Haku and Welcome!

Wishtoyo is place, organization, and movement inspiring people to live in harmony with our earth again.

Wishtoyo is a Native-led organization founded in 1997. Our mission is to protect and preserve the culture, history, and lifeways of Chumash and Indigenous peoples, and the environment everyone depends on.

Wishtoyo, the Chumash word for rainbow, serves as a “rainbow bridge” linking Chumash culture, wisdom, and values to present day protection of our earth.

Where we work

Wishtoyo Chumash Village:
The Village is a unique, traditional Chumash village built upon an historical 8,000-year-old village site. The property overlooks the Pacific Ocean next to Nicholas Canyon beach in Malibu—in traditional Chumash territory. This four-acre site is the only living Chumash cultural village of its kind in Southern California, serving approximately 7,000 visitors per year. The Village functions as an outdoor classroom, cultural gathering place, scientific field site all in one. Visitors and program participants receive an immersive learning experience that cannot be replicated in a school or museum facility. The Village is not an exhibit or simple recreation: rather, it is a living, active landscape that welcomes all.

Wishtoyo Conservancy:
Heading inland to unincorporated Ventura County, California, the Wishtoyo Conservancy is a 67-acre land base situated amongst the traditional villages of Sa’a’tikoy (Saticoy), Mupu (Santa Paula) and Sis’a (in Sisar Canyon) along the Utom River (Santa Clara River). We’re in the midst of ongoing restoration work here utilizing regenerative horticulture and Indigenous permaculture practices, allowing natural processes to reclaim the once-dead soil and degraded habitat of this former golf course. We aren’t creating decorative native landscapes, rather, we are re-establishing ecosystem functions that support native ecosystems and the return of wildlife. Through actively maintaining our Traditional Ecological Knowledge and cultural tending practices, the Wishtoyo Conservancy is becoming a place of cultural learning and community gathering, catalyzing a vibrant cultural and ecological recovery throughout Chumash territory and for all First Nations Peoples. This is our investment in a future that extends beyond our lifetimes.

Wishtoyo’s Eco-Farm and Restoring Native Food Systems:

The Eco-Farm is a 33-acre land base that Wishtoyo is developing as an eco-farm based on our traditional values and connection to land, culture, and identity.

This program seeks to strengthen our community-based Traditional Ecological Knowledge by combining our ancestral foodways with contemporary regenerative agricultural models. These efforts will result in a Native-led eco-farm and community native seed bank, as well as serve to sustain knowledge about wild tending, harvesting, and tradition food systems. By establishing farming practices that are rooted in traditional knowledge, we nourish the land and our bodies through the food it gives us—ultimately achieving Native food sovereignty.

Wishtoyo’s Restoring Native Food Systems program is working to develop regenerative and sustainable methods through tending and Gathering Practice, Workshops and Trainings, and actively utilizing Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Our work is guided by the wisdom of our Indigenous ancestors before us as we use traditional knowledge, science and modern technology of all forms to navigate a path forward to recover our land, air, waterways, and food systems. As practitioners of nature, we realize that our species does not exist in isolation from the biosphere; rather, our fate and that of our children and the future depend on it.

Together we are building a future we can envision but will never see. It’s a 150 year plan. In this way, we participate in life as a part of the solution, a part of the necessary change to carry forth ancestral knowledge in order to live in a more harmonious, peaceful, bountiful and sustainable world in relationship with our Mother Earth and all our relations.