Traditional singing fills the air at this picturesque part of Santa Barbara City College. Before the college...before Santa Barbara - this would have been the site of an original Chumash village.
It’s a history that is being made more visible with the installation of new signs along the bluffs here. The signs educate on the history, culture, language and art of the original dwellers of this land.
Solange Aguilar was the visual artist and designer for the signs and says she was aware of the responsibility of recording the history and culture.
"To work on this project, and to represent thousands of years of culture was a huge responsibility. I definitely felt the weight of that in everything that I was doing," she said.
"A lot of my role was sitting and listening to my family members and hearing what they wanted to see represented on there, and just bring things to life that hadn't been brought to life before in this way. It was a lot of responsibility, a lot of weight," said Aguilar.
The project has been in the works for nearly 9 years, after a campus-wide controversy over an art installation which resembled a teepee was erected in this space. Annette Cordero was a faculty member at the time, and says creating something beautiful and positive is a step to heal wounds and encourage greater understanding.
"We wanted to do something positive, to get a positive closure to what had been a painful experience," she explained.
"We felt that the signage, giving accurate information, giving a more respectful perspective, and quite frankly, giving our perspective would be a way of bringing healing to the space, to the community, certainly to those of us who had experienced it, but also for the future, it would be something that would be a positive reflection," said Cordero.
"Most of the people who come through here won't know what the background was. They won't know the negative part. They'll just see the signs and it will be very positive and it will be very healing, I think," added Cordero.
Amanda Jacobs from Santa Barbara City College says the installation of the signs is important for the student body and community as a whole.
"This is just huge for our student body and our Santa Barbara community to come to campus and be educated on the Chumash culture and the land that we occupy," said Jacobs.
Along with the signs on campus, there’s also a QR code which can be scanned for further reading and resources.
