Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Arts in History

Department

History

First Reader/Committee Chair

Ocampo Diaz, Daisy

Abstract

After assisting in the curation of Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art, I can assert that I have gained ample experience in exhibition curation. I have gained the necessary skills to work with a subject or concept, perform essential research to become thoroughly informed on it, and network to access relevant people for exhibition advising. I learned steps to creating the exhibition from beginning to end; identifying objects and curating an object list that best told the story we sought out to share with the public. Through Fire Kinship, I have demonstrated my abilities to not only successfully curate, but most importantly to me, my ability to tell a history and story of revitalization within California Indian communities. The exhibition will spotlight the kinship between fire and four southern California tribal communities: Tongva, Cahuilla, Luiseño, and Kumeyaay.

Burning was the most significant environmental tool employed by Native people in what is now southern California. Native stewardship created major ecosystems as a result of fire, and many habitats were deliberately maintained by, and essentially dependent on, this relationship. Native communities throughout southern California used fire for a variety of purposes. Most important among them is stimulating new plant growth, creating and sustaining vegetational mosaics to create biodiverse areas beneficial to animal life, facilitating hunting by reduction of undergrowth, controlling plant diseases, eliciting desirable plant growth characteristics, and minimizing the severity and number of uncontrolled wildfires.

The people need the plants in order to live, but the plants also need the people. The plants rely on the people to gather their seeds, leaves, and roots and to talk and sing and pray to them. Fire is a relative that exists on the land and at the heart of culture and communities.

Fire Kinship seeks to dispel a common fear for fire and place it in a context of good fire which is exactly that, good fire. Fire that has purpose for a greater means and is not destructive. In the context of Fire Kinship, good fire is used to tend and sustain the ecosystem so that it remains clean, and plants become strong and vigorous for the different lifeways of the Tongva, Cahuilla, Luiseño, and Kumeyaay people. These lifeways include hunting and gathering, water travel, clothing, and gift giving. Fire is a relative whose kinship with people can be found throughout the object-relatives and artwork by each artist. Each item in the exhibit has this special connection to fire.

The exhibition will feature historic object-relatives, other culturally significant items, and contemporary works from California Indian artists and culture bearers. As a California Indian, I am particularly passionate about the story Fire Kinship seeks to narrate. The exhibition will open at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles on January 12, 2025, and close on May 25, 2025.

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