Gabrieleño

The Gabrieleño, also known as the Gabrielino, is a historical designation used for the Tongva people, Indigenous inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin and surrounding coastal and inland areas of Southern California. Their traditional homeland extended across the Los Angeles metropolitan region, parts of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, the Channel Islands, and coastal valleys.

The Tongva organized into numerous village communities and relied on a broad range of resources, including the acorns and seeds of California ecosystems, fish and shellfish from coastal and riverine environments, and game from the inland areas. They crafted and used planked canoes, called tomols, for travel and trade along the coastline and among the Channel Islands. The Tongva language was traditionally spoken in the region; today it has a small number of fluently speaking revivalists and is the focus of ongoing language revitalization efforts. Social and ceremonial practices varied among communities but shared a common coastal–inland cultural milieu.

The arrival and expansion of Spanish missions in the late 18th century, especially Mission San Gabriel Arcángel (founded 1771), brought missionization, new diseases, forced labor, land dispossession, and disruption of traditional lifeways. These forces contributed to drastic population decline and significant cultural changes.

Today, descendants identify as Tongva or Gabrielino, and operate or participate in cultural and advocacy organizations focused on language revitalization, cultural preservation, and repatriation efforts. The term Gabrieleño appears in historical and mission-era sources, while Tongva is commonly used by contemporary groups and scholarship to denote the people and their enduring cultural heritage.