LOS ANGELES — When Jamie Rocha and her family first visited the swath of undeveloped land in the Monterey Hills late last year, the grass was dead, the ground muddy.
But on a recent Thursday, after drenching rains in Los Angeles, the grass was a rich green and purple lupine lined the path. Coyotes roamed nearby, sniffing the ground before disappearing below the hillside's sloping edge.
The afternoon calm belied the family's excitement. On this day, they were walking on what would one day be their land, 12 acres that had been purchased by the region's only Indigenous charter school and returned to the Gabrielino Shoshone Tribal Nation of Southern California, the area's original inhabitants.
