Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto
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| Born | ca. 1938 |
| Occupation | cultural advisor, author, nurse |
| Children | 5 |
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Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, born around 1938, is an author and cultural advisor. She used to work as a nurse. She is a member of the Chumash tribe, specifically from the Barbareño group. Ernestine is very active in helping to record the Barbareño Chumash language. She has also worked as an artist and a historian for the Chumash people.
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Early Life and Heritage
Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto was born in Santa Cruz, California, around 1938. Her mother was Mary Yee (1897–1965). Mary Yee was the very last person to speak the Barbareño Chumash language as her first language. This means she learned it naturally from birth.
Ernestine grew up hearing people speak this native language. Because of this, she is a direct link to a language family that is no longer spoken by many. Her family's ancestors lived close to a place called Painted Cave, California. Some of her family's stories, including those from her great-grandmother Luisa Ygnacio, were written down by a scientist named John Peabody Harrington. He was an ethnologist, which means he studied different cultures.
Ernestine's Important Work
Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto has worked closely with an archivist named John Johnson for more than ten years. An archivist is someone who collects and keeps important historical records. Together, they have written down many family memories and cultural traditions of the Barbareño Chumash people. They became friends when John Johnson was studying Chumash family customs for his college degree.
Illustrator and Author
Ernestine helped illustrate a children's book called The Sugar Bear Story. This book was published in 2005. It shares one of her mother's traditional cultural stories. The book was put out by Sunbelt Publications and the Anthropology Department of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Film and Advocacy
In 2009, Ernestine helped write a script for a documentary film with John R. Johnson. The film is called 6 Generations: A Chumash Family's History (2010). It tells the story of her family's past. Filmmaker Paul Goldsmith produced this movie. The film won several awards at a festival in 2012. These awards included Best Film and Best Script.
In 2019, Ernestine spoke out against a building project by the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara. The resort wanted to build bathrooms in an area that holds sacred Chumash graves. She believed this area should be protected.
The United States National Park Service has a special page on their website about her thoughts. She shared her comments on Chapter 7 of the famous book Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) by Scott O'Dell.
Ernestine also worked as a nurse at a rest home in Santa Barbara.
See also
