Saubel, Katherine Siva, 1920-2011

<p>Katherine Siva Saubel, née Katherine Siva, (born March 7, 1920, Los Coyotes Reservation [on the border of Riverside and San Diego counties], California, U.S.—died November 1, 2011, Morongo Reservation, near Banning, California), Native American scholar and educator committed to preserving her Cahuilla culture and language and to promoting their fuller understanding by the larger public.</p>
<p>Reared on the Palm Springs Reservation in California, Katherine Siva was taught by her parents from an early age to honour the traditions of her people, the Cahuilla. After graduating from Palm Springs High School, she worked as a teacher’s assistant at the University of California, Los Angeles (1959–60), and as a consultant to linguist Hansjakob Seiler at the University of Cologne, Germany (1964–74). In the process Saubel became a scholar of the history, literature, and culture of the Cahuilla. Together with her husband, historian Mariano Saubel, and others, she cofounded the Malki Museum on the Morongo Indian Reservation in Banning, California, which not only displays artifacts dating from prehistoric to recent times but also sponsors the publication of scholarly works on Native Americans from the region.</p>
<p>Saubel’s own scholarship had two very different focuses: ethnobotany and the Cahuilla language. In the late 1970s Seiler and Saubel collaborated on both a grammar and a dictionary for Cahuilla, a language which had never before been preserved in writing. She also published a dictionary, I’Isniyatam (Designs): A Cahuilla Word Book (1977). An authority also on the unique Cahuilla uses of plants, Saubel was the coauthor, with anthropologist John Lowell Bean, of Temalpakh (From the Earth): Cahuilla Indian Knowledge and Usage of Plants (1972) and of two books of ethnobotanical notes. In addition to teaching Cahuilla history, literature, and culture on various campuses in California and at the University of Cologne, Saubel also served on the California Native American Heritage Commission, where her intervention helped preserve locations sacred to Native Americans throughout the state. She was named 1987 Elder of the Year by the California State Indian Museum and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.</p>

<p>Katherine Siva Saubel, an elder of the Cahuilla Indian tribe of Southern California, once described herself as “just a voice in the wilderness all by myself.” She meant that she had few people with whom she could speak the Cahuilla language or sing the songs that conveyed her people’s ancient stories.</p>
<p>“My race,” she told The Times in 2000, “is dying.”</p>
<p>Now Saubel, long its feistiest guardian, has died.</p>
<p>“It’s a huge loss … the end of an era,” said Nathalie Colin, an ethno-historian at the Malki Museum near Banning, which Saubel co-founded more than 45 years ago to preserve Cahuilla history and traditions.</p>
<p>Saubel, 91, died of natural causes Tuesday at her home on the Morongo Reservation near Banning, said her nephew, Kevin Siva.</p>
<p>One of the last fluent speakers of the Cahuilla language, Saubel worked with linguists and anthropologists to produce a Cahuilla dictionary and grammar book as well as historical accounts and studies of medicinal plants known through tribal lore. In 1964, she helped launch the Malki Museum, the first nonprofit museum founded and managed by Native Americans on a reservation.</p>
<p>She was also an activist, who in 1998 brought electricity to the Los Coyotes Reservation in San Diego County, where she was born and later served as tribal chairwoman.</p>
<p>“Dr. Saubel was truly remarkable, both as a leader and as a fierce defender of Native American culture, from the preservation of the traditional Cahuilla language to the protection of sacred sites,” Robert Martin, chairman of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, said in a statement last week.</p>
<p>The Cahuilla (pronounced ka-wee-yah), once one of the largest California Indian tribes, are concentrated in Riverside and San Diego counties. Among the more prominent Cahuilla bands are the Morongo and the Agua Caliente band in Palm Springs.</p>
<p>Born on March 7, 1920, Saubel was the eighth of 11 children. She lived on the remote Los Coyotes Reservation until she was almost 4 and then moved with her family to Palm Springs.</p>
<p>She entered public school there at 7, knowing not one word of English. Some Indian children were beaten when they were caught speaking their native language in school; Saubel was just ignored. “I would speak to them in the Indian language,” she told The Times in 2000, “and they would answer me in English. I don’t remember when I began to understand what was being said to me. Maybe a year.”</p>
<p>She was believed to be the first Native American woman to graduate from Palm Springs High School, in 1940. That year she married another Cahuilla Indian, Mariano Saubel.</p>
<p>She is survived by their son, Allen; four grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.</p>