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Junípero Serra

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Junípero Serra has been decapitated, defaced, and became a saint all within a month’s time. He is surrounded by controversy. Many celebrated for he was the first Latino to become canonized. Rubén Mendoza of California State University of Monterey Bay explains, “Father Serra was not only a man of his time, he was a man ahead of his time in his advocacy for native people on the frontier.” However, Valentin Lopez who is the chair of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band explains that “Serra’s and the Church’s failure to learn form the teaching of Christ or from the life of St. Francis resulted in the complete extinction of many, many California tribes and great devastation for many others.” This statue was of a man who lived over two hundred years ago …show more content…

These schools have been described as an instrument to wage intellectual, psychological, and cultural warfare to turn Native Americans into “Americans”. There are many reports of young Native Americans losing all cultural belonging. According to an interview with NPR, Bill Wright was sent to one of these schools. He lost his hair, his language, and then his Navajo name. When he was able to return home, he was unable to understand or speak to his grandmother. Losing one’s cultural knowledge, and therefore the reality of their culture, allows others to have control over their collective and individual consciousness as well as their destiny. In this case, it is clear that the United States government has had the dominant relationship over the Native …show more content…

Now Pope Francis has made Junípero Serra an official saint. Many Native Americans may feel like their history, the history they have fought so hard to preserve, will be forgotten. Which brings us to the fallen statue of Junípero Serra in Carmel. This act is just another expression of the underlining historical tensions we can see within the Native American communities and outside communities. As George Orwell once said, those “who control the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” . It clear that from the time of Junípero Serra until now, outside forces have controlled the past, the present, and the future of the California Native

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of schedule Spanish conquistadors, numerous evangelists considered themselves to be siding empathetically and defensively with the indigenous people groups. In 1537, Pope Paul III pronounced that Indians were not mammoths to be slaughtered or oppressed, but rather people with souls fit for salvation. At the time, this was comprehended to be an edified perspective of indigenous individuals, and one that good natured teachers tried to empower. Letters from ministers who lived among the Indians give us a feeling of the worries numerous held for the welfare of tribal people groups. A letter by Franciscan monk Juan de Escalona reprimands the "shocks against the Indians" conferred by a Spanish legislative head of what is presently New Mexico.

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Sadly, Eileen Kane discovers the man who once drew thousands was now becoming more of a historic versus religious leader, a myth as opposed to a prophet. While at one time the role of his reformative religion united the Native Americans and provided hope for those used to prejudice and being treated as inferior by the whites (Kane, p. 210), his practices had mostly died out. However, the memoir still highlights the importance of his religious movement in shaping the current religious and cultural path of the Paiute

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While it was clear that Serra did not personally assault the Natives as Hernan Cortes or Christopher Columbus had done, he did support the deplorable living conditions of Mission Indians. For instance, Serra was in favor of punishing Neophytes who escaped the Mission with floggings. This shows that, Serra expected the converts to endure their enslavement within the California Mission system. Nonetheless, Serra’s disagreements with the Spanish military does not justify his willingness to practically enslave the Native

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However, according to Father Junipero Serra, the natives were by far in the wrong with their actions to destroy the mission (Chan/Olin, 60). This argument is obviously one sided, but if the website for the San Luis Rey Mission mentioned the fact that the natives sometimes did not like the fact that they were being taken over by a force that merely controlled them with guns, it would most definitely affect their tourist income in numbers. In addition, the mission website is less likely to mention the fact that there were punishments for those natives who did reject the work or conversion to Catholicism. As mention in Francis F. Guest’s essay, “Cultural Perspectives on Death and Whipping in the Missions”, there were many instances in which the punishments for natives was excessive and superfluous. “There is incontrovertible testimony that delinquent Indians were whipped, sometimes excessively, by the padres”

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De Soto kept a chart from the king and read a lengthy statement to each group of natives that he encountered. He informed them that they all belong to him and the Spanish crowd. The Indians were to pledge their allegiance to Spain and accept the Catholic faith. If they refused it, it came with the warning that the Spaniards will start a war and go after all of their

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According to Las Casas, the Son of God “gave his life for every living soul (p. 32),” which includes the lives of the indigenous people (p. 72). Therefore, each man, woman, and child, no matter where they came from, their skin color, age, sex, religion, are equal and apart of the human race. In his short account, Las Casas is absolutely appalled that a human life could be belittled and devalued to the extent where a single mare can be bartered for eighty locals: “that is, eighty members of the human race (p. 65).” Therefore, he claimed that it would be “a criminal neglect of my duty to remain silent (p. 6)” and took a stand to defend the indigenous people against what Las Casas believed to be “mortal enemies of the human race (p.

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With His Pistol in His Hand takes place in Mexico during the summer of 1901. The main character Gregorio Cortez Lira is a young and humbled hard working farmer; married to Leonar Diaz and father of four. He was very close to his brother, Roman Cortez. One day while Gregorio and his brother were at home on the farm, the Major Sheriff confronted them in regards of a horse thieft. The Sheriff heard that Gregorio traded with an American a horse and a mare.

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Between 1830's and 1840's the life of the California Indians were brought down, and the wealthy Californios enjoyed the benefits. Since in 1824, a California governor tried to force the separation of Indians and the missions, and soldiers killed many Californian natives for their resistance. In 1833, General Jose Figueroa, governor of California, approved the law of secularization, which was the decision to take away the lands from the Missions and give them to the natives. This decision affected 18,000 mission Indians because most of them depended on the missions. With the secularization, Indians gained their freedom and received part of the missions' land; however, the natives did not have money and tools to work the land; thus, some

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Sexual assault was a massive problem that led to bigger problems, including further alienation and greater conflict between the indigenous tribes in California and the Franciscans who were trying to impose their European ideas of civilization. Sexual assault was a major problem that, as Antonia Castaneda in her book states, “sexual assaults against native women began shortly after the founding of the presidio and mission at Monterey in June 1770...and continued throughout the length of California. The founding of each new mission and presidio brought new reports of sexual violence”. This last part is particularly important because accounts do exist of the soldiers that were supposed to be carrying out their duties at the local presidios were instead going out to find indigenous women to satisfy their sexual desires and thus committing atrocities of the worst kind to Indigenous women. Father Luis Jayme provided an account of the evils that the soldiers brought onto indigenous women and mentioned a case where a group of soldiers had gone into a village and raped various women, “Soldier Castelo carried a gentile woman into a corral...

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Hilary Weaver argues in her piece of writing; that identifying indigenous identity is complex, complicated, and hard to grasp when internalized oppression and colonization has turned Native Americans to criticize one another. Throughout the text, Weaver focuses on three main points which she calls, the three facets. Self-identification, community identification, and external identification are all important factors that make up Native American identity. The author uses a story she calls, “The Big game” to support her ideologies and arguments about the issue of identity. After reading the article, it’s important to realize that Native American’s must decide their own history and not leave that open for non-natives to write about.

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1422 Words | 6 Pages

They were stripped away from their traditional and ordinary lives and introduced to the “oppressors’” way of life. If they stepped out of line and attempted to retain their previous lifestyle, they were physically abused through a system that wanted to spend as less money as possible to “kill the Indian, save the man.” It was this trauma that they went through as children that they reflect on their own children as they grew accustomed to it. It was this that many Navajo families of the reservation have a sense of fear to teach the younger generation the culture and language they were forced to grow apart from. The result and impact of the boarding school system can still be seen

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Merrell’s article proves the point that the lives of the Native Americans drastically changed just as the Europeans had. In order to survive, the Native Americans and Europeans had to work for the greater good. Throughout the article, these ideas are explained in more detail and uncover that the Indians were put into a new world just as the Europeans were, whether they wanted change or

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