Introduction
For a city of nine million, Los Angeles possesses a remarkable secret. Usually characterized as a place without a past, as a garden of sprawl and rootlessness, Los Angeles would seem to be an historical enigma. Yet I have discovered, during fifteen years of research, the remarkable ancient history that lies behind the Hollywood exterior. This is the story told in Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California. Readers and audiences join me on a tour through the primordial origins of Southern California, from the Big Bang to the arrival of Cabrillo in 1542, seen alternately from both the viewpoint of Western science and the myths of the indigenous people. A weaving of cosmology, geology, biology, mythology, and ethnography, Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California is an urban epic about the city's extraordinary natural history and Native American heritage. As the journey unfolds, readers and audiences also find themselves located in the continuum of life singing beneath our feet. For a taste of this extraordinary journey, read below:
 Indigenous Myths:
First
there is
quiet
Only solitude
like an empty house (no house)
Only
Kvish Atakvi
Kvish : Vacant
Atakvish : Empty
These two are man and woman, brother and sister
Then Kvish Atakvish
becomes
Omai Yamai
Omai: Not Alive
Yamai: Not in Existence
When these two discover themselves,
they talk with one another:
Brother, who are you?
Sister, who are you?
(Desire stirs the man,
so he never again calls her sister.)
She asks again: Who are you?
He says:
Kvish
Kvish
Kvish
(I am Empty
Empty
Empty)
He blows out his spirit breath: Hannnn!
She answers:
Atakvish
Atakvish
Atakvish
(I am Vacant
Vacant
Vacant)
She blows out her spirit breath: Hannnn!
She asks again: Who are you?
He answers:
Omai
Omai
Omai
(I am Not Alive
Not Alive
Not Alive)
He blows out his spirit breath: Hannnn!
He asks again: Who are you?
She answers:
Yamai
Yamai
Yamai
Hannnn!
(I am Not in Existence
Not in Existence
Not in Existence)
She blows out her spirit breath: Hannnn!
Not Alive-Not in Existence
becomes
Whaikut Piwkut Harurai Chatuta
Whaikut Piwkut : Pale Gray The Milky Way
Harurai Chatutai : Changing Descending Deep into the Heart
These two become
Tukmit : Dark Sky Tomaiyowit : Earth.
(Clearly it is not
male and female
sky and earth.
but of another nature.
These two
Tukmit Tomaiyowit / Dark Sky Earth
come forth from what came before
not as children
but as themselves:
a Continuing Being.
It is very dark
without stars, sun, moon.
The woman lies with her feet to the north.
The man sits by her right side.
In the darkness
they talk with one another,
and what they name
they become:
The First World.
He asks: Who are you?
She answers: I am Tamaiyowit .
She asks: Who are you?
He answers: I am Tukmit.
Tamaiyowit speaks again:
I am Earth
I stretch to the horizon
I quake
I shake
I rumble
I am round
I revolve
I roll out of sight and return.
Tukmit speaks again:
I am Dark Sky
I rise
I arch
I cover
I come from the east
I devour all in one bite
I seize and send away human spirits
I sever
I am death.
Sitting by her side in the darkness
Tukmit feels Tamaiyowit's right hand.
He asks: What is this?
She answers: My right hand.
Tukmit finds Tamaiyowit's left hand.
He asks: What is this?
She answers: My left hand.
He touches her head and asks: What is this?
She answers: My hair.
Feeling each part of her body,
he asks again and again: What is this?
She answers: My hair parting
My skull
My temple
My forehead
My ears
My brow
My eyebrows
My eyelids
My cheek bones
My nose
My lips
My mouth
My tongue and palate
My teeth, front teeth and eye teeth
My chin
My neck
Moving his hand down the length of her body,
Tukmit continues asking,
asking and touching
Tamaiyowit answers him,
naming and becoming.
He sighs
She resists, reminding him
that she is his sister,
but they continue
until, finally, they are united.
Western Science:
In the beginning
unutterable
hot
no space
no time
(not shape not size not taste not smell not see not touch)
a singular nothing
nothing at all
compressed to a point, infinitely dense
but wobbling
14 Billion Years Ago
Colossal balloom!
The Big Bang
seething radiation
no center no edge
roiling gaseous universe soup
pure energy pops riotous sparks
(or the spectral harmonics of minute energy strings)
wild infinitesimal bits: the six quarks:
up down strange charmed truth beauty
the three electrons and
the three little neutral ones: neutrinos
whirl in and out of colliding light
particle annihilating antiparticle
blasting photons at every turn--
the first frenzied pips
radiate forever into unfathomable mystery
(What caused it? Came before it?
Into what belly, what field did it blast?)
energy to mass
mass to energy
plasma pounding to particles and back to wave
gravity overcome by the speeding expansion
and walloping heat.
The Big Bang births space
as it expands
time as it travels
doubling its size in seconds.
Shock waves throbbed through the plasma,
ringing the cosmos like a temple bell.
Temperature falling--the hot whirling
slightly cools:
Three quarks cling to each other (up up down)
and settle as protons (positive charge)
Three quarks cling to each other (down down up)
and settle as neutrons (no charge),
Electrons settle (negative charge).
(Forms ripen in nothing's singular field)
The same proton, neutron, electron
throughout space and time
(star, tongue, tear, plastic fork)
Our bodies as old as the cosmos.
Colliding, cooking, particles fuse into nuclei--
the seed at the center of atoms:
a single proton we name hydrogen
one proton plus one neutron: deuterium.
When two deuterium, bang together and bond: helium
In the hot frenzy,
almost all the deuterium in the whole universe
transforms into helium (two protons)
The birth of matter!
Hydrogen (ninety percent of the visible universe:)
and a little Helium (nine percent).
Space and time, porous and strange,
spread out in all directions--
an etheric fabric stretching itself
against the attractions of gravity
it hovers
in the movement of matter.
(Gravity, the busy mystery: What is it?
The curve in the bed--space/time--when we--matter/energy--sit?
The dander--weightless infinite pushy particles--
shed from every dog in the universe?)
Invisible, baffling Dark Mass
(no light burning nor mirrored, no light at all)
in gravity-collected clouds it dark-halos the visible matter:
protons, neutrons, electrons
(and will holdfast from flying apart
the coming galaxies)
Invisible, baffling Dark Energy
gravity repelling, stretching, flattening
innate to the fabric of space and time
Ninety-six percent of this story, of everything: Dark
(our elegant theories!)
veiled, impervious, mute.
Expanding and cooling Expanding and cooling Expanding and cooling
Light takes off
flowing through space and time
But matter congeals
Electrons, hovering in layers, cling to the nuclei
(one electron per proton):
hydrogen and helium (become)
atoms.
The electrons absorb photons from the infinite light stream
Energized, electrons jump from rung to rung, hot-footing
up an energy ladder away from the nucleus
until, tottering at the top, they jump
to fly loose and alluring into space
or to the arms of another atom
or, insistent on being shared, wed atoms into molecules.
If, tiring of adventure, they climb
back down the ladder toward the nucleus
they release their stash of photons
that rush away glowing (light and heat).
(We chase after rowdy electrons,
whose swapping and
sharing charges/changes
everything we measure.
We call it chemistry.)
And so the future of the universe
formed at its birth:
(All the energy that will ever be was born at the beginning).
Teeter-tottering between
visible/invisible motion and visible/invisible mass
Collapse
to another (the same?)
primordial infinite point
(Big Bang reversed)
or
Infinite expansion:
ceaselessly stretching space and time
(stars like boats floated on an ever-widening sea)
or
Infinite expansion
ceaselessly shredding space and time
(galaxies, planets, bird wings, atoms torn to bits)
or
Perfect balance
gravity (motion) and mass (Dark Energy) in perfect balance
(and it all stands still).
Gravity pulls hydrogen atoms
into massive cooling gaseous clouds.
More mass means more gravity.
 Hydrogen clouds contract
friction!
Temperatures rising
atoms stirred up
Hydrogen atoms, bounced around,
lose their electrons that billow into
Plasma clouds: loose protons and electrons
leap and spin
in gravity's blender
hotter and hotter
tighter and tighter
closer and closer.
In the cloud's seething shrinking center
protons melt together
and melt together again and again:
hydrogen into deuterium into helium.
Copious radiation from the fusions
flows forth as
starlight.
History of
Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California
The Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California Project began in 1986 when I received grants from the Santa Monica Arts Commission and the Santa Monica Foundation to create and produce a performance telling the story of the origins of the Santa Monica landscape. "Sacred Sites/Santa Monica" was presented at Palisades Park, the Santa Monica Pier, John Adams Middle School, and at Santa Monica College.
In 1992, I was commissioned to write a revision, "Sacred Sites/Los Angeles (Now called Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California)," by the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at California State University at Los Angeles, as part of their Ford Foundation funded LA Project. Subsequently, we performed at four locations near the Los Angeles River that represent different ethnic and socio-economic communities: Van Nuys, Glendale, East Los Angeles, and Compton. Discussion leaders from the University of Southern California, from indigenous Native American groups, and from environmental organizations led audiences in post-performance conversations about the issues raised by the play, especially about how we define and experience community.
Book and Documentary
(Forthcoming)
Adapted from the performance described below, Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California and its accompanying film documentary, created by film maker and photographer Michael Barnard, will allow readers and audiences to savor the dynamic story of the creation of Southern California. From seething gaseous clouds to gigantic tectonic plates that crash, melt, and re-emerge in a continuous cycle of creation and transformation, to ice ages and eras of balmy tranquility, Southern California's evolution matches its reputation for drama, eccentricity, and paradisiacal weather.
Performance
Primordial Los Angeles comes to life in the one-woman show, Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California. Using masks, movement, poetry, singing, slides, and musical accompaniment, Suntree reveals the prehistory and sacred geography of Los Angeles told alternately as indigenous myth and contemporary science.
Length: One hour
Requirements: Performance space with projection, lighting, and sound equipment
Audience: Anyone who has ever wondered how Los Angeles came to be the way it is. Audiences at schools, colleges, universities, and conferences as well as general audiences interested in the dynamic connections among art, science, myth, and culture have all enjoyed this performance. Some of the venues where Susan has performed Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California include the University of Utrecht, Netherlands; the Australian Women in Archaeology Conference, Sydney; Crossroads School; the EarthTrust Foundation; the University of Southern California; Pomona College; the University of Judaism; the Los Angeles Bioregionalism Conference; the Southern California Environment and History Conference.
David Koff (Musician, Composer) has created and performed music for 2nd City Alumni at the Upfront Comedy Club and with Theatre-A-Go-Go. He is the founder of the comedy improv group Social Extortion, a member of the street theatre troupe FrogWorks, and is a screen actor and writer.
Zoey Zimmerman (Director) received her M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. She has directed and acted in regional theaters throughout America including the Yale Repertory Theater, Portland Stage, and the Eugene O’Neil Theater Center. Film and television credits include Nixon, Picket Fences, and Gone in the Night. She also directs FrogWorks.
Tours
Susan offers a guided tour of Southern California’s primordial landscape and sacred geography, including visits to ancient bedrock, fault lines, native plant habitats, volcanoes, wetlands, waterways, and ancient villages and sacred sites. (We visit only those Native American sites that will not be endangered or disturbed by our presence.)
Praise for
Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California
“Your combination of quality scholarship and professional performance made a serious impression on the students. They saw that art and science can work together, and they were inspired to write about their own sense of place. I received numerous notes thanking me for combining Theater, Dance, Music, History, Religious Studies, Chicano Studies, and Women’s Studies to bring you here."
Dr. Betty Bernhard, Chair
Department of Theater and Dance
Pomona College
"Your performance was a powerful experience for the students, awakening them to the wonders of this landscape and the rich culture of the Native American people who live here. They were dazzled and delighted—and most important of all, they learned a great deal.”
Dr. Miriyam Glazer, Chair,
Department of English and Literature
Director, Dortort Writers' Institute
University of Judaism
"L.A. based theatre artist Susan Suntree performed her one-woman piece, Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California for two sell-out audiences at Utrecht University. Using a couple of stunning masks, slides, and original music by David Koff, Suntree effectively wove together millennia of stories about her native city. Her perspective ranged from the indigenous to the scientific to the personal as she performed a simple but mesmerizing show that clearly captivated the Dutch audiences."
Dr. Eugene van Erven
Senior Lecturer in Theatre and American Studies
International and Intercultural Projects Producer
University of Utrecht, Netherlands
“Susan’s fascinating tour opened our minds to a Los Angeles we had never imagined. The girls used the knowledge they gained from that one day to research, demonstrate, write, and create for the entire semester.”
Deirdre Gainor
Assistant Head of School
Archer School for Girls
“Your performance at the conference has had a lasting impact—it is one the things people often mention when reminiscing.”
Dr. Jeannette Hope
Heritage Consultant, Conference Organizer,
Australian Women in Archaeology |
