Our Mission

Wishtoyo is place, organization, and movement inspiring people to live in harmony with our Earth again.

Wishtoyo serves as a “Rainbow bridge” linking Chumash and Indigenous lifeways with the protection of natural and cultural resources, utilizing traditional ecological knowledge to provide environmental and cultural preservation and justice, education, research, and advocacy.

A dream to restore balance

Wishtoyo is a Native-led organization founded in 1997 by Chumash elder, Mati Waiya, an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and serves as Elder Representative for the Tribe.

Wištoyo, the Chumash word for rainbow, serves as a “rainbow bridge” linking Chumash culture, wisdom, and values to present day protection of natural cultural resources.

Our dream grew from humble beginnings to become a movement, a place, an organization— inspiring people to live in harmony with our Earth again. The challenges we face today are real. Our world is out of balance, from rapid climate change to increased social polarization. Key drivers of this imbalance are dominant worldviews that place us as separate from one another as well as from the planet. We accept our responsibility as original, free, independent people of Turtle Island.

Our work is guided by the wisdom of our Indigenous ancestors before us as we practice traditional knowledge, science and modern technology of all forms to navigate a path forward to recover our land, air, waterways, and food systems. As practitioners of nature, we realize that our species does not exist in isolation from the biosphere; rather, our fate and that of our children and the future depend on it.

Continuing an Ancestral Legacy

Wishtoyo Founder and Executive Director, Mati Waiya, is a documented descendant through his matrilineal line of Indigenous Peoples in Coastal Chumash, Tammien Ohlone, and Northern Yokut territories. As an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, Mati serves as an elected Tribal Council member and the Elders Representative. Mati Waiya’s maternal ancestors included several Native people who were baptized at the Spanish missions in Chumash, Yokut, and Ohlone territories. Several published historical works have described how Spanish expeditions frequently sought to find and capture mission neophytes from tribal groups who had remained unconquered during this colonial period. Several of Mati’s ancestors were among these people who left a documented trail in the California Mission system.

Mati Waiya founded Wishtoyo Foundation in 1997 as a Native-led organization to protect and preserve the culture, history, and lifeways of Chumash and Indigenous peoples, and the environment everyone depends on.