Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto

Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto
Born	ca. 1938[1] Santa Cruz, California[1]
Occupation(s)	cultural advisor, author, nurse[1]
Children	5
Mother	Mary Yee[1]

Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto (born 1938/1939)^[2] is an author, cultural advisor, and former nurse of Barbareño Chumash descent.^[1] She is active in documenting the Barbareño Chumash language.^[1] Additionally, she has worked as an illustrator and Chumash historian.

Early life

Ygnacio-De Soto was born circa 1938 in Santa Cruz, California.^[1] She is the daughter of Mary Yee (1897–1965), who was the last first language speaker of the Chumashan language, Barbareño.^[3] She grew up listening to native speakers of the language and therefore serves as a direct living link to that extinct language family.^[4]

Her ancestors lived near the area of Painted Cave, California.^[4] Some of her family stories, including stories by her maternal great grandmother Luisa Ygnacio, were documented by ethnologist John Peabody Harrington.^[3][2]

Career

Ygnacio-De Soto has worked closely with archivist John Johnson for over a decade, in documenting family memories and Barbareño Chumash cultural traditions in to writing.^[2] They became friends when Johnson was writing his PhD thesis on Chumash marriage and family patterns.^[2]

Ygnacio-De Soto was the illustrator of a children's book which tells one of her mother's cultural stories, The Sugar Bear Story (2005), published by Sunbelt Publications in conjunction with the Anthropology Department of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.^[5][4]

In 2009, she helped to co-write a documentary film script with John R. Johnson.^[6] The film, 6 Generations: A Chumash Family's History (2010) is about her family's history and was produced by filmmaker Paul Goldsmith.^ ^[6][7] It has been reviewed in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology.^[8] The 6 Generations film won several awards at the Archaeology Channel International Film and Video Festival (2012); including Best Film; Best Script; Special Mention, Increasing the Awareness of the Ethnographic Record; and Audience Favorite.

She spoke out in 2019 against a project by the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara, which aimed to build bathrooms in an area that holds sacred Chumash graves.^[9]

The United States National Park Service has devoted a web page to her commentary on Scott O'Dell's book, Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), in Chapter 7.

Additionally, she has worked as a nurse at a Santa Barbara rest home.^[2]

Publications

• Yee, Mary J. (2005). The Sugar Bear Story. Ernestine Ygnacio De Soto (illustrator). San Diego, CA: Sunbelt Publications. ISBN 9780932653703.

See also

• Barbareño language

References

1. Dallow, Lily (July 31, 2023). "Meet Fiesta's 2023 Grand Marshal: Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, Barbareño Chumash Elder". Noozhawk. Retrieved 5 August 2024.
2. Chawkins, Steve (2010-01-31). "Researcher Gave the Chumash a Gift: Their Heritage". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
3. "Ygnacio-De Soto". Island of the Blue Dolphins. U.S. National Park Service. Retrieved 2020-04-23.
4. Kennedy, Frances H. (2008). American Indian Places: A Historical Guidebook. Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 298. ISBN 978-0-395-63336-6.
5. "Newsletter". Newsletter. Vol. 24. The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. 2005. p. 14.
6. Kettmann, Matt (2009-11-12). "Two Centuries of Chumash". The Santa Barbara Independent. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
7. Hurst Thomas, David (2011-02-01). "Listening to Six Generations of Chumash Women (Goldsmith, Soto, Johnson, Edwards, Walden, and Johnson's )". Current Anthropology. 52 (1): 127–128. doi:10.1086/657926. ISSN 0011-3204. S2CID 224791797.
8. Farris, Glenn. "6 Generations: A Chumash Family's History" (film review), Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 30(2), 2010
9. Yamamura, Jean (October 12, 2019). "Bacara Beach Bathroom Battle Lines Form: Move Farther Up the Beach Could Endanger Grave Sites, Chumash Contend". Santa Barbara Independent. Retrieved March 23, 2021.

External links

• Official website
• Film preview: 6 Generations: A Chumash Family's History