Shalawa

“His name in Chumash means “obsidian,” and with his wife (whose name means “dolphin”). Together they have been protecting the meadow from the ravages of developers, vandals, university-trained grave-robbers and rich senior citizens who allow their dogs to defecate inside the sacred medicine circle. The meadow has been a place of ceremonial gatherings for many generations.He was taken to Shalawa Meadow by the elders as an infant, when his training as a doctor began. (At that time he only recalls the tobacco ceremony being performed there.)  He dislikes being called a “shaman” “There has not always been a medicine circle on the meadow. In 1979 he became disgusted over local residents throwing litter, draining dirty oil from their cars onto the ground, vandalizing and robbing graves  The Chumash cemetery had to be protected from the American Dream.

“Obsidian” put up a small painted medicine pole in the middle of the meadow, as if to say “this is sacred ground.” When he returned the next day, the pole was stolen. “As the months went by, several replacement poles, successively sturdier and sturdier, were in turn stolen. In 1985 “obsidian” and “dolphin” made a small circle of stones around the medicine pole, which they took down after each ceremony to prevent another theft. Then they erected a very big brightly painted pole which thieves simply found impractical to steal. The vertical pole is the umbilical cord connecting the people to the earth mother Xutash. The horizontal cross-bar is the duality of the world.  Midway up the pole are deer antlers, and beneath these the bands of four symbolic colors: blue for Ocean, red for Earth, black for Owl’s Wing (sky), and white dots (Milky Way).

Syukhtun was the largest and most influential of Chumash villages, the center of a culture which stretched from Big Sur to Malibu, and inland as far as the central valley.”The Chumash are the caretakers of the western gateway of the Pacific at Humqaq, now known as Point Conception.

Monks visit Chumash Shalawa Meadow

Santa Barbara is blessed with a beautiful coastline, which for eons has been a place of meditation and prayer. Tibetan monks participated in a procession with representatives of the Chumash people toward their burial ground known as the Shalawa Meadow. Here is a descripton of the struggle to save this ancient burial ground, taken from the Syukhtun web site (Syukhtun being the original Chumash name for their village at present-day Santa Barbara).

“For years I have returned to Shalawa Meadow in Santa Barbara … to observe the Chumash medicine circle claiming the field as sacred land. The local people know it as Hammond’s Meadow, after the people who bought the land in 1928. Most are yet unaware that the correct name is Shalawa, a large and ancient Chumash village in what is now the wealthy township Montecito between Butterfly beach and Miramar.

The village sites have been totally developed, and now the burial ground of Shalawa, on a bluff overlooking the Santa Barbara Channel, is on the agenda for development. A persistent battle has been fought to save the meadow from Los Angeles developers, resulting in a halt of this desecration . With the rapacity of the American Dream leaning heavily on the flimsy chain-link fence surrounding it, Shalawa is now experiencing the precarious safety of magic.

On several occasions, Visiting Tibetan monks honor this particular place by performing rituals with representatives of the Chumash  on the meadow and observing the seasonal transformations of the medicine circle of stones laid in regard to the cardinal directions,