09/22/04

LC040922

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Digging on sacred ground. What happens when a major development
encounters an ancient Indian burial ground?

Robert Dorame>> That is an intact cemetery. This is a village
site. This belongs, and always has been respectively belonging,
to the Tongva people.

Val>> And then, they called him "The Bronze Buckaroo". The
story of Herb Jeffries, America's first black singing cowboy.

It's all next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> What happens when a construction crew unearths a sacred
Indian burial ground? Well, that's what happened last fall at
the huge Playa Vista development near Marina del Rey.
Construction crews uncovered an Indian cemetery. It wasn't a
big surprise. After all, the Tongva-Gabrieleno Indians had
lived in that area for centuries, but what to do with the
remains sparked an intense battle not only between Native-
Americans in Playa Vista, but within the tribe itself.

The west side development called Playa Vista is the biggest
mixed-use project built in Los Angeles in fifty years. For more
than a decade, it has been the focus of intense controversy over
wetlands and other environmental issues and now, even as it
nears completion, there is yet another controversy underway. It
has to do with an Indian cemetery and a water drainage system
that has been dug on the southern border of the project.

The waterway is needed to carry rainwater runoff into Centinela
Creek, but last October, construction crews encountered
substantial remains from a Gabrieleno-Tongva Indian burial site.
The Tongva were Southern California's first inhabitants. They
lived in an area stretching from present-day Malibu to San
Bernardino and south into Orange County. Steve Soboroff is the
spokesman for Playa Vista and says Indian traditions have been
respected.

Steve Soboroff>> We're following the rules. We're in fact not
only following the rules, we're above and beyond the call of
duty. We're a great neighbor. We're very proud of the way
we're handling this. These excavations are being done with
spoons and toothbrushes and brushes, not with bulldozers.

Val>> When the remains were found last fall, Playa Vista
quickly hired an archaeological company. The forty-member team
of archaeologists and technicians mapped and excavated the area.
So far, they've found the remains of about 165 Tongva. Some
members of the tribe say the way the remains were handled was
illegal, improper and disrespectful.

Kimberly Johnson>> I saw very young archaeologists working on
the site with no regard. I saw brushes on the bones that were
breaking the bones as they were brushing away. I saw bones that
had accidentally been stepped on and broken. It made me sick
that they just absolutely dismissed any idea that this was a
cemetery.

Val>> The Tongva Indians requested that no video be taken
inside the site, so we confined our camera to the hill above
Playa Vista. Robert Dorame is the designated Most Likely
Descendant, or MLD. That means he can make recommendations as
to how the remains are handled.

Robert Dorame>> I have been on the site and the last site visit
was with the Native-American Heritage Commission. I have made
recommendations to Jeff Alschultz, who is the owner of
Statistical Research --

Val>> -- who's doing the excavation?

Robert Dorame>> Who's doing the archaeological work. He has
refused my guidelines.

Val>> Supporters signed letters demanding that Playa Vista stop
the digging immediately, but Playa Vista went forward and
completed the excavation. Eventually it unearthed remains from
nearly four hundred Tongva.

Robert Dorame>> This is an extremely high number because it is
an intact cemetery. This is a village site. This belongs, and
always has been respectively belonging, to the Tongva people.

Val>> But Playa Vista says they are working with Tongva members
and are handling the remains according to a detailed agreement,
an agreement that had the concurrence of Tongva leaders.

Steve Soboroff>> The community has signed an agreement that was
ratified three years ago of how to deal with these. This has
been going on for over a decade, but we've got to make sure that
the water going into that Santa Monica Bay is clean and, if that
corridor is slowed down or stopped, that hurts the Santa Monica
Bay and that's not what we're prepared to let happen under the
condition that we follow the guidelines, the respect and the
dignity to the Native-Americans.

Val>> The one thing to understand about Native-American
politics is that there are various councils and groups within
any one tribe, so while one group of Tongva is protesting Playa
Vista --

[Film Clip]

Val>> Another group headed by Tongva tribe member Martin Alcala
is working with Playa Vista.

Martin Alcala>> "Spirits of the West".

Martin Alcala>> I am on the site daily to make sure that my
ancestors are respected. What we do is we have an orientation
every Monday morning before any work where we gather around in a
circle and I request that the people who will be working on my
ancestors treat them like their own, like their great-
grandfathers, and that philosophy has worked very well where I
am very satisfied with the way they're being handled.

Val>> But Robert Dorame points out that the agreement governing
Native-American remains expired three years ago and, although it
was renewed, he doesn't consider it valid.

Robert Dorame>> I'm not sure who signed that and, again, who
the signatures were, but the question is, was in fact the
Native-American community of the government notified about the
situation here?

Val>> It's clear that the divisions between tribal councils can
get very emotional and attacks at times get personal.

Martin Alcala>> I feel the ancestors, especially here at Playa
Vista, are a lot more closely related to my portion of the
family than Mr. Dorame's. He in fact is Gabrieleno and Apache
and it's the Apache you're seeing in him now, not the Tongva.

Robert Dorame>> Our personal ancestry from my lineal
descendants also goes across right straight to the highland of
Pima. We have family records of family being buried on Catalina
Island.

Val>> Dorame, in turn, is critical of Alcala because he was
paid by Playa Vista for monitoring the project.

Martin Alcala>> That's correct. Like I said, Mr. Dorame's a
monitor at times, Mr. Davis, and they are certainly paid for.

Val>> One of the reasons for these intense feelings has nothing
to do with ancestral bones. It has to do with the right to open
a casino. Casinos are run by Native-Americans, but only if
they've received official recognition from the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. Whichever particular group of Tongva wins recognition
also wins the right to run a lucrative enterprise, and the more
authentic a council is, the more likely it will earn federal
recognition.

Martin Alcala>> Once we're federally recognized, then this
problem sort of goes away because suddenly we'll be able to
declare ourselves a sovereign nation and perhaps throw up a
casino to help us out of a couple hundred years of grinding
poverty and maybe even buy back the land to treat it the way we
want it to be treated.

Val>> As for Playa Vista, it plans to house the Indian remains
in a Native-American Cultural Center that will be built near the
site.

Steve Soboroff>> We're doing an interpretative center right
near this area that's going to celebrate the history of the land
in partnership with LMU and the Gabrieleno-Tongvas, so we're
doing numerous programs with them to celebrate their history and
their heritage.

Val>> In the meantime, a tribal council official has filed a
lawsuit against Playa Vista and a half dozen government
agencies, saying the remains were not handled according to law.

>> There was no consultation with the tribe required under
federal and state law and so they found some sell-out Indians to
sign off on this and that's what they're using.

Kimberly Johnson>> Historically, what they've always done is
just move the Indians out of the way so that they can develop
and that's what they're continuing to do.

Val>> Phase Two of Playa Vista's plans calls for the
construction of 2,600 homes. With Indian remains scattered
throughout the area, it's very likely this controversy will get
worse before it gets resolved.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> Here's a Hollywood trivia question for you. Who was the
first and only black singing cowboy in the movies? Hint: he was
also called "The Bronze Buckaroo". Well, his name was Herb
Jeffries and he starred in a film called "Harlem on the
Prairie". It was the first full-length musical western with an
African-American star. Now a short documentary has been made
about Herb Jeffries. It was one of the pieces featured in the
Veritas film project. Here is "Egyptian #24" directed by
Darroch Greer.

[Film Clip]

Herbert Jeffries>> So I came out to California 1936. I walked
into Mr. Gill's office and he said, "What can I do for you?" and
I said, "I'm trying to find somebody who might be interested in
making some black cowboy pictures because there are thousands of
these little theaters throughout the south and only white cowboy
pictures." He said, "Wow, what a great idea. Let me call my
distributor." He picked up the phone and said, "I got a guy
here who's been traveling through the south with Earl Hines's
band and he's interested in somebody making some black cowboy
pictures to play in all those segregated theaters." He said,
"I'll take all you got. How many you got?"

[Film Clip]

Herbert Jeffries>> He got everybody, a beautiful girl to play
the lead and couldn't find a leading man. Either they couldn't
ride, they couldn't sing or they couldn't act. They did screen
tests on about twenty of them. So in desperation, I just went
to him and said, "Why don't you let me play the part? I can
ride, I can sing, I can act." He said, "Oh, you don't look the
part. It won't work." I said, "Paint me up. Put on some
makeup and make me look dark." So they gave me Max Factor's
Egyptian #24.

[Film Clip]

Herbert Jeffries>> I went to hear Ellington in my hometown in
Detroit. So I went in there, you know, dressed in a big ten-
gallon hat and my cowboy suit, walked up in front of the
bandstand and Ellington saw me and he said, "Ladies and
gentlemen, The Bronze Buckaroo, Herb Jeffries." He asked me to
get up and sing a song. I did with the band. Then he said,
"Come to my dressing room during the intermission. I want to
talk to you about something." So I went into his dressing room
and got a chance to chat with him and he asked me if I would do
some theater engagements and some hotel engagements with him, so
I agreed. I wound up by staying with him for three and a half
years.

[Film Clip]

Herbert Jeffries>> I did "Jump For Joy". Again, in "Jump For
Joy", I was not supposed to be in it. I didn't match the color
scheme, according to the producers. John Garfield, who was a
very good movie star at that time, had invested some money in
the show. We'd been running about six weeks successfully and
Garfield came backstage. He said to me, "Mr. Jeffries, I hope
you don't become offended by this, but you just don't match the
rest of the cast." He said, "I think we ought to put some
makeup on you." So they went back and got some more of that Max
Factor's Egyptian #24 (laughter).

So I went out there to do my number and we were dancing around
and I looked down in the pit and I saw Ellington with the most
horrifying look on his face I ever saw. When I was down in the
dressing room, Ellington flew in and said, "What in the world
are you calling yourself doing? Al Jolson?" The next thing I
knew, Mr. Garfield and the makeup man were in the room and
Garfield said, "Well, I guess that doesn't work at all. I'm
sorry. Let's just go back to where we were." (laughter)

[Film Clip]

Herbert Jeffries>> All I know is that if four drops of black
blood is so potent that it can turn all the rest of you into
what it is, that's got to be some kind of super blood and
probably the only thing that I would have regretted, if I were
one who was being called a mulatto or octoroon or the various
different names that they call people, I would wish to have more
of that blood.

Val>> In 2003, Jeffries was inducted into the National Cowboys
of Color Hall of Fame and, a year later, he was inducted into
the Hall of Great Western Performers.

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Val>> His name is synonymous with genius. He cracked the code
of physics and revolutionized the way we look at the world. He
is, of course, Albert Einstein. But even Einstein had some good
years and some not so good years. 1905 was a very good year.
That's the year the twenty-four year old patent clerk explained
the nature of life and created the special theory of relativity.
Now a comprehensive presentation of Einstein's life and theories
has been gathered together at the Skirball Center. Patt
Morrison visited the Skirball to learn more.

Patt Morrison>> What is it about Einstein that makes his name
and his work resonate even with people who don't understand it,
like me?

Diana Buchwald>> It's a very interesting question that Einstein
asked himself many, many times. He started asking himself that
question as early as the 1920's. Most famously, he told Charlie
Chaplin that people smile at you because they have no idea what
you're doing. People smile at me because they think they know
exactly what I'm doing.

Einstein is probably the best-recognized representative of
modern time. The combination of his revolutionary papers on
rethinking space and time and the fact that these papers and
this theory were confirmed after the end of a horrid war
propelled Einstein into worldwide fame around 1920. He tried to
publicize science as much as possible. Einstein tried very hard
to explain very difficult science, complicated concepts such as
you will see in this exhibition, to the general public.

Patt Morrison>> Everyone is familiar with the concept of dog
years versus human years, that one human year supposedly equals
seven dog years. Einstein's concepts about space and time
really made possible the notion of the elasticity of time and
time travel. For example, Einstein was born 125 years ago. If
he had left the earth when he was born traveling at almost the
speed of light and were to come back today, he wouldn't be 125
years old. He'd be seventeen years old. That's the difference
in the change in time accorded by space.

His time here at CalTech at -- in the early 1930's, he wintered
here for three years. What did he do in California? He enjoyed
some of the California attractions, he went to a movie premier,
he went to a date orchard, he went to Santa Barbara.

Diana Buchwald>> He came to California not merely to relax in
the sun, but to be around what were at the time the foremost
astronomers and astrophysicists in the United States and
possibly in the world. The California technology at the time
had the largest telescope in the world.

Patt Morrison>> This was Mount Wilson?

Diana Buchwald>> Mount Wilson, the sixty inch and the hundred
inch Hooker Telescope. And with this telescope in the late
1920's, Edwin Hubble and other scientists had discovered that we
live in a dynamic universe, not a static universe, a universe
that is expanding fast. This was a conception that was totally
foreign to scientists almost a decade or so earlier, so Einstein
came to see for himself this marvel of technology.

Patt Morrison>> What most people don't realize, I suppose, is
that there are two theories of relativity and each of them does
something very different.

Diana Buchwald>> Absolutely. Einstein's theory of special
relativity which we're celebrating now with this exhibition,
published in 1905, and the second one was Einstein's generalized
theory of relativity which he completed in 1915, a decade later.
The special theory of relativity applies to systems in motion
such as trains and cars and so on.

Patt Morrison>> This is the famous equation.

Diana Buchwald>> And an addendum to this famous first paper in
special relativity is the famous equation E equals MC square,
the equivalent of energy and mass. The special theory of
relativity was the foundation for the generalized theory, which
is a theory about space and time, the relativity of space and
time, the non-existence of absolute space and time.

Patt Morrison>> This exhibit demonstrates how space time, the
fabric of space and time, can be warped by mass. Think of the
surface of a trampoline. If you roll a tennis ball across the
surface of a trampoline, it just rolls right across. But if you
put a bowling ball on that trampoline and then roll the tennis
ball across, the bowling ball's mass alters the behavior of the
tennis ball. It's not going to roll in a straight line. So if
you move closer to this, this demonstrates how your mass alters
this particular fabric. Move farther away and you see that it
diminishes.

There was one breakthrough he contributed to that he ended up
regretting, which was nuclear war. In fact, he spent a good
portion of the latter years of his life as a pacifist proposing
nuclear disarmament. He had written very passionately about
that and spoke as well.

Diane Buchwald>> Einstein was a pacifist, to our knowledge, as
early as the outbreak of World War I. That is half a century
before the first nuclear bomb was exploded over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. He held this position adamantly until Hitler's rise
to power and, in particular, until the invasion of Poland in
1939 when he changed his mind. In 1939, he contributed his
famous letter that he wrote to President Roosevelt which you can
see here in the exhibition urging the United States government
to embark on research in nuclear matters in particular because
he and his colleagues were well aware that in Germany an atomic
bomb might soon be built.

Patt Morrison>> Einstein was born in Germany and died in the
United States, but he considered himself a citizen of the world.
He also considered his strongest bond to be with the Jewish
people. He didn't really practice rituals, but he felt himself
very strongly a Jew. He was a supporter of the Jewish homeland
and, in his later years, he was offered the presidency of Israel
which he declined. But he also urged that Jews and Arabs manage
to find some peace between themselves too. He strove for peace.
He also strove for a unified field theory, the holy grail of
physics, one theory to tie everything together.

Diana Buchwald>> Right. In his theory of special relativity,
Einstein combined dynamics and electromagnets. But his theory
of generalized relativity needed to be reconciled or combined
into one whole unified theory with other theories of forces
between atoms and nuclear particles, for example. Einstein
devoted himself to this project, as we mentioned, for twenty-
some years, thirty years, did not find the satisfactory solution
and, to this day, we have not yet managed to combine all the
known forces and interactions of matter, energy, space and time
into one. So he left us a lot to do and he knew that.

Val>> And where, might you ask, is Albert Einstein buried?
Nowhere. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at an
undisclosed location. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala.
For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see
you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Past mistakes threaten the future of the trauma center at King-
Drew Hospital. Can the patients be saved?

>> If we let it go, we are all guilty and the blood of those
who die will be on our hands.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.