ANCIENT RITUAL—Holding special
ceremonial wands, Mati Waiya, whose name means “Little
Hawk” in Chumash, performs a traditional tribal dance as
part of a program last Sunday to impart the heritage of
Malibu’s earliest recorded inhabitants at the Wishtoyo
Foundations’s Chumash Demonstration Village located at
Nicholas Canyon County Beach. Draped in a coyote skin and
adorned with sacred hawk feathers,, the body paint Mati Waiya
wears is mixed by hand from natural ingredients, including
charcoal and ochre, and represents symbols handed down through
generations of Chumash.