Jenée Ornelas, who grew up playing in county and city parks, is experiencing a full-circle moment — from playfield to stewardship — as she pioneers a new job with Los Angeles County’s Department of Parks and Recreation. She serves as the county’s first-ever Tribal Liaison between the massive parks system and the tribes whose ancestral homelands overlap with Los Angeles County.
Ornelas ’19 (Early Childhood Development) is an enrolled citizen of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, who trace their heritage to villages in the San Fernando, Simi, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Growing up, Ornelas, spent weekends and summers playing softball and soccer, riding her bicycle and rollerblading at Sylmar’s El Cariso Community Regional Park — on her ancestral land.
At 4,084 square miles and nearly 10 million residents, Los Angeles County is the nation’s most populous. The sprawling parks and rec system includes 181 parks.
“My job is to help be that bridge to the tribes. Hopefully, there will be more of me, because there’s so much that can be done,” said Ornelas, 38, who started the new role April 7. “I’m continuing to learn about my own tribal history, and I’m also given the opportunity to learn from the other local tribes and their histories. When I’m meeting with tribes, I’m connecting dots … looking at how they can be included in future projects and identifying opportunities for meaningful inclusion. Tribes are now being uplifted, and their histories will be shown.”
As tribal liaison, Ornelas is working with not just her own tribe, but the local native nonprofits, land conservancies and several tribes including the Gabrieleno San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians – Kizh Nation, and the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation.[JO1] She also hopes to connect with more tribes across the region.
“My role is unique because I work in planning and development, but also with [the parks department’s] Natural Areas division, which includes places like Vasquez Rocks, Devil’s Punchbowl and wildlife sanctuaries,” Ornelas said. She’s based in Alhambra, but she travels frequently to sites such as Vasquez Rocks in Agua Dulce — the location of the ancestral Tataviam village of Mapipinga. “I’m learning to get out there, see what the programs are like, be seen, and learn how we can bring in the tribes and their educational programs.”
Space to Gather and Celebrate
One of her first priorities and greatest passions? Access. Ornelas is determined to offer space for tribes to hold gatherings and ceremonies. Her own lived experiences growing up with the Tataviam drive this passion.
“A lot of the tribes want to share their history and feel that they’re being heard,” she said. “With the county and department of parks and rec, I experienced the restrictions: We had to either pay to hold a program in a location, or we didn’t have a space to do programming. It was hard.”
She’s currently working with two tribes to establish what’s called a cultural conservation easement — similar to a memorandum of understanding (MOU), Ornelas said. The tribes will identify natural areas in the county significant to their people, and she’ll help coordinate between the tribe and the superintendent of that facility.
Her long list of projects also includes helping restore the Eaton Canyon Nature Center interpretive exhibits, which were wiped out by January’s wildfires. Ornelas and her colleagues — with assistance from a local tribe — are developing a demonstration project for the nature center, sharing “native plants through a tribal lens,” she said.
In her first weeks on the job, the county asked her to start with the basics: At the LosAngeles County Department of Parks and Recreation “All-Staff Rally” in May for about 1,500 employees, from park rangers to administrative assistants, Ornelas explained the county’s land acknowledgement (adopted in 2022) and its meaning. Next, she led trainings at all agencies within the parks and rec department, on how to pronounce the tribes’ names and prep for community meetings.
Through Grief to Graduation
Ornelas dabbled in several disciplines before she landed on her undergraduate major and early career: child and adolescent development. She wound her way through L.A. Mission and Pierce community colleges, then briefly to San Diego and back to College of the Canyons — where she completed her associate degree.
“I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I kept changing. I was in kinesiology, art, and I even studied nursing for a little while,” Ornelas said. Eventually, she transferred to CSUN as a child and adolescent development junior in 2017, working full time during the day in tribal administration for the Tataviam, and going to school full time in the evenings.
“I didn’t have a typical [new-student] college student experience, [but] I learned a lot about myself at CSUN, academically and personally,” Ornelas said. “When I started, my father was battling pancreatic cancer. In that second semester, I got the news that he only had about 6 to 12 weeks to live. My professors were so supportive, so I was really thankful. It was so hard.”
Her dad,Timothy “Timmer” Ornelas, died in spring 2018. Ornelas took just a week off from school, determined to graduate. She crossed that commencement stage in 2019 as a member of the Tau Sigma National Honor Society for transfer students. “I needed to have that consistency [of school] after my dad passed,” Ornelas said. “Growing up, my dad always said, ‘School is your job! My job is going to my job so you can keep going to your work: school.’”
On campus, the University Library was her go-to study spot, and she loved the Student Recreation Center as a consistent way to de-stress in the evenings, she said.
For the Next Generations
Before joining the county, Ornelas, the granddaughter of former Tataviam tribal leader Rudy Ortega Sr., had worked for the tribe’s Education and Cultural Learning Department since 2016. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians numbers about 1,000 members today. She started as a program associate and then worked her way up to coordinator and, eventually, to director. After graduation, she focused on expanding the department and oversaw the publication of the first-ever Fernandeño Tataviam Language Workbook.
As the parks system’s brand-new tribal liaison, “even applying and in the series of interviews, I learned a lot about myself and the work I did with the tribe,” Ornelas said. “I had gained so many skills, and it made me so thankful that I was trusted enough to run a department. I didn’t know I could do something like this, on a bigger scale.
“For a long time, I was coordinating programs [for the tribe], but I knew it was more than that,” she said. “A lot of it was developing work skills or social skills for the youth that were part of the program. I was more in a child development mindset, and then I learned how to manage and apply for grants. Then, it was networking on a larger scale, going to conferences.”
Her heart, Ornelas said, will always be with her tribe. She’s inspired by the legacy and example set by her grandfather, who “would always give back,” she said.
“A lot of the work that I do is not for myself — it’s for my 8-year-old niece or the generations after me,” Ornelas said. “They can go to a park and see [signs] in their native language, like the word for elderberry, kwúr. And the history of that site, like Mapipinga —Vasquez Rocks. If that’s one space that’s significant to my tribe, just think of the many other spaces we have for the other tribes as well, so they can share their history.”
