Collective Memory Flows Like Water at Kuruvungna

Kuruvungna – “a place where we are in the sun” – in this place memory flows like water: sustaining connection, creativity, and collective renewal.

Over the summer of 2025, Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) and the Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation (GTSF) presented Endless Wellspring, a series of free public programs at Kuruvungna Village Springs that celebrates Tongva art and culture.

Kuruvungna is the site of a natural spring and an ancestral Tongva village in Tovaangar, present-day Los Angeles. Stewarded by the GTSF, the two acres of land include ponds, gardens, and a cultural center dedicated to the life and history of the Tongva people.

In recent years, the Springs has undergone immense ecological restoration through a collective community effort to care for, and maintain, the sacred site. Reflecting that work, Endless Wellspring was centered around the theme of regeneration, bringing together Native artists and educators to engage with the natural elements, ongoing life, and significant history of Kuruvungna. The series was organized by Mercedes Dorame, artist and GTSF board member, and Christopher Mangum-James, LAND deputy director, with support from artist and scholar Lili Flores Aguilar.

Below are reflections by Aguilar on the work being done at Kuruvugna, and her personal connection to the land.

Guided by the grounded hands of Bob Ramirez, president of GTSF and Daniel Ramirez, chair of the Land and Waters Committee, and Kuruvungna volunteers have cultivated the land at Kuruvungna Village Springs over the past five years with care. It now flourishes with plant relatives like deergrass, clarkias, lupines, fuchsia, sycamores, willows, sages, endemic plants of Pimungna, and palms from Cahuilla homelands. Last year, teosintli – the grandmother of maize – took root, carrying ancestral memory into the present. With these seedlings and plantings, pollinators returned, weaving threads of life back into the waters and soil.

Bob and Daniel’s work is both patient and persistent. Bob often describes the daily effort of removing invasive crayfish – who prey on the California native chub – as Sisyphean. Yet this persistence is not futile; it is a prayer of care and healing, a reminder that tending requires consistency, humility, and reciprocity. In this way, Bob and Daniel embody the teachings of Tongva elder Craig Torres, who reminds us that true stewardship is relational. Through the Tongva phrase, “Weere ‘Eyootax Pomoohiinkem Xaa”—we are all each other’s relatives—Craig conveys a worldview where human, and more-than-human animal, plant, rock/stone, and water kin are bound together. Bob and Daniel’s tending enacts this teaching, showing that kinship is a practice. Each weed pulled, each crayfish removed, each plant nurtured into root and bloom becomes an act of remembering that we are all related.

Around three decades ago, the Springs had fallen into neglect and were filled with trash. In 1992, GTSF co-founder Angie Behrns, together with neighborhood community members, began restoring the site and raising awareness of its significance as a sacred and historic place recognized by the Native American Heritage Commission. Today, the land is being rewilded by stewards Daniel and Bri, alongside the Kuruvungna Village Volunteers.

Kuruvungna’s flourishing is thus not simply about ecological renewal, but also the living poetry of relational reciprocity – a teaching carried forward in the hands and spirit of those who continue to care for this place in the sun.

This resurgence forms the context for Endless Wellspring, a series that embodies regeneration by bringing Native artists and educators into dialogue with Kuruvungna’s land, waters, and histories. Through workshops, performances, and plant walks, the series reanimates the Springs as a place where memory is not only recalled but embodied. Each gathering becomes an invitation to feel connection – between people, plants, waters, and stories – and to experience how collective memory is reinvigorated through ecological arts.

The initiative has been shaped by a constellation of advocates. Walton Chiu has championed the Springs at the West LA Sawtelle Neighborhood Council; Tongva artist and board member Mercedes Dorame has pushed for deeper arts-based engagements; and Christopher Mangum-James has emphasized Kuruvungna’s layered character. As Bob and I often observe, the Springs is a palimpsest – layered with ancestral history and ongoing, dynamic presence. Together, these contributions affirm the site as both sacred ground and contemporary cultural space.

One especially powerful example of embodied memory was Angie Behrns’ oral history walk. As Angie guided visitors across the site, her narrative became a living archive. Listening together, we felt how the Springs’ histories are carried not only in archives or plaques but also in breath, movement, and voice. These recorded embodied memories offer a framework for how The Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation (GTSF) envisions telling Kuruvungna’s complex story – through inclusive and accessible curatorial strategies grounded in lived relationships rather than detached display.

It is within this current moment of flourishing that I locate my own story. As a community steward with GTSF for just over a year, I have been privileged to support this work of ecological and cultural revitalization. Yet my relationship with Kuruvungna began long before.

I grew up nearby in West LA. Friends from University High would talk about the Springs on their campus, though to me it always seemed elusive. Passing by, I would see the gates closed, the sign reading Kuruvungna Springs—a place I could glimpse but not enter.

Years later, during the pandemic, I sought community amidst the isolation of graduate studies and began volunteering at the Springs. One of my earliest encounters was with Bob, tending the land near the kiiy. At that time, only a few plants encircled the architecture; today, the same place is lush, a living testament to care, reciprocity, and ecological stewardship. Bob’s ever-present call, “Grab a rake!” was less an instruction than an invitation: a reminder that tending this place is both responsibility and privilege, a practice of belonging enacted with each gesture of care.

As an intern, I helped organize the Gathering at Kuruvungna, alongside colleagues Bri, Angela, and Christine. The event reimagined the earlier Life Before Columbus celebration launched by Angie Behrns, Loretta Ditlow, and the founding GTSF board in the early 90s. This shift away from Columbus reflects more than a change in name: it signals a movement away from colonial commemorations toward cultural memory revitalization. Listening to Angie’s stories—about her childhood on the Westside, and the challenges of sustaining a nonprofit dedicated to a sacred site—taught me that the Springs’ endurance is itself a story of survivance.

Today, GTSF serves as cultural and ecological steward, storyteller, and convener. By caring for land and water, preserving and sharing knowledge, and holding space for both human and more-than-human communities, the Foundation ensures that Kuruvungna is not only remembered but continues to thrive. Endless Wellspring extends this mission, showing how ecological arts can carry collective and embodied memories forward – reminding us that stories are vital not only in words but in the ways we move, gather, and relate with the living world.

In this place where we are in the sun, memory flows like water – healing collectivities while gently eroding the concrete histories of urbanized Tovaangar.

Lili Flores Aguilar, Ph.D. (Coca-descendent) is a Community Steward at Gabrielino-Tongva Springs Foundation. Transdisciplinary artist and scholar, rooted in Native and Indigenous aesthetics, her work weaves traditional ecological knowledge with community-driven design practices across the arts. With a background in anthropology, archaeology, and media arts, she engages collaborative methods to map plural stories through curating, teaching, and public programming.

Author's note: Survivance is a term from native literary theory and practice that emphasizes an active sense of presence over absence and the continuation of stories as renunciations of dominance and the unbearable sentiments of tragedy (Vizenor 2008).

Images of the summer lupine; teosinte seeds in hands; and valley arrowhead by Lili Flores Aguilar. Additional photos by Star Montana and Gina Clyne.