The Temecula Valley Historical Society offers two programs in July — the debut of the Pechanga Cultural Resources Department’s film “The Temecula Massacre” on July 22 and a presentation on an upcoming military mission to Greenland and its historical significance in World War II, on July 29.
Both are at 6 p.m. in the Little Temecula History Center, the red barn at 32075 Wolf Store Road, Temecula.
Following the July 22 screening of “The Temecula Massacre,” Lisa L. Woodward, one of the authors of the film’s companion book, “The Temecula Massacre, A Forgotten Battlefield Landscape of the Mexican-American War,” will answer questions about the 1846 Temecula Massacre. Woodward and co-author Gary DuBois will also sign copies of the book, which will be available for purchase.
DuBois and Woodward’s work includes firsthand, previously unpublished accounts of the Temecula Massacre, according to a news release.
DuBois, an enrolled citizen of the Pechanga Band of Indians, is the founding director of the Pechanga Band of Indians Cultural Resources Department and is the tribal historic preservation officer. He received his law degree from Washington University School of Law. He is also a scholar of Native American history, the American West and Constitution law and is a lecturer in those fields at Cal State San Bernardino.
DuBois clerked for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma Tribal Courts and was a Udall Fellow for the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee. He is also a veteran of the U.S. Army.
Woodward is archivist for the Pechanga Band of Indians Cultural Resources Department, managing the tribe’s collection of photographs, archival documents, ephemera and sound recordings. She also conducts research for the Pechanga Tribe in the areas of cultural resource management and collection repatriation from institutions across the country.
She received her doctoral degree in Native American studies from UC Davis, and while at Davis, as an undergraduate and as a graduate student, she assisted in developing the J.P. Harrington Database Project, which assisted in providing tribal communities access to John Harrington’s extensive collection of field notes on Native languages.
In the July 29 program, Jennifer Lehr will speak about an upcoming military mission to Greenland and its significance in World War II when the Germans had several weather stations there to monitor fleets in the North Atlantic. Lehr will display items her uncle had with him when he was stranded in Greenland during World War II.
Lehr, the chief operating officer of Fallen American Veterans Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization, advocates for surviving families of the 83,000 U.S. military personnel missing in action since World War ll.
She is a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary Post 1508 and is the wife of a U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam veteran and daughter of a U.S. Navy veteran. Her interest in repatriating MIA service people is motivated by not knowing the whereabouts of her uncle Pvt. Dugan Harris, who served in the Korean War and is one of the 83,000 listed as MIA.
The July 22 program will be in-person only, but the July 29 program will also be available live streamed to the historical society’s Facebook page and will later be archived to the historical society’s YouTube channel.
For information, go to temeculahistory.org/.
