More Than Beach Bones: The Story of Sand Dollars in Indigenous and Latinx Ocean Knowledge

 Walk along any California beach and chances are you’ll stumble across the delicate skeleton of a sand dollar, bleached white by the sun, etched with a flower-like pattern. Most people pick them up, snap a photo, and move on. But there’s a deeper story hidden in the sand. One that ties marine biology, Indigenous knowledge, and Latinx cultural symbolism into a shared oceanic reverence.

First, What Is a Sand Dollar?

Despite looking like a shell, a sand dollar is a living marine animal , a type of echinoderm, related to sea stars and sea urchins.

[An olive-skinned woman holds three Dendraster excentricus (Pacific sand dollars) of varying sizes in her hands. The sand dollars are beige and dry, with visible flower-like patterns on the surface.]

While alive, they’re dark purple, covered in soft spines that help them burrow just beneath the sandy ocean floor.

[An olive-skinned woman holds a live purple Dendraster excentricus (Pacific sand dollar) with several attached red goose barnacles (Lepas anatifera) on its upper surface. The photo is taken in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.]

They live in the intertidal zone, that magical margin where land and sea meet. When they die, their skeleton called a test  washes ashore. The white disc with a flower/star pattern on top is what most of us recognize.

Indigenous Knowledge: Sand Dollars and Chumash Ocean Relationships

For coastal Indigenous peoples, like the Chumash, Tongva, and others across the Pacific coast, sand dollars (and marine life in general) are more than curiosities. They are relations , part of a living, breathing ocean system to which people are deeply connected.

The Chumash, whose territory includes the Channel Islands and coast from Malibu to Morro Bay, have always honored the ocean as a source of life and spirit. While some knowledge is sacred and not meant for public sharing, it's known that invertebrates like urchins, abalone, and likely sand dollars played important roles — as food, medicine, and spiritual symbols.

The five-petaled pattern found on a sand dollar has been interpreted across cultures as a sun, star, or flower . These are common sacred symbols found in many Indigenous cosmologies of the Americas, often representing harmony, balance, and life cycles.

In Mexican and broader Latin American traditions, nature is often woven into faith, folklore, and symbolism — sand dollars included.

You may have heard the legend passed down in coastal and Catholic communities:

The sand dollar’s star shape is said to represent the Star of Bethlehem, while the five "doves" inside (when broken open) symbolize peace and goodwill. 

This blending of Catholic mysticism and Indigenous reverence is a hallmark of Latinx cultural traditions where the natural world becomes sacred through story, prayer, and presence.

Beyond religion, Latinx beachgoers often associate sand dollars with luck, blessings, or protection.

A Shared Understanding: Ocean as Teacher

Whether viewed through a Chumash lens of deep relational stewardship, or through Mexican/Latinx symbolic traditions of nature as sacred, the message is similar:
The ocean is not a place to conquer. It’s a place to listen to.

Sand dollars, small and fragile as they are, remind us:

• That science and story can coexist
• That cultural wisdom carries truth modern biology can’t always explain
• That we, too, are shaped by the tides

Respect Before Collection

Let this be said clearly: not everything found on the beach should be taken home.

If you find a full sand dollar, ask yourself:
Is it alive? (If it’s dark, fuzzy, or wet: yes, and it should be left alone!)
If it’s a shell, what will I do with it? Why do I want it?

Better yet: photograph it. Sit with it. Say thank you, and then let it stay. Let it return to sand, back to the cycle it came from.

Keep Learning + Supporting

To deepen your relationship with the land and sea you walk on:

• Follow groups like the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation or Sacred Places Institute
• Learn your local Indigenous land/sea acknowledgment
• Honor cultural knowledge by listening more than taking

We don’t own the ocean,  we learn from it. And sometimes, if we’re lucky, it leaves us a small sign of good fortune… a quiet regalo del mar.