General Contractor Ojai

Ojai sits on the traditional territory of the Chumash, a Native American people who inhabited the central and southern coastal regions of California, in portions of what are Morro Bay in the north to Malibu in the south and the Channel Islands. Before the arrival of European settlers, at least 10,000 Chumash people lived in over 150 independent villages, speaking variations of the same language. Starting in 1769, Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived to colonize the California coast, Christianize the native population, found military presidios and relocate Chumash people from their villages into Spanish missions.

Due to violence and imported disease, Chumash people died at devastating rates under Spanish rule. According to George Tinker, a Native Scholar, “The Native American population of coastal population was reduced by some 90 percent during seventy years under the sole proprietorship of Serra’s mission system.” Whether due to Spanish rule or as part of the California Genocide under the land’s eventual control by the United States, by 1900, the Chumash population had declined to just 200, while current estimates of Chumash people today range from 2,000 to 5,000.

The name Ojai is derived from the Ventureño Chumash word ʼawha’y meaning “moon.” A 1905 book on place names in the United States records the name Ojai as being derived from an Indigenous word meaning “nest”, though the specific Indigenous language is not identified.