A favorite memory of Luke Madrigal: singing traditional Cahuilla bird songs and dancing at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Dragonfly Gala. Gerald Clarke Jr. and Ernest Siva are behind him. (Carlos Puma Photo)
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center has received an amazing gift from the family of Luke Madrigal, a longtime friend and supporter of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, who died one year ago.
We have received hundreds of Native American books for our reference library, representing more than 30 years of Luke Madrigal’s careful collecting of Native American books, all from his perspective as a Cahuilla traditional bird singer and culture bearer. Here is part of the story that led to his gift, which is for you and everyone who saves and shares Native American cultures.
The First Call to Action (February 2019)
By Pat Murkland
(Ed. note: this story about Luke Madrigal’s first call to action was written last year, before it became “part one.”)
It never seemed to stop raining. After floods washed out our bridge, I rode into town with my neighbors in their four-wheel-drive Land Rover. Cahuilla-Serrano Elder Ernest Siva was at the wheel. We bumped and bounced along our canyon’s deeply rutted dirt road, skirting washed-out areas with deep precipices. I told our skillful driver that he reminded me of movie adventurer Indiana Jones. He didn’t know who that was. As we forded our boulder-strewn wash and adventured toward town, Ernest’s cell phone rang. It was Luke Madrigal.
As we crossed the river in February 2019 after the bridge washed out, the cell phone rang.
Luke’s voice on the speaker phone faded in and out, volleying with the rain that had again begun pelting the car roof. His message, however, was clear — a life-changing call to action. He said that his daughter Isabella was writing a Native American play for her Girl Scout Gold Award project. This is the highest level a Girl Scout can achieve. He asked whether our nonprofit Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Gathering Hall in Banning might be a venue for the rehearsals and performance. Since our nonprofit Learning Center saves and shares Southern California’s Native American cultures, history, languages, and other traditional arts, and we also always want to encourage and nurture our young Culture Bearers, of course we said “yes.” And that’s how Dorothy Ramon Learning Center began a special cultural relationship throughout 2019 with the Madrigal teens Isabella, then 16, and Sophia, 15, their mother, Renda, and father, Luke.
As it turned out, the deadline for the performance of Isabella’s play was only days away, and a lot sooner than we had expected. Isabella had to finish writing the play, find about 15 actors and actresses of varying ages (most had never performed before), hold rehearsals and workshops, and then stage the production, as well as design sets and create costumes without spending money we didn’t have, perform, direct the others, survey the audience, evaluate the results, then submit everything for her Gold project. Undaunted, we scheduled rehearsals and accompanying workshops. That gave us roughly two weeks to the performance date at the Learning Center at the end of February. Two weeks.
The Eagle
Rhea the eagle (Photo courtesy of Rebecca K. O’Connor)
As the rehearsals and workshops began, another forceful February rainstorm was dumping water everywhere. The weather was so bad, only the Madrigals showed up for the project launch. When I tried opening the Center door for our workshop, the lock broke, and we all got soaked when we had to use another door. Yet Luke Madrigal was happy and enthused. When Ernest Siva, president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, showed up to cheer on the group with kind words, rain literally pouring off his trench coat and fedora hat, Luke exclaimed that the coat and hat were exactly perfect for the costume in the play of his character, Dreamwalker. We looked at the label, and discovered that Ernest’s hat was a deliberate replica of the hat that Indiana Jones wore in the movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Luke Madrigal presenting as Dreamwalker at the Center’s 2019 Dragonfly Gala (Carlos Puma Photo)
Then we had another surprise. Rebecca K. O’Connor, a Learning Center friend who also is a longtime licensed falconer, was passing by and stopped by to retrieve a display on her way home. She happened to have a wild bird with her: a small eagle from Africa named Rhea, brought to the United States to participate in a program aimed at saving this endangered species.
I will never forget the joy in Luke Madrigal’s face when he met the Eagle. Traditionally for the Cahuilla, Eagle ('áswet in Cahuilla for golden eagle), a supernatural being, is one of the most revered at the top of the animal hierarchy. Eagle has served throughout time as a symbolic representation of the continuance of life, according to Lowell John Bean (1972).
Luke Madrigal always was able to step into his Cahuilla cultural worldview and free himself to connect with the cultural strengths and resiliency that served the ancestors well. Despite all the rain and lack of turnout, he said the workshop was a great beginning; the project would succeed because we all had been honored by the visits of Elder Ernest Siva and the Eagle. He showed us how one can find joy and deep meaning in everything, if one only looks.
The February 2019 premiere of Isabella Madrigal’s play, “Menil and her Heart,” drew an enormous crowd to Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. (Pat Murkland Photo)
And by the way …
In all future adventures with the Madrigals, Ernest Siva never forgot his hat.
Ernest Siva: Gratitude and Wonder
Elder Ernest Siva, the Center’s president, discusses the bright future of Luke Madrigal’s books, and the treasures offered by saving and sharing cultures via books such as Lowell Bean’s Time Immemorial: The Traditional Ways and History of the Members of the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation, newly published by Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, also his own 2004 book and CD set, Voices of the Flute: Songs of Three Southern California Indian Nations, published by Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s publishing arm, Ushkana Press.
Pandemic (Spring 2020)
Luke Madrigal, a Cahuilla family man who worked in Indian child welfare services, taught his daughters “that stories are medicine, culture is strength, women are leaders, and that we have a responsibility to our ancestors,” as daughter Sophia wrote in our Oct. 28, 2020, News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. Isabella’s play spotlights the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women, and teaches how contemporary Native American people can find healing in traditional stories.
Luke Madrigal performing as Dreamwalker with daughters Isabella (left) and Sophia Madrigal.
Isabella and Sophia Madrigal won more than $10,000 in fellowships to share and develop the play’s messages, and Isabella, who currently is in her first year at Harvard, eventually earned not only the Girl Scout Gold Award but also the National Girl Scout award, and addressed the United Nations about murdered and missing Indigenous women.
Several months after the devastation of Luke Madrigal’s death, Dorothy Ramon Learning Center again joined Renda, Sophia, and Isabella Madrigal during the pandemic, to carry onward with Luke Madrigal’s legacy. Sophia, now a junior at Orange County School of the Arts, formed the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit. Although the Center has remained closed throughout the pandemic, the Center has co-hosted and shared her play and several workshops online, all part of Sophia’s Girl Scout Gold Award project focused on finding and sharing resiliency and healing through traditional Native American storytelling.
Luke Madrigal’s Second Call to Action (2021)
Two years after Luke Madrigal’s first call to action, a storm in February 2021 pushed black mud down from the fire-scarred hills into the canyon. Between snow, rain, and mud, there was a sunny day. I agreed to meet Renda and Sophia Madrigal to accept the gift of Luke Madrigal’s books for the Center’s reference library. I was expecting a couple boxes. I was shocked when they appeared in a U-Haul truck stuffed with plastic bins. All those bins are filled with books.
Sophia Madrigal (left) and Renda Madrigal arriving with the family gift of Luke Madrigal’s Native American book collection. Isabella was away at Harvard University but represented via her mother’s Harvard t-shirt.
We are deeply grateful for these hundreds and hundreds of books, all portraying Luke Madrigal’s joy of the book hunt over 30 years for Native American books in authentic and accurate voices. His collection ranges from 1800s Smithsonian ethnology books and anthropology books of the last century, to contemporary Native American specialized research and literature, all chosen by him, with careful notations in pencil on a flyleaf or title page, such as “no. 27, only 700 published.” The collection as a whole is Luke Madrigal’s voice speaking as a Native American Culture Bearer.
The very next day, we happened to find out that the Banning Library District was trying to give away a half-dozen 9-feet-wide wooden library bookcases, so, boom. Thank you, Banning library. The library has since donated two more bookcases.
Angelo Schunke of the Learning Center board brings the donated bookcases to the Center.
Nachich Mih'! (Serrano)
Hawvuun Chem Hiichiina! (Cahuilla)
Let’s Go!
Bins filled with Luke Madrigal’s books and donated bookcases for Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Native American reference library. The existing library will be expanded from an adjacent room into this one.
Our Native American library before this donation was under development for several years with the strong support of interns from California State University, San Bernardino. Thanks to previous important donations by Justin Farmer and many others, our reference library comprised more than 1,000 books, along with other publications and reference materials focusing on Native Americans. As we embark on this next call to action, we need your help. Even though the Center remains closed during the pandemic, we are moving forward in developing our library.
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center leaders Ernest Siva (left) and June Siva (right) with Sophia and Renda Madrigal after we all unloaded the truck. It also was Ernest Siva’s birthday. (Pat Murkland Photo)
The Luke Madrigal Collection and the rest of our specialized Native American library need to become accessible to the public as a regional scholarly reference library.
Our goals:
• Manage professionally and protect the integrity of these valuable collections.
• Provide and promote reference library services, which include sharing the catalog database online.
We need your help to make the Learning Center’s reference library a valuable resource for Native Americans and the greater community. We’ll need money — no donation is too small (and it’s tax-deductible). Ideas for funding? Grants? Great ideas? Tell us.
Since 2003, Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 501(c)3 nonprofit mission has been to save and share Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. A California State University, San Bernardino, advanced art and design class on nonprofit marketing will start working with us this month to improve our website. We’re also participating in a class offered via the University of Texas on ways to serve you better with our online weekly News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. Please support us by subscribing (it’s free). Thank you! Pat Murkland, Editor, February 17, 2021.