We’ve been reflecting about heroes who stepped forward to help save and share our beautiful Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts for current and future generations. This week, we’re especially talking about anthropologist Lowell John Bean (Dorothy Ramon Learning Center Dragonfly Award winner, 2011).
Anthropologist Michael Lerch and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center President Ernest Siva honor Lowell Bean with the Dragonfly Award in 2011 for his high-soaring achievements in saving and sharing Southern California Native cultures. (Carlos Puma Photo)
Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares his appreciation for Lowell Bean in the Malki Museum’s current Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. Here’s the story:
The Egg Man
First, we have eggs to thank for Lowell Bean’s development into a top scholar of Indigenous Southern California. Ernest Siva remembers that when the young anthropologist first approached Cahuilla tribal leader Jane Penn on the Morongo Reservation near Banning, California, more than a half-century ago, she and her husband, Elmer, initially slammed the door on him. Jane Penn had zero use for anthropologists seeking information about Cahuilla traditional culture. But the Penns relented when they saw that he possibly could be “useful” — cleaning eggs for them. So, he cleaned eggs. He listened while he was cleaning. And that’s how it all began.
Achama, Lowell! 1
From “Pioneers: Memories of Lowell John Bean, (1931-)”
By Ernest Siva
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, Banning, CA
I first met Lowell on a Greyhound bus destined for points east from Los Angeles, circa late fifties. We were both students at the time. We had a great visit. He was on his way to work with the local Indians at the Morongo Indian Reservation. He was especially interested in studying the culture of the Cahuilla. He had convinced his major professor that there were real Indians here, who had not been completely changed. After our visit, he made the comment that I could probably write a dissertation off the top of my head. I was a saxophone player and was playing a different tune at the time.
Lowell had entered the scene at a time when the world of the Indian was experiencing the ending of traditional cultural practices, and he persevered to witness a renaissance of the same. He became a player in some of this renewal through raising the consciousness of hungry minds during the 60s and 70s when Native American study programs were forming.
I was pleasantly surprised upon consulting Temalpakh (Bean and Saubel 1972) for the first time. So many entries and so much information! No wonder it took a decade to produce. But equally striking for me was the attitude reflected by a single statement: “[Yet] when one considers how much material has been possible to obtain from a few Indian people so distant in time from their ancestors, there can be few remaining doubts about the highly sophisticated knowledge of the environment possessed by the Cahuilla” (Bean and Saubel 1972:4).
I became convinced that Lowell was the right man at the right time for this job. During the early days he was a founding member of the Malki Museum (1964) and Malki Museum Press.
It’s a good thing he was able to convince Jane Penn (Wanakik, Pass Cahuilla) that he could be useful helping on her ranch by cleaning eggs, since she had no use for any anthropologist.
Soon, an anthropologist was working among the Indians, learning from elders in the Southland. My aunt, Katherine Siva Saubel, shared with Lowell her knowledge and love of plants that her family had taught her. She found a kindred spirit in this young man. They teamed up and worked to produce Temalpakh (1972), the outstanding book on Cahuilla use of plants and Cahuilla culture in general that led to Lowell’s dissertation and the book Mukat’s People. He was the author, but she was a principal consultant. Her love for sharing information regarding the Cahuilla people had found an outlet. Her work with linguists had already achieved prominence, culminating with 'Isill Heqwas Wáxish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail (Saubel and Elliott 2004).
Fast forward to the present. Dr. Bean’s talent, scholarship, dedication, and hard work over the last half-century have won him many believers and fans, including us. In 2011, the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center recognized Lowell with its annual Dragonfly Award for “high-soaring achievements.”
My mother, Katherine Ramon Howard (now deceased), once made the comment that we, the Maarrenga’yam, Serranos, never tell our story because it is too fantastic. Nobody believes it! Well, someone (Younger Brother) will figure it out, Qaym aarc, teym pam! (They don’t miss, they are Spirits!) Maybe one of Lowell’s former students cleans eggs.
Madrigal family members singing and dancing to traditional bird songs at an early Dorothy Ramon Learning Center Dragonfly Gala (Carlos Puma Photo).
Ground-breaker
Before the 1970s, the relationships that Southern California Native American people had with their homelands often stayed invisible. Further, non-Native scholars often spoke for Native American people, rather than letting them speak for themselves.
An 1975 academic review2 of Lowell Bean’s Mukat’s People shows his pioneering role. Then, the work was newly published and his work presented new-fangled notions; now, 46 years later, the book is a classic staple for anyone wanting to learn about the Cahuilla people. What he did:
Lowell Bean included the voices of Native American experts. Always.
“Bean’s presentation is consistently knowledgable and sensitive, and it appears to afford careful attention to the voices of his Cahuilla friends and informants,” the reviewer noted. “Correspondingly, the treatment of women’s roles is thoughtful and full; Bean has worked with women informants and has taken them seriously. His work has been well-received by members of the Cahuilla community.” 3In older times, Native American people actively managed the natural world. The general (mistaken) impression, though, was that they stood around merely gathering the bounty — such as waiting for acorns to grow and fall from the trees, or, for deer to have a good foraging season. Lowell Bean is among those pioneering anthropologists who helped destroy the mistaken generalizations that hunter-gatherer cultures were passive participants in their world. “Bean interweaves his descriptions with a careful look at the adaptive significance of the particular aspect of culture under scrutiny,” the reviewer noted. “The ecological explanations which emerge rest comfortably on a view of Cahuilla culture as part of the larger ecosystem, a view which also involves a subtle integration of physical and social environments.”4
Lowell Bean’s initial work with Jane Penn “led to long associations with Cahuilla elders,” Steven R. Simms writes in the Journal. 5 “He co-founded the Malki Press and the Malki Museum with Jane Penn and Cahuilla elder Katherine Siva Saubel and … (continued) Ballena Press with Sylvia Vane. Bean became a professor in the 1960s at what was then California State College at Hayward. While he retired in 1992 and became Professor Emeritus, his work continued. His most recent book was published last year (Bean 2020). In it, he encapsulates his lifelong research on the people of the Palm Springs area (Jordan 2020). Bean is an ethnographer in the best, older sense of the word, while presaging the advocacy that is now the ethical standard.”
Dragonfly Memories
Logo on Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s doors in downtown Banning, CA.
We will never forget how the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren of Lowell Bean’s Cahuilla consultants came to the 2011 Dragonfly Gala to honor him for helping the ancestors save and share Cahuilla traditional knowledge. Ernest Siva and his wife, June, vice president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, share beloved memories of this and other Dragonfly Gala moments. These include how June Siva cooked traditional yucca blossoms for 300 people when the Center honored Jane Dumas (Native Plants, 2005). Also remembered are MaryAnn Andreas and James Ramos (Leadership, 2014), William Madrigal and family (2018), the Bird Singers Alvino Siva, Robert Levi, Anthony and John Andreas (Music, 2006), Lorene Siquoc and Barbara Drake (2012), Marigold Linton and Joely Proudfit (Education, 2017).
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Simms, Steven R., (Utah State University) Ed. “Pioneers,” Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Malki Museum Inc., Vol. 41, No. 1 (2021), “Memories of Lowell John Bean, (1931-),” “Achama! Lowell,” Ernest Siva, pp 122-123
Katz, Naomi (California State University, San Francisco), The Journal of California Anthropology, Malki Museum Inc., Vol. 2, No. 2 (1975), “Reviews,” pp 240-241
Ibid.
Ibid.
Simms, Steven R., (Utah State University) Ed.“Pioneers,” Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Malki Museum Inc., Vol. 41, No. 1 (2021), “Memories of Lowell John Bean, (1931-),” pp 122