Posted on 09/06/2015 8:33:03 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
With the California Mission's founder about to be named a saint, the church plans to be more sensitive to the heartache natives suffered.
With the pope expected to canonize Father Junipero Serra, who founded Californias first nine missions, the Catholic Church has announced plans to address the Native American experience with more sensitivity and truthfulness.
A Los Angeles bishop will oversee a review of third- and fourth-grade Catholic school curriculum to ensure it better reflects a contemporary understanding of Native American history, it was announced. Along with the curriculum review, church officials will review displays, signage and training materials used to train docents and guides at the states missions.
Bishop Edward Clark, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and a long-time liaison with the states Indian communities, will lead the 18- month review, which will include an examination of the cultural content at California missions under church authority.
The review will aim for culturally-sensitive and historically accurate enhancements to grade-school portrayals of Indian life, as well as to traditional teaching on the missions themselves, according to the California Catholic Conference. The mission era gave rise to modern California, but it also gave rise to controversy and to heartache when seen through the eyes of the First Californians, said Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto, president of the California Catholic Conference.
For many years, the Indian experience has been ignored or denied, replaced by an incomplete version of history focused more on European colonists than on the original Californians, he said.
The announcement comes on the eve of the canonization of Father Junipero Serra, the 18th century Franciscan priest who helped convert thousands of native Californians to Christianity.
Pope Francis is expected to canonize Father Serra on Sept. 23 during his visit to Washington, D.C.
Today, on the verge of Father Serras canonization, the time has come to confront that incomplete history and to work with Native American educators, respected historians, Catholic school officials and others to change that and to reflect the best scholarship we can about that era, said Ken Laverone, provincial vicar of the Franciscan Province of Santa Barbara, a partner in the educational effort.
Soto said the initiative will also advise on ways to make the missions relevant for tribal members.
By definition, reconciliation isnt just about the past, its also about the future, the bishop said. And the future of Californias missions wont be complete until tribal members feel welcomed and included in mission life today.
“We’re sorry we converted you from paganism.”
Reverting to the myth of the noble savage? In fact the most destructive effects of Indian cultures came through the many different diseases brought by the Europeans.
Heartache?
Who knew that California’s stone-age peoples were so eager to remain living as starving, naked, hopeless sub-humans?
For the open-minded, the rush of those pagans to become baptized Christians provides a clue.
Like the rush of border-crossers who hope for the benefits of Anglo-America...
That is a very callous statement.
F you. I’m a Cherokee and I dont think my people are savages.
Were sorry we converted you from paganism.
____________________
“Oh, and pick up your original sin on the way out.”
History can be a complex thing.
It is clear that the Christian mission in California was primarily motivated for the good. Nevertheless, there were some well-documented instances when things were not as they might have been. For instance, (my authorship, references available of course if desired)...
“In 1796, it became known that there was a problem at Mission San Francisco. According to witnesses, two hundred Indians left the mission due to .. the three muchos: too much work, too much punishment, and too much hunger. Apparently, the work they were required to do was excessive and .. the food was insufficient.1 Fray Fermin Fancisco de Lasuen, Junipero Serras successor, said that: What is said about the work cannot be denied. It is evidenced by the big projects accomplished in a short time, for much of it was forced labor. I reprimanded them [mission fathers] and placed them under obligation to be more forebearing.2 Punishments included moderate administrations of floggings and time in stockades, and varied according to the severity of the perceived infraction. One punishable violation was leaving the mission without permission or overstaying an approved time away. Enforcement of this policy against extended visitations to relatives back home in the wild was apparently complicated by the fact that some Indians ... fled through fear of a contagious and fatal disease that broke out here [at San Francisco Mission], per Lasuen. In 1800 Jose Arguello spoke of the tuberculosis, venereal disease, and dysentery that afflicted the mission communities. It was mostly children and the very young who succumbed.3 And by 1855 a local [Los Angeles] physician estimated that nine-tenths of the towns Indians were infected with syphilis.4
I have not seen the proposed teaching materials so cannot possibly comment on them. The above is just a scrap from a paper I wrote some years ago, there is more but you get the point. We can celebrate all the good AND we can acknowledge, as did the Church authorities at the time, that not everything was quite perfect.
The myth of the Noble Savage was an invention of the European philosophies, who knew almost nothing about the actual cultures of the indian nations. Nothing savage about them. Probably the peoples of the Southeast lived healthier lives than the French peasantry, at least in true days before De Soto and the wave of disruption caused by his maurading and the wave of disease. That was because they had less waste to handle and better disposed of it than the French did. But like most oral cultures, they were more fragile and once broken foun fit harder to recover.
Have they been lied to ?
You are right, I was also mad at post #2. I’m a half breed, and I always turned down any “gov’t assistance” or anything along those lines because of my Cherokee heritage. I always said it happened years ago and life moves on, and I love this country and the constitution. But please forgive me if I get upset at the way my ancestors were treated and then some people think it was great.
I disagree with most Catholic theology and am a happy protestant. That said, those Spanish mission priests were some brave SOBs.
By the time they had crossed the ocean, got off in Mexico, and proceeded on foot up into New Mexico, or made it up into California, they were so far from Spain that they might as well have been on Mars.
And they had to live among total heathens that would kill at the drop of a hat. And that was just the mission era. The Spanish who landed and first encountered the Aztecs were the the full equivalent of the allied armies liberating the Nazi death camps.
Its terribly unfair to see the treatment they get in todays culture.
As a native American, I say get over it. This is the year 2015.
Apocalypto left a memorable impression of what you described.
Of course. I just don’t think that other poster meant harm.
It’s ok, thanks.
Yes, the Mexican Indians were very into mass murder on a near genocidal scale.
A hundred yard long skull rack and 60,000 more victims were just found. The Conquistadors and Priests were the best thing to happen to the central Mexican Indians.
Forced conversions, and held in virtual slavery in the missions.
Indian Resistence to the California Missions
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/525
California missions spotlight: How a flogging at Mission Santa Inés triggered a legendary rebellion
http://www.latimes.com/travel/california/missions/la-tr-d-missions-santa-ines-20140907-story.html
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