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Connecting Circles Connecting Circles focuses on indigenous accomplishments including resilience, knowledge, insights

10/30/2026
10/30/2026

People of the West tells 500 years of California’s past through the eyes of its first people.

Most Americans learn California history from the people who took the land. Many classrooms still teach the missions and the Gold Rush as proud chapters in America’s History.

Streaming worldwide on November 1. 🌏

10/30/2026

Is this a myth?!🧐🤔
⛪🪨 Beneath California's historic missions lies a story far older than the Spanish buildings standing above them.

And much of that story belongs to the Indigenous people who were already here.

When Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1776, the surrounding region had been home to Acjachemen communities for thousands of years.

They possessed generations of knowledge about local landscapes, natural materials, construction techniques and the environment.

Then the Spanish mission system transformed their homeland.

Indigenous workers became essential to building the mission complex, shaping adobe bricks, transporting stone, cutting timber and constructing the buildings that would become some of California's most recognizable landmarks.

The Great Stone Church, begun in 1797, was an ambitious construction project that combined European architectural plans with Indigenous labor and craftsmanship.

Much of it collapsed during the devastating earthquake of 1812.

Today, its ruins remain among the mission's most famous features.

But here's what deserves more attention.

The foundations of California's missions are not evidence of a proven lost civilization. The deeper history is the Indigenous world that existed long before the Franciscans arrived.

Villages, sacred places, trade networks and generations of accumulated knowledge were already part of this landscape.

🪨 The Spanish left behind buildings. The Acjachemen left a history that reaches much further back.

And understanding who actually built California changes how we see every stone.

10/27/2026

A tribe of about 2,000 people took on Big Oil in court. And won.
The Waorani of Ecuador’s Pastaza province refused to let their ancestral land get auctioned off for drilling. Judges agreed the government never properly consulted them, and the sale was stopped cold.
Half a million acres of Amazon rainforest, protected.
The ripple goes further. That same ruling threw serious doubt on the planned auction of 16 more oil blocks covering over 7 million acres of Indigenous territory.
Nemonte Nenquimo, who led the lawsuit, was blunt about it. Their forest is not for sale to oil companies. Ever.
Turns out “no” still holds up in court.

10/27/2026

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