Spotlight: Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians and Chairman John Chistman
By Guest Contributors, Lucy Roberts, CEO and Geneva Gamez Vallejo, Creative Services, HMC Bilingual Advertising
In working with the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians in San Diego for more than 18 years, a question I’ve asked myself continuously is exactly how their neighbors perceive them. Sure; everyone has the opportunity to visit the reservation with a trip to the casino, the outlets or the resort. Maybe you’ve caught a concert on their land as well, but is this all there is to this tribe? Hardly – because they are so much more than just a business.
They are, for example, a self-governed people with their own police and fire departments. They have academic ambitions, just like any other families. They value higher education and thrive in keeping their culture alive through special programs on the reservation.
For these and many other reasons, it’s important to highlight their presence in our community. We recently sat down with John Christman, the newly elected chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, and our interview with him proved enlightening.
So, who are the Kumeyaay?
They are the original native inhabitants of San Diego, and they have resided in the region for more than 10,000 years. The tribe was the first to greet the Spaniards when they sailed into San Diego Harbor along the Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo 1542 expedition. Upon the arrival of the Europeans, much of the Kumeyaay lands shifted, but you’ll still find part of the tribe south of the border in Ensenada, Baja Norte, México, where their land once reached before boundaries began to change.
As for the name Viejas, legend says that, when Europeans arrived, women and children received instructions to run and hide in the caves. Upon hearing the marching drum of the European army, they were to flee the caves and run further up the mountain. The elderly women were unable to keep up, so they remained in the caves, and when the Europeans searched there, all they found were “Viejas,” which is the Spanish word for elderly women. The name stuck and became what is now the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians.
Language and Culture
With the arrival of other new inhabitants, the Kumeyaay had to endure challenging struggles that extended far beyond giving up land. Among other things, their language and culture were in jeopardy. In fact, reminiscing not too far back, Christman explained how his grandparents had no other option but to attend Indian schools.
“The schools were a form of assimilation, so that had a real profound effect on the culture itself, because when they were sent away, they weren’t permitted to speak our language,” he said. “That in itself stopped a lot of practices and a lot of families from speaking their language. My grandparents had to avoid speaking our language just to survive,” he added.
Keeping the language and culture alive is a key objective in Christman’s tenure as chairman. “We’re trying to [keep the language alive] through tutoring; we are incorporating it into the education part. Some of the commands we do in our language, like colors and numbers, and I’m currently working on a more advanced program that is a combined effort to create an archive of music and language with some of the tribes. We’re experimenting with newer audiovisual techniques,” he explained. With the archive, he’s optimistic the tribe will avoid ever suffering a similar cultural loss.
Christman admits that the outside view of the tribe has a hard time “separating the old from the new.” It’s as if evolution only happened around them. Surprisingly, many misconceptions about Native Americans come directly from academic misrepresentation. He asserts, “The education that was provided throughout the school systems, along with what even Hollywood’s played on it, but the school systems themselves within the last few years have always depicted us in the olden times. You know how we have contemporary governments? They don’t really talk about us living in the twenty-first century. We’ve always changed and we’ve always had to adapt – otherwise we wouldn’t be surviving.”
A History With the Tribe
Christman has been in politics since 1990, when he was 21, after his grandfather nominated him Vice Chairman and the tribe’s membership subsequently elected him.
“The responsibility of that helped me have a different view. My grandfather firmly believed, and I do, too, that everyone who is a member should serve at one time,” said Christman.
After completing a two-year term as Vice Chairman, he began working as a purchasing and administrative projects manager for Viejas Casino, a role he held for seven years before becoming the tribe’s treasurer in 2001, a role he then held for a decade. He returned to Viejas Casino in 2015, serving as a manager of facilities support, before he officially became Chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Tribe in 2018. He’s continuously been an integral part of the tribe’s growth, and he plans to continue to expand on that legacy moving forward.
The casino business is imperative to the Kumeyaay, as it’s a corporation and a community all in one.
“The casino is basically the lifeline to the whole tribal government. It funds all the public works, the education, the tribal government itself, the general welfare, our health insurance. Everything is funded by that. How we sustain, how we go forward. I’ve been privileged enough to see the before and after of it. I got to see the poverty that existed before; I lived it. And by no means are we now millionaires or that affluent, but we were able to stay together and survive and be self-sufficient,” said Chairman Christman.
The casino is not only the lifeline of the tribe. Along with the resort and outlet center, it is the source of income for nearly 2,000 non-tribal employees from all around San Diego county. In addition, the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay spends more than $70 million a year on more than 4,000 vendors, creating millions more in tax revenue from local businesses. The tribe is always looking for a way to give back and help its surrounding community.
Education is an important aspect of Kumeyaay daily life.
Although, there is no school on the reservation, students attend the school of their choice outside the reservation, and the tribe encourages them to further their education through special after-school programs offered at home. Some of the special programs offered cover tutoring, sports and cultural enrichment. As an incentive, students receive awards based on their academic excellence on a monthly basis. Upon graduation, any tribal member moving on to higher education will receive tution in full from the tribe.
Many members who graduate from four-year universities come back to Viejas and fulfill their professional careers here, while others take their education to other parts of the country and continue to spread their first-hand knowledge of the tribe to others.
Christman is also a father to five children, three of whom he says have expressed interest in getting more involved with representing the tribe when time permits.