Joining the Tongva: Mo’omat Ahiko

1995

Two years before the ‘Elye’wun Chumash tomol was completed, our southern neighbors—the Tongva—build their first ti’at in 200 years. On a historic day in September 1995, our Chumash people were invited to greet the Tongva ti’at plank canoe Mo’omat Ahiko as her mixed crew of Tongva and Chumash paddled in the open waters around the Tongva ancestral island of Pimu (Catalina Island).

“Twenty or thirty of us have been waiting for hours. Where are they, why are they so late arriving? We hear from one of the early returning support boats that Mo'omat Ahiko (Breath of the Ocean) left Two Harbors late. Much later we hear that navigational difficulties added some ten miles to the journey. Some of us have brought beadwork and other crafts to busy our hands, and we are content to wait in the shade of palm trees lining the harbor beach at Avalon on Catalina Island. We talk and laugh and tease one another while we watch on one side the endless promenade of tourists and, on the other side, the harbor crowded with yachts, sailboats, cruisers, ski-doos, kayaks, you name it. But we know that the hot California sun is actually shining on the island of Pimu, ancestral homeland of our cousins and hosts, the Tongva people. Late in the afternoon something in the universe shifts, sending ripples across the harbor to us. They're coming. I stand transfixed as I glimpse droplets of water sparkling off first one raised end of the paddles and then the other, as they are dipped in unison first on one side of the plank canoe and then the other. Avalon harbor falls away as Mo'omat Ahiko brings her crew safely home. Built about five years ago, Mo'omat Ahiko is the first ti'at in two hundred years. She is the first plank canoe I have seen in the water, an experience I did not know to hope for and yet long awaited. …tears stream down our smiling faces... .”

—Roberta Cordero, Coastal Band Elder and a founding member of the Chumash Maritime Association

1998

In September 1998, the Tongva Ti’at Society invited the Chumash Maritime Association to bring the ’Elye’wun tomol to join them for the ti’at festival in Long Beach. The ’Elye’wun and the Mo’omat Ahiko cut through the waves together, bringing back memories of when the ancestral routes between our peoples’ homelands were thick with canoes—transporting goods, people, and news.

Images courtesy of Frank Magallanes and Althea Edwards.