Names Provide a Link with Malibu’s Original Residents

• Chumash Singer and Storyteller Says That the Ancient Language Continues to Resonate

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

Not all Malibuites may be aware of it, but the coast still resonates with echos of the language and history of the area’s original residents, the Chumash. According to Chumash singer and sto-ryteller Julie Tumamait, traces of the language remain in place names like Mugu, “beach,” and Malibu, or “humaliwo,” which means ”where the surf sounds.”
Other local Chumash names include the beach destination for millions of Angelenos every summer, Zuma, which stems from the Chumash word for abundance, “sumo.” Mysterious Anacapa Island, which often appears as a mirage of impossibly high cliffs and arches, is the Chumash word for illusion.
A descendent of Island Chumash, Tumamait is committed to preserving the Chumash language and culture by sharing stories, songs and cultural lore at schools and locations like this one, the Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center in The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
As night fell and the stars and the bats came out, local children had a chance to learn about Chumash language and traditions, at a site in the Santa Monica Mountains that for thousands of years was home to Malibu’s early residents.
Anthropologists estimate that there may have been as many as 20,000 Chumash living on the coast between San Luis Obispo and Malibu when the Spanish explorers arrived on the scene. Today, only between 4000-5000 persons can claim Chumash heritage. The culture and the language came close to extinction in the twentieth century, Tumamait says, but efforts are under-way now to revive it and keep thousands of years of tradition alive.
A 4000-word dictionary, the work of many years, sponsored by the Santa Ynez Chumash was published in 2008, in an attempt to revive Ineseno, or Samala, one of six related Chumash languages. Other efforts are underway to collect, preserve and teach the Barbareno and Ventureno Chumash languages.
“We don’t have a lot of our songs,” Tumamait said. “Just little bits and pieces. We have about 70-80 percent of our culture, but our most sacred part is missing.” The songs that have survived, she says, are very ancient, transmitted by oral tradition for centuries. She sang several for the audience, accompanying each with either a rattle or a set of clapper sticks, a percussion instrument made of local elderberry wood.
Tumamait said that there are no longer any native speakers of the Chumash language, but there is an effort underway to revive the language. She describes wax cylinder recordings made by legendary linguist and ethnologist John Peabody Harrington in the early 20th century that pre-serve interviews with a handful of individuals who still spoke the Chumash language.
“We are grateful for that,” Tumamait said, describing it as an important resource. “[But] it’s hard to understand, no one is fluent any more.”
Tumamait told the gathering of children and adults stories that ranged from a humorous cau-tionary tale of a boy who cried xus—bear, to a beautiful and sad legend of how seven children escaped their cruel mother by transforming themselves into geese and flying up into the sky to become the seven stars of the Pleiades.
“Many of our stories teach children how to behave,” Tumamait said. “We call it myth, but it’s teaching.”
Tumamait paused as a barn owl circled the group. It dove, just a few yards away, and glided silently off with a mouse.
“He’s come to hear stories, I’m sorry, owl, I don’t have an owl story today.” She did, however, have the owl’s Chumash name: “she’,” which sounds almost like the bird’s hunting cry. The name for the great horned owl, she says, is the equally onomatopoeic word “muhu.”
Tumamait ended the evening with what she described as a visioning song. “There’s a lot of visioning we need to do in the world,” she said. “We need to put positive energy [into it]. Little by little, it’s coming back.”