Another chance to get rid of demeaning relic

For more than 25 years, San Francisco’s American Indian community has fought for the removal of the “Early Days” portion of the Pioneer Monument at Civic Center.

The statue, on Fulton Street between the San Francisco Public Library and the Asian Art Museum, shows a swaggering Spanish cowboy gazing out on the horizon, while his religious corollary, a Catholic missionary, berates the barely clothed American Indian man who cowers beneath them.

It is part of an 1894 monument that was a gift to the city from the investor James Lick. Its sculptor, Frank Happersberger, designed it to be easy for the public to understand.

Through the positioning of its bronze figures — their clothing, and their actions — the message of “Early Days” is particularly clear:

The conquerors of this land are here , it says, and its original inhabitants belong at our feet.

The Bay Area’s American Indian community rightfully disagrees. Activists have requested removal of the statue from a prominent public position since the 1990s.

The 2015 Charleston church shooting, when a white supremacist murdered nine African American churchgoers, inspired them to redouble their efforts.

“When I look at that statue, what I see is that a part of myself is not seen as human,” said Mariposa Villaluna, a 37-year-old who’s been active in the latest effort to remove the monument. “I grew up looking at a message that I deserve to be colonized, that I’m not as good as other people. I don’t want my toddler to grow up with it, too.”

The latest effort was finally paying off. Earlier this year, San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission voted unanimously to remove the statue.

This came after a unamimous removal vote from the San Francisco Arts Commission, a unanimous resolution from the Board of Supervisors, and packed public meetings of approving San Francisco residents.

Then a 64-year-old Petaluma lawyer named Frear Stephen Schmid filed an appeal to block the removal. The city’s Board of Appeals agreed with him.

On Wednesday, June 13, the Arts Commission and the city’s Historic Preservation Commission will request a re-hearing from the appeals board — and the whole maddening process will begin again.

All over the country, cities and states have been removing their monuments to a misinterpreted history that reflects shame, not honor, on their residents. According to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, 110 Confederate symbols — 47 of them monuments — have been removed across the nation since the Charleston murders.

New Orleans removed four very public monuments. The state of Georgia renamed two holidays. North Carolina, Texas, Virginia — they have all taken down monuments, renamed schools and retitled highways.

These are places that San Franciscans enjoy believing are backwards and benighted.

Meanwhile, despite unanimous approval, San Francisco can’t seem to get rid of “Early Days.”

I am deeply embarrassed by my city.

I called Schmid. I was unsurprised to learn that he is the kind of person who, upon being asked to explain his reasons for attempting to block the removal of a statue in a city where he doesn’t even live, answers with, “Read my brief.”

I was also unsurprised on reading Schmid’s stated opposition to the June re-hearing request that he called Supervisor Katy Tang’s argument for statue removal “highly emotional,” and mentioned that he “sought to educate” Mayor Mark Farrell, who expressed disappointment at the appeal board’s decision.

Sadly, sexism, pedanticism and lack of consideration for other people’s experiences are an oft-mixed personality cocktail.

The interesting thing about Schmid’s argument is that it hangs on a common misperception. In his April 18 statement to the Board of Appeals, Schmid writes, “(N)ot to know history, is to repeat history.” In his June opposition, he writes, “Let history stand.”

Many people believe that removing public monuments to white supremacists and brutal colonizers amounts to some kind of historical erasure. It’s an idea that assumes history is settled and unchanging, instead of a living document that’s being frantically revised every day.

For example, most Confederate monuments were erected not after the Civil War, but during the early 1900s as well as the 1950s and ’60s. The purpose of putting them up then wasn’t to celebrate recently departed soldiers. It was to terrorize African Americans and discourage them from fighting for civil rights.

Similarly, the days of conquering Spanish cowboys and austere missionaries were long over by the 1890s in California. What wasn’t over by then was the idea of forcing “education” on American Indians: California set up its first Native boarding schools during the 1890s, where young children were abused and forced to conform to white culture.

Like every monument, Happersberger’s statue is a reflection of the time when it was made — not the past it pretends to portray.

It’s way past time for San Francisco to look toward a future in which every human being has value.

San Francisco can’t seem to get rid of “Early Days.”