Our ethos is the preservation of our culture.
Preserving our Culture through Cultural Resource Management (CRM)
The protection and preservation of our culture comes with protecting our ancestors, their personal effects, sacred objects and village sites.
The Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California tribal monitors assist with state, county and city agencies along with private entities to ensure compliance is met.
Our professional tribal monitors are of Gabrielino Tongva heritage and direct descendants of the land we monitor, we do not sub-contract to non-tribal persons. We collaborate with our kin-tribes to ensure tribal cultural resources are protected.
Preserving our Culture through Restoration Projects
The Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California are directly involved in consultation and partnership with city and private land restoration projects within our ancestral homelands of Tovaa’ngar spanning from Topanga Lagoon to Crystal Cove. Our scope of work includes recommendations for the land to become a thriving community asset.
Preserving our culture
through the arts.
Mercedes Dorame is a multi-disciplinary artist who calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of (in)visibility and ideas of cultural construction and ancestral connection to land and sky. Born in Los Angeles, California, she received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA.
Dorame’s work is in the permanent collections of the Getty, the Hammer Museum, LACMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Triton Museum, among others. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from organizations such as Creative Capital, the Montblanc Art Commission, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Loop Artist Residency, the James Phelan Award for California born visual artists, and from the Photography Department at the San Francisco Art Institute for her MFA Studies.
She is currently regular faculty at CalArts in the Photo Media Program, and was commissioned by the Getty for her sculptural installation Woosha’aaxre Yaangaro as the inaugural Rotunda Commission. Her work is also on view in the Borderlands exhibition at the Huntington Library. Her work and story were recently explored in the Los Angeles Times article “How artist Mercedes Dorame shares pieces of her Tongva heritage across L.A.’s public landscapes”, and she was honored by UCLA as part of the centennial initiative “UCLA: Our Stories Our Impact” as an outstanding alumni working in equal justice over the last 100 years. She has shown her work internationally.
Katie Dorame is a visual artist born in Los Angeles, currently living and working in Oakland, CA. She makes paintings and drawings that build her own directional vision: reclaiming, recasting and re-working Hollywood and its land, roles and history. Dorame's work has been exhibited at The Autry in Los Angeles, Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco, Form and Concept in Santa Fe and the de Saisset Museum in Santa Clara. She has attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe as an artist in residence, and the Interlude Residency in New York and contributed to SFMOMA's Open Space blog. She is a Tongva artist of mixed white & Indigenous ancestry.
Adrienne Kinsella is a fine artist, working in a variety of media, focusing on drawing and painting. As a descendant of the Tongva of Los Angeles, issues of access and belonging, or lack thereof, is a theme that spans her work. Her representational paintings examine interiors, exteriors and collapse timelines in an ongoing search for “home.” In her drawings, native plants function as both symbols and direct references to longevity within the landscape, quietly declaring, “we are still here.” The life cycle of plants holds deep meaning for the artist, suggesting that hope springs from seemingly dead things, a promise of regeneration from even the tiniest seeds. Earning her MFA from California State University Northridge with distinction spring of 2021, Kinsella has shown recently at La Mama Galleria in NYC, OXY ARTS and Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles and Dorado 806 Projects in Santa Monica among others. In summer 2024, she was awarded a full fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont, and had a solo show with Open Mind Art Space at Tryst Art Fair in Torrance, CA. Her piece, It Will Heal, was recently featured on the cover of the Los Angeles Native Heritage Arts Calendar. She will show at The Lucky Labs in Los Angeles in February of 2025.
Tribal Chairman, Robert Dorame
Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Chair, Robert Dorame has created monuments, murals and art throughout Tovaan’gar. Pictured above is the Tongva Monument at Discovery Park in Playa Del Rey.
River Garza is an artist from Los Angeles,CA whose work draws on traditional Indigenous aesthetics, Southern California Indigenous maritime culture, skateboarding, Graffiti, and Low Rider culture.
Mat Dorame
Tongva Memorial at Loyola Marymount University designed by Mat Dorame. Photo by Lisa Fimiani.
Cindy Dorame
Cindy Dorame is an exceptional Tongva jeweler who specializes in creating custom, one-of-a-kind abalone pieces. Her commissioned works are highly sought after, reflecting the inspiration drawn from her Tongva ancestry. This heritage influences her unique designs, reminiscent of the beads crafted by our ancestors from shells and later from glass.
Chris Dorame
Chris Dorame is a musician from Orange County who frequently tours across the United States and performs at major events like the Mint 400. As a multi-instrumentalist and a national touring and studio musician, he explores a variety of genres. For the past three decades, Chris has dedicated his talent to Tongva events, helping to represent and preserve Tongva music. This includes his participation in the Moompetam American Indian Festival at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
The Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California Tribal Council is traditionally and culturally recognized by the State of California as an aboriginal tribe to encompass Tovaan’gar. Our tribe is on the Native American Heritage Commission contact list and has served as Most Likely Descendants throughout Tovaan’gar.
Tovaan’gar is our ancestral homelands spanning north from Topanga , south to Crystal Cove, west to the islands of Santa Catalina, San Nicholas, and San Clemente then east into San Bernardino County.
Tribal members are a direct lineal decent from the San Gabriel Mission records. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has issued Certificates of Degree of Indian Blood and members have been recognized in the California Judgement Fund Rolls.
Our Legacy.
Guashna Village (Ballona Wetlands) circa 1933
