LOS ANGELES _ On a recent afternoon, Mati Waiya wore a bear bone in his nose and a medicine bag dangled from a strap around his neck. In his hand were two California condor feathers, sacred to the Chumash people who once flourished on the Southern and Central California coasts.
For more than a quarter of a century, Waiya has served as one of the most prominent voices for the Chumash, invoking his ancestors' ties to the land along the Santa Clara River. His nonprofit Wishtoyo Foundation, which runs an education center in Malibu, has raised more than $12 million since 2015, IRS records show. The foundation also has waged legal battles to protect historically Chumash areas and waterways from pollution and major construction projects.
But leaders of the local Chumash band and academic experts on the tribe's history and genealogy challenge Waiya's claims to Chumash roots. Several also have asked whether it is appropriate for him and his family to make money through the foundation and allege he performs ceremonies that mislead the public about Chumash culture and usurps the role of the tribal leadership in Ventura County.
A Los Angeles Times review of census, birth, marriage, death and Roman Catholic Church records dating to the 18th century shows that Waiya's forebears came from Mexico, where ethnohistorians said there were no Chumash.
In an interview at an old Santa Paula golf course that his foundation has bought to create a Chumash cultural conservancy, Waiya said he had a documented family genealogy that shows he is of Chumash descent, but he declined to share it with The Times.
"We know where we come from," Waiya said, gesturing to the Topatopa Mountains.
Questionable claims to Native American ancestry have become common in recent decades, infuriating tribes who complain that their culture is often appropriated for financial gain.
A Times investigation this year found that more than $300 million in contracts reserved by local, state and federal government agencies for minorities across the country instead went to contractors who made unsubstantiated claims to being Cherokee Indians. The contractors were members of unrecognized groups that federally recognized tribes say are illegitimate. A review of genealogy records dating to the 19th century found that the contractors' ancestors were white.
The controversy over Waiya's ancestry is more complex, raising thorny issues of cultural identity and who can legitimately represent Chumash interests.
Waiya has strong support from some Chumash members of his foundation who say he has fought to preserve the tribe's history and culture. But to his detractors, Waiya's role as one of the state's most visible leaders of the Chumash people makes his ancestral claims all the more concerning.
