Post Grammy Comments, We Learn Billlie Eilish's Home Soil Belongs to Tonga Peoples
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Billie Eilish is highly regarded in the Grammy Awards community and among her large community of devoted fans. The Song of the Year winner at Sunday’s Grammy celebration unleashed her fierce tongue against Dr. Priscilla Chan, who with her husband Mark Zuckerberg donated stock worth $45 billion to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative with the goal of managing all disease by the end of the century: 2200.
Dr. Chan was honored — as was the singer and songwriter — at the 2025 WSJ Innovator Awards.
Accepting her award Sunday night, Billie said: “As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land ... F*** ICE.”
via Billie Eilish Instagram
It didn’t take long for conservative journalist Eric Daugherty to point out that Billie’s own home in Los Angeles is built on land historically inhabited by the Tongva. While we educate ourselves, you can learn more about the indigenous peoples of the LA River basin here.
When reporters reached out to representatives of the Tongva people, they said that Billie Eilish had never reached out to them about her upcoming remarks. Contrary to headlines saying the Tongva representatives bashed Billie, the comments I read only stated that it would have been great if she had reached out to them — but there’s no reason to assume that Billie even knows about the actual tribe who occupied the land on which her own house is built.
A representative said they are always grateful when any speaker raises awareness about the actual history of America and specifically in Los Angeles. Their sentiments are that the awareness can be raised even higher if actual stories of the people are referenced even as a footnote. For clarity, the Tongva people did not blast Billie Eilish, no matter what you read.
AOC cannot stress how important this issue has become in recent years. Anne is working on a high-risk for stumbles project about land and soil and who lived on it, working with Gemini-3, Google’s breakthrough rational-thinking AI. G-3 is superb on writing statements that avoid the entire arena of virtue-signaling.
After looking at 4-5 videos on the Tongva people, none of them struck us as best-in-class. So we will keep looking but the link above has good information. The Cultural Humility Training references in the top image came from this Instagram, related to the Tonga peoples.