to do, you know, on that. And then, also, you have " ; Tuk-woot" ; [holds up a laminated drawing of a cougar with word ' ; túˈkwet' ; ]. Who is this? LK: A cougar or mountain lion. DC: It' ; s a cougar, okay? LK: Cougar? DC: You have ' ; tuk-woot' ; village, ' ; tuk-woot' ; village, ' ; tuk-woot' ; court, at Cal State San Marcos! LK: Yes, that' ; s right! DC: Okay? " ; Aush-woot?" ; [holds up a laminated drawing of a hawk with word ' ; áşwut' ; ] I know that' ; s not a [unintelligible] of an eagle, but that' ; s an ' ; aush-woot.' ; The eagle. LK: The eagle. DC: Yeah. And these are words that, um, are the alphabet, pretty long, you know, and considered more than 26 letters, that are important to the kids because they can identify with them. You know. I also have a coloring book, and you know, 1-2-3 and stuff like that I' ; m sharing. But one of these [reaches to the left for something else] that I want to end with, if you don' ; t mind, is that if, um, [sighs] in 2004, this is the Heritage Keepers [holds up a magazine entitled " ; Heritage Keepers" ; ]. This is a magazine coming from the Ramon Learning Center [reads back of magazine] LK: Hmmm. DC: Okay. And, um, it' ; s still going on from Banning, California. And I wrote a poem [opening magazine, and finding page where poem is printed], um, and I wanted to read it and share it with you. Is that okay? LK: Yes! I would love that. DC: Okay. It' ; s that, um, I wrote this poem when I was doing the--learning the Luiseño language, and I had to write this poem because I was, um, trying to pull the words out [gestures as if churning things over in her head] of my head that I knew. And where I was at--it was Teeter Romero and I were up in Rainbow, up there by north of us here. And we were going to go out there to gather Juncus in Gomez Creek area, which is behind Riamb--Rainbow. You gotta go up the mountain. And when we were up there at the top of the hill--it was early in the morning, and we stopped because we looked out towards the valley towards the ocean [points to the left] and that morning it was clear. You can--you could--you could see the, see the ocean shining clear at the, at the other end, which is really not-- [shakes her head]. But then you saw El Moro Kukutuk, okay? That' ; s another story. One day you might have to say it, but Kutukutuk too, is part of our creation story. And you can see that mound really clearly, with the ocean in the background, shimmering, and that mound there in the valley near Camp Pendleton, and Bonsall and Fallbrook area. In this part of our creation story, I got these things in my head as I' ; m looking at it, and I thought of our people. Because of the creation story, of trying to be saved. They were, they--we had the flood, also, in our creation story. And all I could think of, and was watching it, seeing the ocean shimmering, seeing that mound and thinking of " ; Oh my God, that' ; s what came up. The ocean came up." ; And the people were running, because the water was coming in and coming in, and they had nothing to save ' ; em. And the people from Pechanga were up there on their high point [points up with left hand], which is up there by Rainbow. If you ever go by Pechanga on the back way you' ; ll see the big hill that' ; s up there. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: That' ; s one of their lookouts, and I don' ; t know that there--the name of it, but it' ; s a point. And they were looking at the people, you know, the Luiseño people in the valley, running. And all they could do was keep singing. Now I don' ; t--I have the words to that song, that they had-- that they started there. But, I don' ; t have that with me right now. But they were singing up there to hopefully save their people. They' ; re crying for them, and trying to save, save their people. Well, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this mound comes up. And so they were watching their people swimming towards it, and running towards it. And this mound kept coming up, and that' ; s more--El Moro Hill, or Kuktuk. That is a volcano cone. People don' ; t realize that, you know, we do have volcanic areas-- [laughs] LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --in this area. And that' ; s a volcano cone that came up and our people in that valley, meaning my ancestors, okay--were saved. They were able to go on to Tuktuk, El Moro Hill, and come up, and go up there. You can visit that here--uh, that mound or that little knoll or dell, if you want to call it. It' ; s on Indian Rock Road. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: It' ; s Sleeping Indian Rock. It' ; s Sleeping Indian Road [scratches head] right there. Part of it' ; s on Camp Pendleton. Part of it' ; s in Fallbrook. And, part of it is owned by the County of San Diego. You can' ; t build on it. You can build on--near it, but you can' ; t build on the Camp Pendleton side, because that' ; s a blind--ammunition dump. And the Navy owns it. Fallbrook owns a third of it, and San Diego County owns a third. There' ; s a trail that you can go up on there, if you want to visit it and go, and there' ; s a hearth on the top that they do celebrations, ceremonies up there. My great-grandmother was born there, at the base of that El Moro Hill. So, yeah, we' ; ve got history in there, and, you know, our aunt used to tell--my aunt, my great aunt, used to tell stories, you know, about that-- LK: Mm-hmm. DC: --and they used to go, go there. But what I did was wrote a poem as I was doing, uh, looking at it, and I was thinking, my language is going in my head, but I could only pick out some words that I knew at that time. So it' ; s called " ; Naqmayam" ; and I was saying it--first saying it in Luiseño, then I' ; ll read it again in English, what it meant. LK: Okay. DC: Okay. It says " ; Naqmayam. Toonquay qawiinga/noo toowq ' ; ataxmi/naqmayam/noo toowq ' ; ataxmi heelaqal/' ; ataaxum naqmawun! Popuu' ; uk ponakilvoy/yu' ; pan heth' ; aan/no$uun toonavan ' ; ataaxum poomoto/naqmayam! Heelaxam!" ; Now, I usually sing this, I know. It' ; s just--it' ; s--it' ; s--I usually--it sticks after a while, I' ; m singing it, because I do sing it, at the Mission on All Soul' ; s Day. [chuckles] So, if you come on All Soul' ; s Day, on November 2nd, around 6 o' ; clock, between 6 and 6:30, I' ; ll be doing it and lighting the candles there, and I' ; ll be--I can sing it. And why I like to sing it, it' ; s sometimes I can hear my voice [gestures to her right ear], it bounces off the mission wall. It scared me the first time that it happened-- LK: [chuckles] DC: --because I never had an echo come back like that. And, anyway, " ; naqmayam" ; means " ; listen." ; " ; Toonquay qawiinga" ; means " ; from the rock on the mountain." ; Naqmayam. I see the people. I see the people singing. People listen. The door was closed. Again it will open. My heart will weave among the people. Listen and sing. I wasn' ; t looking at them crying, you know. I was thinking about them singing, and being happy. And the door was closed at one time for us, but it was now opening. LK: Mm-hmm. DC: And then my heart, at that time, with the weaving, there, my heart will weave among the people. And, um, so it was kind of, you know--and they published it, in that--in that--in there-- LK: It' ; s beautiful. DC: --It kind of gives the story of me. This has happened in 2003 [laughs]. And that' ; s how long ago, with the language. And I' ; m still trying to bring the language back, you know, I mean, we did it with--for a while when we were together with the Rotary Club. But then again I' ; m doing it, trying to get it back with people, and with our people, on that. It' ; s still going on at the Pechanga, with this fantastic Pechanga . I started back with them, way back when, and they started at the preschool. And then, now, they' ; ve taken it all the way up through their 6th grade there on their reservation at Pechanga. They don' ; t speak any English in the classes. All their instructors or the teachers have to learn the language. It' ; s taught in Luiseño. They' ; ve got an agreement with the school district of Temecula, that they follow them all the way through school, all the way through high school, that they have to release them at least, I don' ; t know how many times a week, to be brought in and taught their language, to keep it up. LK: That' ; s wonderful. DC: They take it all the way through high school. But, Pechanga has done really good. Pauma is also―has a class there, you know. Pauma does. Rincon does. Pala, uh, I don' ; t know if Pala does. But, each one has a different, like a dialect, you know. The only sad thing is when you get politics coming in. I' ; m just going to let you guys know. Politics is really deep within the tribes, on there, and um, I' ; m right, you' ; re wrong, etc. And it' ; s sad, because we' ; re all the one people, but that' ; s the way it goes. You' ; re born into being an indigenous people, not just for us here in California, but across the United States. You' ; re born into politics, whether you like it or not. So, um― LK: Well, I just want to close with saying that it' ; s been an honor and absolute pleasure to interview you and listen to you. I want to acknowledge that you went from accounting to weaving to becoming an educator of your pe―of your tribal background, and also a historian, and I think a big part of your legacy is to keep this out there. And you' ; re doing it pretty much on your own. It' ; s not like you have all this, um, Federal money behind you, like the federally recognized tribes, so― DC: We don' ; t have that [shaking her head] LK: ―you do not have that. You' ; re not federally recognized. But I just wanted to honor that in you, and thank you so much for allowing me to do this. DC: Okay. LK: No $uun. DC: Noh [bowing her head, and chuckling] I was going to say No $uun Looviq. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives
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Title
A name given to the resource
Caudell, Diania. Interview October 27, 2022
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Diania Caudell focused on her Native American ancestry as well as her past occupation as an accountant. Also included is her implementation of Native American education in the San Juan Capistrano School District and how her back injury led her to become a basket weaver.
The written transcription of this interview also contains a glossary and poem in Luiseño with English translation, written by Caudell in 2003.
Identifier
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SC027-22
Subject
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Basket making
Education -- Native Americans
Luiseño Indians
Date
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2022-10-27
Format
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video
Creator
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Diania Caudell
Contributor
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Linda Kallas
Coverage
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Oceanside (Calif.)
Publisher
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California State University San Marcos University Library
Language
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English
Luiseño
Rights Holder
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Diania Caudell
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving image
Art and artists
Community history
Native American experience
North County Oral History Initiative
Women's experience
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https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/2c516f34374336a003467920b9e6a60e.pdf
5a59759182ca0ebad99808f33264f291
PDF Text
Text
DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
Diania Caudell: Is my lipstick okay? [laughs]
Linda Kallas: Today is October 27, 2022. I am Linda Kallas, and I am interviewing Diania
Caudell as part of the North County Oral History Initiative. Thank you, Diania, for being here,
and allowing me to do this with you today.
DC: No $uun Looviq [“My heart is good” in Luiseno. Our way of saying “thank you.”]
[chuckles]
LK: Miiyu. [“Hello” to one person in Luiseno.]
DC: Miiyu [laughs].
LK: Um, we were—I just wanted to ask you when and where you were born.
DC: Uh, where was I—April 16, 1948. I was born here in North County, San Diego—Oceanside,
California, San Diego County.
LK: And was your family an active part of any cultural community, such as religious or ethnic
groups?
DC: Well [sighs] yeah, we were, uh, part of the first indigenous people here in the Americas or
whatever you want to say on that part. Um, we are part of the San Luis Rey Band of Mission
Indians, uh, been in the area as far as, uh, the written is concerned, you know, since they were
written at the Missions, I would say the 1700s, because after that it was, um, mostly—before that
it was all oral. So, um, we’ve been here over nine generations. That’s on the native side.
LK: That’s on the native side.
DC: Yeah.
LK: Which means—
DC: It means that—
LK: On the other side is—
DC: On the other side, the French side came to us, and he landed here in 1868. He was Hubert
Foussat. Here in San Francisco. He was one of the founding fathers of Oceanside.
LK: Is that why there’s a street named after him?
DC: Yes. But that’s not at a—that’s not named after my great grandfather. That’s named, really,
with—after his brother, Ramon Foussat.
LK: Okay.
DC: And he’s the one that had the ranch in the area up there, by Highland and Oceanside.
Faustino Foussat had the land there in the valley, San Luis Rey Valley.
LK: And there’s also an elementary school named Louise Foussat.
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�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
DC: Yes. She’s—I’ve always called her as an aunt, but she’s really a cousin. Um, she was—she
married a Foussat. Okay. Her maiden name is a Munoa, and her mother was, um, Theresa
Gidden, Theresa Giddens, and, um, that’s another one that’s—she was born at Pala, and,
uh,that’s another side of our family, my father’s side, that had been here a long time. That’s
another whole side that I could talk about when you get to that point, if you want to, and his
grandmother—
LK: Okay.
DC: —was born on the Marron Ranch in 1865, so—
LK: So, your family history stretches way back in the North County.
DC: Yes. Yes.
LK: Um, this seems like a silly question, but how do you like living and working here?
DC: [laughs] Okay, it—all I can tell you is that, um, I wouldn’t want to live anyplace else, you
know, other than—growing up, I lived all over the state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and
Nevada, only because I’m, I’m a construction brat, let’s just put it that way. My father was a
heavy construction operator, had his own equipment. So, if you go anywhere here in California
for the freeways, he probably helped build those, all the dams here in California, uh, he was
probably was working on those, um, also like Parker Dam in New Mexico, you know, even in
Arizona, I mean, excuse me, Arizona. You have some of the bigger dams, you know, throughout
[breathes in] so, um, my mother kept coming back to North County, because she was born here
in San Luis Rey Valley. Her family, her family’s from here. My father’s family is from Pala. So,
we kept coming back and, um, I think she put her foot down from travelling when my brother
and I were in junior high. So, I graduated from Escondido High School, and stayed in Escondido
until I got married, then I moved up to Orange County, San Juan Capistrano. I was up there for
40 some years, before I came back down here to my home.
LK: Wow.
DC: [laughs, then bell chimes] Oh-oh. Is that me?
LK: Well, so you do feel part of the community, and within that, do you feel like you have a
support network?
DC: Well, if you’re gonna say support network, you’re going to have to look at the whole family,
okay. Just with my great-grandfather. He had 11 daughters.
LK: Wow.
DC: And so, one of them was my grandmother, and he raised my mother because her father died
when she, when she was a young child. And so, my great-grandfather, Faustino Foussat, raised
her. So, when you have a large—just one branch of the Foussat family that had all these sisters
and all these children, um, there’s a support group on the ones that were close [chuckles] let’s
just say. My grandmother, um, was born in San Luis Rey Valley, uh, lived there all her life, uh,
well not all her—until she retired, and then she went to Hemet. But, she retired from Camp
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TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
Pendleton. She was one of the first workers there, you know, in the pressing. So, network-wise,
yes, we have a good network of family. But, they all kind of seem to travel away, you know, on
some things. Still, today, you know, because it’s San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians which
I’m part of, we have good support network, in that, within relatives. I mean we have—I have a
lot of cousins, you know, and related on both sides. If we had to talk about that, I’m double
related on some of them, and people just kind of wonder what—how did that happen? When you
try to explain the story, uh, it gets confusing.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: So, um, we just want to do a big picture one day [laughs].
LK: That would be nice. Um, you said that you were in Orange County for 40 years.
DC: Mm-hmm.
LK: So, tell me about the work you did there.
DC: [sighs] Ok. Let’s just start that—when I got married, I moved up there and, um, when I was
here I was starting in accounting. Okay? I’m an accountant by trade. That wasn’t really what I
wanted to do, but that’s how it ended up, you know, going into accounting. Um, so I did a lot of
accounting for dealerships. Went back to college to get my degree into Accounting, and then
went into accounting, business law, etc. so I stayed—like to work with numbers. I’m just good
with numbers. And, so, I worked with dealerships, school districts, medical field in the
accounting field. I didn’t become, later on, the weaver or in, with my cultural until I had to have
a back injury. So, for 40-some years, up there in San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, I got
involved with the Acjachemen people, the Juaneños there, helping them through Indian
education, in the 70s, because that’s a story that— I can go into that, and I think I—it’s kind of
long but shortly is that I grew up with being native, and the schools not teaching us correctly.
Okay?
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: You read the books, etcetera, and you hear about how they were dressed, what they were,
were they savages? Etcetera. And I would come home from school and saying this is not how we
are. And then my mother, my grandmother, and family would say “Don’t argue, Diania, just let it
go.” And so when I got married, and my two children, my son and my daughter, when they went
to school up there in the Palisades, or in Capistrano Unified School District, they came home one
day and said they were entitled to something other. It was like a Spanish program, Title II, at that
time. And so, I went to the school to find out how my children got tagged into—in the Spanish
community, when my last name is French, and it’s Caudell. And so, talking with the school
principal, um, we found out that I followed that person that was in charge of Title II, and what
had happened—how my two ended up coming with that notice is that this person went around
the school to the classrooms and asked questions. Now, if you had a surname, with Romero,
Sanchez, Alvaros, Valenzuela, any of those Spanish names, she automatically put them down on
the list as a Spanish or Mexican. Uh, then, the other question when she got that from the roster,
she then would ask “how many children here already know that their parents, or grandparents,
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�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
speak Spanish.” Well, my two automatically raised their hand because their father spoke
Spanish. And he was taught that from his mother and also because of the community of San Juan
Capistrano. You’ve got to think of the missions. That was the language that was taught to the
Indian people. And, um, so that’s how my two got on there. And so I challenged that at the
school district, at the, you know, with the superintendent, and, uh, they came back at me and
saying “well, the last Indian person that was living here in San Juan Capistrano died in 1933, and
he was the bell-ringer.” And I go, “no, that can’t be, because I’m here. I’ve got relatives that are
married into the Juaneño or Acjachemen people. You still have them here, and so, um, I became
an advocate [laughs], an activist, or whatever you want to say, and contacted my relatives there,
that are—that married into the Acjachemen people, and, identified them. We went back to the
school district, and went through all their rosters, because back in the 70s, when you’re ethnic,
when they ask you that question, when you’re enrolling your student, your child, they ask you
what ethnic group you are. Well, in those days—I’m saying those days, in the 70s, you only had,
like, you had Caucasian, you had Asian—not even Asian, really. Mexican, I think. But you
didn’t have the—what you have today is the Native American/Alaskan ethnic group. And so I
always put us under “Other” as Native American, because I am a registered through the B.I.A.,
Bureau of Indian Affairs, and I have my certification, that I am who I am, meaning Native
American. And, um, so I always made sure that my children would have that, going through
there. So, we went through K-12, went to the registry of the school district and got all their cum
files, or whatever they call them, those information files, and took home all the ones that were
identified as Native American. A lot of them were not, because they didn’t want to, because it
was passed down to us that you didn’t want to register as Native American because it wasn’t the
best thing to do. So, they always put Caucasian. So, from K-12 in that school district, Capistrano
High School District, we had identified 210 students.
LK: Wow.
DC: And so that kind of put us into the category of challenging the school. Uh, UCI had Kogee
Thomas at that time. She was the Director. She heard about what was happening. She came
down to become my mentor. With that, because she’s really high with the Seminoles and
Muscogee people at that, then, and we wrote the first grant. We brought in Title IV, Indian
Education Act, Public Law 194, in 1975. [laughs]
LK: Wow.
DC: So, I’ve been through this for a long time. We ended up forming the San Juan Capistrano
Council, because they had to reform themselves again. They never left. They just said their
leader moved, and they just kind of—in the 60s, or in the 50s, he left, and so they just kind of
knew they were there, but they weren’t formally formed yet. So we reformed them. So today I
can just tell you that in Capistrano Unified School District, they still have Indian Education.
They have a Indian Research Center, kind of, for teachers, instructors, and parents, there on the
Clarence Lobo Elementary school grounds.
LK: Mm-hmm.
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Transcribed by Melissa Martin
�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
DC: That if you wanted to study any Indian, not just California, any, any native person across
indigenous person across the United States, in Alaska and Hawaii, etc., that you can go to that
resource center, and that instructor, teacher, parent can pull the correct information that these
tribes have handed in. So, that was one of my things that I did up there, other than just being an
accountant.
LK: Wow, that’s impressive.
DC: Okay, that was in the community. [laughs]
LK: Yes, yes. And then you mentioned you hurt your back and that’s what lead you to getting
into basketry. Can you talk a little bit about that?
DC: [sighs] Yeah, that was, um, a fall I had, okay? I don’t want to describe the fall, because it’s
kind of, you know, it’s kind of stupid. I mean, the thing is when you hurt your back, um, I
thought I’d go to the chiropractor. I went to work, and was working in Huntington Beach at that
time, and I drove my car to Huntington Beach, went to sit down at my desk at the dealership, sat
down and I couldn’t move. They had to literally pick me up, take me to my car. I called my
chiropractor in Newport and, uh, he went to adjust it, and he says “This isn’t that, you know.
This is something else.” And so they took x-rays, and he still tried the adjustment. I—and it got a
point where I had to quit. I couldn’t—you know, I was losing to walk, etc. And the pain kept
going through that, and then finally when they did an MRI on me, you know, they found out that
I had―let me see, I’m trying to figure out how to describe this, because I’m not a medic, medical
person— I was diag—rheumatism arthritis runs in our family on my dad’s side, my
grandmother’s side.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Not too much on my mother’s side, but on, through my dad’s side. And so, I guess
hereditarily, I have that in my system. What are you going to do? So, when I hit the lower back
really hard, I accelerated the arthritis rheumatism in my spine. And so when that happened, that’s
what they found with the MRI. So, they said “Diania, if you don’t have, do something with it,
it’s going to get worse, and you’re going to lose a lot of functions that you normally can take that
you can control of. And, anyway, I put it off a whole year. I didn’t want to have my back opened
up. And so, I got to a point where I couldn’t deal with this anymore. And so, I had to say yes.
They opened up 5, 4, and 6 of your vertebraes <sic>. They opened them up, and all I can
describe it was a rotor-rooter job. She went in there, and just tried to scrape out all the
rheumatism, or arthritis, away from my spine, inside my spine. And when she did that, she hit
one of the sciatic nerves.
LK: oh…
DC: And uh, ‘cuz it, nothing’s replaced. They just sealed it back up again. And, uh, so when I
came out of surgery, I didn’t realize that I couldn’t walk because the nurses tried to—they put
those belts [gestures tying a belt around her waist] on you when you’re going to go and make
you go to the restroom, etc., you know, when you’re [unintelligible] and when I went to get out
the bed, I fell straight to the floor. Thank goodness I had belts on me, because the two nurses and
5
Transcribed by Melissa Martin
�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
all the surgeons come running in, and I lost everything from the waist down. Had to learn how to
walk all over again. It took me—they said “Diania, you’re going to have to learn patience.” And
I’m not one with patience, let’s put it that way. I do have patience for other people, but not for
myself. So, I didn’t know what to do and the Acjachemen people had sent me a newsletter, and
my mom brought it up, and on the front cover of that newsletter that was next to the, my bed in
the hospital was Lillian Robles. She’s an elder. She’s passed on before, but she had a basket hat
on. And I saw the basket hat and I went “Oh, great. I guess to learn patience, I guess I can get
into basketry.”
LK: Oh…
DC: And I never was in it. I was more in the Indian education. I was more into the helping with
the activities. My mother was a weaver. My aunts were weavers, their jewelry, they’re always
crafting with their hands. I was not. They always pushed me away, and said “Diania, you know,
we’re need—we need you in education. We need you speaking for our people.” And so when I
called, I looked at that, and I called Teeter Romero who was a top weaver from the Acjachemen
people, and she—her and I were really close, worked together for years, with Indian education—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: ―Inter-tribal Council of California, I mean, the different areas, you know, for the people,
Indian people. And I called her, and let her know that, um, I need to become a weaver. Well, she
started laughing on the phone, when I called from the hospital, because she didn’t know where I
was at.
LK: She laughed at you?
DC: Well, she laughed at me, because she said “you’re not a weaver, you know, you’re just not a
weaver.” And then she says “Why?” And I says “Well, I’m in the hospital, and I can’t walk, and
I need to learn patience.” So, when she heard that, she says “okay, when you’re able to get home
and sit up in a wheelchair, we’ll come to you.” And, they did. I was with my mom here in
Escondido, at that time. And they came down. About six months—let’s see, I had the operation
in April; they came down in June. And I was being able to sit up in there. I was still trying to
learn to walk. I was with a walker. And, they came! And they started, uh—sat down with me,
and the first thing they gave me was raffia in one hand and pine needle in the other, and they had
me doing the coiling, just to learn to go round and round and round and round, with basketry.
From then on, it took me, you know, work—it took me almost two years to learn how to walk
again, by myself. I was with a—I couldn’t drive. My mom was driving me all over. I had the
walker. I got everything back in my left leg, but on my right leg not everything came through.
And so, another six to eight months, I was doing acupuncture at Indian Health Council in
Rincon, because I didn’t want to open up my back again, okay, have another surgery. So, I don’t
have a lot of feeling in my right foot, from my calf, I think, down. But, I do think it—people
don’t realize that, you know, that I don’t, but that’s what put me into retirement, really.
LK: How many years ago was that?
DC: Okay. When did 9/11, what year was that? 2001?
6
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�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
LK: That was ’01.
DC: Okay, ’01.
LK: 09.
DC: Because, yeah, April of ’01, because I remember I was still in bed and my mom got a call
from her sister and my mom come running in to my bedroom, trying to insist I turn the TV on,
and what she says—my mom was crying and I looked at that and there it was when I saw the
airplane hit. They had that going on the towers and it was like looking at a movie.
LK: Yeah.
DC: Okay. That was just unbelievable. Okay? So, that was April, September, okay. It was—
that’s how I can remember. I can never remember the year, but I just think it’s the year of 9/11.
So twenty-oh-one, right?
LK: Yeah, 21 years ago.
DC: Yeah, so it was 21 years ago. I was still on—I have been on social security disability,
because I can’t sit that long. So, if I get up on you guys, and take a break, then I’m sorry, you
know, but that—My, my job was an accountant, and so that was sitting a lot.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And then to get up and sit and get up is one of the things. So, uh, that’s how I got into
basketry and I’m still doing that today, you know, on that. But, it’s taken me learning different
things, you know, getting—you want me to go into California Indian Basket Weavers
Association?
LK: Yeah, I―
DC: [laughs] okay, okay.
LK: I was going to ask that—I—but I wanted to go back, just for a minute—
DC: Okay.
LK: —to Indian education.
DC: Mm-hmm.
LK: So, I think you said it’s still going on to this day. You still, they still have that educational
program in San Juan Capistrano.
DC: Yeah, they still have the Capistrano Unified School District and it’s going still strong, but
they have to be the parents that have to want it.
LK: Ah, okay.
7
Transcribed by Melissa Martin
�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
DC: It doesn’t just stay with the Acjachemen people. And they do have, I think they have a
resource instructor there, someone in their administration, that they do go out for. Because it is a
fund. It’s funding, it’s federal funding. All school districts need money―
LK: Right.
DC: ―and it’s a head count. And so, Capistrano Unified School District still has it, so does
Huntington Beach, because they have a large community of the Cherokee Indian―
LK: Oh!
DC: ―outside natives coming in, because a lot of people don’t realize, that if they do start
researching, you can go into 1963. They had the Relocation Act, of Native Americans. And, this
isn’t taught in schools. This isn’t taught in—you know, for the general public, sometimes, unless
you’re involved with Native Americans and their—and the different things. Well, 1963 they
relocated Cherokee, Choctaw, and a lot of different native groups into California.
LK: Oh…
DC: You know, a lot of the Cherokees went to the Anaheim area, Huntington Beach area, and
settled there. You had a lot of the Cherokee, Osage, and some coming down to San Diego. The
largest Choctaw Relocation is in Bakersfield.
LK: I’ll be darned.
DC: So, yeah, it’s a—it was—it’s interesting, uh, how they did move native people around to get
them away from their “homeland” and give them incentives at that time that “we can move you
to California. You know, you can emerge into there” and stuff. And so a lot of it is kind of
detrimental but with them, they brought their, they brought their culture and their tradition with
them, which is good.
LK: So, if you could see something change in regard to that educational program, what would it
be? Would it be to expand it to San Diego County? Would it be…
DC: Well, San Diego County had a big—has a big Indian education program. They did—they—
you just don’t hear about it―
LK: Okay.
DC: ―um, in their school district. What it would be good to expand on there is that, um, to get it
more to the public, to the other schools, okay. It takes a school district to want it. I’ve notified
Oceanside. I’ve notified Vista. In Vista alone, a few years ago, they identified another 200,
because now they have that on their information form of the child’s registers, you know, what
ethnic group you are. And 210 had registered as Native American. It doesn’t mean they’re, you
know, San Luis Rey or California. They can be from anywhere in the United States. And most of
them that do register for their ethnic group know that they are, or they’ve been told that they are.
LK: Mm-hmm.
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�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
DC: But it gets a parent, it’s gotta be a parent to initiate it, to get a parent group together, and
that way they can work with the school district. And then they can apply for grants. And then
they can get the head count. Then they can get a resource instructor in there, or someone to work
with the Indian education, and then it comes in with tutoring. That was one thing I did. I knew
for, just for reading and math, at least. Get the children on the tutoring. They have the tutoring.
They were pulled out of class or they brought the equipment in, if they needed equipment. There,
Capistrano Unified School District, we’ll go back to that. It was shown as a need. Getting the
general books that they need into the libraries. That’s how that resource center started, because
the school districts will only go by what the state says, for state books, state history books,
they―etc. The Native peoples say “No, that’s not correct. We will want our own books coming
in.” So that’s what we did in the 70s. We brought in records. At that time, you didn’t have CDs
or you know, what we had, you know, you had—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: LPs. And so we brought in records of the singing of the different groups. They brought in
books that the teachers can get through, or parents could check out, you know, and working with
that to get the education in there. And you have to have the school district to want to work with
you. Um, we—it was a hard thing, with, even with Capistrano Unified School District, to do it.
But if I didn’t have the help with Kogee Thomas and some of the top people that come from
back east, that were very strong in their native cultural, that I don’t think that Capistrano would
have done it either. ‘Cuz we challenged them. We challenged them, so—
LK: But, how enriching for the students.
DC: It is, but you got to have again, you gotta have a parent―
LK: Right.
DC: ―who would want that, so their student or their child can get that extra help.
LK: There has to be a buy-in for it, with the parent.
DC: Yes, and so it’s, it’s—today, in Capistrano Unified School District, the ones that do use it—
I know my grandchildren went through it—they provided the computers at home for the tutoring.
You know, they didn’t have to go to like a trailer, or be pulled out of class, and be taken, you
know, like to a tutorial room like we did in the 70s.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Uh, with the st—with my two children, my daughter used it and they had computers at
home. The school district provided these computers, these laptops for the home that they could
use and they got tutored every day, since they were in grade school. All the way through high
school.
LK: Wow. It gave them a really good sense of self.
DC: It gave a sense of self, and they—at first it was “why do we have to do this for half an hour
every day?” [laughs] I mean, but as they got older in high school, and then went to college, you
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know, especially going through all those tests that you have to take for college, they, they were
happy because they knew a lot of the questions and were able to answer them. Because of the
tutorial they had, um, above and beyond what they normally get in school, in class.
LK: Wow. That’s wonderful. So, you’ve already explained a little bit about your life’s path, how
it’s evolved and changed over the years, so I was going to ask you if you wanted to share a little
bit more about the basketry and CIBA, and I see that you have a little sample of one.
DC: [laughs] Ok. When you said CIBA, I don’t think everybody knows what CIBA is, okay.
You’re familiar with it. CIBA is California Indian Basket Weavers Association. Um, that’s
another thing that I have been a member of and I’m on the Board for the last umpteen years, I
would say—let’s just say the last 12 years. I know it’s been longer. Uh, but how I got involved in
that, again, was going back to when I became basket—learning basketry and the plants, finding
out that southern California doesn’t have everything that they normally have. If you know the
county here, we’ve got 18 reservations here in the San Diego County alone and the people—
where they were sent—aren’t on their homelands. I mean—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: It’s not where they would have their medi—their medicinal plants, their foods, or their
traditional cultural plants like basketry and other things, and so they had—the people had to go
off the reservations, and to public lands, which would be your forestries, um, county parks, state
parks, etc., even private land, to get the materials that they need for the basketry. Well, I had a
problem with that because I didn’t understand that, you know, and why did they have the
restrictions here in southern California when I found out that in central California, they don’t
have that. In northern California they don’t have the same restrictions. But it’s because a lot of
these central reservations or rancherias in northern California, too, is that they’re on their
homelands. They’re rancherias. They weren’t like taken from one area and moved. Okay.
They’ve had little rancherias, then. That’s what they called them, instead of reservations, up in
northern California, spread out. And so they were on their lands and they had the traditional
materials.
LK: Oh, I see.
DC: For example, you’ve got the Yuroks and the Hoopas up there. They’re in the forest up there.
They have the red for—the, the redwoods. They got the forest. They’ve got a lot of their plants.
And that’s their economic development.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: But, that’s―they don’t call them reservations. They call them rancherias. Okay, so, so I
started asking questions about that. You know, I’d say “how come, what for?” And I went to a
gathering of CIBA, because they have a large gathering once a year for the basket weavers of the
state of California, and I started asking “how come, what for, why is it that in California we
don’t have this, when you have it up there?” And then I was told by a board member, “Well,
Diania, you keep asking these questions. Why don’t you—we’re having a Board election. Why
don’t you throw your hat in, your name, and we can see what we can do?” Well, I got elected.
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You know, I mean, I didn’t expect that at all. And I’ve been on it ever since, since 2003. And,
uh, so I became an advocate of, for southern California, to get in, our traditional trading, you
know, gathering, etc., our traditional materials, you know, on that. And so, if I didn’t enjoy what
I’m doing and have a passion for it, you know, I think learning about my traditional materials
that we use for basketry, which is hard to find here in southern California, if you don’t get
somebody to help you, you know, with that. And, um, so I think being educating people has
helped me.
LK: Um, the traditional materials are hard to find because of development? They’ve all been—
DC: Yes, uh—
LK: —plowed over or—
DC: Um, there’s a—[reaching to her left for a brochure with the front cover reading “Indian
Rock Project”] okay, let me just see, I’m just going to go through here. This here, this is Indian
Rock Project, okay. This is something that we worked with the Cal St—uh, San Luis Rey Band
of Mission Indians and Cal State San Marcos worked together with Palomar College to do, to put
this book out. This was done in 2003, which was a long time ago. But in here, in this book, let
me just—[flipping through pages]—the—when you see what they—when you ask me about,
uh—[looking at a particular page]—uh, where is it? [flips through more pages] And then you
all—she’s probably going to edit this, but that’s okay. Because I was asked that question that you
were just asking, and [still flipping through pages]
LK: About the natural—
DC: I found it. Okay, I had said here, on here “preserving tradition” and this is, you know―
[turning the booklet to Linda to show her the specific pages]—I ended up being in the booklet,
okay, okay, on this Indian Rock Project [shows front cover] You could probably go online, you
know, and download it, because they don’t have any more of these booklets. But, when you
asked me that question, I said [she’s reading from the booklet] “a lot of our things are being
destroyed. If you look at our environment around us, we have development, development,
development. Juncus and all the plants that we use for actually making the baskets are being
destroyed. When we are out driving, we stop, we get out there, and we take pictures. I want to
find a spot, notify the nearest reservations, notify the Forestry, notify the developers—“Can we
go in? Can we pick? Can we transplant? Because if you are going to develop it and destroy it, let
us go in.” That was a statement that I had made, you know, for—for, for, like an interview for
this booklet. So—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And then it went on [flipping through booklet again] into who I am or whatever. But, um,
yes, the development. And so more developers now are finding out that if you do have—if you
do identify traditional materials and stuff, they are now trying to hopefully preserve ‘em, or to
have you come in and take them, or use them. But it is. Southern California is, gets hit with a lot
of development because you look around here and you’re looking at it. I’m looking at the
Mission San Juan—Mission, excuse me, San Luis Rey Mission. If you ever go by there, and stuff
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like this, you’ll see we had wetlands there right next to it, and through the Lavanderia and right
next to the Mission, what’s happening now? The Mission leased it out, or sold it, whatever you
want to say—99-some years. You’ve got this big, huge retirement center going in there. It’s like
a resort. They are built on the wetlands, and uh, there went something that was natural, native,
etc., and it’s being developed. You drive around to different places now, here in San Diego
County, and you’re seeing development. So, it’s really hard on—
LK: Everywhere you look.
DC: Yeah, and I just don’t understand, for me, where they’re getting their water from. Because if
we have a resource of, of water—that’s one of the things that we don’t have here in southern
California. We have to bring it in from other places.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: How can you develop and, and, and bring in people, more and more people, so how are you
going to give them water? Feeding you know—if you’re going to feed, you’ve got the grocery
stores yet, or whatever. You still can’t even have farmland any more hardly, but water. Water is
essential for all living things. So, where they come, the water? I mean, the lease on the Colorado
River is coming up. That was only a 99-year agreement. How are they going to negotiate that, if
they want to stop the Colorado River from coming in? You know, I know they’re doing desalting
plant, but that’s not even good for the ocean, you know, and not even good for us as people.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: So, um, that’s a big question that I ask. Every time I drive around and see these
developments, you know, and it’s money. It’s politics and money. Okay, we can go on. We
won’t go into that—[laughs]
LK: Well, going back to the baskets—
DC: Okay.
LK: Can you tell us some of the natural fibers that you use, natural plants you use in the baskets.
DC: Okay.
LK: The traditional—
DC: —Traditional plants. In the state of California, we have over 243 different tribes, 26
different dialects of language, and each one of the—in California, it’s kind of divided up, like in
northern, central, and southern, and we all don’t use the same plants. Here in southern California,
we basically use about five. And that would be Juncus textilis, which is a green reed that grows
near water. It needs water. It’s like a tule, if you’ve seen tule in―
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: ―these wetlands, and stuff, or at these lakes, lagoons, but it’s not cornered or— Tule has
three—is three-sided. Juncus textilis, is round. It’s a round reed, and it grows up straight. It
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could—If you know how crab grass grows, it has, is that right? How it goes—what do you call
that [gestures with her right hand, pointing straight and making curves in a snake-like
fashion]— you know, you pull it out of the shoots—
LK: Uh-huh.
DC: —you know, like crab grass—
LK: Yeah.
DC: And, anyway, uh, depending on where it’s growing at and the materials that are in the—
minerals—excuse me—that are in the soil, the bottom of the root type of thing, where the shaft
comes out of there, the reed comes out of that shaft, it’ll have color on it. And it’s either from a
deep light brown, mahogany color, to a deep red mahogany color. And, I didn’t bring any of
those baskets with me. I was going to, okay, but maybe I should have, but I didn’t. If you ever
notice some of the traditional baskets, you’ll see this deep red color or brown color—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: That’s usually coming from the Juncus on the, on the end of the shaft on there, bottom part,
which is in the ground. It’s green when you plant—It’s green when you collect it. You have to
process it. It takes time. It grows with poison oak. That’s another thing. We call it—it’s our
protector. The only time we go and gather the Juncus textilis is when we say the poison oak goes
to sleep, and that only means that the leaves are gone.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: But it’s still going to be contaminated, probably, with poison oak. And that’s why we don’t
teach it as much, because some people don’t want to be dealt with, with poison oak. That’s what,
that’s the reed that we use for coiling. Okay? And that takes a process, splitting, etc., and getting
it ready. It takes anywhere from six months to a year to even get your material ready to do a
basket.
The next one that we use for our start would be the center, which is the center of the basket, is
yucca. And that, again, is that—what is it, yucca—uh, the Whippi? Or they call it the “Lord’s
Candle.” It think you’ve seen it down by the road. You’ll see it growing on the hillsides. There’s
different ways to use that. Some people will take the dead leaves, those great big green ones that
they have and they grow pretty, even from the agave—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC:—and the yucca. When you see those dead ones, or dried out, in the desert, etc., you can take
those and you can soak them really, really big in a big tub, and then you take that, and you pound
it. And you just keep pounding it, when they’re—you know, when you’re drying them. And
they’ll—they’ll turn fibrous, like string—
LK: Oh.
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DC:—and that’s how you get your yucca sandals, and things like that, that they use in fiber, or
your cordage. The other way you can do is with the yucca is you take the center of the new
shoots that are coming out, before it becomes a flower in the stalk. [gestures up with an open
hand] You take that, and you twist it, and you get about 30 or 40 small, small [gestures to
indicate smallness of an object] little leaves, and then you take those and you shred ‘em with a
needle—we do—or pound them, and uh, you don’t need to go out there anymore because you’re
not going to make 30 or 40 bags in your lifetime, as far as I know. I’m not going to. But you
have enough to where you don’t have to go out there and gather them.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Then, deer grass. People use deer grass as a native plant for decoration or whatever, because
it’s drought tolerant.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: But it’s not that Pampas grass that you see waving from that Africa—that African one is an
invasive plant. I wish people would just take it away, and these nurseries—just take it out, you
know get it—because that Pampas grass kills everything on the native plants. It just takes over.
And deer grass is similar to it, but it doesn’t have that fan on the top.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And, uh, the deer grass, we gather that and we take the shoots or the stems on them, and we
gather, and that’s what we coil around [gestures in a coiling fashion with both hands] So, the
traditional, for the Mission baskets they called here that the Luiseño use, Cahuilla use,
Kumeyaay use, the Cupeno use here in southern California, even the Chumash further up, and
your Tongva and your different people. We do a coiling technique. Okay? So have you ever seen
those baskets in museums, etc., you’ll see that one by one, they’re coiling.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: They’re coiling the Juncus textilis. They’re coiling around with sticks that they use, which
would be deer grass. And the center star that you see in the middle [creates a circle with her
fingers on her left hand] is done with yucca. And sometimes it’s also done with Juncus on
Juncus, or Juncus on Deer Grass. It all depends who the weaver is, etc. Since we have to gather
that, and we can’t find it all over, you know what we do, we try to really work with the forestries,
and private owners, and people. Try and get them to plant. It’s not easy to plant the Juncus
textilis because it’s not going to grow everywhere. So, there’s different areas that do have it. If
you want to see Juncus textilis, where it’s at, you can see it in the public, it’s in the public
discovery center there in Carlsbad.
LK: Oh.
DC: They have a good—kind of like a little garden, that they have it growing there. And the deer
grass and the yucca. And that was done because we worked with the Discovery Center years ago
with Cal State San Marcos and the students. And we did all the planting there, when it was there.
So, if you want to see that, I would go there and visit it. And you can see what the Juncus textilis
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looks like. See, uh—[sighs]—but doing basketry is that—what I have here is samples. I did bring
a basket. I just brought these hair pieces that I’ve made for my two granddaughters [shows
beautiful, small round woven hairpieces]. Can you see them okay?—
LK: Yes, yes.
DC: Out of Juncus. If you see, this one here is a little bit darker, and the black there [now holding
only one of the hairpieces, with a woven black ring in the mid-region of the weave, and gesturing
to this area] is dyed Juncus, okay? Now, that Juncus, um, was dyed with—[looking at the
hairpiece now, more intensely]—I don’t know, this was given to me, [chuckling] the dyed
Juncus, so I’m assuming they did it with, um, elderberry leaves, okay, and um, put in the Juncus,
and in a can, okay, or, or like a coffee can that’s all rusty. And what you do—you put the rusted
can in there. You have your Juncus already split and put into the weaver, and then you put, um,
into a coffee can [gesturing to show the size of the can] and it’s all rusty. You put some rusty
nails in it at the bottom, and then you start layering it with the Juncus textilis. It’s the process.
And on top of that you put elderberry leaves, and you keep going ‘til you fill it. [gestures
indicating layers building up] Then you fill it with water.
LK: Oh.
DC: And then you let the water—and then you put that can somewhere so it can ferment. It’s like
I tell you, it’s got to get all yucky and like, rotten, and what it is is that it probably turns black.
And it’s—and you’re getting the iron—what do you call that? Iron oxide?—
LK: Uh-huh.
DC: —from the, from the nails and from the rusty can. Then when you empty it out, your Juncus
is black.
LK: Wow.
DC: Dyed black. And that’s also what’s coming from the elderberry leaves. Another way that
our ancestors did it was that during the creeks they knew where there was iron oxide in the soil,
in the sand.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: They would get their Juncus, and they would bury it in that sand. They’d come back, weeks
later or whatever, and dig it out, and it’ll be black. Another way they do it, up in northern
California, and in here too, is using walnuts, because we had, you know—black walnuts is a
native plant of California.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And so they would take the shells, crunch ‘em up, you know shells, the outside shell,
they’re called, and if you’ve ever picked walnuts, you know that your hands get black?
LK: Yeah.
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DC: Okay, because that—on the hull—because you take that, well they’ll take that hull and chop
it up, and then put in water, and put your Juncus in there, and with the walnut there, and they’ll
turn black, too.
LK: Wow.
DC: That’s just one other way. It takes time. And they also use the acorn husk, or the shell of the
acorn, and the black acorn, or any of the acorns, crush ‘em up again and put them in water, put
the Juncus in there, and then you have to leave it. So it is a time consuming deal. So these are
two headpieces I did.
Now, when we get to the schools—when you get to the school— [holds up a small woven
basket] this is a little basket that I’ve had for years. But this is not a native material. This material
that we use for teaching is from, okay, rattan. Everybody knows what rattan is. Rattan has a pith
in it. Rattan and bamboo look similar but bamboo is hollow. Rattan is got the pith. To get the
pith out of the rattan, pull it, press it, and make cane. This is how you get cane.
LK: Oh.
DC: And so what we use here, is that you can buy cane in different rounds, or different sizes or
gauges. You can get it flat. You can get it round. Uh, we get the round, and this is called
Cherokee Single Wall twine. I call it, uh—we have our own twine, excuse me, but it’s not like
this one, the Luiseño. And why I use Cherokee is because one of the easiest ones that the kids
can use at school. It’s the closest thing that I can get to the river cane, from the Cherokee and
Choctaw and the people there, in Oklahoma and that area, will use, because they go and pick
their river cane. We don’t have river cane here in California. If we do have it, I wouldn’t want to
go down there because it’s probably contaminated.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: It’s got all those other things, and they probably sprayed it a lot with pesticides. And so this
is what we teach in school, and I call it “Cherokee Single Walled Twine.” We make the starts.
The kids can make one of these [holding up a skein of yarn] within an hour, even the adults, over
two hours. And maybe not this size, maybe a little bit bigger. But this way, they don’t have any
allergies or con― such so far, uh, getting sick from it. Because, I can’t guarantee our native
traditional plants that we do use aren’t—it doesn’t have some type of pesticides on it, or some
poisons on it that we’re not aware of.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And we use our mouth [wipes her right hand across her mouth] a lot for our third hand
when we’re weaving with our traditional materials.
LK: Because you have to keep them—
DC: We have to keep them very moist.
LK: Moist.
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DC: Everything has to moist. It has to be pliable. It has to be moist. If you’re going to be
weaving with almost anything, even with cloth, even with weeds, even with flowers or stems or,
you know, branches. We do use willow, though, okay? Aurora willow, or the willow tree. We
make baskets out of that too. If you ever notice the big acorn granaries, they call ‘em, have you
ever seen them on pictures—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —that the tribes had next to their kiichas or their ewaks for here in southern California, even
northern California. They have great big acorn granaries. Those are made out of willow. They’re
woven green, and when they’re woven green, uh, then they let―they dry. But do they use
willow? Willow is a natural insecticide. It keeps the insects away from the acorns. And that’s
why they have them high up on a stilt like, or platform, to keep their small animal away from
them, or whatever. But if they do―these small animals try to get to the acorn, then they can also
plug it up, or whatever.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: But those acorn granaries can last for hundreds of years, you know. They’ve found, when
they’ve done research, you know, in the mountains or at their villages, you’ll see a granary that is
still up. But, it’s a natural insecticide. People don’t realize that the willow is a natural
insecticide—
LK: That’s interesting.
DC: —to weave with it.
LK: So, in traditional weaving, was it always the women, the tribal women, that did the baskets
or did men—
DC: I would say—
LK: —create baskets as well?
DC: Uh, yeah. Traditionally, mostly it was the women and the girls, okay? Because you’ve got to
think about—before contact, especially here in California, we’re the last native people that were
contacted as they came west—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: ―our baskets were used for cooking, for storage, for gifting, for birthing, for death. And that
was our—they were utilized for everything. And that’s why they can say that “Mission baskets
were woven so tight that they can hold water.”
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Well, yes and no. The only reason why they can hold water is that the deer grass in what
they’ve coiled around swells. [laughs]
LK: Oh.
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DC: So, but they also had the—and when they cooked in them, they used another plant that we
do. It’s more fire resistant. And that’s your Trius lobata, or your sumac. And that’s kind of―it’s
white. Have you ever seen baskets that have more of a white bottom to it?
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: That’s because it’s usually with sumac, and that one has a resistance to fire. But, only be—
resistance, how can I say this—fire tolerant but not to a point. When they cooked in baskets, the
cooking baskets, they were done with a stick that they’d keep moving [circles her right arm as if
stirring], and they were used with river rocks, hot rocks in there. Central northern California
used lava rocks a lot, but that had been tumbled in the rivers. But the ones that are here, we
would probably get the smooth river rocks, and then you heat them up and then you put them
into the basket, and you have to keep stirring them [makes a stirring motion with her right hand]
into that food. Men probably did the baskets that were, um, that were for fishing, like the fish
traps, or your great big, huge granaries,―
LK: Oh, yeah.
DC: Okay, on that? And they’re made out of the willow. Um, they didn’t make them—northern
California, they made ‘em a lot of out of the different plants up there, the branches there. But,
almost all of them are made out of willow, you know, because it was pliable to work with. But,
that’s your bigger gathering baskets or fish traps, etc., you know. But mainly, it’s mostly the
women. But men did do that. We do have men today that are top weavers, um, so, we even have
one in our tribe that’s a fantastic weaver [chuckles].
LK: So, it’s a form of functional art. I mean, ‘cuz it is a form of art. That’s what—
DC: Well, it didn’t become a form of art until it—until I would say, after contact—
LK: Right.
DC: —because it was a utility that we had to use, you know. It was something.
LK: Right. It was functional.
DC: Yeah, and I say, you know, when pots and pans came out, I, I would have been one that
threw the baskets away. [laughs] Let’s use a pot, too, you know.
LK: [laughs]
DC: It’s just like when you gather your foods, you know. I gather the acorn and I make that
wiiwish, we call it, the acorn mush. I use a processor to crack all my—you know, to mix it up,
you know, and get the nuts, ground it down. You know, if you ever see these, um,—how can I
say these—we call them gathering, gathering spots or metates are these big rocks that have the
holes in them—the grinding area, they call ‘em grinding stones, grinding— Can you imagine the
woman that’s sitting there, or a child, or whatever, pounding acorn to get a meal out of it, you
know, to get it real fine like a flour. And, and how long they pound it up there to get those holes
in there. How old! You can just tell the age of the—by looking at these grinding areas, or
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grinding rocks that you see, how, how hard they must have done it, so it just—it didn’t happen
overnight, to make those holes, you know, in those rocks. It had to be―
LK: Right.
DC: [gesturing in a pounding motion] ―years and years of processing. And, uh, I’ve tried it. We
have two in our backyard, and I didn’t last five minutes. Raising that rock, that pestle, over my
head and pounding the acorn, okay? I mean, I couldn’t, after that, I couldn’t raise my hand after
five minutes, or even three minutes. My mom was laughing at me out there―
LK: [chuckles]
DC: ―you know, and I said “Our women must have had—the women must have had shoulders
and—
LK: Strong arms.
DC: —biceps, strong arms, to do that, daily, every day, to get the acorn to get it ready for the
mush because that was a staple for the people, you know, because the acorn—wiiwish, we call
it—or the, um, what do they call it, with the Kumeyaay, um—we call it wiiwish, they call it, um,
okay, I’ve got to think about it. I know it starts with an ‘s.’ But anyway, um, everyday. Because,
see, that’s 100% protein.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: The acorn is 100% protein. So, it was a staple and it was also a replacement for when they
didn’t have any meat, you know, so it was always used. So, when these processors came through,
they said “Diania, how come you don’t do it the traditional way?” I said “Uh-uh” [shaking her
head] I said “my ancestors would have popped in that, those electrical things to plug in, they
would have used it too.” I said “There’s no way I’m going to go out there and you know, [she
and Linda start laughing] and pound.” I mean it’s kind of like a joke but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s—you
know, you know, when progress comes, I’m sure they, they would have—they wouldn’t have
stayed with their old ways. That’s how I look at it. [chuckles]
LK: Circling back, you mentioned a few institutions like Cal State San Marcos, The Discovery
Center in Carlsbad, CIBA, and you’re part of the Pesticide―
DC: Oh, Tribal―
LK: ―with the National Parks?
DC: Well, I belong also to the Tribal Pesticide Program Council through EPA. And that’s
because of the pesticides and insecticides and stuff that effect our, our plants. A lot of people
don’t realize that, when they see our traditional plants, they think they’re weeds.
LK: Oh.
DC: And they’ll spray them. Or also, that, um―there’s drifts that happen and if you have native
plants that are growing near there, and you’re not aware of the native plants that are there, and if
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how they’re spraying, and if the wind comes up [she makes a “whoosh” sound, and waves her
hand in a broad sweep to indicate wind over field], the drift will go over there. There’s no signs
that tell you that “Hey, we’re going to be spraying today!”
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: County doesn’t even tell you that, I mean, unless they come around, you know. The
mosquitoes, like in Central California, Sacramento, they post it, because with all those rice fields
that they have up there, they have to. They have to do that, spraying for the mosquitoes. And
they do it by helicopter. And I’ve been up there when they’ve done that, and they’ve got notices
all over―“Shut Your Windows”, “Shut Your House”, “Stay in Your House Between This Hour
and This Hour”― because they’re coming in and just sprayin’ and it goes all over your cars, etc.,
out there. In the University of Davis, Woodland, in that area. So, but they don’t do that too much
down here, okay. So, when you don’t know about it, and then you see the plants and you’re
going to go through it, you don’t know if it’s been sprayed or anything, or drifted on. And then
you pick it, and then you get it, and you put it in your mouth, or whatever, you smell it to see if it
is, you get hit. And I’ve had, that’s how I got into pesticides. I went to pick a plant that I thought
that the only way you can identify it is to smell it, so I popped it [gestures breaking a stem open]
like you know you see you pop it, and I stuffed it up one nostril and within five minutes my
whole side of my face went red [gestures a swipe across right side of her face]. Rushed in to
Rincon Indian Health Center. They said “Diania, what did you do?” I says “okay, this is where I
was at.” And, I had a chemical reaction, that it was sprayed, that it somehow got sprayed. And so
I was on―the first time I got steroids, and shot with steroids and it’s five-four-three-two-one
[gestures counting on fingers], you know, you’re taking all those pills, five days. Found out that
the golf courses are the worst [chuckles] people, or development, or whatever, that use
herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, any type of your “cides” they said, because they want to keep
their grass green and they want to keep their flowers beautiful and colorful. They don’t want any
rodents. They don’t want anything upsetting that golf course out there. And if you have any
native plants that are near there, uh, they’re probably going to get hit with that type of thing. And
the golf course is another one that doesn’t tell you that they’re spraying. I don’t, I’ve never gone
by a golf course that said “Hey, we’re spraying today. There’s a sign.” And I worry about the
people that are out there golfing, okay.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: You know, and I love to watch golf. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I enjoy, I’m not a golfer
but I love watching the Masters and stuff. And it goes through my head, when these guys are out
there, and the women, you know, and they’re walking in it, but you don’t know if they’ve been
told about the spraying, or you know, if they have an asthma thing, or, or something like that. So
what happened was that I got into pesticide with CIBA. [chuckles, and reaches to her left for a
brochure] So then I was working, we worked with a brochure [laughs, and shows for the camera
a brochure, then reads the front of it] they call, it’s called “Pesticides: What Basket Weavers
Should Know.” But, this doesn’t just tell you for basket weavers. It’s for everybody―
LK: Mm-hmm.
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DC: ―okay? And the contact people [flips the brochure over, and points to the back side of the
brochure] like for here in Southern California, you’ve got the contact if you’ve had this. It just
tells you what to look for on native plants, if they look dead, if they’re doing anything. [opens
brochure and looks inside] I’m trying to get EPA right now to try to start making us some more
of these, but if I have some more, [turns the inside of the brochure to face the camera] like if I
gave you, you know, some handouts that you could make your own, you know. They don’t have
to be in color. [closes brochure, but still holds it up] But, it’s just an awareness about pesticides
when you’re out there. And it, you don’t have to be gathering. You can just be taking a trail ride
out there, or hiking. Your animals could come back with pesticides or insecticides on them, and
then you have your kids rubbing them [gestures petting an animal], and playing with them, and
hugging them, and then you wonder also why your child is coming out with a rash. Why are they
coughing? Why are they sneezing? And so, most of the time, it’s some type of spraying and it’s
out there. So I sit on that, that, across the United States, we’ve got all the tribes. But the bigger
tribes like the, your Black Feet and your Crow, etc. you know, they, they lease their land,
because they’ve got millions of acres on their reservations. So they lease their lands to Montanyo
[sounds unsure]. One of that does soy beans, and corn, and all these big guys.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: But they need to have the pesticides, but they’re trying to regulate it more so especially on
native ground or Indian country, because, um, they don’t want to be digesting it. They don’t want
this corn and everything that is going out to the public to be digested, because if you go on to a
lot of your other farms and stuff like this, they’re not telling you what the pest―what is being
used. But the, in the Indian country, they want to make sure it’s safe. They don’t want to get sick.
They don’t want their own families to get sick. So, it’s a big political thing. But what had
happened in northern California, how this—how CIBA became involved in the 90s, about ’93, is
that the weavers in northern California get their―they use a lot of roots.
LK: Mmm—
DC: And they use a lot of willow roots. So, during the―on the rivers of northern California, they
go high. But when they recede down, that’s when the roots stick out from the, from the banks
where all the willow trees are growing. And so they go into the water, and they’re picking from
the banks of the river, all the roots coming out [gesturing pulling something towards her].
LK: Uh-huh.
DC: Okay? When you kind of think of, when the water is high [gestures raising up as in water
level], this is where the roots are going. They’re going to get water for the, for the trees. Well,
industry up nor―up, up river, where they call, where they, where it is coming down into the
river, they were dumping chemicals into the water—
LK: Hmmm—
DC: —as a dump. You’re talking about the lumber mills, some of the uh, other industrial things
are doing it. That’s what was stuck in the salmon, also. And so the weavers were doing it. Then
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all of a sudden they were finding their elders the weavers were getting cancer around their mouth
[gesturing around her mouth]
LK: Oh, no.
DC: And they were getting cancer inside. They were losing their teeth [pointing at her teeth].
And they couldn’t figure out why. Because it wasn’t just happening to just one tribe. It was
happening to all the ones that, that were gathering, you know. You’re talking the Pomo, the
Uroquois, the Hupas, the Kuroks. All the ones that use this type of material. And so in ’93, they
found out that, they had EPA come out. They had this whole thing. They wrote a paper on it, a
risk assessment, and found out that it was chemicals in the water when they tested the waters on
these big ones. And so that started, for CIBA anyway, with the pesticides—
LK: Huh.
DC: —to get on there, to be more sort of a―― how can I― a public, you know, awareness.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: You can only educate. You can’t stop it. You can only, you know. That’s why you have all
these, um, lawsuits right now, happening in northern California and their waters. Look at the
salmon. What’s happening, not just in California, but in Oregon and Washington with― because
of the chemicals. Uh, you can’t, sometimes you can’t even eat, you know, some of that salmon
because they can’t even go upstream, because when they come upstream, they come back sick.
And the worst one is in Alaska.
LK: Right.
DC: See, people don’t want to hear about Alaska. But everything that we use down here in, in, in
the “mainland” they call it, the chemicals, anything, okay, it all goes into our atmosphere, right?
[points upward with both hands]. I mean, you spray, and it’s going to go up.
LK: Yep.
DC: Okay, when it goes up, where does it go? It goes to the Poles. [gestures as if touching top
and bottom of a globe] North Pole, north pole is getting it mostly. South Pole is not as much,
because they don’t get that drift like they did. But what it did, it collects up here [circles her
hand in a rotating motion] in the atmosphere, and what it is, over Alaska in the Arctic area.
That’s why it’s cleaning out too. Because it’s just going around, all these chemicals. It, it forms a
warmth and a heat. And that why, that’s what’s, and now when it rains up there, it drops down
[laughs, and gestures as if something is falling] into their land and into their trees, and into their
plants, and they’re contaminated. And it’s all because of us down here, meaning, I’m saying
“us”, mainland and you know, uh, North, Central, South America, all of us, you know, Europe,
that using all these different chemicals and things like this, and drifts up [raises her hands up],
collects in that atmosphere up there [circles in the air with her left hand], goes to the North Pole.
It’s going around and around. It rains, or whatever, and it comes down, [indicates rain coming
down, with both hands] and that’s why Alaska is having all those problems right now with their
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food [gestures as if counting on her left hand], climate change, the heating, etc. And, uh, a lot of
it is the use of chemicals and pesticides.
LK: Well, what started out as a―
DC: [chuckles]
LK: ―lessons in patience for you―
DC: [bursts out laughing]
LK: You’ve expanded your knowledge to all aspects of basketry and, and working with other
organizations. So, I know those aren’t the only ones you work with, though, and I can list a
couple just to jog your memory. I know you work with Camp Pendleton.
DC: Oh, well yeah, well, Camp Pendleton is―
LK: And Daly Ranch.
DC: Daly Ranch. Well, Daly Ranch was because [sighs] I went to, I went to be a docent. Okay?
Because I had to find something to do after, you know, I, and that I, before I had my surgery, I
became a docent, and I wanted to do the trails. Okay? The native trails. But when I had, after my
surgery, I couldn’t do the walking anymore. And so they did have a small “Indian program” you
know, on there. And one of the rangers I, you know, I, I love him dearly, he’s still there, we
worked together, he was the one that was doing the Native American aspect of the Daly Ranch,
what they would give to the public and school district. Fifteen minutes [gestures making air
quotes] is all he would have. So I went through his training, on the docents, and he brought in a
native person from souther―from Kumeyaay territory, I think, a weaver. I can’t think who the
weaver is now. She did a display and stuff. And so Ranger Robert, I think I mentioned him, he
did a lot, because of his sons were in Boy Scouts, you know, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Eagle
Scouts, and they had to do a lot of the native areas of, on there. So he made a lot of the artifacts
that the Daly Ranch uses and I use right now for exhibit. And he learned about the plants, and the
foods, etc. Well, he went to serve wiiwish, acorn. And when he served it, it was great. And I just
went “What?”, you know. And it, it was [gesturing as if saying ‘no’ with her fingers] I don’t
know. And I’m going asking “How did you do this?” Well, he used the acorn, but he didn’t use
the acorns that we normally would use. He used a different type of acorn. And how he fixed it, or
whatever. And so, when we had our barbeque when we graduated from the docent class, I went
home [laughs] and I made the ______________. This is supposed to look like, okay, you know,
our wiiwish does that. And he says “well, teach me!” So we started working together. Then they
asked me if I would come in and do the native American part, you know, with the Daly Ranch.
Daly Ranch through the 7th graders and the whole school district, in Escondido School District,
they run the 7th graders through there for 6 weeks, in the Daly Ranch, twice a week, like a
Tuesday and a Wednesday, from 8 o’clock until 2. And we do about two hundred some a day.
LK: Wow!
DC: I’m the native American part of it, and they do plants, and then they do insects, and then
they do the large predators, you know, and then they, the tricks. But, I’m the native American
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portion of it. It started out as 15 minutes, and now all of a sudden, now I’m doing about 35
minutes, and just expanding it—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —to get them knowing that this was our first―you know, Daly Ranch is on the, one the land
of native peoples. There’s, there’s areas out there on Daly Ranch that the public can’t see, that
know that they’re―they live there. They have artifacts, etc., on that. So, um, and I got asked to,
to do that. It’s all voluntarily. If I get paid from anything for doing that―I’ve been doing that
going on 16 years now―it’s a surprise for me, because they do it through grants.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: I started out, like I said, volunteering, and it had expanded it to bigger working with Fred
Wood, who’s a retired school teacher, you know, from a junior high, 8th grade. And I started with
my cousin, Kathy Wallace, who’s our story teller now, and her son Brandon―he was about 9 or
10 years old―we would do it together. Well, it got to a point to where she expanded out
[gestures expansion thrusting her right hand out away from her], you know, he got older. And
so, I had Teeter Romero used to come down for me and help me, from San Juan Capistrano. And
then, also now, I got it for myself and it’s hard to get people to want to take it over. Because the
first question they ask “Well, how much do you get?” And I says “Nope.” I says “I can’t
guarantee you anything on that. If I get paid, it’s a surprise for me at the end of the six weeks,
depending on how much the grant through—It’s through a grant, that they get―
LK: Right.
DC: ―that. That’s to the Friends of the Daly Ranch. Even though the Daly Ranch is owned by
the city of Escondido, this Friends of the Daly Ranch and the docents do it because of they want
to.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: The only ones that really get paid on there is the rangers, because they’re employees of the
city of Escondido.
LK: Right.
DC: And uh―
LK: But that’s not the only institution that you do work. You, you go to elementary schools
and―
DC: Well, yeah, I have. I did elementary schools. I think, you know, we do―like San Elijo.
We’ve been doing that for seven years, and that’s during that one basket that I just showed you,
with the Cherokee style. We do third graders there. [sighs] Before they built that new elementary
school, we were doing anywhere from 2 to 300 hundred a day, in well, one day. We had it for 35
minutes, at 70, at the time. And then, because they had a program going. Kathy would be the
story teller. They had adobe making. They had―and so these children are going [gestures in a
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round circle with her right hand] all day, every half hour they’re going to another, another thing.
I would have four weavers come in to help me. And then we would give a quick 10-minutes, 5minute thing with parent volunteers, to come in and help to, to and I think you’ve even done it
before, [chuckles] to just help these students. And so you’d have all these third graders in one
room, sittin’ on the floor, on these things, ten, ten to a circle so I know it’s seventy, because we
had seventy cir―seven circles in there. We’d done seventy at the time, forty-five at the time, and
then within thirty-five minutes, you know, they’re done. If they didn’t finish this basket [holds
up small basket which can fit in the palm of her hand] in their time, then they would take them
with them and complete it in their ar—in their art department students. So we’ve been doing that
for quite a while. I’ve done the thing with Cal State San Marcos with their students up there,
giving the demonstrations, etc., given a talk. And then even teaching the students, you know, the
basketry.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Same thing with the senior center, in El Corazon [gestures to Linda].
LK: El Corazon.
DC: We just did that for three days, and they really enjoyed it.
LK: We cannot leave out one other entity, which was the Mission—
DC: —Oh!
LK: —San Luis Rey. How could we forget that.
DC: [laughs] You know, she’s sees, she’s getting me into the basketry thing, here. Um, San Luis
Rey—people don’t understand. San Luis Rey is one of the missions here that is not part of the
diocese, or owned by the Catholic Church, per se. They’re owned by the Franciscan order of the
Catholic Church.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Or, errr, I’m not—I’m a Catholic, but I’m not that kind. I’m not a practicing Catholic. Let’s
put it that way. But, um, so they’re owned by the Franciscans. San Luis Rey, Santa Barbara, and
there’s one more, and I’m going to better learn that one too because there’s three missions in the
state of California that are not part of the “Catholic.” San Juan Capistrano is part of the Orange
County diocese.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And they bring in the most money for the missions in the state of California. San Juan
Capistrano does, because you’ve got to pay to get in, you know, and everything else. But
anyway. The friars—well, they’re not—they’re friars—the Franciscan order, um, are there, at the
San Luis Rey Mission. You don’t know that they’re there, because they’re not really public other
than when you see ‘em walking around in their brown robes. They have a retreat there. They live
there. They study there. They go through their schooling, sometimes, there at the San Luis Rey
Mission. And I was notified by Gwen, the director, and Helena, whose at the museum, that they
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were having a retreat there. And they wanted a activity, and so Gwen says “Contact Diania, and
see if they want to do a basketry.” Well, Father David, or Brother David—he’s up at Santa
Barbara now—he used to be here at San Luis Rey, and my brother used to work with him. And
he knew I did baskets. That’s why he probably agreed. But these Franciscans were coming from
all over the world. They weren’t just coming from the United States. They were coming as
novices; ones that are almost going to graduate into their order; some that were graduated
already into the order; some that were retiring from the order. Some they didn’t speak English.
And, um, there was forty, almost fifty of them.
LK: Forty-six.
DC: Forty-six of them, and they were there for a week [chuckles] And they asked “Diania, would
you mind doing, you know, a demonstration and talking about the basketry, or people, etc.?” My
brother videoed it, you know, and I haven’t really even seen it yet. I think he gave you a copy,
right?
LK: It’s great.
DC: Okay. I have to give Roberta—not Roberta, but Reinette and Ella Sue, I think, also. But,
um, I says “Okay, I need four weavers, and uh, to do this.” And we did that in the back of the
mission, and here I was expecting—when we were setting up, all of us were expecting—there’s
Linda Kallas, Ella Sue Snyder (she’s a Acjachemen), Reinette (I can’t pronounce her last name.
My cousin—Reinette Omah, Olvera, but I can’t pro—)
LK: Olvera.
DC: Yeah, but she goes by that Italian married—
LK: Contreras.
DC: No, no. It starts with an “A” [indicates a letter “A” as if writing in the air]. Anyway.
LK: Okay.
DC: And you, and me, okay. Linda was—Linda, who was going to interview me, she goes
“Me?” and I says “Oh yeah. You know how to do these! You’ve been sittin’ with us for a while.
You can come in here.” And we’re going to do the Cherokee style basket. I just gave a talk about
our traditional materials, etc. So, we get all set up and here come these men, you know, coming
through. You know, I, I was expecting them to come into—with their robes on.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: You know, their brown robes. That’s what I was expecting. Here these men come in.
They’re in shorts. They got T-shirts on that say “Surf’s Up!” you know. All these different things
coming home with these hats, sandals, barefoot, you know. I mean, they’re coming from the
retreat area, you know, tennis shoes on, and all different ages. And it was interesting because I’m
going “Whoa, okay.” You would have, you would have put them on the street. You would not
have known that they were friars, okay. And, uh, like I said, all ages. They had a—we had a
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good time, laughing, etc. Like I said, we do have that, um, if you knew my brother did with that.
They were all anxious. They made beautiful baskets. [laughs]
LK: They were so impressed with you, and um—
DC: You know.
LK: They were so grateful and so full of gratitude for learning that skill—
DC: Yeah. Well, we took a lot—
LK: They really enjoyed it.
DC: Well, we took a picture, a group picture, at the end and then we had all their baskets on top
of that one rocker area.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And you can see that these baskets—[turning to her left, and reaching for something] I
showed you this [holds up the little basket that she showed previously in the interview] and this
is mine. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to make the same thing like this. Your basket is,
is going to be completely different. Even though they start out the same, your basket will be with
what you create with your hands. [puts down basket] And so that’s what they were really
impressed with, because we had some beautiful baskets. You had some real nice round ones
[gestures a round object]. You had flat ones [gestures flat object]. You had long ones [gestures a
tall object] and they just had a good time.
LK: They cherished them, right?
DC: Oh, it was a—it was—it was—it was rewarding, you know, on that. But that’s what happens
when we do that. We did it with the seniors—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —out there, and they all thought that they were going to be making their own little ba—
baskets that we showed them. And then when they finally was looking at it, even the men there,
you know, everything was different. And so, that’s what I enjoyed about the baskets. Even with
the kids, you know, they don’t— No two baskets are alike.
LK: Exactly. And, expanding on that, we have the elementary school named Pablo Tac after a
Luiseño native that was educated in the Mission. But also, you’re—you have an opportunity to
demonstrate there coming up, correct?
DC: Yes, coming up on November 4th, 2022. I’ll be demonstrating and so will Roberta—
hopefully Reinette will be there—traditional weaving. We’re not going to be teaching. That’s
probably, hopefully coming up next year.
LK: Yes.
DC: You know, on that. We just had the demonstration also at Camp Pendleton.
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LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Uh, there. I’m a docent for the Santa Margarita Ranch and Lost Forest Ranch, docent there
at Camp Pendleton. But I’ve been working with the Archaeology department since, uh, ugh, ‘90s
with Stan Berryman and then Danielle [Page], and now Kelly Bracken is in charge of it so—.
Because we have a lot of sites there on ran—on Camp Pendleton.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: People don’t realize it, that we’ve got over 600 some building sites there, and sites, and
sacred sites, etc., on Camp Pendleton, so we’re kept close with the—they’re kept close with the
different tribes. And since I’m the weaver in the native plants, I have a different aspect of it. I try
to make that, if the plants are out there, please, you know, don’t do this with them, and stuff. So,
they notify us that if we have native plants there, do you want us to move them. Do you want to
collect them, etc. They do have a native garden there that we do collect the deer grass from,
which is up there by the pavilion, behind the new hospital. Um, that way I know they’re not
being sprayed, when we go there.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: We just did elderberry tree, um, [chuckles] gathering from the berries, and I made some for
your, for you for your husband. I thought I was making jelly, and it ended up being syrup. But he
likes, he loves it, you know, ‘cuz we gathered there at Camp Pendleton, because [chuckles
again], because then I know that, um, also those aren’t being sprayed. And, so there’s different
areas by Camp Pendleton. Plus, with the cultural, okay. And why I started with the, the new
General, the Commander-in-Chief, there, at –I can’t think of it. I just—I worked with her, and
um, was—a— how?—docent there for the Santa Margarita Ranch. They were going to be the
ones dealing with the party. She had her fiesta there, a couple weeks ago. And, um, I didn’t want
to just be the docent dressed in the—how can I say this?— We dressed in this Spanish shawl. I
don’t know if you’ve seen the docents from center. [gestures to someone other than Linda
Kallas, seated to her left] You’ve been there, right? And, uh—Tanis. And, uh, we have that
costume [still looking to the other person] or the regalia that they use. I’m comin’ in, because I
put these on [hold up her necklace] and I’m, you know, trying to keep the Native American thing
going there. And you heard me [points to person off camera, and continues to talk to him/her]
this last meeting, you know, and Larry was over here [points to opposite direction, and laughs].
Uh, it’s that, uh, react? That we’ve forgotten, you know, on that. And they do think—they kind
of forget us. But anyway, and so I says [still talking to the person off camera] “I’m not going to
be a docent. I just—can I come in and do traditional weaving, you know, with our people,” with
her. And she just said [shaking her head]—she says “heck yes, please, let’s come in” and stuff.
So, um, I had the drapes on there. I wasn’t going to go San Luis Rey Band because we were all
San Luis Rey Band members that were going to do this traditional weaving demonstration. But
we’re all CIBA members also. So, I used this California Basket weavers —uh, weaving drape on
our table. They put us up there, you know, with the rest of them, and, um, I had Mark, who is our
weaver, one of our top weavers for our tribe. He had—he was demonstrating his baskets. We
were all doing a demonstration, and, and appreciating that, you know, on there. That’s the last
28
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thing we did on the traditional, you know, weaving thing with Camp Pendleton. Then we’re
going to do this one November 4.
LK: And then the Jubilation of the Valley Festival?
DC: Oh yeah, we’re going to have, coming up in November—
LK: —the Luiseño Day. Mm-hmm—
DC: —Spirit of the Valley—
LK: —Spirit of the Valley.
DC: —with Studio Ace. And we’re going to be doing baskets there.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And I’m going to be doing teaching the Cherokee style—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —okay? It’s not gonna—it’s not Luiseño style. And so we’re going to be doing, uh, [sighs]
all day [laughs]—
LK: And you’ve been invited—
DC: —from 11 to 3.
LK: —to do basket weaving at a senior dance at the—
DC: Aw, come on now, [gestures pushing away from herself with her right hand] I know.
LK: [laughs]
DC: It’s just a—thank you, Linda. Um, that’s December 15th.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And that’s coming in because of the senior center over there. That’s just an activity they
wanted us to do. Plus, we do basket traditional weaving in front of the Mission, hopefully, every
4th Sunday of the month.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: But sometimes we don’t, because we have other things to do. So it’s almost a contact—
they—a website, or contact one of us to do that. We do it at Rancho Guajome, but we’ll kind of
travel with our weaving person. Um, one of the things I want to say is that I do get feedback
sometimes from our own Indian people—“why are you in front of the Mission, Diania?” okay,
you know. Because they see a pictures of the background where we’re weaving, and, um—“why
are you doing it on the, on the Mission grounds?” I mean, you have this animosity with some of
our people that have gone through the Mission system and their ancestors were really treated
bad, etc. I’m not going to say the missions were the best things that happened to the indigenous
29
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people in the state of California, or even in the other missionaries throughout the, throughout the
different tribal people—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —in Indian country. But, I’m trying to tell them “I’ll let you know. I’m not there to, to
praise the Mission. Don’t get me wrong, okay? I have my aspects with them, too, but I’m there—
we’re there, really, to respect and honor our ancestors that are buried there.” I’ve got a lot of
family that’s buried there in that old cemetery. I know our ancestors had built that mission and
helped it. We’ve got a lot of ancestors that are buried in those grounds that aren’t in the
cemeteries. When you had your epidemics, the pox, the small pox epidemic—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —there’s a lot of burials in, on those grounds at the Mission that had to do multiple burials
real fast. So, we’re there honoring our people. I’m not there to honor the Mission. And, I have to
let them know that. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was raised with the Catholic there. My mom
went to school there. My great-grandfather, he was part, you know. Every Sunday it seemed like
the Father was always there in his house at the ranch there in the valley, having dinner. But I
don’t really have that, um, hatred, or whatever you want to call it—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —to the Mission system. Yes, they know that they’ve done wrong. My brother and I sit on
the committee for the 225 anniversary that’s coming up, honoring San Luis Rey Mission. I’m
there on it, and so is he, to make sure the indigenous people aren’t forgotten.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: They’ve got to have something that’s, that’s still representing, you know, them with the
ethnic group. We have our powwow there that’s been there for 23 years, you know. We just
haven’t had it since Covid. And that’s another thing that’s on the Mission grounds. You have
some of the indigenous people who will not come to our powwow because it’s on Indi—on
mission grounds. But, to me, that’s personal for them.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: The Mission has not been at a controversy for us. Yes, we know some of our ancestors were
treated wrong, you know. You can walk in that Mission, and, um, you can see different things
that, um, and the stories you hear, you know, and the longondria <sic> that’s going down there,
where they had to do the washing and stuff. You’ve got Pablo Tac. You know, he came from that
Mission, and was taught, who can, you know, going back to Barcelona, you know, and Rome
also, and is buried over there, and died. But, um, you—we—how can I say this? San Luis Rey
Mission, they, the Luiseños around the Mission San Luis Rey weren’t as—
LK: It was a—
DC: —progressive as
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LK: —Luiseño village, correct?
DC: Yes, it was a Luiseño village there, but they didn’t attempt to burn it down like the
Kumeyaay did, at the old—in San Diego. They burned that mission down three times [holds up
three fingers]. But it comes with people, and how they took it, um, as a, as a rewards system, or
whatever. Okay? They were fed! Can you imagine? I mean, ee were nomads and gatherers and
movers. Meaning nomadic, it’s not like we moved all over [gestures in a sweeping motion]. It
was like we went from ocean to the mountains [points from right to left, indicating movement
from west to east] to gather and to the desert [points forward]. You see what I’m saying. As
being nomadic. We didn’t have “a permanent” village. We knew what village we came from, but
if we had to go, you had people that probably stayed there, the elders, and then the rest went out
to gather. But we weren’t a warring people. Sure, we probably fought with the Kumeyaay and
any others that came through. But with the Kumeyaay people, they were warring people. Now,
they came from the, from the Colorado area. I mean, you’re looking at warriors, you know, came
across, and when they were doing that with the missions and stuff, you know, you—they—it was
on their land. They, they didn’t like it. They, you know, they, and they, to me, with San Diego
Mission, um, and you read the history on that, it, it was, it was harsh. Where here, Father Peri —
'cuz remember, San Luis Rey was the 19th mission. It was the one that—it was at almost the end
that it was built. Okay? And San Luis Capistrano really was the 2nd one.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And then they come around there [circles her arm] and they built San Luis Rey, 19-what, a
number 19, in 1798. Okay? So, you’re looking at all these other missions that were built way
before that. Father Peri, he—his system was more with the native people. Yes, you could come,
but he let ‘em build around him, also. But it was not the Fathers that were chased in the mission,
the Indians. It was the soldiers at the—that’s who were supposedly protecting the Fathers. They
were the ones that went out and chased the Indians down. They were the ones that did the
punishments, when they had their, their, their soldiers—the ones that were in charge—they took
it to their head, you know, I mean, to do the punishment, because as far as native indigenous
people were below the Mexican people. You had the Indians [gestures making layers, indicating
layers of hierarchy], then you had the Mexicans, the Spaniards, you understand, that, that—
LK: Were higher, you know.
DC: —hierarchy. So, um, I don’t have that too much on there, you know, with that. Everybody
has their own. I have it because the missions only because they kept ‘em down [gestures
downward with her right hand], and they did use ‘em—I wouldn’t—I don’t use the word slave,
but they—I guess, slave labor. They were the laborers, where else they really didn’t—they didn’t
get paid.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: You know, on there. And then when the missions were done, and the secularization, when
they did that, they were lost. They cried, you know. I mean, they were starving, because of
that—and then what had happened, the ranchers got us here, Picos, the Marrons, the Couts, all of
31
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2022-10-27
the rest of them—they went and destroyed the mission. They were, they were tearing it apart.
They were taking the beams. They were taking all the statues. They were taking the different
things, and using them to build. You know, you get some of these ranchers, they have some of
the beams on that are from—that are from the Mission. The artifacts.
LK: Wild.
DC: You know. But you don’t hear that side of the story. That’s why at Camp Pendleton and
Rancho Santa Margarita and them, when it, they hid the stories and that—“Come on, you guys,
you know. Pico wasn’t the best guy.”
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: He, he was really one of those really against the Indians.
LK: So, in addition to your passion and your education with the basketry, you are like a historian
of your people, and the area, and I see that you brought some other materials. Is there anything
you want share?
DC: [again reaching to the left] Well, one of the things is that, uh, okay, and I know that for you,
you’re trying to do this. I did study the language [holds up some leaves of paper], but since I
didn’t—wasn’t able to have—speak to somebody, I went through the Pechanga —
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —and they sent me to Cal State—I mean, to Riverside, also to the international classes that
was there. But since I didn’t have anybody to communicate with [gestures as if transmitting
words to another person], it was hard for me. I can read it, and I can probably understand it when
they’re—when they start talking to me, you know—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —get the words right. But I’m fortunate that I did have that. But this is one [looks at paper]
of the things that I’m going to share—I’m going to be sharing this at the, uh, Spirit of the Valley,
once they get over there. But it’s like this one here, okay? [turns paper toward Linda. The paper
is laminated, and has a colored drawing of a deer, with the word ‘şúukat’] You hear that one
What’s that?
LK: Soosh-kah? Soo-kah—
DC: Soos-kwaht, okay?
LK: Soos-kwaht.
DC: Deer.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: Okay. I’m just going to be doing that. This is for the children. Ishwoot? [holds up a
laminated drawing of a wolf with word ‘ˈíswut’] What’s that? Ishwoot.
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LK: That is a wolf.
DC: Yeah, wolf. Okay? And then this is something that I use with kids [holds up a laminated
drawing of a grasshopper with word ‘wiˈét’]. Whee-uht.
LK: Grasshopper.
DC: Or cricket.
LK: Or cricket.
DC: Yeah. Whee-uht. And so, you see in these names—why I use these, because you see in these
names, being with the native kids now, that they’re being named this. [holds up a laminated
drawing of a bear with word ‘húnwut’]
LK: Hunwhat.
DC: Hunwhat.
LK: It’s a bear.
DC: It’s a bear. Children are being named that now, with these, especially with these names here,
with their—for the children. They’re proud of being called ‘hun-what.’ They’re proud of being
called ‘soos-kwaht,’ called—proud of being called ‘whee-uht,’ you know, instead of just being
called “cricket,” you know, on there. And so that was one of the things that I found I have been
proud to do, you know, on that. And then, also, you have “Tuk-woot” [holds up a laminated
drawing of a cougar with word ‘túˈkwet’]. Who is this?
LK: A cougar or mountain lion.
DC: It’s a cougar, okay?
LK: Cougar?
DC: You have ‘tuk-woot’ village, ‘tuk-woot’ village, ‘tuk-woot’ court, at Cal State San Marcos!
LK: Yes, that’s right!
DC: Okay? “Aush-woot?” [holds up a laminated drawing of a hawk with word ‘áşwut’] I know
that’s not a [unintelligible] of an eagle, but that’s an ‘aush-woot.’ The eagle.
LK: The eagle.
DC: Yeah. And these are words that, um, are the alphabet, pretty long, you know, and considered
more than 26 letters, that are important to the kids because they can identify with them. You
know. I also have a coloring book, and you know, 1-2-3 and stuff like that I’m sharing. But one
of these [reaches to the left for something else] that I want to end with, if you don’t mind, is that
if, um, [sighs] in 2004, this is the Heritage Keepers [holds up a magazine entitled “Heritage
Keepers”]. This is a magazine coming from the Ramon Learning Center [reads back of
magazine]
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LK: Hmmm.
DC: Okay. And, um, it’s still going on from Banning, California. And I wrote a poem [opening
magazine, and finding page where poem is printed], um, and I wanted to read it and share it with
you. Is that okay?
LK: Yes! I would love that.
DC: Okay. It’s that, um, I wrote this poem when I was doing the—learning the Luiseño
language, and I had to write this poem because I was, um, trying to pull the words out [gestures
as if churning things over in her head] of my head that I knew. And where I was at—it was
Teeter Romero and I were up in Rainbow, up there by north of us here. And we were going to go
out there to gather Juncus in Gomez Creek area, which is behind Riamb—Rainbow. You gotta
go up the mountain. And when we were up there at the top of the hill—it was early in the
morning, and we stopped because we looked out towards the valley towards the ocean [points to
the left] and that morning it was clear. You can—you could—you could see the, see the ocean
shining clear at the, at the other end, which is really not— [shakes her head]. But then you saw
El Moro Kukutuk, okay? That’s another story. One day you might have to say it, but Kutukutuk
too, is part of our creation story. And you can see that mound really clearly, with the ocean in the
background, shimmering, and that mound there in the valley near Camp Pendleton, and Bonsall
and Fallbrook area. In this part of our creation story, I got these things in my head as I’m looking
at it, and I thought of our people. Because of the creation story, of trying to be saved. They were,
they—we had the flood, also, in our creation story. And all I could think of, and was watching it,
seeing the ocean shimmering, seeing that mound and thinking of “Oh my God, that’s what came
up. The ocean came up.” And the people were running, because the water was coming in and
coming in, and they had nothing to save ‘em. And the people from Pechanga were up there on
their high point [points up with left hand], which is up there by Rainbow. If you ever go by
Pechanga on the back way you’ll see the big hill that’s up there.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: That’s one of their lookouts, and I don’t know that there—the name of it, but it’s a point.
And they were looking at the people, you know, the Luiseño people in the valley, running. And
all they could do was keep singing. Now I don’t—I have the words to that song, that they had—
that they started there. But, I don’t have that with me right now. But they were singing up there
to hopefully save their people. They’re crying for them, and trying to save, save their people.
Well, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this mound comes up. And so they were watching their
people swimming towards it, and running towards it. And this mound kept coming up, and that’s
more—El Moro Hill, or Kuktuk. That is a volcano cone. People don’t realize that, you know, we
do have volcanic areas— [laughs]
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —in this area. And that’s a volcano cone that came up and our people in that valley,
meaning my ancestors, okay—were saved. They were able to go on to Tuktuk, El Moro Hill, and
34
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2022-10-27
come up, and go up there. You can visit that here—uh, that mound or that little knoll or dell, if
you want to call it. It’s on Indian Rock Road.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: It’s Sleeping Indian Rock. It’s Sleeping Indian Road [scratches head] right there. Part of it’s
on Camp Pendleton. Part of it’s in Fallbrook. And, part of it is owned by the County of San
Diego. You can’t build on it. You can build on—near it, but you can’t build on the Camp
Pendleton side, because that’s a blind—ammunition dump. And the Navy owns it. Fallbrook
owns a third of it, and San Diego County owns a third. There’s a trail that you can go up on
there, if you want to visit it and go, and there’s a hearth on the top that they do celebrations,
ceremonies up there. My great-grandmother was born there, at the base of that El Moro Hill. So,
yeah, we’ve got history in there, and, you know, our aunt used to tell—my aunt, my great aunt,
used to tell stories, you know, about that—
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: —and they used to go, go there. But what I did was wrote a poem as I was doing, uh,
looking at it, and I was thinking, my language is going in my head, but I could only pick out
some words that I knew at that time. So it’s called "Naqmayam” and I was saying it—first saying
it in Luiseño, then I’ll read it again in English, what it meant.
LK: Okay.
DC: Okay. It says “Naqmayam. Toonquay qawiinga/noo toowq ‘ataxmi/naqmayam/noo toowq
‘ataxmi heelaqal/‘ataaxum naqmawun! Popuu’uk ponakilvoy/yu’pan heth’aan/no$uun toonavan
‘ataaxum poomoto/naqmayam! Heelaxam!” Now, I usually sing this, I know. It’s just—it’s—
it’s—I usually—it sticks after a while, I’m singing it, because I do sing it, at the Mission on All
Soul’s Day. [chuckles] So, if you come on All Soul’s Day, on November 2nd, around 6 o’clock,
between 6 and 6:30, I’ll be doing it and lighting the candles there, and I’ll be—I can sing it. And
why I like to sing it, it’s sometimes I can hear my voice [gestures to her right ear], it bounces off
the mission wall. It scared me the first time that it happened—
LK: [chuckles]
DC: —because I never had an echo come back like that. And, anyway, “naqmayam” means
“listen.” “Toonquay qawiinga” means “from the rock on the mountain.”
Naqmayam. I see the people. I see the people singing. People listen. The door was closed. Again
it will open. My heart will weave among the people. Listen and sing.
I wasn’t looking at them crying, you know. I was thinking about them singing, and being happy.
And the door was closed at one time for us, but it was now opening.
LK: Mm-hmm.
DC: And then my heart, at that time, with the weaving, there, my heart will weave among the
people. And, um, so it was kind of, you know—and they published it, in that—in that—in
there—
35
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2022-10-27
LK: It’s beautiful.
DC: —It kind of gives the story of me. This has happened in 2003 [laughs]. And that’s how long
ago, with the language. And I’m still trying to bring the language back, you know, I mean, we
did it with—for a while when we were together with the Rotary Club. But then again I’m doing
it, trying to get it back with people, and with our people, on that. It’s still going on at the
Pechanga, with this fantastic Pechanga . I started back with them, way back when, and they
started at the preschool. And then, now, they’ve taken it all the way up through their 6th grade
there on their reservation at Pechanga. They don’t speak any English in the classes. All their
instructors or the teachers have to learn the language. It’s taught in Luiseño. They’ve got an
agreement with the school district of Temecula, that they follow them all the way through
school, all the way through high school, that they have to release them at least, I don’t know how
many times a week, to be brought in and taught their language, to keep it up.
LK: That’s wonderful.
DC: They take it all the way through high school. But, Pechanga has done really good. Pauma is
also―has a class there, you know. Pauma does. Rincon does. Pala, uh, I don’t know if Pala does.
But, each one has a different, like a dialect, you know. The only sad thing is when you get
politics coming in. I’m just going to let you guys know. Politics is really deep within the tribes,
on there, and um, I’m right, you’re wrong, etc. And it’s sad, because we’re all the one people,
but that’s the way it goes. You’re born into being an indigenous people, not just for us here in
California, but across the United States. You’re born into politics, whether you like it or not. So,
um―
LK: Well, I just want to close with saying that it’s been an honor and absolute pleasure to
interview you and listen to you. I want to acknowledge that you went from accounting to
weaving to becoming an educator of your pe―of your tribal background, and also a historian,
and I think a big part of your legacy is to keep this out there. And you’re doing it pretty much on
your own. It’s not like you have all this, um, Federal money behind you, like the federally
recognized tribes, so―
DC: We don’t have that [shaking her head]
LK: ―you do not have that. You’re not federally recognized. But I just wanted to honor that in
you, and thank you so much for allowing me to do this.
DC: Okay.
LK: No $uun.
DC: Noh [bowing her head, and chuckling] I was going to say No $uun Looviq.
36
Transcribed by Melissa Martin
�DIANIA CAUDELL
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2022-10-27
NAQMAYAM
TOONQA Y QAWIINGA
From the rock on the mountain
NOO TOOWQ 'ATAXMI
I see the people
NAQMAYAM
Listen
NOO TOOWQ 'ATAXMI HEELAQAL
I see the people singing
'ATAAXUM NAQMA WUN!
People listen!
POPUU'UK PONAKILVOY
The door was closed
YU'PAN HETH'AAN
Again it will open
NO$UUN TOONAVAN 'AT AAXUM POOMOTO
My heart will weave among the people
NAQMAYAM! HEELAXAM!
Listen! Sing!
Written by Diania L Caudell @2003
37
Transcribed by Melissa Martin
�
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Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files.
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Caudell, Diania. Interview transcript. October 27, 2022.
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Diania Caudell focused on her Native American ancestry as well as her past occupation as an accountant. Also included is her implementation of Native American education in the San Juan Capistrano School District and how her back injury led her to become a basket weaver. This interview was recorded as part of the North County Oral History Initiative, a partnership between California State University San Marcos and San Marcos Historical Society & Heritage Park. This initiative was generously funded by the Center for Engaged Scholarship at CSU San Marcos.
The end of the transcript contains a glossary and a poem written by Caudell in 2003 in the Luiseño language, with English translation.
Creator
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Diania Caudell
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Linda Kallas
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2022-10-27
Subject
The topic of the resource
Basket making
Education -- Native Americans
Luiseño Indians
Coverage
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Arizona
Escondido (Calif.)
Oceanside (Calif.)
San Juan Capistrano (Calif.)
Publisher
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California State University San Marcos University Library
Language
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English
Luiseño
Rights
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https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en
Rights Holder
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Diania Caudell
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CaudellDiania _KallasLinda_2022-10-17_transcript.mp4
Art and artists
Community history
Native American experience
North County Oral History Initiative
Women's experience