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Sometimes Writer-Blogger
​Cutcha Risling Baldy​

The San Diego Mission and Kumeyaay Revolt: A (decolonized) mission report written by my nine year old daughter or don't try to tell me that fourth graders can't understand a more complex view of history

6/13/2017

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See every year in California Fourth Graders (and their wary parents) are forced build and/or do some kind of California Mission Project. This is a part of the California class curriculum. In third grade you learn about the "prosperous gold rush" and in the fourth grade you learn about the so-called majestic, well-built and "history changing" missions. You know, where the Catholics showed up and were all "hey Indians, we want to teach you to garden!" 

The Mission History in California is very sanitized. It erases the incredible amount of violence that it took to re-make this state into "California." The Spanish didn't just send friendly Padres they also sent scores of soldiers. Junipero Serra (the "founding father" of the mission system) wasn't just writing about how much he liked to teach Indians how to "garden" he was also writing things like: 
That the spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, by blows appears to be as old as the conquest of these kingdoms (July 7, 1780). 

If Your Lordship does not have shackles, with your permission they may be sent from here. I think that the punishment should last one month (July 31, 1775).
In both of these quotes Junipero Serra was talking about how much he felt justified in committing violence against Indian people. The first quote Serra was all "hey the Spanish were mean to Indians during conquest so we can be too." And in the second quote "Hey, I'm sending you these Indian runaways, make sure you whip them sometimes and also lock them up in shackles. If you don't have any we can send some!" 
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Sure does sound like "gardening" is pretty high on that list huh? (Enforced gardening or required gardening or "unfree" gardening is also slavery FYI... historians). The narrative of the Missions as peaceful places where Friars and Native people lived together is so ubiquitous that it becomes part of the California identity. Our mission projects must show how "important" missions are to the history of California. ​

​<--- 
This is the Michaels "Mission Kit" which you can go to the store and buy and then force your children to put together a mission with these cute little Indian figures and Padre figures. But you can't buy a cat-o-nine tails (a whipping instrument that had nine ropes coming off of it that they would sometimes tie little metal balls to the end of so they could beat Native American people with it) or shackles. And no kit comes complete with the dormitories where they used to force Indian women and children to sleep at night, locked up, without a bathroom and which visiting explorers would describe as having the "foulest stench."

Here is an example of some Mission Project that I found online. Please note: I would never poke fun at these children who are obviously very sincere in their effort to complete this project. Instead, please pay attention to the types of information that they are asked to include in their mission project and the way they talk about the mission system. 
PictureFrom Facebook (Ral Christman)
I knew my daughter would face the dreaded California Mission Project once she hit the 4th grade. And that was this year. The plan was to have her do the San Diego Mission. We'd planned for her to build it, and then set it on fire and then turn that in so that she could tell the story of the Kumeyaay Revolt. Unfortunately she was not able to actually set the thing on fire, so instead she put flames on the structure and wrote her report specifically about the revolt.

​Questions that my daughter had as part of her project were things like "how did the Spanish influence the structure of the Mission?" and "Why is the mission important to California history?" She, in particular, commented to me that her friends were mostly writing "positive" things about the mission, and she really couldn't understand why. 

In my talks I often have people point out to me that teaching the "real" history of the Spanish Missions couldn't happen in the 4th grade. Children, they say, would not be able to handle "real" facts about the mission system. And I usually counter with "do you know who mostly grows up knowing this history from the very beginning of their lives? Native children. So which children are you trying to protect? There is a way to show children a more nuanced history, a history that doesn't erase Native people or make them in to passive parts of the story. I have done it with my own daughter her whole life."

But I thought what better way to show what a 4th grade project should look like when it talks about Native survivance and resilience and when it refuses to silence Native resistance then to share my daughter's report. 

I present for your reading pleasure Arya Barya's mission report. #RewriteAndRerightHistory

San Diego Mission & Kumeyaay Revolt
By: Arya (age 9)

PictureYes the San Diego Mission is on fire. B/C it's historically accurate.
In 1769 the San Diego mission was built by the Spanish. In 1775 the Kumeyaay revolted and burned the mission. The Spanish influenced this structure by deciding how it was going to be built and making it look similar to the buildings they had in Spain. After they planned it they forced the Native Americans to build it.

This mission is important to California history because it was the first mission built in California. Six years after they built the mission the Native Americans were tired of being treated badly by the priests and they set the mission on fire and led a revolt. This is important to California history because it shows that Native Americans were fighting against the mission system from the very beginning.

This has had a lot of lasting effects for Native American people. Native Americans didn’t do their cultures or traditions for a long time but now they are bringing them back. A lot of Native Americans stopped speaking their languages but now they have lots of language classes. Native Americans lost their homes and couldn't go back to their villages. The mission system tried to teach Native Americans that their culture was bad but many Native Americans today are very proud of their culture.
​
The Kumeyaay still live in San Diego today and they are proud of how they resisted the Mission system. The Kumeyaay didn’t like how they were being treated. The Spanish soldiers would hurt the Native American women. The Spanish priests would not feed the Native Americans and they were starving most of the time. The priests forced the Native Americans to work and if they didn’t work they would hit them with whips. They kidnapped the women and children from the villages and forced the men to come to the mission. A lot of Native Americans tried to run away and the soldiers would force them to come back. A lot of the Kumeyaay were mad and scared and decided to revolt against the mission system. On November 4th, 1775 the Kumeyaay set the mission on fire and tore apart the chapel. The whole mission was burned to the ground but after that the Spanish rebuilt it. (sadly) *


No, I didn't add the (sadly)... she did. Because she is awesome. 

For more info on the movement to change the 4th Grade California Mission Project:

Repeal, Replace and Reframe the 4th Grade Mission project (Sacramento State University)

With the recent adoption of the new History-Social Science Framework by the California State Board of Education, it is acknowledged that the story of California begins in pre-Columbian times. For this reason, it is important that we include the voices and history of California Indians.

To this end, the practice of creating models of the California missions and not including the impact and daily life of the native population within these missions has perpetuated a false narrative. As indicated by the State Board of Education, “building missions from sugar cubes or popsicle sticks does not help students understand the period and is offensive to many. ... Missions were sites of conflict, conquest, and forced labor.”

The intention of this resolution is to set in motion the replacement units so that educators in California, as well as those in our teacher education pipeline, can access the California Indian perspective that has been absent.

We need your support to help produce new standards-based curricula to reframe California’s history.

First, if you support this endeavor, sign on to the Resolution to Repeal, Replace and Reframe the 4th Grade Mission Project

Second, share the project with your networks:
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I wrote about the first two seasons of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and then forgot to write about the third one

6/1/2017

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Maybe I’m too busy. Maybe it was because I watched basically the entire season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in the middle of grading final exams and cannot be responsible for anything I did during that time as my brain is still not exactly back to full capacity. Or maybe it was because Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt finally did what I suppose it wanted to do, it kind of made me go “wait, Jacqueline is Native? There’s a sort of Native (character) on a show?”
​
Not for nothing but if Titus Andromedon wasn’t a consistent part of this show then really the entire season would have boiled down to “huh? Does Kimmy ever actually row in a competition? Is she any good? Does she win? Did I miss that episode?”
I was waiting with bated breath for any mention of taking down the Washington Re*skins and when the episode finally came where Jacqueline was headed to the owners meeting for her big showdown I wanted to root for her. Sure, she’s a white actress playing a Native character who passes for white and sometimes pretends she is white and sometimes tries to reconnect to her Nativeness only to be wholly rejected by her parents, but I’m willing to go with it. Just like I’m willing to go with Kimmy being some kind of rowing wunderkind who never actually ROWS in anything. I’m willing to go with Kimmy getting into Columbia and not actually, oh I don’t know, getting a tutor, or taking advantage of her sheer luck when there are so many other people who, you know, didn’t get into Columbia or have no chance of getting into Columbia (on a freaking scholarship) so why not put in some extra hours?
​
I wrote only two sentences in my rigorous note taking that I often do when I’m trying to watch these shows and offer some kind of response: 
  1. Why do Jacqueline's  parents hate her?
  2. Have they ever met their grandchildren?
Picture
​That’s it. That’s all I wrote for the few episodes where Jacqueline was finally going to take down the Washington Racial Slur Team. And then just as soon as this storyline about Jacquelyn reclaiming her Lakota roots started it was over. She solved it. With capitalism. And something else happened later with her new boyfriend/kind of husband where he become beautiful and then he went back to his family to run the evil empire which is fine because now they changed the name.
​
Look, Jacqueline character is “interesting” in so much as she represents a Native person who must deal with complex ideas of identity and representation. When the writers, or the show runners made a decision to go all in with Jacqueline as a Sioux person, they inherited this conversation whether they knew about it or not.

​As Native people we express, understand and debate our identities because of legacies of colonialism (like blood quantum or boarding schools); because we are still defending and reclaiming our sovereignties and self-determination and because there isn’t a universal answer to how a Native character would feel, act, look or fit into a “quirky” sitcom like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. 
Picture
Titus’s blackness is not the only defining thing about his character but it is something present (ever present). Kimmy, her whiteness is as much a part of her character as her naivete. But Jacqueline occupies this incredibly complex and layered space as a Native character who presents as an upper east side white woman who feels Lakota who craves her Nativeness in a way, but also does not make any real connection to it unless you count watching a football game with her parents wearing Washington (New Names) gear. There has to be something more for her character than “I solved this decades long problem that Native people have been fighting for and have faced threats and derogatory slurs because… I could. What were you all doing for so long protesting outside the building when you just should have found your way in?” 

I’m not looking to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to be the best little sitcom with a non-Native actress playing a Native person who passes as a white person who wants to connect with her Nativeness. I’m just saying couldn’t we push it? What if we went from the “oh yeah,
Jacqueline’s Native” to “F-yeah, Jacqueline is Native!”  
​
Master of None (another Netflix series) did this fantastic episode this season which (spoiler alert if you haven’t binged watched it yet, WHY NOT? GO TO THERE. Now. I’ll wait.) followed for an entire episode characters that were not part of the main cast. One right after the other the audience was able to see into the lives of other New Yorkers. It was fantastically done, thoughtful, and basically solidified for me that you can do anything now if you’re on Netflix so you have no excuse. 

Here is my proposal for you Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt writers:

Next season give us an episode. Just one. In my mind, Jacquelyn realizes that her kid has never met his grandparents and that he knows NOTHING about his Lakota heritage. She insists on taking him back to her family home where she meets up with her cousin Irene (played by Irene Bedard of course) who is the Tribal Attorney and basically the most badass awesome Native lady you’ve ever met. Jacqueline and her have always had a bit of a rivalry with each other and now Irene is like the perfect Native in Jacqueline’s mind. Any “Native” thing Jacquelyn tries to do, Irene does it better (and she has tons of inside jokes with Jacqueline's parents). At some point Jacqueline leaves in a huff convinced that she can go out and find the herb that her Mom was talking about needing. She gets lost. Eats some crazy berries. Trips out and finally gets found by Irene where they both fall in the river and get all cold. Irene can’t start the fire and Jacqueline is finally able to do it on her own. They have to hug it out into the cold night until the next day when they are found all snuggled up and sleeping. Turns out they were only like just around the corner from the hotel. Later Jacqueline dad asks Irene “why didn’t you just use the lighter you always carry in your boot?” And Irene just winks at him. *End Episode*
 And now back to House of Cards, which BTW my review so far is: I never thought I'd say this but I kinda miss those corrupt Native American casino owners. At least they were making jokes about Andrew Jackson.
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    Cutcha Risling Baldy is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. She received her PhD in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis.  She is also a writer, mother, volunteer Executive Director for the Native Women's Collective and is currently re-watching My Name is Earl...


    (5) Top Posts

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