In recent years, the enduring legacies of the original people of the Los Angeles basin, referred to as the Tongva or Gabrielinos,[1] have become more and more apparent in the landscape of the region. Right behind L.A.’s world-famous Hollywood sign lies Cahuenga (or Kawenga) Peak, the Tongva’s “place in the mountains.” People can hike the Gabrielino Trail in Angeles National Forest, just north of El Monte, and up Tongva Peak[2] in the Verdugo Mountains, north of LA; go to public parks named Tongva Park in Santa Monica[3]; go to a Tongva Memorial Garden at Loyola Marymount University;[4] and see the San Gabriel mountains on a daily basis. These markers of indigenous heritage are important reminders of the region’s roots as well as of indigenous life today. In the present piece, the reader is invited to think of the LA Basin as an indigenous space as well as to imagine how that heritage has interacted with other waves of migrations, politics, and modes of cultural and artistic expressions over the course of its history.

Pre-Columbian Indigenous Life in the Basin

The Tongva/Gabrielinos migrated from the Mojave Desert to the current-day L.A. Basin around 7,000 years ago, displacing some of the Chumash who had been living in the area since at least 8,000 B.C.[6] By 1500, present-day L.A. County had around 25 Tongva villages comprising a population of 300 to 500 hunter-gatherers speaking one of the Shoshonean Uto-Aztecan languages and relying on nuts (particularly acorn and pine nuts), berries, game, and fish for subsistence. They settled on territories encompassing present-day Santa Monica to the northeast, the San Gabriel Mountains to the north, Riverside to the east, stretching all the way southeast to Corona and southwest to Newport Beach, and including the islands of Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara, San Nicolas and San Clemente.

Spanish Explorations and Colonization

The Spanish started exploring the shores of southern California in the early 16th century, with a first expedition to Santa Catalina Island in 1520, followed by a series of failed expeditions sent by Hernán Cortés in the 1530s .[8] Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo traveled to the coast of California in 1542 and landed on Catalina Island, and Sebastian Vizcaíno was received peacefully by indigenous people of the Basin in 1602. But it is not until the travels of Gaspar de Portolà, Governor of the province of Las Californias in the Viceroyalty of New Spain by land that Spanish settlement started in 1769. At the time, around 5,000 Tongva people were living in the Basin.

Between 1769 and 1823, Spanish Franciscan friars of the Catholic Church led by Junípero Serra would replace the Jesuit Order’s control of Alta California and establish 21 missions financed by the King of Spain. Spread along the Californian Camino Real, also known as California’s Historic Mission Trail and superseded nowadays by the long highways of the Californian coast, the missions stretched all the way from San Diego to Sonoma, just north of San Francisco. Misión San Gabriel Arcángel was established as the fourth of California’s missions in 1771 some nine miles east of the indigenous village of Yangna, which would provide the site of the administrative pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781 (present-day downtown L.A.).[9]

The negative impact of the Franciscan missions on the indigenous population of the Basin loomed large, and indigenous groups immediately resisted the establishment of the missions, as exemplified by the crushed 1785 rebellion led by indigenous female spiritual leader Toypurina.[11]

Despite their acts of resistance and rebellion, however, the Basin’s indigenous peoples soon came to be submerged by the wave of Christianization that swept the region. Of the estimated 310,000 Native Americans living in current-day California by 1769, about one-sixth remained after one hundred years of colonization, a history many missions still fall short of acknowledging.[12]

The missions relied on the original inhabitants of the Basin in order to gain power in the region, starting a movement of Christianization, exploitation, and decimation of the Basin’s indigenous peoples, renaming the Tongva as Gabrielinos in the process. The Tongva served to build the missions and were often separated from their families and communities; many were Christianized and forbidden to speak their native tongue while others ran away into the nearby mountains. Those captured would have their feet or heads cut off and put on sticks for the public to see as examples of punishment inflicted by the Spanish on those seeking to escape. Many died from the diseases brought by the Spanish while others were raped.

The denial of Tongva identity remains evident today, as mass graves remain nameless at the Missions of San Diego and San Francisco de Asís, among others.[13] In 1859, Mission San Gabriel was returned to the Catholic Church by President Buchanan, and still operates as a Catholic parish to this day.[14]

Mexican Rule in Alta California and American Settlement

Upon Mexico’s independence from Spain, the Mexican government retained the system put in place by its predecessor. Alta California remained for the most part privately owned through land grants provided to rancheros, with indigenous workers serving to sustain the ranchos until the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, even with the secularization of the missions by the Mexican government in 1834, political, economic and social freedom remained elusive for the Basin’s indigenous people.[16] Alta California fell under the protection of the Presidio of Sonoma, replacing the older Spanish military forts of San Diego (1769)―which controlled and protected the San Gabriel Mission―Monterey (1770), and Santa Bárbara (1782).[17] And Los Angeles became an important hub of power as the new capital city of (Alta) California (1835-1854).

In 1848, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded Alta California (or present-day southern California) to the U.S. By the time the first American settlers started arriving in the Basin, the indigenous population of California had declined by half.[18] After gold was discovered in Placerita Canyon (in the western edge of present-day Angeles National Forest) in 1842, the Gold Rush brought a massive wave of immigrants to the Basin in 1849 and 1850. In 1850, California became an American state; in the next three years eighteen treaties were negotiated with the federal government in order to establish reservations, but they were never ratified.[19] Today, the Tongva are still not recognized by the federal government, although the State of California recognized them formally as the original people of the Basin in 1994.[20]

Significance to El Monte, South El Monte and the Los Angeles Basin

Located about 15 miles east of Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley, the communities of El Monte and South El Monte are located in the heart of Tongva/Gabrielino lands, at a richly layered historical and geographical crossroads.[25] The area was formerly known, according to some sources, as Houtngna or Hautngna, “the place of the willow,” and to others as Sheevanga or Sheevangna—“the wooden or willow area.”[26] It was later renamed ‘la misión vieja’ by the Spanish when they colonized the area.[27] But, over the past few years, the area has witnessed a budding revival of Tongva identity.

The Tongva, like most other Indian nations in the United States, are still here despite numerous efforts at removing indigenous peoples and practices from the American landscape.[29] It is not simply a story of indigenous enslavement by the missions, or of displacement of indigenous populations and land grabs by individual settlers. In the 1930s and 1940s, the descendants of Tongva people in El Monte and South El Monte moved further away to work in the sugar beet fields. Thankfully, at least some of the Native people living in the area managed to find refuge among Mexican families.

Cross-cultural collaborations continue to shape the region. Intermarriage added to this ethnic diversity. Descendants of Tongva people were also able to use the names of Mexican families for protection well into the twentieth century, at a time when it was still safer to be Mexican than Indian. And when several citizens of Japanese lineage were interned during World War II, Tongva neighbors preserved their business until their return.[30]

Today, attempts to superimpose development projects onto their original landscape continue. A “$30 million project, which includes the building of 14,000 square foot building, a 116-car parking lot, and other structures”[31] in South El Monte is currently threatening to remold the Whittier Narrows Nature Center into yet another part of American consumer society, which tends to dissociate people from the natural world.

This is not a new fight; plans for a dam at Whittier Narrows started in the 1920s and continued through the New Deal, threatening the communities and natural areas, including a bird sanctuary in the area. At the time, the El Monte Citizens Flood Control Committee organized to fight the plan.[32] Today, the recently formed Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area organization continues to fight local politicians who are not attuned to the area’s environmental importance and historical meaning to people.[33]

The lack of a tribal land base recognized by the state or federal governments is echoed by many other Indian tribes of California, who are still seeking recognition by either to this day. Without that recognition, tribal lands cannot exist legally.[34]This makes it even more difficult for the Tongva to protect their ancestral connections to the land and stall development projects.

For the Tongva, attempts by outsiders at disappearing both people and their cultural practices when the people survived took many forms: from religious conversion to cultural assimilation through schooling in the Spanish missions as described above. That, too, is part of a larger history of assimilation which has continued into the American era in various forms. Less than an hour east, in Riverside County, the American government established, in 1892, the Perris Indian School, supervised by a man responding, fittingly, to the name of Mr. M.S. Savage.[35] The School was “the flagship among 25 federal off-reservation American Indian boarding schools,”[36] following after the national model of vocational training and cultural assimilation for Native American students set up by Carlisle Indian School, the very first of such schools built in Pennsylvania in 1879.[37] Ten years later, the Perris Indian School was relocated to Riverside and renamed as the Sherman Institute. The School “is still operating today as Sherman Indian High School, [as] a modern off-reservation boarding high school for Native American Indian students.”[38]

As a result of the discriminatory policies and practices described above, simply identifying as Tongva was unthinkable for many just a few decades ago. According to Gloria Arellanes, who identifies as Tongva and lives in El Monte, her identity was nipped in the bud at home because her family had told her about the threat of discrimination and violence should she be identified by others as Tongva. As a result, she was taught to blend in and speak Spanish or English, not Tongva. Similarly, Mark Acuña, a Tongva tribal council member,

had been raised by his father and grandparents as white. They wanted him to be able to get an education and assimilate into the American culture. He did. He studied ethnobotany and became a college professor.

It wasn’t until he was around 50 years old that he went to hear a Tongva woman speak about medicinal plants that the tribe had used. He was ready to argue with her that the tribe was extinct. Then he recognized the plants she was talking about as the same plants his grandfather grew. He remembered someone saying his grandfather had been a Tongva medicine man. Then his father told him how the family decided to keep his ancestry from him so he could pass as white.[40]

Acuña’s life story exemplifies how a culture’s various elements are carried by people in their day-to-day experience and yet easily made invisible in more or less subtle ways. In Acuña’s experience, Tongva identity survived through his grandfather’s cultural practices using plants. But the fact that those practices had remained unnamed to him, as if practiced in a cultural vacuum, disconnected him both from his own identity and his conception of Tongva history as he was unable to recognize the tradition followed by his grandpa.

The fact that people are no longer afraid to identify as Tongva today therefore illustrates the desire and possibility to restore their own visibility and identity.[41] Support project have sprung up. At UCLA, for instance, the linguist Pamela Munro set up a Facebook page to help revive the Tongva language with the help of Tongva speakers.[42]

But obstacles persist. On the one hand, the legal barriers to Tongva self-determination are far-reaching. A few years ago, the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe submitted a proposal to the city of Garden Grove in order to request permission to build a casino near Disneyland. The project could not move forward due to lack of federal recognition of the tribe, which prevents the Tongva from establishing a casino since there is no “Indian land” providing the proper jurisdiction to administer it.[43]

On the other hand, the Tongva’s cultural presence in the Basin keeps growing. If the Basin’s names and places remain under debate today, they have allowed a revival of Tongva culture in the Basin. These names provide points of entry into the region’s many layers of history and constitute a shift in the indigenous history of the Americas: for the Tongva themselves, a renewed sense of confidence in their heritage, and for the larger society, a (relatively) reduced discriminatory attitude toward indigenous peoples. Puvungna or “the gathering place” on the campus of California State University, Long Beach constitutes, to this day, the main gathering point for Tongva people for cultural events and was chosen by at least some Tongva descendants for its historical significance as the place where the creation deity Chinichinich―spellings vary―appeared to the Tongva long before colonization.[44] And a cultural center and museum opened in Kuruvungna Springs, on the campus of University High School in West Los Angeles, to celebrate the Tongva’s cultural heritage in 1992. One of their signature events is the Life before Columbus Festival, held every year in October.[45]

As noted by some Tongva people themselves, what has allowed them to survive until this day on various levels—physically, culturally, and otherwise—has been, in part, their ability to “pass” as people of different ethnicities, based on whichever was most protective at different moments in time. Examples abound. During the Gold Rush, some Tongva, who lived under the informal protection of neighborly Mexican families, took on a Mexican identity, as it was then “safer to be Mexican than Indian.” And in the twentieth century, it became common to try and pass as white in order to blend into mainstream society as best as possible.[46] It is time to make living together respectfully of our cultural differences a priority.

About the Author

Aurélie A. Roy is a Ph.D candidate in History at Columbia University. Her dissertation explores the history of Indian rights lawyering. She currently lives in Boulder, CO and works at the University of Colorado Law School on a project aimed at determining the legal obligations of the National Park Service to Indian nations.

East of East Series

1. SEMAP, “Making Place: Mapping South El Monte and El Monte”

2. Yesenia Barragan and Mark Bray, “Ricardo Flores Magón & the Anarchist Movement in El Monte, California”

3. Nick Juravich, “‘City of Achievement’: The Making of the City of South El Monte, 1955-1976″

4. Vickie Vertiz, “El Monte Forever: A Brief History of Michael Jaime-Becerra”

5. Michael Jaime-Becerra, “1181 Durfee Avenue: 1983 to 1986″

6. Jude Webre, “I’d Know Where to Find You: Art Laboe’s Charmed Life On Air”

7. Maria John, “Toypurina: A Legend Etched in the Landscape”

8. Jennifer Renteria, “The Starlite Swap Meet”

9. Wendy Cheng, “A Brief History (and Geography) of the San Gabriel Valley”

10. Eric Frith, “The Rebellion against the Mission of the Saintly Prince the Archangel, San Gabriel of the Temblors, 1785″

11. Alexandra M. Landeros, “Toni Margarita Plummer: Writing Her Way Home in The Bolero of Andi Rowe”

12. Carribean Fragoza, “Rush”

13. Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis, “‘The Sky is Black and the Asphalt Blue’: Placing El Monte in the Early LA Punk Scene”

14. Polo Morales, “Punk and the Seamstress”

15. Daniel Morales, “Hicks Camp: A Mexican Barrio”

16. Toni Plummer, “10911 Michael Hunt Drive”

17. Andre Kobayashi Deckrow, “A Community Erased: Japanese Americans in El Monte and the San Gabriel Valley”

18. Michael Weller, “El Monte’s Wild Past: A History of Gay’s Lion Farm”

19. Juan Herrera, “¡La Lucha Continua! Gloria Arellanes and the Making of a Chicano Movement in El Monte and Beyond”

20. Melquiades Fernandez, “The El Monte Berry Strike of 1933”

21. Karen S. Wilson and Daniel B. Lynch, “Who Were the Monte Boys?”

22. Ryan Reft, “From Small Farming to Urban Agriculture: El Monte and Subsistence Homesteading”

23. Rachel Newman, “A Truth that Had to be Told: Uncovering the History of School Segregation in El Monte”

24. Aurélie Roy, “‘Tongva-Village-Turned-World-City’: Contemporary Indigenous Legacies in Greater L.A.”

Further Reading

For people interested in pursuing more advanced research on the indigenous peoples of the L.A. Basin, the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University has opened an archival collection.

George Angelo, Jr. Whispers: The Story of the Tongva/Gabrielino, Chumash, and Juaneno from Past to Present (documentary movie).

Vincent Brook. Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012.

Cindy Hardin and Jane Beseda, “Part I: The First Americans of Ballona―Origins and Daily Life,” Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society Blog. http://smbasblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/part-iii-the-first-americans-of-ballona-culture-and-time-of-change/

—. “Part II: The First Americans of Ballona―Food and Plant Uses,” Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society Blog. http://smbasblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/part-iii-the-first-americans-of-ballona-culture-and-time-of-change/

—. “Part III: The First Americans of Ballona―Culture and Time of Change,” Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society Blog. http://smbasblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/part-iii-the-first-americans-of-ballona-culture-and-time-of-change/

Claudia K. Jurmain and William McCawley (eds.). O, My Ancestor: Recognition and Renewal for the Gabrielino-Tongva People of the Los Angeles Area. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books and Rancho Los Alamitos Foundation, Long Beach, 2009.

Keepers of Indigenous Ways, Inc. Website. http://www.keepersofindigenousways.org/

William McCawley, The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles. Novato, CA: Ballena Press, 1996.

Rosanne Welch, “A Brief History of the Tongva Tribe: The Native Inhabitants of the Lands of the Puente Hills Preserve.” Available at http://tongvapeople.com/native_american_history.pdf.

References

[1] There is disagreement and controversy over the accuracy of the name which should be attributed to the indigenous people of the L.A. Basin. Some advocate for Tongva and others for Gabrielino or a hyphenated version of the two, while still others advocate for Kizh. This article does not seek to settle this dispute, but rather to trace and celebrate indigenous presence in the region as one of its many layers of settlement. For an illustration of the controversy, see Ashley Archibald, “Turf War Rages On over Name of Tongva Park,” Santa Monica Daily Press, March 3, 2013, http://smdp.com/turf-war-rages-on-over-name-of-tongva-park/119202.

[2] The Peak was renamed in 2002. Cf. http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2012-10-15/opinion/tn-gnp-1015-intersections-descendants-of-the-tongva-look-to-their-past_1_tongva-language-tongva-indians-tongva-tribe. For information on access to hikes to Tongva Peak, see http://www.backpacker.com/destinations/hikes/5699.

[3] For information about the Santa Monica Tongva Park, named in 2013, see http://tongvapark.squarespace.com/about/.

[4] For more information, see Loyola Marymount University, “Tongva,” http://admin.lmu.edu/greenlmu/gardens/tongva/. The University has also opened a archival collection on the original people of the Basin; the link to its catalog is provided in the “Further Reading” section of this article.

[6] Los Angeles Almanac, “Headline History, Los Angeles County, Pre-History to 1799 A.D.,” http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi01a.htm.

[7] “Los Angeles Natives,” http://socalstorytelling.blogspot.com/.

[8] Four Directions Institute of Native American Studies, “Gabrielino (Tongva),” http://www.fourdir.com/gabrielino.htm.

[9] Liana Aghajanian, “Intersections: Descendants of the Tongva Look to Their Past,” Glendale News-Press, http://articles.glendalenewspress.com/2012-10-15/opinion/tn-gnp-1015-intersections-descendants-of-the-tongva-look-to-their-past_1_tongva-language-tongva-indians-tongva-tribe/2.

[10] California Missions Map, http://www.maps.com/ref_map.aspx?pid=11651.

[11] For more ample detail on the early rebellions, see Rosanne Welch, “A Brief History of the Tongva Tribe: The Native Inhabitants of the Lands of the Puente Hills Preserve,” http://tongvapeople.com/native_american_history.pdf.

[12] Carole Pogash, “To Some in California, Founder of Church Missions Is Far from Saint,” New York Times, January 21, 2015, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/to-some-indians-in-california-father-serra-is-far-from-a-saint.html?_r=0.

[13] Phone interview with Gloria Arellanes (Tongva from El Monte), by author, September 20, 2014; and California Missions Resource Center, “California Missions Facts,” http://www.missionscalifornia.com/missionfacts.html.

[14] Four Directions Institute of Native American Studies, “Gabrielino (Tongva),” http://www.fourdir.com/gabrielino.htm.

[15] Library of Congress, “The Old Spanish and Mexican Ranchos of Los Angeles County,” by Geald A. Edy (1937) http://www.loc.gov/resource/g4363l.ct001439/

[16] “A History of the Kizh (Orange County’s Native Inhabitants),” July 31, 2012, http://jesselatour.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-history-of-tongva-tribe-orange.html.

[17] California Mission Guide, “The Presidios: Spanish Outposts in Alta California,” http://www.californiamissionguide.com/presidios/california_presidios.html

[18] “A History of the Kizh (Orange County’s Native Inhabitants),” July 31, 2012, http://jesselatour.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-history-of-tongva-tribe-orange.html.

[19] For more detail, see http://www.gabrielinotribe.org/TribalHistory/tribal_history.cfm.

[20] For more on this, see Alice Mirlesse, “Identity on Trial: The Gabrielino Tongva Quest for Federal Recognition,” (2013), Pomona Senior Theses, Paper 90, http://scholarship.claremont.edu/pomona_theses/90/.

[25] For a short history of the San Gabriel Valley, see Wendy Cheng’s article at https://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/a-brief-history-and-geography-of-the-san-gabriel-valley/. Include as clickable link in text.

[26] Memories of El Monte Blog, http://memoriesofelmonte.blogspot.com/2014_03_01_archive.html; Oral interview with members of the Kizh-Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, by Nick Juravich, on file with the East of East Project, January 10, 2015. For more information, contact East of East.

[27] Oral interview with members of the Kizh-Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, by Nick Juravich, on file with the East of East Project, January 10, 2015. For more information, contact East of East.

[29] See, for instance, the website of the Official Tribal Council of the Gabrielino/Tongva Tribe of the Los Angeles Basin, available at http://www.tongvatribe.net/Home_Page.php (last accessed November 25, 2015). For those interested in Tongva language revitalization, see https://www.facebook.com/TongvaLanguage/.

[30] Oral interview with members of the Kizh-Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, by Nick Juravich, on file with the East of East Project, January 10, 2015. For more information, contact East of East.

[31] Laura Vena, “Shaping the Landscape at Whittier Narrows Nature Center,” KCET, January 26, 2015, available at http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/el-monte/whittier-narrows-nature-center.html (last accessed November 25, 2015).

[32] David Reid, “Whittier Narrows Parks: A Story of Water, Power and Displacement,” KCET, July 1, 2015, available at http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/east-of-east/whittier-narrows-parks-a-story-of-water-power-and-displacement.html (last accessed November 25, 2015).

[33] See also the website of Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area, available at http://www.naturalareafriends.net/home (last accessed November 25, 2015).

[34] On its website, the California Judicial System indicates that 78 tribes are currently seeking recognition. See “California Tribal Communities,” http://www.courts.ca.gov/3066.htm. For some complementary information about California tribes, see, for instance, “California Indian Reservations,” https://www.aaanativearts.com/reservations-by-state/california-indian-reservations.

[35] “The History of the Perris Indian School,” Perris Valley Museum Historical Archives, http://perrisvalleyarchives.org/the-history-of-the-perris-indian-school/.

[36] Bettye Miller, “New Book Recounts History of Sherman Institute: Historians Connected to UC Riverside Co-Author the First Collection of Images and Voices Focused on an Off-Reservation Indian Boarding School,” UCR Today, https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/10497.

[37] For more information about the Sherman Institute and the national Indian boarding school policy, see “American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many,” National Public Radio, May 12, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865.

[38] “Indian Boarding Schools,” California Indian Education, http://www.californiaindianeducation.org/indian_boarding_schools/. For the current school’s website, see Sherman Indian High School, “About Us,” http://www.shermanindian.org/home/.

[39] Ibid. [“Indian Boarding Schools”]. For pictures of the current campus, see Sherman Indian High School, “Campus Pics,” http://www.sihs.bie.edu/index_files/Page518.htm

[40] http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/challenges/tongva.html

[41] Phone interview with Gloria Arellanes (Tongva from El Monte), by author, September 20, 2014.

[42] “UCLA Linguist, Gabrielino-Tongva Indians Use Social Media to Revive Extinct Language: Descendants Learn Tongva Through Professor’s Facebook Page,” UCLA Newsroom, June 27, 2014, http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ucla-linguist-gabrieleno-tongva-indians-use-social-media-to-revive-extinct-language

[43] For more details about the project, see Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, “Garden Grove Casino Resort Proposal,” http://www.gabrielinotribe.org/garden_grove/index.cfm.

[44] Follow-up interviews with Gloria Arellanes, via facebook (Tongva from El Monte), by author, September 21 and 23, 2014. For more information about Puvungna, see California State University, Long Beach, “About Puvungna,” http://www.csulb.edu/~eruyle/puvudoc_0000_about.html .

[45] Gabrielino Tongva Springs Foundation, “About Us,” http://gabrielinosprings.com/mainmenu.html.

[46] Oral interview with members of the Kizh-Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, by Nick Juravich, on file with the East of East Project, January 10, 2015. For more information, contact East of East.