Puvungna

Puvungna is where the world began. For the Acjachemen and the Gabrielino/Tongva it is the place where living things passed from spiritual form into physical form, and it is described by the people who hold it sacred in the terms other faiths reserve for Jerusalem or Mecca. It is not a ruin and not an exhibit. It is ground still in use.

Twenty-two acres remain, an undeveloped parcel on the western edge of the Cal State Long Beach campus, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974. The site once reached well past the campus boundary. The city bought the land in the 1950s and the university went up on it. In 1993 tribal groups stopped a plan to put a strip mall and parking lot here.

In 2019 the university dumped six thousand four hundred cubic yards of construction dirt and debris from a dormitory project onto the site. The Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation – Belardes and the California Cultural Resources Preservation Alliance sued. The settlement reached in September 2021 bound the university and any future owner not to develop or damage the land, and required it to find a permanent steward.

That has not happened. The only application, from Friends of Puvungna and the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy, was rejected. The dirt is still there.

Visit quietly. This is a living sacred site, not an attraction.