100 Lecture Series: Indigenous Transportation Knowledge with Adonia Lugo

In her lecture “Re-Indigenizing Los Angeles’ Transportation Systems”, cultural anthropologist Adonia Lugo provides an overview of pre-1769 indigenous transportation systems in order to demonstrate how we can be better stewards of our environment. As she discusses, one of the most significant features of their transportation patterns is that they were in a relationship with their environment, particularly with water, as opposed to being in control. For example, indigenous groups would move to accommodate the rivers, creeks, and weather patterns due to flooding concerns. Additionally, these individuals referred to the current LA, Hondo, San Gabriel, and Santa rivers as the “4 sacred rivers”, further demonstrating the level of respect they maintained with the environment as they used it to get around. Lugo is very interested in the concept of re-indigenizing, which she defines as “awakening relationships between people and the landscape we live in”. Using indigenous transportation history as a model, she recommends that we build relationships with tribal members to be in better harmony with our environment. This can include paying local indigenous people to lead restoration efforts and collaborating with tribal groups to better understand them as a vital stakeholder in transportation planning. A great example she provides of successful re-indigenizing is the Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy, which appropriately includes indigenous knowledge in various sustainability practices. Her recommendations help frame re-indigenization as a practical process that we are morally obligated to invest in within the realm of transportation planning. Speaker Adonia Lugo is the Equity Research Manager at UCLA ITS, co-founder of the open street event CicLAvia and the People for Mobility Justice organization. Adonia has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from UC Irvine. This event is part of the Perloff Lecture Series on 100 Years of Transportation Research, presented by UCLA ITS and UCLA Urban Planning Department. Funding is provided by the Harvey S. Perloff Endowment.