USC Dornsife and The Ti’at Society partner for the preservation of Tongva/Gabrielino traditions at the Library of Congress
With upwards of 70,000 tourists per year, the Channel Islands are a testament to people’s fascination with the resilience and innovation of North American sea-faring communities. Thousands of years ago the Tongva/Gabrielino people integrated ti’ats, or plank canoes, that could transport large numbers of people and cargo from Pimuu Island, better known as Santa Catalina Island, to the mainland. In the early 1990s, the first of these ti’ats to be constructed in perhaps 200 years was created in an effort to reclaim the traditional knowledge of making these strong, sleek, ocean-going vessels.
With elders passing away, the group sought a $50,000 grant from the Library of Congress to create an oral history of all that has been learned, saving this knowledge for future generations. Members of the Ti’at society worked together to restore traditional maritime practices and preserve them for generations with support from scholars from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences and Cal State University Long Beach
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