Selected Past Event

November 7, 2019: Life after Genocide: Extinct People Can Park Anywhere – An Evening with L Frank Manriquez

L Frank

November 7th, 2019, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Berkeley Public Library, West Branch
1125 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94702. (map)

The California Institute for Community, Art, and Nature (California I CAN) invites you to an evening with L. Frank Manriquez (Tongva/Ajachmem), a well-known Native American activist, artist, cartoonist, performer, and humorist. Malcolm Margolin, a longtime friend and admirer, will introduce her.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Public Library as part of their celebration of Native American Heritage Month. This program is free and open to the public. RSVP to info@californiaican.org.

Fasten your seat belts and hang on tightly for a tour of Native California that will utterly amaze you. Here’s a preview.

  • Join L. Frank as she reflects on her travels to reservations and Indian communities throughout California, where she collected photos from family albums for a project funded by the California State Library that presented Native life from the inside.
  • Travel with her to the past, where she picked out from the wreckage of her shattered culture the shards of an extinct language, songs long silent, and skills and arts unpracticed for generations, bringing them back to life.
  • Witness her building a traditional plank canoe like those built by her ancestors in the Los Angeles area, and accompany her on a drive to Puget Sound where she joined other Native boat-builders from along the Pacific Coast in an annual Canoe Journey.
  • Follow her on a gallery tour of her paintings and other artworks that have been shown in some of the most prestigious art museums in California.
  • But best of all, let her take us into the unique world she has fashioned for herself. While L. Frank has been deeply engaged in the revival of traditional ways, has mastered many traditional skills, and has served on the boards of many Native organizations, she is also one of the most modern, iconoclastic, utterly self-defined people you will ever meet. Abandon all clichés, ye who enter. There is something new here, something exciting and liberating in the deep integrity of a person who has had the courage to follow her art to wherever it might lead.

Malcolm Margolin, Founder and Executive Director of California I CAN, worked with L. Frank in his previous role as Publisher of Heyday Books and News from Native California.