Orange County’s Acjachemen Nation Maps 10,000 Years of History for Its First Digital Archive
- Laila Freeman
- 19 minutes ago
- 7 min read
With grants from CalTrout and the California Coastal Commission, the tribe is building an interactive map of its ancestral sites, sacred waters and oral histories.
Orange County’s Acjachemen Nation, the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians (JBMI), is building a digital archive for the first time.
The Acjachemen Nation (pronounced ah-HAWSH-eh-men) originally inhabited what is now Orange County for as long as 10,000 years. The Acjachemen and the Tongva have had a long, complicated history in the region, including their ancestors’ treatment and captivity at the Mission San Juan Capistrano.
Joyce Perry, 71, has been the Belardes-JBMI director of cultural resources for 26 years and is no stranger to preservation and activist efforts. She is the founder of the nonprofit organization the Westerners First People of Earth Mother, Payomkawichum Kaamalam (PKK) that deals with archaeological and cultural efforts to preserve Acjachemen history. She currently resides in Irvine.
“You could say that we’ll be recreating a story that has never been told in Orange County from our perspective,” Perry said. “I know anthropologists, archeologists have published a lot about their concepts and their beliefs, but this will be the first ever from our perspective.”
Still overlooked 10,000 & 60 years later
Perry’s late teacher Frank Lobo wrote of his native experience in academia in the 1960s in “Oral Histories with the Acjachemem of San Juan Capistrano.”
“I was astonished by a passage in a ponderous anthropological volume that a well-respected anthropologist had written,” said Perry. “This gentleman stated that we no longer existed. That we were extinct! This meant that well more than two dozen of my relatives, with whom I interacted every day, ceased to exist as Acjachemem. My count did not include my parents’ generation, nor did it include my grandparents’ generation. Extinction had been conferred on all of us.”
Lobo details his experience sharing the text with his native community at a beach gathering: “My reading was met with shocked silence and then with shouts and shrieks. There were shouted comments of outrage that soon degenerated into raucous laughter. After the chaos faded away, the Acjachemen present concurred that the statement made by the learned professor regarding our alleged extinction was somewhat premature. And the party continued into the night.”
The Acjachemen party continues in the present day as well, where council members celebrate the culture and continue efforts to preserve and share its rich history in spite of going unnoticed.
The federal government requires seven areas of criteria to be met for a tribe to be federally recognized. Like other California tribes, the Acjachamen are not a federally recognized tribe, but that does not stop their ongoing preservation efforts.
PHOTO 1: Preservationist David Belardes. PHOTO 2: Joyce Perry, second to right, and Belardes, right, with members of the JBMI. Screenshots from “On the Backs of our Ancestors,” courtesy of Todd Perry
Complicated Divisions
In the ‘90s, rifts among the tribe created divisions that split into three tribal governments claiming the Acjachemen identity: JBMI-Belardes Band, 84A and 84B.
JBMI was previously led by the late preservationist David Belardes, Joyce’s “dear friend” whom she “loved very much.” She credits him with teaching her genealogies, sacred sites and history. David’s son Matias is now the tribe chairman. Joyce now works closely with David’s children.
“We’ve worked together to make sure that his legacy and his knowledge since he’s passed is put in a place that can be used for generations — seven generations from today,” Perry said. “That might be my greatest contribution to the community after I’m gone.”
In 2025, 84A members filed a formal opposition to the nomination of Joyce Perry to the CalNAGPRA CSU Systemwide/Campus Repatriation and Oversight Committee, accusing her of Indigenous appropriation and sacred site desecrations among other complaints.
Around the time Belardes passed away in 2014, new developers in Huntington Beach were constructing The Residences at Pacific City apartment complex. The location where Indigenous ancestors were laid to rest on the land is where the developers sought to build a swimming pool.
Joyce recalled how at the time, Tongva elder Rober Dorame wanted to move the ancestors so they wouldn’t be under the pool. Since unearthing ancestors is never the goal, Joyce and David’s son voted not to move them, a decision that Joyce grieves in a documentary about Acjachemen preservation efforts.
“I don’t feel good about that,” Joyce said in the film. “I feel sad about that. We probably should’ve listened to Robert.”
Some sacred sites are open to the public like Panhe in San Clemente. Part of the sacred land of Putuidem located in San Juan Capistrano wasn’t recognized until 2021. The rest of the site is occupied by JSerra Catholic High School. Even the Bolsa Chica wetlands have been preserved via the efforts of the Acjachemen Tongva Land Conservancy, but about 200 ancestors were still unearthed in 2008.
“There wasn’t any protection for our ancestors until the Native American Heritage Commission was established and then all these laws were created and they're continuing, other than this horrible administration (which) is now trying to diminish them all,” Perry said.
Payómkawichum Water Stories: Revitalizing Cultural Knowledge from Springs to the Sea
It’s been a team effort to bring the archival project to life and to write the necessary grants to fund the project. Joyce said that while she had the vision, PKK Director of Operations Maria Hinojosa is the “mechanic.” In 2024, CalTrout announced its partnership with JBMI. CalTrout is a nonprofit organization that aims to protect California’s waters for fish and freshwater ecosystems.
CalTrout made the statement, “Recognizing the inseparable link between ecological and cultural restoration, NOAA has awarded a dedicated budget of over $400,000 managed directly by the Acjachemen Nation. This funding will support construction monitoring for cultural artifacts, native plant revegetation, expanded educational programs, and enhancements to Putuidem Village, including interactive displays preserving the Acjachemen language.”
The California Coastal Commission awarded the Whale Tail Grant in July of this year, contributing $49,800 for JBMI’s mapping project titled, “Payómkawichum Water Stories: Revitalizing Cultural Knowledge from Springs to the Sea.”
The official grant announcement states, “Through field visits, interviews with Tribal Elders, and archival materials of culturally significant waterways and coastal areas, tribal youth and young adults will develop a Payómkawichum Cultural Waterways Map, along with educational materials for classroom and community use that connect cultural teachings with contemporary coastal stewardship themes. Participants will learn digital archiving, project organization, and environmental storytelling.”
The project will include an interactive story map of the area’s waterways including the Santa Ana River (aka Wanaawna), which has held significant meaning and sustenance to the Tongva and Acjachemen people. The project will also include a Sacred Lands Project that will be private to the public.
Even though these grants are recent, Joyce says tribe council members have been piecemealing this work for about seven years. The waterway map’s completion is slated for the end of 2027.
She cites kinship as an JBMI value, evident through her family’s involvement. Her son and award-winning filmmaker, Todd Perry, directed and produced the documentary “On the Backs of Our Ancestors.” The film, along with the waterways map, will be featured on JBMI’s upcoming website. The documentary includes the experiences of preservation efforts in Southern California. Samuel Dunlap, a previous Native American monitor for the Koll Company, an Irvine-based real estate operating company, is featured in the film, speaking about exposing the company in the ‘90s for not informing the public that it found Indigenous remains in Bolsa Chica.
Todd Perry concludes the documentary by saying his goal is to “bring awareness to saving history, and the fact that we live in a society that doesn’t value truth and seems to want to wash away the real history right in front of our eyes to further their own narrative and kind of push production.”
Joyce was David Bledares’ archivist and now she’s passing the torch to her granddaughter, Sophia, who plays a vital role in the archival project. Sophia is the daughter of Joyce’s other son, Scott.
Sophia reviews all the archives and is in charge of data entry into the GIS system, the resource that is helping create the map.
Joyce mentioned how Sophia’s review of their records has been opening her eyes to the Acjachemen history she wasn’t aware of before.
The public map will focus on five major waterways in O.C. and the tribe’s long-standing relationship with them, including Trabuco Creek, Aliso Creek and Santa Ana River.
Perry offered a glimpse into what will be displayed for the multi-layered interactive map of Acjachemen history:
Layer 1 | The number of ancestral sites: approximately 2,400 according to Joyce.
Layer 2 | The village locations around sacred sites.
Layer 3 | Timeline tracking of how far the sites date back in history. They may be anywhere from 2,000 to 11,000 years.
Layer 4 | Sites on which ancestors have been unearthed.
Plus more to be developed.
Sophia has been involved with the archival project beginning this summer – as her first summer job. Perry lit up with pride when sharing how she feels about Sophia’s participation and her native name: “It has been the joy of my life. As it was my son's. Sophia's native name is Moomot. Moomot means ocean, so her name is wise, graceful ocean …. Sophia is the light of our lives.”
Joyce explained how, according to lost Acjachemen tradition, the son’s mother bestows a native name onto the child, so she’s grateful Sophia’s parents allowed her to do so. Joyce has been sharing the culture with Sophia since she was born.
“I would teach her the words for the moon and the sun and the ocean and the stars,” Perry said. “We would have stories about protecting the ocean.”
Sophia will also be interviewing her grandmother for the tribe’s private records. Acjachemen members ages as young as 7 and 9 years old up to their 20s and 30s will be interviewing older, knowledgeable people within the tribe about their experiences and oral histories.
“There’ll be hours and hours and hours of interviews that will go into our tribal archives,” Perry said. “Then we’ll extract from that accordingly, and decide what we’ll keep for our tribal community for private information and because the public is so hungry to hear about us and learn about us. We are so proud to tell people about who we are, but since contact, everything has been stolen, extracted – erased. We’re skeptical about sharing the smallest thing, so it’s a learning process for us.”
To learn more about the Acjachemen Nation and their history in O.C., visit Blas Aguilar Adobe Museum, open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and by appointment.
