Being California Indian in a Post-Canonization World

In the aftermath of the chaos surrounding Junipero Serra’s canonization, California Indians are exhausted.  Whether we thought there was a chance of derailing Serra’s sainthood or just wanted to record our anger at the injustice of his canonization, we worked hard and pushed ourselves through an emotional hurricane the past year.  We are not beaten, though; just bone tired, heart-weary. 

But a lot of ugly words are being thrown around on the internet and in conversation about Indigenous people who attended or even participated in the ceremony. Words like “traitor,” “betrayal,” and worse are being used.  I’d like to say something about this. 

I am not Catholic, and have absolutely no loyalties to the Church or the Pope.  Yet clearly, as a woman with Esselen and Chumash Ancestors, I am angry, anguished and frustrated by Serra’s canonization.  Of the many problems I have with the canonization, one of the biggest is this:  sainthood for Serra sets up what I feel amounts to permission for Round 2 of missionization and an outright gift to genocide-deniers.  Therefore, I have invested much of my writing and energy to speaking out against the canonization. 

At the same time, I feel that other California Indians - like Vincent Medina, who read a passage from the Bible translated into Chochenyo as part of the canonization ceremony - have the right to take part in the ceremony without the scathing criticism or disrespectful jokes now being slung at him.

Why do I feel this way?  I have said many times, as survivors of genocide, every single California Indian person alive right now is a treasure.  We do not have the luxury of denouncing or expelling people because their methods of decolonization differ from ours.  Working together, creating bridges across those gaps, can only make us stronger and more vital, and give us the diversity and strength we need for this battle.  Because of this belief, I can respect Vincent's position even though I would not have chosen to make my stand in exactly same way.  This wasn’t an easy journey for me, though.

As someone who values transparency and clarity, I appreciate that Vincent has been up-front about his choice; he repeatedly spoke out regarding his anti-canonization position in the media and on his personal FB page, yet he did not renounce his Catholicism, which comes to him through a beloved and devout family network of Indigenous people.  He is also open about being gay, which is another difficult stance for a devout Catholic.  This kind of border-dwelling is not for the faint of heart, but Vincent is not keeping any secrets.

I grew up in a family plagued by secrets; secrets about violence, dysfunction, alcoholism, sexuality, mistakes, death, and fear.  I learned early and continuously that to speak my truth about the world was dangerous – people might abandon me, hurt me, take away my freedom, or even hurt themselves.  There was a time in my life when I internalized my family’s aversion to truth and dependence on lies, and I was not honest about many things.  I put up with abuse, I did not defend those who needed it most because I feared conflict.  It was easier to remain silent, to look away, or to make up a story that hid the truth. 

In short, you might say that I grew up with a missionized mind and soul.  I “feared the lash” that would come from speaking my truth, from resisting oppression.  I cowered, and in my cowering, I allowed great damage to happen, and to continue – to myself, to my little brother.  As I grew older and moved away, the scars of my early obedience to fear controlled every relationship I had, from my first spouse, to my friends, and eventually, to my own children.  The mission followed me wherever I went.

For a long time one way I avoided the truth about my life was to simply hate the ways in which both my father and mother contributed to my scars.  I blamed them in a simplistic black and white scenario in which they were bad parents, and I was a victim.  As I got older and learned more about colonization, missionization, and Historical Trauma, I was tempted to extend my hatred and righteous anger to the religious and legal institutions that stood behind those events.  I teetered on the verge of hating Catholicism, hating all of Christianity, hating every priest I saw on the street, hating just because it felt so good to have someone to blame for the blows I’d taken, the blows the people I loved had suffered.  This is what they mean by “internalized oppression”: the mission of my mind made me think that hatred was my idea.

It took years, a lot of lessons from life, and yes, a certain amount of courage, for me to learn that something as easy as hate can’t be right, or satisfying.  I still wrestle with the desire to hide from conflict, to blame others, to lash out at someone else in ways that make me appear to be the victim.  I still feel the weight of that mission wall around me.  Some days I think, seriously?  Is there no end to these adobe bricks?!

But it took so much time to be that hateful.  It took so much energy.  It ate so much of my soul.  As I began to value my writing and my creative energy, I realized that the more my hatred took over, the less generative and productive my work became. Each burst of hatred and bitterness was another adobe brick in the mission walls, locking me down.  I was becoming bitter, incapable of generosity, unpredictable in my moods, at a loss, spiritually. This was never so clear as when, in the course of writing Bad Indians, I tried to describe my father.  Initially I thought, I have to write about all the bad things he did – I have to write that truth.

Yet, my writing of those details was terrible.  Terrible to write, and terrible to read. Flat, predictable, without heart, with nowhere to go – I found myself thinking, I might as well just write, “My father - meh,” and leave it at that, since any extended attempt at writing came out shallow and pointless. In short, my writing didn’t create any goodness – for me, or in the world - when I wrote from hatred. I was building more walls, not bridges.

It was only when I finally admitted that I had loved my father – truly, madly, deeply, the way a young girl idolizes her daddy – and wrote that part out first, that I could then turn to the ugliness he had also given me.  Because my father wasn’t all good, or all bad.  He was a terrifying, beautiful mixture of both, and although talking about his alcoholism or his anger was part of the truth about him, it wasn’t ALL of the truth about him.  He also had an incredible touch with plants, understood color like an artist, could be tender and heart-broken as a child over a sick pet.  In fact …

My father was complicated.  And so was my love for him.  That was the truth I’d been trying to avoid. That was the bridge I’d been trying to burn.

So when I see people slamming Vincent Medina or other California Indians for their choice to remain Catholic, or even to participate in the ceremony, I want to say, look: it’s complicated.  There is no one way to be California Indian.  Many people think that my choices to live far away from our homeland, be active in academia, live as a Two-Spirit person, are very un-California Indian.  And I admit that there are times when even I desperately wish I were living at home, learning things I can only learn from elders and people who have been working all their lives with the materials, languages, land and peoples of our homeland.  But one thing I’ve learned in 54 years: each human being has individual talents and skills, and the trick is to figure out what yours are, and what choices you must make to put them to best use. I’ve made choices that not everyone approves of, or is comfortable with.  The choice to come out.  The choice to identify as Indigenous and commit to the work of decolonization (hey, as a mixed-blood, I could pass as vaguely ethnic and run with the unaffiliated pack).  The choice to support a woman’s right to abortion.  The choice to say, I’m not a Christian.  Some people have written me off for those choices, even in my own family. 

Here’s what I know about living in a black and white world:  Lumping people together into one group – those people are good, these people are bad - is almost always an act of fear. 

So while I would have chosen differently for myself, I respect Vincent’s choice and I acknowledge his reasons for making that choice.  

Vincent posted a statement on FB saying that by participating in the canonization ceremony, he specifically wanted to let the world know that not only did California Indians survive such a massive genocide, but that some of us are actively working to reclaim language, culture, and identity, to thrive as creative and modern people, and to speak languages that the Church worked violently to wipe out – and to speak these words in the presence of the Pope and the world. 

I have fears about what the post-canonization world is going to look like for California Indians, but I recognize that Vincent’s actions have solid reasoning behind them, a strategy that has value in any struggle against oppression.  During the Civil Rights Movement, their African heritage did not prevent a large majority of Blacks from being both Christian and opposed to racism, even though most American slave-owners were Christian and imposed Christianity on their enslaved workers.  Instead, Civil Rights activists called out Christians who did not live honestly by their own belief system and challenged them to live up to their own sacred truths.  For these activists, evolving as a people who rejected institutionalized racism did not mean a refutation of a once-foreign religion that had become theirs.

Thus, I can see the value of Vincent’s hopes that his Indigenous presence might act as a catalyst and reminder of Indigenous surviance.  Perhaps because I am a woman who lived in silence about my romantic and sexual attraction to other women for decades, I know the power of finally speaking out, and the yearning for an audience to hear my voice. In addition, I admire Vincent not just for his cultural work, his commitment to learning his language, and for his work as a Two-Spirit person, but for his courage to do all this in the face of much opposition.  To voice his truth as a contemporary California Indian man is not the easiest path he could have taken. 

I want that kind of courage – along with the courage I saw in so many California Indians during this fight – as part of our community.  Together, we have so. much. power.

We Californian Indians live now in a post-canonization world.  Canonization of Serra happened, and we must work to survive its aftermath: the disrespect done to us by the Church, by media coverage, by educational institutions and yes, by each other.  Wounds have been re-opened, and many of our learned coping responses to stress and anger have popped right up (oh hello old triggers!  I see you!).  We must ask ourselves, is this the best bridge I can help build toward what happens next?  Have I cut myself off from the possibility of diverse, rich California Indian voices in conversation?  Will I be part of a community that stretches and grows with change, or divides and diminishes? 

As I write this, I’m speaking to myself.  I’ll be fifty-four years old next month.  Some days, it feels as if there is so little time left in this life for me to learn everything I want to learn, and to accomplish all that I want to leave behind.  Some days, it feels as if I have just crawled out of the mission.  Sometimes, I think, if I have to move one more fucking adobe brick, I am going to lose my mind.

I want to have conversations with my relatives, not battles.  Let’s save our ferocity for decolonizing, and give our compassion and patience to one another.  I want to be part of a strong, deep California Indian future.  I’m not saying we can’t disagree or engage in critical thinking, even argue back and forth - but haven’t we built all the mission walls we ever want to build?  

Nimasianexelpasaleki.  Thank you for listening. 

Canonization Fodder: California Indians and the Sainthood of Junipero Serra

Children's coloring book sold at a mssion gift shop.

Let kia’alpa ahik iniwa welel ta’a neku tuxus laka masianex jatan kominan efexe.  We ask that these words find the ears and hearts of all people.

California Indians who are descendants of those few survivors from the missionization of Southern California (1769-1835) have responded to the news of Junipero Serra’s canonization in many ways: on-line petitions (http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/urge-pope-francis-to), gatherings at various missions for prayer honoring the Ancestors or peaceful protests, moderated debates, a mock trial, art installations, press conferences, a 650-mile walk through California visiting all 21 missions, social media, radio shows in English and Spanish, and letters to the Pope himself.  Articles in many newspapers, both online and in print, on multiple radio stations, and feature stories in newscasts, also serve to broadcast our dismay and pain over the honoring of Serra, founder of a mission system that caused huge losses – much of it irreparable - for Indians from Sonoma to San Diego.

With just a few days to go, we have made our voices heard not just in the U.S., but in many international presses as well.  We have engaged in this conversation with heart and soul, many of us giving up weeks and months of our time to educate people all over the world about what really happened to the Indigenous population of California, all the while maintaining jobs, families, community work.  Some of us truly believe that there is a chance our voices will be heard.  Others simply don’t want history to record the absence of our voices, hoping that these records will someday note our resistance to yet another form of colonization.  Either way, we have refused to allow this canonization to go forward without speaking truth to power, and that is an act of determination in the face of the overwhelming odds and great power of the Catholic Church.  It is, in fact, almost Missionization, Round II - although this time, the Indians are a bit more organized.

But I am facing the fact that Pope Francis refuses to listen: that he actively, purposely, consciously refuses to give California Indians the time of day.

For all of his seemingly heart-felt, progressive compassion for women who have sought abortions, couples who have divorced but want to return to the Church, LGBTQ folks who wish to retain their Catholic religion and traditions, and more direction about sexual abuses against children by priests than any other Pontif before him, Pope Francis has not made one public comment in reference to the situation in California.  He has not so much as glanced in our direction.

It is as if we, the very people upon whom Serra’s heroic record of evangelization was built, are no more alive to Francis than adobe bricks.

It is as if we, the very people whose lives and deaths make Serra the priest into Serra, the saint, are inconsequential footnotes in our own history.

It is as if we California Indians and our Ancestors are merely canonization fodder.

Indeed, the Pope does not appear to know that the truth is, California Indians still exist: we live and breath, walk the streets of L.A. or San Diego or Santa Barbara, have histories twisted and intertwined with Serra’s miraculous life.  We are alive:  teachers, parents, professors, carpenters, scientists, linguists, truck drivers, tribal chairs, basketweavers, abalone workers, small business owners, poets, students, scholars.

Perhaps the Pope has been kept in the dark about the fact that any California Indians survived the missions at all.  He hasn’t contacted or responded to any tribal chairwomen or chairmen; he has not made any statement about the terrible physical or mental pain our Ancestors endured and which, in too many cases, still affects us today in different forms.  He has not spoken to any California Indian of any stature, famous, infamous, or anonymous, who opposes or questions this canonization.

Of course, he’s the Pope.  He doesn’t have to speak to us.  He doesn’t have to acknowledge us, the descendants of those whose anguish and deaths paid the price for Serra's sainthood.  That’s the kind of power and privilege that 500 years of raking in the enslaved lives, gold and resources of two continents provides.  Francis doesn’t owe us anything, not even a conversation about the loss of 90% of our population in the name of evangelical fervor. We are canonization-fodder, nothing more.

Which leaves me asking myself, if pain is inflicted by a man who will one day be named a saint, does that mean the pain never existed?

If, in 1780,  my Ancestor was flogged by a filthy leather Cat o’ Nine Tails, twenty-five lashes on nine separate days and then, on nine consecutive Sundays, forty more (a special but not unusual punishment known as “The Novenario” within the missions), to the point where no amount of vinegar or poultices could heal the wounds; if that Ancestor sickened, fevered and was eaten alive by infection, died in a raging fog of pain, grief and confusion – does time miraculously work backwards at the moment when Serra is canonized?  Does my Ancestor’s suffering suddenly no longer exist? Did it never happen at all?

Now that would be some serious Saint Magic.  Maybe that could be Serra’s Second Miracle, the one Pope Francis waived on this fast-track canonization.

But Pope Francis is not concerned with my questions.  Like Serra, Francis has fallen prey to the vanity, greed and ambition so much a part of the Catholic Church’s history.  Solid gold candlesticks, expensive vestments, elaborate monuments and cathedrals – none of these are necessary to truly worship the Creator, whether that Creator is Indian or Spanish or something else altogether.  Jesus Christ spoke pityingly and sternly of those at the mercy of such belief systems.  The Franciscans themselves were under orders to dress simply, give up all worldly goods, and serve the poor.  This vow of poverty was also meant to curb other excesses like desire for fame, self-importance, acclaim.

Somewhere along the line, those instructions were lost.  Someone decided that even if priests couldn’t possess gold, God would like gold communion cups, marble in His church, the finest cloth money could buy on His altar.  Someone decided that a tally of souls “saved” by baptism functioned like notches on the belt of a great warrior -  my own 5x great-grandfather, Cholom, was noted in the San Carlos Mission baptismal records as “the 1000th Indian baptized here” as if he were prized not for his soul, but as a symbol of conquest.

And Francis, for all of his lip service to kindness and compassion, seems to have forsaken California Indians as well as the hope of any real change within the Catholic Church.

This moment in history could have been an opportunity for Francis to address the blind, unthinking ambition that is the steamroller approach to spreading the Gospel.  The Church doesn’t burn people at the stake as witches anymore, and we don’t seek to excuse those who did; but we shouldn’t canonize them, either.

The truth is, my families came through the brutality of Carmel, Soledad and Santa Ynez missions in 1835 and we, like other survivors, have lived ever since in a world profoundly warped by the on-going injustices and consequences of the missions founded by Junipero Serra.  In many ways, I consider myself fortunate: while I was baptized by a Catholic priest as a baby, it was purely a part of what little ritual remnant remained in my father’s rag-tag cultural baggage, and I did not engage with the Church at all after about the age of four, and never as an adult.  As a non-Catholic, neither Pope Francis’s decision, nor Serra’s canonization, matters the least bit to my spirituality.  This canonization is not even a blip on the radar of my relationship with the Creator.  Catholicism is someone else’s religion, and for that I am deeply grateful.

Those of my relatives who still practice Catholicism in some form are suffering far, far more pain over this canonization than I am.  Deep rifts have opened up between family members, but also within the hearts and souls of individuals who find themselves torn by loyalty to their Church, and loyalty to their tribe and Ancestors.

However, all of my relatives and I live in a secular world that is pocked by the scars of everything that happened in the California missions, including the devastation that Mission Mythology spreads among Natives and non-Natives alike.

In this secular world, California Indians are quite alive, and the legacy of lies perpetuated by missionization makes our daily lives profoundly difficult to negotiate.  Daily, we fight lack of land or federal recognition, struggle over water rights, our economic, mental and physical health issues, high rates of incarceration, substance abuse and suicide, educational deficits, environmental pollution and cultural losses. State and federal administrators and institutional racism in the educational system continue to teach the world that California tribes were (and are) primitive, godless, stupid, lazy, weak and fearful creatures who desperately needed to be “civilized” in the past and still can’t manage our own lives in the present.  This month, a young Maidu/Navajo student at Cal State Sacramento University was humiliated and dismissed from her history class for correcting her professor – with research, notes, and records – about the decimation and genocide of California Indians during missionization and the Gold Rush.  In 2015, dis-information and lies about Indigenous Californians so instrumental to Serra’s missionization legacy are still savage weapons used against us to deny our humanity.

I’ve been told that the traditional 4th grade curriculum in California, which teaches both missionization and Serra as heroic and progressive, will be given a more realistic slant in the post-canonization era.  I don’t know if this is true or not.  We’ve been asking and working for this kind of reform for decades – yet even if it happens, the canonization of Serra will cancel out whatever good such corrections might do.  Fourth graders will be told on one hand that missionization was bad for the Indians, many died ugly deaths, and – if they are lucky – will hear that California Indians were already civilized when the Spanish encountered them.  Then they will hear that the Catholic Church made Serra a saint.  A saint.  Students will hear that the Pope apologized for crimes and sins committed during colonization.  Then they will learn that Junipero Serra committed those crimes and sins, yet was honored for dishonoring the Ancestors of the California Indigenous peoples.  The cognitive dissonance is stunning.

This, too, is what we inherit from missionization: a complicated dance around the truth to protect the perpetrators of a massive crime and cover-up.  Is it any surprise that we oppose sainthood for the man who founded those missions, and in whose name so much damage continues to be done?

This week a delegation of Californians, Native and non-Native, will hold two press conferences – one in New York, one in D.C., both major stopping points for Pope Francis - to explain our opposition to the canonization.  I’ll join the group in Washington D.C. as the Esselen Nation representative.

1.   Monday September 21, 10:00 am-noon at St Peter's Church (Balcony Room): 619 Lexington Avenue. NY, NY 10022.  Speakers include Norma Flores, aka Toypurina Carac, (Kizh Nation); Val Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band; Dr. Donna Schlindler (psychiatrist who specializes in Historical Trauma), Dr. Christine Grabowski (anthropologist), Antonio Gonzales (AIM WEST Director and UN Liaison), and surprise guests.
  

2.  Tuesday September 22, 11:00a.m.-1:00 p.m. at  Plymouth United Church of Christ, Washington D.C.; 5301 North Capitol St NE, Washington, DC 20011.  Speakers include all of the above, as well as Dr. Deborah A. Miranda, author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, and representative of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Bay Area.

History will record our righteous anger. And if the Pope won’t hear us, our Ancestors will.

Cha'a!  We exist.

Deborah A. Miranda

Still Not Feelin' the Love: An Open Letter to Pope Francis

Dear Pope Francis:

So the Vatican has launched its canonization PR machine for your big visit to the U.S. later this month, and of all the offensive, insensitive, I-can't-hear-you-la-la-la-la-fingers-in-the-ear slogans, they chose this:

Now, Pope Francis, I admit that I cannot bear the word 'mission' even in a normal, non-missionization context.  As a professor, I work hard to use other words in conversation, like "Our FOCUS here is to get students writing," or "My real INTENT with this assignment is to ..." - substituting just about anything so that I don't have to say, "My mission today is to teach you First Years how to write a decent essay."

Heck, if I could, I'd re-write Mission Impossible so that the infamous taped warning reads, "Your task, Mr. Phelps, should you choose to accept it..." - simply because the word MISSION makes the postcolonial fillings in my Indian teeth cringe like a nice big chomp of tin foil.

But this little line drawing with the back of your slightly chunky, grandfatherly figure raising one benevolent hand in graceful blessing and the words LOVE and MISSION together in peaceful blue sans serif font is much, much worse than tin foil shudders.

And that cute word play on "mission" (get it?) makes me go just a touch crazy.

Okay.  I'm pausing for a few deep breaths here, fighting the urge to shout at you like this:  THE WORDS LOVE AND MISSION TOGETHER IN PEACEFUL BLUE SANS SERIF FONT AND THAT CUTE WORD PLAY MAKES ME GO A LOT CRAZY.

But there, I did it, and I feel a teeny bit better.  Just a teeny bit, though.  Trust me, Francis, shouting is only a temporary outlet.

This PR image makes me want to pull my hair out because I am on the other side of the mirror.  As a California Indian whose Ancestors were the subjects of missionization, I can tell you that the Spanish missions were not about love.

As the population graph above shows, the missions - for California Indians - were about death.

Death from the murder, disease, starvation, European-spread syphilis and rape directly brought about by the missions founded by Catholic missionaries.

Deaths that were brought about by one thing:  greed.  Rapacious, self-serving, unmitigated greed - the acquisitive desires of Spanish royalty, military and yes, Catholic priests.

Francis, I know this might be hard for you to hear.  Clearly, a petition asking you to cancel the canonization has gone unheeded, as have multiple news stories, interviews with California Indian peoples, and letters such as this.  But with the Catholic Church's immense power (financial as well as world-wide scope) comes great responsibility.  Does that sound familiar?  Perhaps you know it better as "To those who much is given much is required" (Jesus Christ; Luke 12:48).

Francis, you've been busy proclaiming a 'mercy year' for Catholic women who have had abortions so that they can confess, be forgiven, and rejoin the Church; you've encouraged your priests to welcome divorced Catholics back.  You've recently spoken mercifully of LGBTQ individuals, saying, "A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being."  This past June, you even announced "a specific process by which the Vatican can deal with bishops who are negligent in handling cases of abuse in their territories," speaking to the decades-long sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests that has been covered up by the Church itself.

Of course, all of these actions on your part have yet to play out fully, given the centuries of punishment dealt by the Church to women who had abortions, divorced people, LGBTQ Catholics, and victims of abuse by priests.  And many of these announcements by you are phrased as spiritual expressions rather than outright changes in Catholic dogma; "we enter into the mystery of the human being" is one of those phrases that doesn't, really, pin you down to any actual change. 

Still, Francis, you seem to have no fear of voicing a kinder, gentler Church for the 21st century, despite more conservative pressures from within the Vatican. 

Yet you can't quite seem to bring yourself to apply this kind of clarity and perspective to Serra's canonization. 

People are not born saints, and in fact the Church has (or had) an elaborate process in place to scrutinize the lives of people nominated for sainthood.  However, as the linked Catholic website above notes, Popes are free to waive some of those steps, including the number of years before being canonized, or even - in the case of Serra - one of the two required miracles. 

Unfortunately, the waiving of Serra's second miracle means that his canonization can be pushed through with an incomplete investigation.  I've speculated before (see earlier link to previous post) that you might be looking to use the Serra canonization as a way to celebrate the Church, rather than constantly apologizing for its failures.  Forgive me, Francis, but your organization would benefit from some good PR these days.

Hence, "Love is Our Mission"?

Let me tell you why that phrase and your campaign to canonize Junipero Serra doesn't work for the very people Juniper Serra was tasked with 'saving.'  Let me tell you why many California Indians (and our allies) are protesting this celebration.  Let me help you see our perspective.

You see, we know that everyone wanted (not needed) something from California's indigenous peoples: if not gold, if not some weird tally of Spanish God-points for 'saving' Native souls from Hell, then slave labor to defend land claimed by Spain from other invaders like Russia, France, and the United States of America.

We know that that land, those souls, those lives, were taken, not given freely.

We know that makes missionization a crime.

Yes, I'll say it.  Missionization is a crime against humanity by humanity.  No human being should have to defend him or herself against someone else's religious aggression.  Not in 1770, when Junipero Serra showed up in the homelands of my Ancestors near what is now the greater Monterey Bay area, and not in 2015, on Indian reservations in the U.S. or in impoverished Indigenous communities South America.  Religion is a deeply personal, often culturally-based belief system that means nothing if it is not freely accepted or chosen.  Sure, human beings have the right to offer their religious beliefs to others for consideration.  But human beings also have the right to decline participation in any religion, as well.


To be missionized - i.e., forcibly 'converted' - at gunpoint, by physical beatings, rape, murder of one's families or community members, by psychological coercion, lies, trickery - is a moral, ethical, spiritual crime.

Any religious figure who uses force to benefit a religious organization is not a religious figure.


Yes, I do have high standards - thanks for pointing that out.  Yes, I do realize that the Franciscan priests who missionized California lived in a different time period where missionizing was a European norm.  But no, I do not believe in honoring anyone who participated in that kind of colonization simply because they worked really really hard at forcibly beating religion into Indigenous people.  Or simply because "everyone else was doing it, too."  You know what?  Even if that argument (voiced by every teenager since time began) were valid, the truth is that everyone else was NOT doing it.  Not even all priests were doing it.

To quote myself in an earlier post,

Serra, many of his his supporters have argued, was simply "a man of his times." In other words, colonization happens, and we should not blame those caught up in it. But that has a flip side to it:  if Serra was, in fact, “a man of his times” in 1769 when he founded the first California mission in San Diego, he should have known better: Bartolome de las Casas knew better in 1552 when he published "A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies," and spent his entire life working for the freedom of Indians and return of their lands (a wealthy man, a priest, and former Indian slave-holder); a document Serra and all priests in training would have read and debated. Padre Antonio Horra knew better in 1799 when he protested soldiers' rapes and beatings of Indian converts at his California mission.  The Church officials in California and Mexico sent poor Padre Horra home saying he had gone insane from the stress of missionization and his inability to deal with the hardships of The New World.

As it turns out, Padre Horra asked to be sent home because he knew that his Franciscan brethren had it in for him and he feared for his life after blowing the whistle on their Spanish Inquisition conversion techniques.

History of California. 1884-90  By Hubert Howe Bancroft

[Many other Europeans of the time also left behind records stating the over-the-top cruelty of California missionaries and, as Cutcha Risling Baldy points out, Spanish records contain thousands of accounts showing that Native people thought it was wrong, too - by fleeing, fighting back, setting fire to missions, even killing priests in an effort to defend themselves.  Those accounts, of course, are written by the missionaries themselves about bad, bad Indians who wouldn't listen unless flogged, imprisoned, starved, or otherwise 'persuaded' to accept their enslavement.]

Oh, and speaking of the Spanish Inquisition, Francis, surely you know that Padre Junipero Serra actually was an agent for the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico?  The LA Times reports on this fact:

Even by 18th century standards, Serra's religious fanaticism was over the top. With beliefs grounded in doctrines inherited from the Middle Ages, he took pleasure in extreme self-mortification and worked as a loyal comisario, or field agent, for the Inquisition, tracking down witches, heretics and practitioners of “cryptojudaism” in Mexico City. According to UC Riverside historian Steven Hackel's biography of Serra, he was “a calculating and unrelenting interrogator of those he thought had committed crimes against the Church.”

Just what does "calculating and unrelenting interrogator" mean?

As Steven Hackel writes in his biography of Serra, "Only two full records of [Serra's] actions as a comisario have come to light, but it is unlikely that these reflect his full involvement with the Holly Office in New Spain, given the secrecy that always surrounded the Inquisition" (124).

(Hmmm, interesting.  If there are more records rattling around in the Vatican's archives, Francis, would you consider sharing?)

In one of the two cases Hackel was able to find, he reports that Serra's investigation gathered enough incriminating evidence against a "mulata" or "loba natural" (part Indian and part African) woman named Maria Pasquala to have her sent to Mexico City.  There, she spent five and a half months imprisoned in a filthy, dark dungeon while the judges of the Inquisition 'examined' her further.  The day after she was finally judged guilty of witchcraft, guards 'found' Maria outside her cell, beaten nearly to death (it was called "a grave accident" in Spanish records).  She lingered a few hours, then died, and was buried in an unmarked grave.  Hackel concludes,

"Maria Pasquala's fate was tragic, and Serra as an agent of the Inquisition played a major role in it.  ... Serra knew that Maria Pasquala would most likely be punished severely when he sent her to Mexico City.  But he saw her as a witch and could not have done otherwise.  Nothing in the historical record suggests that Serra knew of her death.  Yet he would not have been surprised to learn that one who had gone so far astray had suffered such a gruesome end" (136, emphasis added).

In other words, when Serra ordered Maria Pasquala sent to Mexico City, he knew that she would be found guilty based on his inquisition testimony, and furthermore, that while the punishment for this was a severe flogging and banishment, Serra knew that her murder by guards with the implicit permission of Church authorities was also just as likely.  

That's 'our Blessed Serra'?  Well, Francis, maybe he's yours, but he's not ours.

That's your Blessed Serra, the man who - four years later - would be given complete control over the lives of thousands of California Indians.

That's your "Mission of Love."

Let me quote Ursula K. Le Guin, who writes, 

Institutional saint-terrorists believe that their religious conviction justifies them in mind-washing, enslaving, torturing, and murdering anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe. 

So long as religions use such believers to enforce their control over minds and extend their worldly dominion, the saint-terrorist will exist and will be canonized. 

Self-sacrificial saints differ from saint-terrorists in choosing to mindwash, enslave, torture, or kill themselves instead of others.

What she is saying, Francis, is that Serra had a choice.  He had a choice between serving to better the lives and needs of California's Indigenous population in the wake of 'discovery' by Europeans, and serving the political and economic desires of the Vatican and the Crown.  Other Europeans of his time chose to protest mistreatment of Indians, and made efforts to protect them.  Serra's choices reveal him to be an ambitious, greedy man whose longing for glory was, in fact, a vice.  There is much more evidence that Serra does not deserve to be honored by anyone, but I can only guess that you have ignored that too, since you have yet to respond to any of these points.

Prove me wrong, Francis.

Canonization of Junipero Serra means:

A) religious violence, aka terrorism, is okay, and

B) the rape of California's people and land - which we are testifying to - was not rape, so we must be deluded, or liars, or both! and

C) violence today is okay tomorrow, because by tomorrow it will all be in the past and that excuses everything.

For all these reasons and more, here is my response to that poster at the head of this post. Here is a glimpse into the Indigenous California side of the strange mirror we call history.

Serra the Saint: Why Not?

 

Serra the Saint: Why Not?

We are told that Junipero Serra is being canonized because he brought Christianity to California Indigenous peoples. If that were all he had brought to us, perhaps I could find it in my heart to forgive Pope Francis’ decision. If Serra had brought us the choice of Christianity – with no punishment for choosing to remain faithful to our own religions – perhaps I could understand the Pope’s decision. But Serra did not just “bring” us Christianity; he imposed it, he forced it, he violated us with it, giving us no choice in the matter.

Missionization, for California Indians, was more like indoctrination in an abusive cult than spiritual grace. Natives who resisted or refused conversion were beaten, imprisoned, starved, exiled or driven from their homelands – usually by soldiers, at the behest of priests. Catholicism was the stealth weapon of Spanish colonization; a “moral” reason for conquest, to protect lands Spain wanted for itself from Russians moving south from Alaska. In addition to Christianity, the Spaniards brought disease, including their own special brand of syphilis that not only sterilized Native women but caused birth defects, blindness and death. A pre-contact population of close to one million dropped to 250,000-300,000 in less than 70 years. These numbers, these statistics, are human beings. Our ancestors. Our relatives. Our families. The missionaries’ efforts directly caused generations of Historical Trauma to California Indians from which we still have not recovered (loss of indigenous religion, culture, languages, art, land, health, psychological well-being and sovereignty were direct results of Serra’s missionization efforts).

In other historical contexts, this kind of abuse of power is called genocide, a crime against humanity. It is certainly about as far away from sainthood as anything I can imagine, and the Catholic Church’s stated intentions to honor Serra with canonization indicates that it has learned nothing, and does not understand that it needs to learn: violently enforced religion is not missionization, it is terrorism.

Why, then, is Serra’s canonization seemingly imminent?  After the church rape scandals in the past couple of decades, Serra may be seen by many in the Vatican as someone whose reputation is above all of that, having lived prior to and not affected by the legal cases still going on. And this canonization is definitely seen, within Vatican circles, as having taken too long already - Serra was beatified in 1988, which raised protests from Native peoples and, along with the then-necessity of a second miracle – may have put things on the back burner till now. Meanwhile, Pope Francis' participation in the fast-tracking of the double canonization last year (of his predecessors, Popes John Paul XXIII and John II) should serve as a red flag, indicating a lack of judgment and sensitivity toward the suffering not just of Native Americans and their Ancestors, but of Catholics themselves, particularly those who were sexually abused and whose Church covered up the crimes.  As Barbie Latza Nadeau writes, Pope John II not only protected one of the priests involved (“Legionnaires of Christ founder Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, who sexually abused seminarians, fathered several children and even abused his own son”), but actually rallied around him.  In addition, “In many ways,” says Nadeau, “John Paul II laid the groundwork for his own fast track to sainthood back in 1983 when he dismissed the office of the advocatus diabolus, or devil’s advocate. Until then, all causes for saints had to be scrutinized by a canon lawyer, called the Promoter Fidei, who studied each saint’s worthiness. John Paul … would not likely have made the cut based on his record on the child abuse scandal."  Indeed, with the new rules for sainthood no longer requiring two miracles, Serra’s canonization does seem very likely to happen soon.  

Serra, many of his his supporters have argued, was simply "a man of his times." In other words, colonization happens, and we should not blame those caught up in it. But that has a flip side to it:  if Serra was, in fact, “a man of his times” in 1769 when he founded the first California mission in San Diego, he should have known better: Bartolome de las Casas knew better in 1552 when he published "A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies," and spent his entire life working for the freedom of Indians and return of their lands (a wealthy man, a priest, and former Indian slave-holder); a document Serra and all priests in training would have read and debated. Padre Antonio Horra knew better in 1799 when he protested soldiers' rapes and beatings of Indian converts at his California mission.  The Church officials in California and Mexico sent poor Padre Horra home saying he had gone insane from the stress of missionization and his inability to deal with the hardships of The New World. Mission websites state that "Padre Antonio de la Concepcion Horra (1767-?) became a problem almost from the very beginning. Then-President of the missions, Padre Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, assigned Padre Horra to work with the experienced missionary Padre Buenaventura Sitjar, for the founding of Mission San Miguel. Less than a month after the July 25, 1797 founding, Padre Horra began showing signs of insanity … 'Two surgeons at Monterey examined Horra and declared him insane; the governor made it official, and Horra was returned to Mexico. From there, Padre Horra was returned to Spain on July 8, 1804." This is from the Mission San Miguel website.    

However, there is another, rarely heard side to this story:  “The treatment shown to the Indians is the most cruel … For the slightest things they receive heavy floggings, are shackled, and put in the stocks, and treated with so much cruelty that they are kept whole days without a drink of water,” Horra wrote in his own defense, adding that charges of insanity were false and brought against him because of his serious charges against of cruelty by priests and soldiers, and mismanagement of Church resources (Bancroft 587).  In closing, Horra asked to be sent back to Spain because he feared for his life – not because of wild Indians, but due to his own Franciscan brethren.

Many letters, diaries and records of others traveling in California during Serra’s tenure and afterwards left behind testimonies of the brutality brought on by the missions.  In 1786, French explorer Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse observed that during his visit to Mission Carmel a mere three years after Serra’s death, “Everything reminded us of a habitation in Saint Domingo, or any other West Indian slave colony. The men and women are assembled by the sound of the bell, one of the religious conducts them to their work, to church, and to all other exercises. We mention it with pain, the resemblance to a slave colony is so perfect, that we saw men and women loaded with irons, others in the stocks; and at length the noise of the strokes of a whip struck our ears.”  Other visitors in the same era noted that Indians were even beaten with a whip or cane when they did not “attend worship” -  not simply going to services, but actually paying attention to the service and necessary responses. These people saw through “the eyes of their time” and what they saw disturbed them deeply.  Serra knew, too. 

In 1988, the last time canonization of Serra came up, protests from California Indians was loud and immediately.  ``He is as responsible for what happened to American Indians as Hitler was responsible for what happened to the Jews,`` Jeannette Costo told The Chicago Tribune. 

This comparison is often dismissed out of hand as hyperbole, yet there is something to it: when Serra supporters write that “he was a man of his times, part of an inevitable colonization and expansion of European powers,” I often wonder, would we accept that as an excuse for Hitler, as well?  Wasn’t he just another power-hungry European leader who went to war for more territory?

More recently, retired Bishop Francis A. Quinn apologized to the Miwok Indians  during a Mass at the Church of St. Raphael in San Rafael California;  Bishop Quinn admitted that missionaries "took the Indian out of the Indian," and imposed “a European Catholicism upon the natives."  He also admitted that mission soldiers and priests had raped Indian women and enforced missionary rules with brutal and violent punishments. Perhaps most stunning, Bishop Quinn agreed with what some of us have long known: that Indians were civilized, had forms of religion, education, art, governance and agricultural knowledge long before the Spanish arrived bent on conversion and their own version of civilization.  

And still more recently, Bishop Richard Garcia asked forgiveness from the Diocese of Monterey (in December 2012) when he offered a formal apology for the abuses of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Ohlone/Costanoan Indians, one of several tribes taken into Mission Carmel. 

A clear thread of protest from within the Catholic Church itself runs parallel to the protests of California Indians, although each has often been in danger of erasure by the powers that wish to control the narrative.

So is it any wonder that California Indians, and many of our allies, feel that Serra’s canonization is a mistake that will only cause further damage to our struggle to return from the aftermath of genocide – a struggle which in large part depends upon our ability to challenge and expose the Mission Mythology that supports past injustices?

As I write this, my mind is already leaping ahead to the hate mail and comments sure to follow.  In the comment section of a November 2013 issue of an article about Junipero Serra in The Guardian, I saw this typical thread:

The sheer inability of people to do their own research, or lacking that, to critically examine the arguments of the “research” they do read (or imagine they read), stuns me.  Obviously, our California Indian Ancestors not only survived “the ravages of Mother Nature,” but had a deeply spiritual connection with the cycles and our responsibilities to the beings around us; we did not need a “refuge” “against” nature, because we had spent thousands of years working with our world and understood what was required for an equitable relationship.  I’ve seen far, far more vicious threads in the past few days.  On the NYT comment section after an article in which I was quoted (along with two other California Indians), someone named Richard M wrote, “I hate to be blunt, but it must be said: ‘Prominent Native Americans’ here equals ‘usual handful of professional left-wing activists.’”  I replied with my academic and tribal credentials, gave him a few hard facts about missions, and told him to educate himself.  I refrained from his own brand of blunt simply because, as an Indian, I’ve learned that I cannot stoop to the level of haters without losing what little credibility I have.

So I don’t fool myself into thinking that I am going to change the minds of haters, or of the people who think this debate is highly amusing and not worth their time, because “it’s all water under the bridge now, just move on.”  But I do feel strongly that as one of the few descendants of the Indians who survived the missions, I have a responsibility to my Ancestors and to my own descendants to speak up and try to create a clearer understand about why Junipero Serra’s canonization would be another historical flogging of California Indians.  No, Serra was not the only one involved.  Yes, he was part of an intricate machine run by the Spanish Crown’s political desires, the Spanish military’s might, and the Vatican’s multiple ambitions to convert and acquire both souls and wealth.  But Serra was also a man who, like many before him, was faced with a choice: go along with the program, achieve his own personal goals, and ignore the larger crimes – or take a stand against inherently inhumane and unchristian acts against a people who were obviously vulnerable to diseases and technologies far different from their own.

Serra made his choice.  And in my eyes, that choice does not make him a saint, or anything close to it.  Why not canonize Mother Teresa?  Why not Archbishop Romero, who died defending indigenous peoples from poverty and injustice?  Why honor and elevate a man who allowed himself to close his eyes and continue to head an organization that was clearly destroying souls faster than it could "save" them?  This is what I want to bring to the attention of those who are willing to consider the more difficult sides of this debate: when we believe in Mission Mythology, or even simply just allow it to continue to exist, unchallenged, we accept that cruelty and injustice is allowable, inevitable, and profitable.

But that will come back to bite you, and those you love, one day.

Deborah A. Miranda
See also:  "Junípero Serra's road to sainthood is controversial for Native Americans"

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