Out with Junipero Serra, in with Native Americans
A California Democrat is seeking to replace a former statue of a controversial 18th-century Spanish missionary located on the grounds of Sacramento’s Capitol Park with a new monument that recognizes regional tribes.
Assembly Bill 338, authored by Assemblyman James C. Ramos, D-Highland, would strike a decades-old requirement to keep and maintain a monument of Father Junípero Serra, who is dubbed “the father of the California missions.”
Instead, the bill would allow tribal nations in the Sacramento region, in coordination with the Department of General Services, to plan and construct a new monument.
The bill received bipartisan approval during an Assembly Rules Committee hearing on Thursday.
Under the bill, it’s not clear who or what would be represented in the new monument, but Ramos hopes it “calls on the Sacramento area tribes to come together and give options of a monument that would be rightly and respectfully dedicated to the local Indian people from this area.”
Protesters toppled Serra’s statue last July amid nationwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white Minneapolis police officer. Serra statues in Los Angeles and San Francisco were also toppled last year.
As debates over cultural representation raged, a marble sculpture of Christopher Columbus was removed last year from the Capitol Rotunda at the request of California Democrats, who called the Italian settler a “deeply polarizing historical figure given the deadly impact his arrival in this hemisphere had on indigenous populations.”
The purpose of California missions was to convert Native Americans to Catholicism. Serra founded the first California mission in 1769. Ramos said fourth-graders in California’s
public schools are asked to build models of California missions for class projects, but “never were taught the other side of the story.”
Pope Francis in 2015 officially declared the missionary a Catholic saint, a decision that was met with widespread criticism from Native Americans. Francis called Serra, who founded the first nine of 21 Spanish missions in California, “the evangelizer of the West in the United States.”
“Very little of California Native American slavery during the mission period is captured in our history books,” said Ramos and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, in a recent op-ed published in The Sacramento Bee. “Spanish friars and the military subdued and enslaved California’s Native Americans.”
Former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 allotted about $100 million in his final budget to build a California
Indian Heritage Center in West Sacramento. An additional $100 million is being raised for the project, according to the California Department of Parks and Recreation.
Ramos’ bill is co-sponsored by six Northern California tribes, including the Wilton Rancheria, Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians, Chicken Ranch Rancheria of MeWuk Indians, Ione Band of Miwok Indians, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians and the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians.
“The Miwok and Nisenan people have lived in this region since time immemorial before the hostile takeover of Native lands by settlers, land barons and gold miners who established Sacramento and the state Capitol,” said Jesus Tarango, chairman of Wilton Rancheria, in a statement. “This bill will begin to tell that history for us and for future generations.”
California is home to
the largest population of Native Americans in the U.S., according to the bill. About 1.6% of Californians identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, according to the Census Bureau.
“This now is a step and a move in the right direction to make sure that that voice is being heard and make sure that the voices of the ancestors of all California Indian people that went through those atrocities and genocide inflicted upon them is being heard once and for all,” Ramos said.