SEC. 2.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following with respect to the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe:(a) In 1994, the State of California officially recognized the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe in Assembly Joint Resolution 96, Resolution Chapter 146 of the Statutes of 1994. The Joint Resolution states that the State of California recognizes the Gabrielinos as the aboriginal tribe of the Los Angeles Basin and takes great pride in recognizing the Indian inhabitance of the Los Angeles Basin and the continued existence of the Indian community. The tribal offices are currently located in the City of Santa Monica.
(b) A state historical site at University High School in West Los Angeles preserves the Tongva Holy Springs, the site where tribal members met the Portola Expedition, which founded the City of Los Angeles in 1769. Mount Tongva in Angeles National Forest is named after the tribe and city plaques commemorate the tribe’s history in Culver City and the City of San Gabriel. Loyola Marymount University dedicated a one million dollar ($1,000,000) garden to the history of the Gabrielinos, and the university library contains a special collection of scholarly works on the tribe, as well as archaeological artifacts discovered on campus. The Gabrielinos are included in a major exhibition at the Native American Museum in Washington, D.C.
(c) Over 1,700 current tribal members are documented as “Gabrielino Indians” by the United States Interior Department, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and current tribal membership rolls. While avoiding recognition of the tribe, the United States published official rolls of Gabrielino Indians in 1928, 1950, and 1972. Since 1972, tribal members have received BIA “blood quantum certificates” as “Gabrielino Indians.”
(d) The tribal history in the Los Angeles Basin and its ethnographic area is well documented through over 3,000 archaeological sites, 400 scholarly publications, in state historical records and federal archives, and Catholic Church records at San Gabriel Mission and San Fernando Mission. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 8: California, the Gabrielinos occupied villages to the north up to Topanga Canyon in Malibu, extending south past the Newport Beach estuary, and inland to the City of San Bernardino.
(e) The Gabrielino-Tongva were enslaved to build San Gabriel Mission and San Fernando Mission. Other Gabrielino village sites have been uncovered at California State University at Long Beach, the Sheldon Reservoir in Pasadena, Whittier Narrows, downtown Los Angeles, and the Los Encinos State Historical Park in Encino. Nine major villages with 50 to 200 Gabrielino-Tongva Indians at each village site lie in close proximity to the Cities of Inglewood and Long Beach, including Amupunga, Atavingna, Tajuat, Puvunga, and Saangna.
(f) From 1851 to 1853, three federal treaty commissioners appointed by President Fillmore signed the 18 “lost treaties,” setting aside 8.5 million acres in California for Indian reservations in return for the Indians’ quitclaim to 75 million acres of California land. After lobbying by California business interests, the United States Senate refused to ratify any of the treaties, instead placing an “injunction of secrecy” on the documents. They were discovered in a locked desk drawer in the United States Senate Archives in 1905.
(g) The Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe signed Treaty D with federal Indian Commissioner George Barbour in 1851. In the Act of 1852, Congress set aside an Indian reservation for the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe near Fort Tejon at the edge of Los Angeles County and began moving Gabrielinos from their ethnographic area to the Gabrielino reservation. After the Senate refused to ratify Treaty D and the other “lost treaties,” the Fort Tejon reservation was misappropriated. As a result, Gabrielino villages were never relocated from their historic ethnographic area, but instead were absorbed into the blossoming cities of Los Angeles County and Orange County.
(h) Based upon the discovery of the 18 “lost treaties” in 1905, a series of efforts were made to address the land claims of the treatyless and landless Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe. The California Jurisdiction Act of 1922 authorized the California Attorney General to represent members of the tribe, among others, and to bring their land claims before the United States Court of Claims. The Court of Claims, in Indians of California v. United States (1942) 98 Ct.Cl. 583, 592, recognized the arguments of California Attorney General Earl Warren, and declared that “There was a promise made to these tribes and bands of Indians and accepted by them but the treaties were never ratified so the promise was never fulfilled.”
(i) Under new legislation in 1946, the Indian Claims Commission addressed individual claims of Gabrielino-Tongva tribal members in Docket 80. In 1972, settlement was reached for six hundred thirty-three dollars ($633) for each tribal member, including current tribal councilmen. The settlement was administered by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dillon S. Meyer, who previously served as chief administrator of the notorious Japanese internment camps in California. The land claims of the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, however, were never settled.
(j) California is one of 16 states that recognize 62 Indian tribes that are not federally recognized. State legislation in other states that recognizes Indian tribes and creates tribal lands provides models for this act. At least five states have established state Indian reservations, which are usually referred to in state legislation as “tribal lands.” Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia all have state-recognized tribes and state Indian reservations.