American Indian Center tells so many stories
The staff of the American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions is still getting settled into its new digs.
The four-building, 12,000square-foot campus is on East Commerce Street on San Antonio's near East Side. AIT purchased it last April for $1.2 million from Communities in Schools, an educational nonprofit.
On Friday, the campus will be christened AIT'S American Indian Center, the first in the city to be owned and operated by American Indians.
The grand opening will begin at 10 a.m. in the same way AIT and its parent organization, the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation, begin all gatherings – with a blessing.
All day, the public will be free to tour the new facilities, speak with staff members, and enjoy music and indigenous food from AIT'S mobile food trailer.
Admission is free.
The tribal center is a dream long deferred.
It took four decades to get here, yet already it looks as if AIT'S staff of 23 full-time employees and 20 contract workers will need a bigger space for all the organization's social service programs, health and wellness work, heritage and history projects, and cultural arts programming.
It's a bittersweet moment because we're still coming to grips with San Antonio's rich indigenous heritage and with how badly native peoples have been mistreated and misunderstood.
The new space tells so many stories.
Walls throughout the four buildings are being filled with art and posters celebrating AIT'S health, wellness and cultural campaigns.
Mounted newspaper stories tell of AIT'S successes and struggles, especially those surrounding the controversial redevelopment of the Alamo, which Native Americans refer to as Mission Valero.
Signs soon will go up identifying the center's buildings and rooms, including restrooms, in Pajalate (pronounced pa-halat), a Coahuiltecan language that children of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation study in Sunday classes.
Archival documents adorn offices, and colorful walls display information about each AIT program.
It all reflects the organization's growth and its status as San Antonio's oldest tribal organization, with the state's largest tribal center, said executive director Ramon Vasquez, who has traveled around the country to visit the headquarters of other indigenous groups.
On the center's walls, in its book, artifact and photo collections, and in its budding archives, visitors will see evidence that American Indians have been here longer than any other people.
They were here long before they led the famous Indian pueblos at the city's five 18thcentury Spanish colonial missions.
Friday's festivities will culminate in a 6 p.m. opening of the center's Spiritual Waters Art Gallery.
The inaugural show will feature work by Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez that dates back 70 years, to his days as a student at Lanier High School. He is the executive director's father and a Tap Pilam elder.
When Tap Pilam was founded in 1988, the younger Vasquez said, the community dreamed of a place where families could gather and nourish their culture and heritage, which had largely been erased from mainstream history.
It's “all still very surreal,” Vasquez said as he gave me a tour of the center, which sits half a mile east of the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.
Until now, the only place where AIT displayed its name and logo was on business cards.
“To actually see it on a physical structure gives us a sense of permanency. It gives a sense of autonomy to be able to do what we need to do now for our own history,” Vasquez said.
Like Mexican Americans, Native Americans have struggled to tell their history and claim agency over it, often in the face of scholars and government officials who considered it unworthy of study, Vasquez said.
For American Indians, that experience included the added burden of being considered extinct by many Americans.
Vasquez recalled his own relatives' fatalistic talk about that notion: “that it was better to be beaten up as a Mexican American than killed as an Indian.”
Still, the center comes at an opportune time. Vasquez said San Antonio has the nation's 10th largest American Indian population per capita.
“The 2020 Census reported a 150 percent increase in American Indians in Texas and a 115 percent increase in Bexar County,” he said.
Many of those are people who newly identified as Native Americans, he said. Others moved to San Antonio in connection with their military service.
The tribal organization and AIT, its nonprofit, have been driven by data showing that 74 percent of American Indians live in cities.
Those who live in cities with American Indian centers fare better in several health and social categories than those without access to centers.
American Indians who leave their reservations and move to urban areas that lack tribal centers would have done better to stay put, Vasquez said.
“We know that, and we want them to thrive like other communities in San Antonio.”
Next year, AIT will mark its 30th anniversary.
By then, the American Indian Center will feel lived-in, less surreal, more permanent.
By then, perhaps San Antonio will appreciate how in 2023 AIT and the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation gave this city a most extraordinary gift, its American Indian Center.
A newspaper journalist for almost 40 years, Elaine Ayala has held a variety of journalism jobs, including news reporter, features editor, blogger and editorial page editor. She covers San Antonio and Bexar County with special focus on communities of color, demographic change, Latino politics, migration, education and arts and culture.