COLLEGE TO OFFER CAMPUS SPACE FREE OF CHARGE TO TRIBE MEMBERS
Members of the Kumeyaay tribes will be first in line to use event spaces at Southwestern College, and when they do, it will be free of charge.
The college’s governing board approved the measure last month.
It’s a small gesture, but one that builds on the campus’s efforts to reach out to and empower the local Indigenous community. Last year, the college began reading a “land acknowledgment” before all public meetings that admits that each of the school’s five campuses sit on Kumeyaay ancestral land.
“We acknowledge the land upon which we sit and occupy today as the current, traditional, and ancestral home of the Kumeyaay Nation,” it reads in part. “Before they were colonized and genocide occurred, Kumeyaay territory was vast and included Baja California to the south, Palomar Mountain to the North, and the Salton Sea to the east. And in fact, included Southwestern College locations of Chula Vista, San Ysidro, National City and Otay Mesa.”
The effort was led by former school board President Leticia Cazares.
When she was appointed president of the school’s governing board last year, Cazares said she knew right away that she wanted to prioritize supporting the local
Indigenous community during her one-year tenure. As an educator at San Diego State University in the School of Public Health and a board member at Southwestern, she feels it’s vital that schools recognize they occupy the ancestral lands of tribal nations.
“All of our campuses — Chula Vista, National City, Otay Mesa, San Ysidro and Crown Cove — currently occupy Kumeyaay land,” she said. “We can’t move forward until we know the past and the history of where we’ve been.
“I really felt that we need to start doing that recognizing because it really has been pushed under the rug for far too long.”
Members of the board started by establishing a land acknowledgment in January 2021 before partnering with Chair Erica Pinto from the Jamul Indian Village. Through their conversations, the idea to waive rental fees was born, a welcome next step from the tribal chair’s perspective.
“I think land acknowledgments are important, and those words have relevance, but the actions is what really speaks to us,” she said. “When you make a commitment — such as waiving the fees or make education accessible to our people — it’s so important because I think those type of actions demonstrate that, wow, they really want to be a great partner.”
Rental fees normally range from $100 to $1,000, depending on the size of the space and expected event attendance.
One of Pinto’s goals is to have the tribe’s youth council write, produce and perform plays in the campus’s Performing Arts Center, a $66 million project that includes a 540-seat auditorium and a 151-seat black box theater. The center opened in August, but was funded through the 2008 Proposition R ($5 million) and 2016 Proposition Z ($61 million) ballot measures.
“It’s just important because we’re creative people and it’s a brand-new facility, and to be able to go down there and utilize this facility free of charge is excellent for us,” Pinto said.
Pinto has other ideas for ways Southwestern College — and other local schools — can further support the Kumeyaay tribes, while also fostering a better learning community for Indigenous and non-native students alike. She’d liked to see Kumeyaay history classes, murals and plaques highlighting tribal traditions, signs translated into the Kumeyaay language, and garden exhibits sharing how various Indigenous plants were traditionally used.
“I can just see this being the first step in many different educational opportunities, not just for us to access their facility, but also a mutual education,” Pinto said.