OUR  GUIDING  ELDER

Julia Bogany

Guiding Elder

Julia Bogany is a member of the Tongva tribe, was on their Tribal Council, and was their Cultural Consultant. Julia constantly, incessantly, voluntarily taught, attended meetings, and sat on Boards to help her tribe; she usually did this without pay. Her calendar was full a year ahead of time. She worked for over thirty years for the American Indian community for her Tongva tribe. She provided cultural, FASD, ICWA training and workshops in the Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside areas. She had also provided workshops in Sacramento for the California Rural Indian Health Board Woman's conferences. Ms. Bogany teaches Tongva language and cultural classes. She attended many language workshops around the country to learn, strengthen, and enhance her tribe's language. She helped to reawaken and revive the Tongva language, as well as assemble a Tongva dictionary. She was Vice President of the Keepers of Indigenous Ways (KIW), a non-profit group of the Tongva. She taught basket weaving and used it to teach math to youth. She was President of Residential Motivators, her own non-profit consulting firm. She had years of training in Child Development, Indian Child Welfare (ICWA), and Native American Studies. She was a strong advocate for ICWA and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and had provided FASD training since 2005. She was fluent in English and Spanish.
 
Ms. Bogany served on several committees and organizations: Community Health Worker for Mental Health, California Indian Education Association, Children Court L.A. Round Table for ICWA, and ran co-ed and women's circles. She was President of Kuruvanga Springs, a Representative for California tribes on Route 66, a member of CNAC (California Native American College board), and Pitzer College Elder in Residence. She taught native culture and history and women's issues at Scripps, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, and the Claremont School of Theology in addition to Pitzer. She worked on thesis with students, and assisted with the summer Native Youth to College program.

In September 2010, she received the Heritage Award from the Aquarium of the Pacific at their sixth annual Native American festival, Moompetam. She had also been nominated for Coastal Commission for the State of California and was a Stakeholder Consultant of 200 parks in Los Angeles County. Ms. Bogany consulted with and trained teachers and school boards on how to revise their curriculum to reflect the correct history of California and California tribes. She wanted to change the future for her tribe, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren; this was her way of doing it. She cared for her great grandchildren and taught them arts, crafts, language, and culture. All the work she's done for the past twenty years was for their future and for the future of her Tongva tribe.