We are delighted to announce a special partnership with multiple organizations in the Santa Barbara area that came together on October 10th to celebrate Chumash Trails Day! Our hope is that this inaugural holiday will inspire us all to think about who walked the land before us, and how, in particular, the Chumash Peoples continue to maintain a sacred connection with the many plants and animals with whom they co-exist today.
On Sunday, October 10, we celebrated Chumash Trails Day – “Old Trails New Soles”
 in honor of Indigenous Peoples’ DayÂ
in Santa Barbara.Â
We at the Tribal Trust Foundation are pleased to be working in collaboration with the Montecito Trails Foundation (purchase the Chumash Trail Map here) and the Barbareño Band of Chumash Indians. This project is being supported by the Santa Barbara Foundation.
      
                          Various trails throughout the Montecito area, courtesy of MTF.
We are grateful for the counsel we received on this project by Chumash elders who have a deep ancestral connection to the land, and deeply appreciative as they continue to share their perspective as we collectively bring Chumash Trails Day to life. In addition to the day’s events, TTF Board Member, Art Cisneros, Chumash Elder and Firekeeper, gave an inspiring opening prayer ceremony and our Chumash Board Member Amber Bassett created a special bracelet talisman. As always, we stand in solidarity with our Chumash brothers and sisters, and are most grateful to them for sharing their unique perspective of the natural world with us. In this spirit, we hope you enjoy an excerpt of an essay written by Chimaway Lopez, below.
as the plants, animals, rocks, and insects bring back memories, offer new ones,
and give lessons about how to be in this place.
So, a trail can be many things to a Chumash person: a path, a story, a connection. Thinking deeply for a moment, a trail is, for me, a confluence of social, ecological, geological, hydrological streams of causality that work together to shape the trail’s being and also its continued emergence. But before all of this; the plants, animals, insects, rocks and springs; the hikers, engineers, volunteers and recreationalists; the picks, shovels, saws, and shears; even before the very idea of a trail, my elders saw a confluence of place: a trail is from a place, through a place, towards a place, and exists as a manifestation of this being-ness within place, space, and time.
Walking through our trails is to think alongside these wise old Chumash philosophers. If you listen carefully and ask the right questions, you can begin to make a connection. What kinds of souls first traveled these trails? What gifts, weights or obstacles did they carry with them? What were they grateful for and what were they wary of? I am inviting you to pause a moment, to reflect, and think beyond the surface answers of the tourist postcards and brochures: What does this confluence of being-in-motion inspire in you?”
