Here we address the epidemic of local Native identity theft of the Chicano variety in Southern CA. “Tongva” and “Kizh” are fake tribal names that do not exist in any credible historical records, but were created by opportunists in the 1990’s, persons with genealogical lineage south of the current U.S.-Mexico border and public documents exist to prove this fact. They take advantage of their appearance (brown skin, eyes and hair) and fake performative behavior (e.g. wearing beads and chin stripe tattoos) to disarm people from scrutinizing their claims of Indigenous lineage and are rewarded for this by public funding bodies and persons who gain monetarily from the misleading of the public away from the path of true solidarity and liberation.
Most honest people with good intentions have been tricked into believing the lies of these grifters, who concocted and adopted their false identities to steal public funds that were originally intended to mitigate multigenerational trauma inflicted upon the original Native peoples of Southern CA. These funds are not meant for Mexican Americans with roots from elsewhere who wear clown suits, chin stripes and fake “Indigenous” accessories.
The problem is that unlike the U.S. Federal tribal recognition policies, State and local funding organizations have no genelogy-based vetting process for these grifters. The problem is now institutionalized and entrenched throughout the entire settler colonial and neocolonial superstructure.
Readers are encouraged to study the TRUE history of the first peoples of the Los Angeles Basin, including that of the surviving descendants of local autonomous Native villages. The history of the L.A. Basin is not a tribal reality. Concocted terms like “Tongva” and “Kizh” strive to homogenize this historical reality and repackage and “brand” it in capitalist fashion, for personal monetary gain, not liberation.
Chicano Local Native identity theft is dependent upon rendering true Native peoples invisible and stealing resources and positions of power away from them. Those who knowingly promote such fraudulent activity are supporters of the still ongoing genocide of Native village lineal descendants. Those who don’t know who the frauds really are are people who may have good intentions, but are being exploited.
Watch this video about the historical process of subjugation of Native people by the first colonizers in the region, the Spaniards, and their Franciscan Missionary system. Note that this video is based upon massive amounts of data derived from extensive Mission records of individuals who were taken from their village homes.
Following Mexican Independence, Mexico inherited the Spaniard caste system which continued to place Native people lower than Mestizo Mexican on the social hierarchy, codified in the Mexican 1833 Secularization Act.
The Chicano Movement, even within the Marxist-Leninist sectors that had a relatively better position on the National Question, never made a clean break with the legacy of concocted national “Mestizo” identity (which homogenizes indigenous lineage) following the Mexican revolution, nor the influence of bourgeois nationalism within the Chicano Movement itself. Positions taken by August 29th Movement (M-L) and later, the League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L) liquidated all Native peoples’ national questions in the post-1848-annexation of Southwest U.S.A.
This is why today, you see no Chicanos taking a public stance against local Los Angeles Basin Native genocide. The Nationalism intersects with an aspiration of re-colonization, not self-determination for true Native peoples. Demands for “Land Back” are at best, mostly raised by frauds for Chicanos, not village lineal descendants.
There are also village lineal descendants who have been complicit with Chicano identity theft, who originally thought it was a useful tactic to boost membership in presenting themselves (erroneously) as a “unified tribal entity” to win Federal recognition. To the extent they may unite with the “Land Back” demands, they too have narrow self-interests, usually not the interests of all local village descendants in mind.
