LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Silver Lake Neighborhood Council and the Silver Lake Reservoirs Conservancy acknowledge the land beneath our feel, the original stewards and inhabitants of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles Basin and Southern Channel Islands), and their descendants. We pay tribute to the Tongva people, who lived on and cared for Yaanga & Maawnga—the Tonga village lands that include present-day Silver Lake.

As constituents of Silver Lake, we vow to make decisions mindfully and with deliberate effort to preserve the ancestral land of the Tongva - People of the Earth - in a sustainable and respectful manner. We will continuously strive to collaborate with and listen to tribal members and descendants of all First Peoples of Southern California when acting as representatives of this community. 

History of First Peoples in Silver Lake

The Tongva people are indigenous to the Los Angeles region and have lived here for over 7,000 years. Prior to European contact, it is recorded that over 350,000 people inhabited what is now the state of California, with 5,000 to 10,000 living in Tovaangar (the Los Angeles Basin). The Tonga are also known as the Gabrielino (a name derived from the San Gabriel Mission, one of several missions built on their ancestral lands starting in 1771), and by the endonym Kizh, a reference to the area’s many villages and the Tongva’s traditional house structures. The Tongva inhabited Silver Lake and the surrounding region through a network of villages and main centers of commerce, including Yaanga - the origin of present-day Downtown Los Angeles - and Maawnga, which corresponds to present-day Glendale and borders on what became Rancho Los Feliz in 1795, later developed into the neighborhood now known as Los Feliz.

With the establishment of Mission San Gabriel, European colonizers began to enslave the Tongva, dismantle many of their villages, and exploit Native labor to build Catholic missions across Southern California. This exploitation continued into the Rancho period in the first half of the 1800s, when California was a Mexican Territory. During this time, autonomous Tongva villages still existed on the outskirts of Tovaangar and were now called rancherias. As the California Gold Rush gained momentum in the early 1850s, American settlers and military forces overwhelmed the region, massacring much of California’s indigenous population in what is now recognized as the California Genocide. In 1851, the federal Indian Appropriations Act legalized the forced displacement of indigenous people onto reservations. However, lands that had been promised for reservations in Southern California - known as the “18 Lost Treaties” - were never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Tongva people who remained on their ancestral lands were arrested and subjected to forced labor camps in Los Angeles.

Despite this traumatic colonial history, several thousand Tongva people still live if Southern California and surrounding areas today. It was not until 1994 that the State of California formally recognized the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe, and to date more than 50 tribes that have historically resided across Southern California remain unrecognized. Looking to the future, we affirm an unyielding commitment to honor Tovaangar and to learn from California’s indigenous heritage as we work toward more mindful and respectful stewardship of the land.

RESOURCES

Gabrielino-Tongva Nation, San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians - https://www.gabrieleno-nsn.us/

UCLA: Mapping Indigenous L.A. - https://mila.ss.ucla.edu/

The UCLA American Indian Studies Center - https://aisc.it.ucla.edu/w/

Native Land Digital Map - https://native-land.ca/