Connie Diaz remembers the day her daughter came home from school, angry after a lesson about the Chumash Indians.
"They were teaching her things like, 'When the Chumash were here, they liked to fish and eat venison,' " said Diaz, a Ventura County resident who is part Chumash.
"My daughter said: 'Mom, I just had to let them know that we're still here. They always talk about us as if we don't exist anymore.' "
That was a few years ago, in a time when the Chumash were treated by archeologists as practically extinct, like the California condors that used to soar over their lands.
But today a sort of Chumash renaissance is taking place. The descendants of the tribe--there are no more pure-blooded Chumash--have become more attuned to their origins, and the interest of outsiders has also been piqued.
In some respects, the Chumash \o7 have\f7 practically vanished. Scarcely 200 years ago, as many as 20,000 Chumash inhabited the coast between Malibu and San Luis Obispo. Today, anthropologists say, there is not one pure-blooded Chumash left.
But there are an estimated 4,000 people of Chumash descent living in the region, most of them in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
Through intermarriage, mostly with people of Mexican descent, the Chumash have been assimilated into the American "melting pot," according to John Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
As they have struggled to discover their own origins and make their presence felt in recent years, they have had to overcome a number of obstacles, some stemming from ancient times.
Historians say the Chumash never had the strong tribal organization and geographic isolation that helped larger Indian nations, like the Navajo, maintain their identity. The Chumash were linked primarily by a common language, and by 1923 only a dozen people spoke it. The last person to speak the Chumash language died in 1962.
For many Chumash today, pressures of daily life also get in the way of cultural fulfillment, social workers say.
Bruce Stenslie, deputy director of the Candelaria American Indian Council in Oxnard, said unemployment, homelessness and broken families tend to occur more frequently among the Chumash and other Native Americans than the population at large.
Despite the obstacles, many Chumash have taken to learning more about their heritage and culture, and some are sharing it with the public in folklore, songs, dances and art.
