Public invited to Tomo-Kahni volunteer awards and anthropology speaker
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Signed copies of “The Handbook of the Kawaiisu” will be offered for sale during the 19th Annual Tomo-Kahni Volunteer Awards program on Jan. 28 at 1 p.m. The event is open to the public and will be held at the Friendship Building of the Community Congregational Church, 100 E. “E” St., Tehachapi.
Renowned anthropologist Dr. John Johnson will speak and state park volunteers will be honored at the 19th Annual Tomo-Kahni Volunteer Awards, Saturday, Jan. 28, at 1 p.m. in Tehachapi.
Tomo-Kahni State Historic Park features the remains of many aspects of Kawaiisu Indian village life in the Tehachapi Mountains. Anyone interested in learning more about Tomo-Kahni or the volunteer program is invited to attend.
The event will take place in the Friendship Building at the Community Congregational Church, 100 E. "E" St., Tehachapi.
Johnson, the main speaker, is curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. He will discuss Tejon Indian history. The Bureau of Indian Affairs recently reaffirmed this tribe's status as a federally recognized tribe; Dr. Johnson’s research contributed to this recognition.
Investigating the historical roots of the resent-day Tejon tribe involved consulting a variety of ethnohistorical sources such as government documents, census records, early newspaper accounts, ethnographic field notes, church records, and oral history interviews. These sources demonstrated that the twentieth century residents of the Tejon Canyon rancheria were descended from the original peoples who inhabited the region.
Dr. Johnson’s career has been devoted to understanding the culture and history of the indigenous peoples of southern Central California through the study of archaeology, archival records and interviews with contemporary American Indians. He has published more than 80 studies about Southern California Indians.
His work to preserve important archaeological sites and collections has been formally recognized by the Society for California Archaeology, which awarded him its Mark Harrington Award for Conservation Archaeology in 2002. He is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara where he teaches an annual course on California Indians.
Presentations will also be made by local Kawaiisu Indians, Kawaiisu language speaker Jon Hammond, and California State Parks representatives.
Signed copies of "The Handbook of the Kawaiisu," an all-encompassing information resource for both researchers and lay people, will be available for purchase. Proceeds benefit the park’s volunteer program. The book includes more than 150 pictures, plus a DVD by Luther Girado in which he tells a Kawaiisu story in his native language and in English.
