Julie Tumamait-Stenslie is a Chumash Elder and storyteller who will be sharing the Sister Song during Journey Week 2024. Journey Week is an immersive week of learning and connecting at Pacifica Graduate Institute, September 26th – 29th, 2024. For more information and to register, visit us here. I’m delighted to speak with Julie and find out more about the Sister Song.
Angela Borda: Thank you so much for speaking with me today. Please share with us some of your background and formative influences?
Julie Tumamait-Stenslie: I’m the youngest of seven; I have three brothers and three sisters. We grew up in the Ojai valley, in the Ventura River watershed. That influence of nature was my safe place. Growing up native in the Ojai Valley was not easy, even in the 1960’s, but our name stands for who we are. Our Family is the only one that maintains a traditional name as a surname. Names are important, all our names tell us who we are, they are descriptive and have a lot of meaning behind them. My great grandfather was baptized as Juan de Jesus. He later was given the name Tumamait by the people. We knew his name was Chumash but did not know what it meant until many years later. My father was my biggest influence; he passed away in 1992 at the early age of 72. But he had about 10 years after he retired from working the oil fields for Shell Oil Company when he started participating in cultural events. We found our genealogy with the help of professors of anthropology. Knowing how we are related to the land and who our ancestors are gives me strength.
I grew up dancing with my sisters, playing in the river and being a lot on my own. I loved the natural world. This was a time when we did not make the connection that we were living a native life with the foods we ate, the medicines from the plants that our mother gave us. As a teenager I got interested in herbal medicine and homeopathic remedies. Later, as a mother, I would treat myself, my animals, my children with those remedies. Once I stepped into my culture, I saw how invested my Ancestors had to be with nature because it ensured their survival. Most important was the reciprocity to Hutash, Mother Earth, that was essential. To honor the earth by singing, praying, and gifting was a no-brainer.
Angela: You do a lot of work with the community as an educator. How do you handle the topic of colonization and what kind of work do you do?
Julie: What happened to us during the mission period was horrific and is a story that still to this day has not been told in its entirety. It is painful story of death in so many ways. However, one cannot stay stuck in that nightmare. I see many of my relatives stuck with the anger. Colonization happened to everyone in the world. And as people are here now in this part of the world, they have left behind their culture, like us they had to assimilate. The good news is they can go back to their indigenous teachings and find what resonates. There are many ways to do this. I listen to where the energies come to me; there may be a name or a ceremony that will pop up when you least expect it. I am always trying to pay attention and not get too locked into a static place. I keep an open mind. Social/environmental justice is particularly important to me; that is something lacking in this generation of young people today. I engage on the federal, state, local, county, and city levels. One of the first things I did was work in the elementary schools, where they study our cultures. They had it so wrong. They still do. But they are getting better. There is a lot of fiction rather than facts that kids are learning. If people can learn two things, I would say learn the name of the nearest water shed where you live, and who the indigenous people of the land are from where you grew up.
My daddy and I would do programs together, being of service, so we got our start at the Ventura Museum Chumash Summer Camp. One of the first programs I did was with women. We are a matrilineal society. Our women were leaders. Living in my indigenous culture and landscape is hard to describe. I tell people, when you find which people you come from, go home, walk the land, learn the stories.
Angela: Do you feel guided in your work?
Julie: I do archeological work; this is where some of my mentors are. I may not have known what I was finding, but it was talking to me. I would hear a voice say, “get up and go,” and sure enough I would find something and give it to the archaeologist. So, much of what I do is done in an intuitive way, moving in a place where elders have passed on, and I count on them in dreamtime and the spirit world. Both my mother and father are my Spirit guides. There is a strong connection that many do not believe in, but to know that they are always with us brings me comfort. It is when their names come into our heads and we say, “Oh!” It is because they are watching over us.
Angela: I’m looking forward to Journey Week, and I see that you will be part of it with “The Sister Song.” Is this a song you will be singing? A talk you will be giving? A ritual?
Julie: All three. It will be an honoring, bringing in the energy, recognizing where we are, the directions. We don’t have colors to our directions, but we do have colors to our elementals, so we acknowledge that, and from my Cherokee elders the seventh direction, which is the heart. I’ll be opening with that. I have a welcome song that I sing. It is one that welcomes the rain. When we are talking about the women, I feel the energy of women coming up and we need to be strong and recognize that our power and energy and spirit is needed here in the world.
The sister song is not from our territory, it comes from the San Joaquin Valley, it talks about the disrespecting of women in a family and when a woman saw her brother go on a long journey, and she was disrespected by him, she called on some energies to help her. And let us just say they found the brother dead in the middle of the desert. But when the women sang a song to resurrect him, he came back to life with a kinder demeanor. And he was kind to his sisters from then on. This is a song in the public domain that John Peabody Harrington recorded, so they are in museums, and that is where my father found these songs. We have a booklet of these songs from that time. People were not comfortable in those days talking about their culture, but Harrington had paid informants who went out learning languages and cultures. And he recorded a lot of native elders singing these songs. I was going to share that too.
Angela: You mentioned people weren’t comfortable in those days talking about their culture. Do you find that still to be true?
Julie: During my talk, I want to engage people, to reconnect to that genetic memory in all of us that we tend to dismiss. My mother was Catholic, so she did not like me doing this work. My aunts would not even admit they were Chumash; they would say they are Mexican. My mother mostly told me bible stories going to sleep. There are these little blockades that get in the way. Some of my relatives think if they dive into this stuff, they will go to hell. My father was one who pressed upon us to be kind, that you do not have to know someone’s name to be kind to them, to say hello and acknowledge them. We have created so much fear in this world.
Angela: The subject of Journey Week is “Beyond Boundaries: Caring for Psyche, Soul, and Imagination in a Posthuman Age.” I’m curious if there are parallels between these elements of depth psychology and Chumash beliefs.
Julie: All stories talk about how to behave in the world. We call them the teachings. There are creation stories. Stories that go beyond myth and lore. Our stories talk about the ego, courage, how things were created, how things got to be the way they are today, lessons from people like coyote. We have a mermaid story too that I love. Stories that reflect how to behave. And we have people like Joseph Campbell, who said if we lived our mythologies, the world would be right. So, we will start from there during my talk, and then move into a ritual, a circle dance.
Angela: Thank you so much for your time in speaking with me and sharing your perspective. I am looking forward to being part of the Sister Song during Journey Week.
Journey Week is an immersive week of learning and connecting at Pacifica Graduate Institute, September 26th – 29th, 2024. For more information and to register, visit us here.
Julie Tumamait-Stenslie has traced her family lineage from her father, Vincent Tumamait, to at least 11 known Chumash villages and as far back as the mid-18th century. Ms. Tumamait-Stenslie has worked as a cultural resource consultant from Malibu to Santa Barbara to the Channel Islands, providing guidance for private groups and state, county, and city regulatory agencies, including the Ventura and Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s offices. She is well known throughout Ventura County and beyond for her Chumash cultural education programs and also performs ceremonies according to her native ways, such as weddings, burials, naming ceremonies, and blessings. Ms. Tumamait-Stenslie is a board member of the Museum of Ventura County and the Ojai Valley Museum. She serves on the accessions committee for the Museum of Ventura County.
Angela Borda is a writer for Pacifica Graduate Institute, as well as the editor of the Santa Barbara Literary Journal. Her work has been published in Food & Home, Peregrine, Hurricanes & Swan Songs, Delirium Corridor, Still Arts Quarterly, Danse Macabre, and is forthcoming in The Tertiary Lodger and Running Wild Anthology of Stories, Vol. 5.
