Tracing their ancestral home to the picture-perfect Channel Islands, the Chumash likely descend from some of the Americas' earliest settlers. When I was in elementary school, my class read a book called Island of the Blue Dolphins about a young Indigenous girl who was stranded on an island off the coast of California. The novel is based on the true story of the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas", who supposedly lived alone on San Nicolas Island for 18 years during the mid-19th Century, after the rest of her native American tribe was relocated to the mainland by missionaries.
My school was in the Santa Ynez Valley, located about 30 miles from where the "Lone Woman" (later baptised as "Juana María" at the Old Mission Santa Barbara ) was brought ashore in 1853 and died just seven weeks later . From that Mission, you can gaze out at the eight-isle archipelago known as the Channel Islands – the furthest being San Nicolas, where Juana María lived. Decades later, that book has stayed with me, but as with many stories, I've come to realise that things are not always what they seem.
Many people are surprised to hear that there even is a cluster of islands off the coast of California. The most-visited island, Catalina , contains the historic port town of Avalon , which was a haven for movie stars in Hollywood's golden era. Another five islands make up the Channel Islands National Park , which was established in 1980 alongside the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary to protect the .