ANCIENT RITUAL

Photo credit, MSN/Frank Lamonea

ANCIENT RITUAL—Holding special ceremonial wands, Mati Waiya, whose name means “Little Hawk” in Chumash, performs a traditional tribal dance as part of a program last Sunday to impart the heritage of Malibu’s earliest recorded inhabitants at the Wishtoyo Foundations’s Chumash Demonstration Village located at Nicholas Canyon County Beach. Draped in a coyote skin and adorned with sacred hawk feathers,, the body paint Mati Waiya wears is mixed by hand from natural ingredients, including charcoal and ochre, and represents symbols handed down through generations of Chumash.