What Does It Mean to Be from LA?

Nearly 10 million people live in Los Angeles County—a region that sprawls over coasts, mountains, hills, valleys, deserts, and urban plains.

But only a few hundred years ago, this land was a network of Indigenous Tongva and Tataviam villages, the largest and most influential being Yaanga, located near what is now Downtown LA. At its center grew a large sycamore tree—a shady gathering place for the village council and a landmark for local traders.

By the mid-1800s, as the Spanish, Mexican, and then American pueblo of Los Angeles rapidly expanded and encroached upon it, the Yaanga village ceased to function as it had for thousands of years, and in 1895, the ancient tree, El Aliso in Spanish, was cut down to make room for urban development.

Since then, LA has continued to grow exponentially. Los Angeles County encompasses the city of LA and 87 others. LA alone comprises 114 neighborhoods, and its residents, about one-third of whom were born outside the country, speak more than 200 languages. Debates on what it means to be “from LA” or what constitutes the “real LA” are as endless as its freeways.

But what if a deeper truth about the region’s identity could be gleaned through the merging of science and art?

This ambition lies at the heart of Alta / A Human Atlas of a City of Angels, a project developed by London-based artist Marcus Lyon in collaboration with Nicole Onishi and Tom Learner at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). Through ancestral genetic science, photographic portraits, and oral storytelling, Alta sheds light on 100 extraordinary Angelenos creating lasting positive change in their communities, and in doing so, paints a vivid portrait of LA in the 21st century.

Selected by a diverse committee of leaders from across the county, the Alteños/ñas, as they’re called in the project, span a wide range of ages, origins, and vocations. The cohort includes both well-known and unsung heroes: activists, advocates, teachers, artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and physicians, as well as a Paralympic athlete, basketball coach, chef, comedian, fire chief, and even a former gang member turned mentor.

Before taking on LA, Lyon produced Human Atlases of Brazil, Germany, Detroit, and Silicon Valley, driven by a desire to tell the authentic stories of places that are often misrepresented or misunderstood.

“We’ve gone to places and asked, ‘Who are the people who are making the difference here?’” he says. “We found those people and asked them: ‘What burns inside you? What are the dreams you have about the world you’re trying to build?’ This project is very much about listening and taking enormous care in accurately representing a group of remarkable human beings.”

“What does it mean to be an Angeleno?” was one of the questions Lyon and his team asked each of the nominees.

Their reflections can be found in several places: Alta’s two-volume portrait book, an app designed to pair with the book’s images, the LA edition of Human Atlas’s award-winning Intersections podcast series, and an interactive exhibition at the Los Angeles Central Library, running from January 13 to April 27, 2025.

In addition to sharing their stories in their own words, all 100 Alteños/ñas also dove deep into their DNA to tell the stories of their ancestors.

What does the DNA of LA look like?

To develop the ancestral genetic science behind Alta, the Human Atlas team worked with FamilyTreeDNA. The DNA analysis began with a cheek swab to collect cells, which the company then compared to samples from 90 different population groups in its database. These “reference populations” are groups of people who intermarried in isolation, making them genetically unique.

All in all, the Alteños/ñas descend from 70 populations dispersed around the globe.

Perhaps the most significant result is that the Alteños/ñas’ largest proportion of DNA pertains to the Amerindian populations from North to South America—in that a majority of the cohort descends from Indigenous people. This finding might shock those who know the region mainly from film and TV, where LA’s racial and ethnic diversity is rarely fully depicted.

Beyond defying stereotypes, this project also enhances the accuracy of DNA analysis, providing a richer story of human existence over time.

FamilyTreeDNA’s extensive collection of Indigenous records, which made these identifications possible, were derived from private and public sources and even academic studies. They include eight distinct Amerindian groups and one Arctic population, and all but one were represented in the Alteños/ñas’ DNA.

As people with rare or unique origins submit their DNA to such databases, this information helps refine tools or even offer new populations to reference. Alta is “absolutely furthering scientific research by offering a fascinating glimpse into the diversity of LA,” says Paul Maier, senior population geneticist at FamilyTreeDNA.

Submitting and analyzing DNA can be a sensitive process. For Alta, each participant had a private account and could choose whether to share the results or discuss them privately before deciding to publish. Ultimately, all participants chose to share their findings, and for some, that led to a deeper journey of self-discovery.

Zeinab “Sade” Elhawary, one of the 100 Alteños/ñas, is an educator, organizer, and foster parent. Among her myriad accomplishments, she helped create the Fremont High School Wellness Center, a clinic created to address health disparities in local neighborhoods. She also helped to secure the School Climate Bill of Rights, a resolution aimed at reducing racial profiling in LA schools.

Her father came to LA from Egypt, and her mother, from Guatemala. For Elhawary, seeing her ancestral DNA mapped out validated aspects of herself she felt had been hidden—on both sides of her family. “Many in my family identify as Arab or Middle Eastern. Seeing the DNA results helped me recognize that I am not just North African but part of the African diaspora,” she says.

Reflecting on her Guatemalan side, she was proud to see her Indigenous Maya heritage represented, which she felt had been diminished growing up. “In Guatemala, we are often taught that if you are of a certain lineage, then you are better than others, and if you are of another lineage, you are less than,” she says. “And none of that is true. We are all human, and we’re all beautiful in the ways that we’re made up.”

Is there a “real LA”?

In many ways, LA suffers from a similar history of erasure. Just as its Tongva roots have been obscured in the city’s cultural imagination, small communities of lifelong residents are often overlooked in popular media in favor of a more glamorous image. LA is frequently depicted as a city dominated by the entertainment industry and expensive, health-conscious lifestyles. This builds the stereotype that if you come here, expect celebrity sightings, perfect weather, palm-tree-lined streets, and sleek mansions.

But most of the Alteños/ñas know an entirely different LA.

“My great-grandfather’s favorite park, which is the Kenneth Hahn Park, is unfortunately surrounded by oil wells, but it’s really a special park for my family,” says Alteña Nalleli Cobo-Uriarte, who led a coalition to permanently shut down a toxic oil-drilling site in her community in March 2020, at the age of 19.

“In my personal experience growing up 30 feet from an active oil and gas well, my body has been on the front lines,” Cobo-Uriarte says. “This is not only happening to me but to my family and most of my community. Communities are not invisible, we are not disposable; we are powerful and strong, and we deserve to breathe clean air in our own homes.”

Often, though, it’s the communities that have been neglected that bring people together and reveal a side of LA few on the outside get to see, even places like Downtown’s Skid Row, which has one of the largest stable populations of unhoused people in the US.

“Skid Row is a community where people know one another, where people speak to one another, where people smile at one another, where people share with one another,” says Alteño Pete White, founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, a grassroots organization helping impoverished people in Downtown LA access housing and food. “That is something that’s just not so common. Here is the spirit of unity, the spirit of acceptance.”

Preserving stories

To solicit nominations, the team distributed a questionnaire with 14 languages and worked with an equity advisor to formulate questions that would result in a diverse group. “LA County is very large, so it was challenging to represent everyone in only 100 people, from all different areas of work, age, race, gender,” Onishi says. “But I think we succeeded.”

Lyon hopes this project will inspire more change agents to emerge. “We want audiences to witness this work and see service to their communities, their streets, their neighborhoods, as a really powerful and important option for how to go about living a full life,” he says.

The two-volume Alta book features a photographic portrait and uniquely stylized ancestral map for each of the 100 nominees, images that come alive and unlock oral histories when viewed through the Alta app’s image recognition system. Copies of the book will be donated to institutions across the region, including LA’s 73 public libraries.

At the GCI, which is dedicated to advancing cultural heritage conservation practice around the world, Alta is a treasure trove of heritage worth saving. And all this work—including 4,500 minutes of oral storytelling—will be preserved.

“Alta is very timely for what the GCI could and should be doing in terms of really broadening what we consider as conservation,” Learner says. “This is a project that ultimately preserves a snapshot in time of Los Angeles. It’s not preserving a painting, sculpture, photograph, or building. It’s preserving intangible heritage across a broad group of people—it’s preserving stories.”

For Alteños/ñas like Elhawary, the answer to the question, “What does it mean to be from LA?” often comes in the form of a story.

“I feel like LA is the only place where my mom and dad could have met,” she says. “There’s nowhere else in the world where someone from Guatemala and someone from Egypt could have come together. They met in community college, where they were able to get an education and uplift themselves in a place with so much opportunity. It’s just a beautiful place.”

Alta / A Human Atlas of a City of Angels is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, a landmark event in Southern California exploring the intersections of art and science. PST ART is presented by Getty. Lead partners are Bank of America, Alicia Miñana & Rob Lovelace, and the Getty Patron Program. Principal partners are Simons Foundation; Eva and Ming Hsieh, Co-Founders of Fulgent Genetics; and Peggy and Andrew Cherng, Co-Chairs and Co-CEOs of Panda Express. Additional support for Alta / A Human Atlas of a City of Angels is provided by John E. and Louise Bryson.