It has been nearly 20 years since late Cahuilla Indian spokesman Rupert Costo and his wife, Jeannette, asked UC Riverside to create a center for the study of Native American history and culture.

It's finally happening.

The Center for California Native Nations at UCR is coming together after many years of planning and brainstorming. Under the direction of Professor Joel Martin, the center will eventually serve as a source of research, historical and cultural preservation and community outreach.

"There's nothing like it," Martin said by telephone. "We've looked around the nation and haven't seen a center focused on California. It will connect the university's best research into the community."

Martin holds the Costo endowed chair in American Indian History, a faculty position funded by a donation from the Costos. The late couple played a key role in UCR's beginnings, leading petition drives in the early 1950s to establish the old Citrus Experiment Station as a UC campus. The Costos later funded a room in the UCR library dedicated to Indian history, artifacts and literature.

New approaches

Martin said UCR is uniquely situated, both geographically and academically, to host such a center.
UCR's service area -- primarily Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- has at least 15 Indian tribes within its boundaries. And as the fastest-growing campus in the University of California system, UCR is poised to take new approaches to research, teaching and community outreach, Martin said.

"The university is the most diverse in the UC system and one of the most diverse in the country," Martin said. "California Indian country is also an extraordinarily dynamic place today. We're talking about the meeting of two forward-looking forces that we'll be at the center of."

The center has already tackled one cultural-preservation project. The university just wrapped up the first year of a project to teach children at the Pechanga Indian reservation near Temecula their ancestral language, Luiseno.

Like many native languages, Luiseno is nearing extinction. But because of the UCR project, young children can now speak and sing in the language, said Bridgett Maxwell, director of early childhood education for the Pechanga tribe.

"It gives me chills," Maxwell said in a phone interview. "The way they carry themselves. The way they get excited about learning the language. It seems like they have a better sense of who they are."
The project now has a waiting list extending into 2006, Maxwell said.

Bringing in students

The Costos would be pleased with the center's progress so far, said James H. Erickson, former UCR vice chancellor for advancement and a close friend of the couple.

"The Costos wanted to draw attention to the major role the Native Americans played in our region," Erickson said by telephone. "And they truly dedicated their lives to rewriting Native American history. They championed this cause all their lives."

Erickson said the Costos also wanted to boost the enrollment of American Indian students at UCR, as well as attract American Indian faculty to the campus. He said they hoped the center would help achieve that.

American Indians make up less than 1 percent of UCR's student body today.

"The center is an essential thing that is going to be a catalyst to bring more Indian students into higher education," said Dell Leslie, 32, a Hopi Indian student from Arizona and a volunteer with UCR's Native American Student Programs office, when contacted by telephone.

"Many people will associate this campus with that center and will feel more comfortable attending because of the relationship that the center will provide."

UCR's center so far is funded through grants and donations, so Martin does not expect the state's budget crisis to affect the center's ability to grow and hire more faculty. Eventually, the center will have its own building on campus.