Enduring Indigenous Homelands Project (EIHP; 2021-)

OC Parks OCAC Repository work in 2022.

The Enduring Indigenous Homelands Project (EIHP)The EIHP is a community-based participatory research (CBPR) program conducted in collaboration with the Pechanga Band of Indians (Payómkawichum peoples) through the Pechanga Cultural Resource Department (PCRD). Using archaeology, digital humanities, and land conservation, EIHP examines Indigenous anticolonial resistance and revitalization movements (1770–1870 CE) while working to map and protect at-risk cultural sites across Northern San Diego County and Orange County, California.
Focusing on the early American era of colonization, EIHP seeks to provide material testimony of how Indigenous communities navigated forced removal, anti-Indigenous violence, and settler expansion, demonstrating their resilience and strategies of survival in these regions.
Key Objectives & ContributionsThe EIHP is a digital heritage research initiative that seeks to:

1. Document Indigenous cultural resilience through archaeological and anthropological research on ancestral lands.
2. Map and digitally preserve Indigenous sites in the Santa Ana and Santa Margarita Mountains, including pre- and post-colonial communities in Cleveland National Forest and the Santa Margarita River Trail Preserve.
3. Develop a digital repository of cultural sites, socio-economic networks, and place-histories, providing Tribal partners with a resource for heritage management and education.
4. Expand public knowledge and visibility of Indigenous histories by addressing gaps in museum collections and land management archives, particularly in Northern San Diego County and Orange County’s wilderness areas.
5. Create publicly accessible digital exhibits (with Tribal approval) to support partner museums and conservation organizations.

Collaborative Partnerships & ImpactThe EIHP builds on Dr. Nathan Acebo’s collaborative work with Tongva (Ti’at Society), Acjachemen (Juaneño-Acjachemen Culture Center), and Payómkawichum (Pechanga Band of Indians), as well as Orange County Parks and The Wildlands Conservancy. By centering Indigenous leadership and knowledge, the project strengthens Tribal sovereignty over cultural heritage and fosters public engagement with Indigenous histories beyond urban spaces.

TÁATAMAY INDIGENOUS ARCHAEOLOGY FIELD SCHOOL (TFS) ​

As of 2024, active work in the Santa Margarita Mountains now includes educational opportunities for Indigenous and non-Native students through the TÁATAMAY Indigenous Archaeology Field School (TFS). This program, taught in partnership with the Pechanga Cultural Resources Department (PCRD), the University of Connecticut (UConn), and San Diego State University (SDSU) Field Programs, offers hands-on training in Indigenous Archaeology. TFS provides students with a community-driven approach to archaeology, focusing on cultural stewardship, land-based learning, and collaborative research with Tribal nations.

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In Development- Koʻolau Digital Mapping & Indigenous Heritage Protection Project

Since 2019, Dr. Acebo has been developing micro-CBPR research projects in the Koʻolau regions of Oʻahu, originally focused on the archaeology of early 20th-century Kānaka Maoli, Filipinx, and other Asian plantation laborers at the Lāʻie Sugar Plantation (1868–1930 CE). The initial project aimed to examine how transnational colonial labor policies and informal plantation economies shaped cultural bonds between Kānaka Maoli and settler laborers.

Following delays due to COVID-19, fieldwork resumed in 2022, leading to new community partnerships with local  Kānaka Maoli families. These collaborations revealed a critical need for digital mapping initiatives to help Kānaka Maoli families protect material heritage and assert Indigenous land rights.

Project Focus & Impact:
The Koʻolau Digital Mapping & Indigenous Heritage Protection Project now prioritizes:

• Supporting Kānaka Maoli families in documenting wahi kūpuna (ancestral places) to aid in heritage protection and land stewardship.
• Using digital mapping and archaeological research to create accessible tools for communities advocating for Indigenous land rights.
• Preserving oral histories tied to plantation labor, migration, and Indigenous resilience in both Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island.
• Developing a transnational Indigenous field school that connects students from Hawaiʻi, California, and New England in collaborative research on Indigenous histories.

This evolving initiative reflects a community-driven approach, ensuring that research directly benefits Indigenous and local descendant families while fostering broader connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars.

Hale construction (2022).

PAST PROJECTS:
Black Star Canyon Archaeology Project (BSCAP; 2013-2021)

The BSCAP examined the endurance and political effects of Indigenous  traditions in the Los Angeles Basin colonial hinterlands, and the harmful effects of anti-Indigenous heritage tourism at the California Historical Landmark (#217) Puhú village in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, California. The Puhú village landmark memorializes the 1832 “Battle of Black Star Canyon”, which was authorized by San Gabriel missionaries as a reprisal for alleged horse theft by Puhú’s residents and resulted in a massacre at the village by hired American frontiersmen. The BSCAP sought to understand Puhú’s ancestor residential life, the village communities ties to  Indigenous political and trading networks before and after the massacre, and the colonists’ motivations for the reprisal. To achieve this, the BSCAP employed an interdisciplinary approach which merged  artifact analyses of orphaned museum collections with geochemical archaeometry techniques (i.e. X-ray fluorescence and neutron activation analysis) with data from missionary records, ethnographic archives, and collaboration with and capacity building activities for Tongva, Acjachemen and Payómkawichum stakeholders.

Publications on the BSCAP can  be found at the link below. In short, the BSCAP established that Puhú ancestors drew upon and enhanced pre- and post-contact  traditions of craft production and trade, and how said practices allowed the village to economically thrive and remain politically autonomous while protecting Indigenous fugitives during Spanish and Mexican colonization. These findings challenge conventional scholarship that presumed post-contact California indigenous villages collapsed as native peoples were missionized or succumbed to European diseases by highlighting how the potential for macropolitical resistance emerges from micropolitical forms of Indigenous resiliency. Findings from ethnographic research revealed how 20th century curation practices and on-going heritage tours hid this history while reproducing false tropes of Indigenous extinction and hauntings. 

This research was enabled by funding support from the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Coast Archaeological Society, the Society for California Archaeology, Stanford University Institute for Research in the Social Sciences and research partnerships  with the Cleveland National Forest, The Wildlands Conservancy,  museum institutions (i.e. Gene Autry Southwest Museum and the San Bernardino County Museum), and the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR).

Archaeological Survey Association Excavations at Puhu in the 1950s.

BSCAP Publications