Unmonumenting Junípero Serra: An Indigenous perspective on permanent removal

The multiple strategies and accounts of removing Junípero Serra from his pedestal across the state of California have emerged from the long overdue need to correct the historical record.

Many are aghast that the statue of a Catholic priest should be removed after years of reverence, especially when that very priest was recently canonized and made a saint for his work. But it is time to tell the truth about the history of the local mission that has been left out of the mainstream media and public education.

Junípero Serra has long been heralded as the father of California, or a founder of particular cities, including San Luis Obispo. But, can one really “discover” a territory where at least one million California Indian people already thrived? The true founders of this area, in the sense that is usually used, are the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis County and Region (ytt). The ytt Tribe have been the caretakers of their ancestral homelands for over 10,000 years in an unbroken chain of culture and kinship. So, Serra is no founder of California or San Luis Obispo.

Slavery and violence

The presence of Serra as a monument glorifies the Mission Period that lasted from 1769-1833, a time of violence and genocide against California Indians. Serra, the principal architect of the California Missions, constructed a system where California Indians built the mission posts under the conditions of forced labor and were not free to leave. They were actively enslaved.

The padres who worked with Serra or succeeded him ensured a system of enslavement via corporal punishment. As historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz notes “…in the middle of the plaza of each mission is a whipping post,” and Padre Lasuén (who took over for Serra at Mission San Carlos) wrote, “It is evident that a nation which is barbarous, ferocious and ignorant requires more frequent punishment than a nation which is cultured, educated, and of gentle and moderate customs.”

Moreover, primary documents detail the types of violence and weapons used against California Indians at the mission sites—including flogging, the cat-o’-nine tails, the corma (foot-stocks), and the cudgel. Chumash and Ohlone Costanoan-Esselen scholar Deborah Miranda provides evidence of these tools of violence. She also records the correspondence between padres and the Spanish Crown where they agreed on a limit of 25 lashes per Indian for each rule they broke; diaries from padres indicate some Indians received as many as 125 lashes at one time.

Not only was physical abuse normalized in the missions, but sexual violence was also rampant. Serra brought soldiers with him on all of his colonizing expeditions and was keenly aware of the sexual violence they committed against California Indian women. Serra stated clearly, “Clever as they are at lassoing cows and mules, [soldiers] would catch an Indian woman with their lassos to become prey for their unbridled lust. At times some Indian men would try to defend their wives, only to be shot down with bullets…even the children who came to the mission were not safe from their baseness.” Some may construe this quote to say Serra was registering disapproval, but his overall goals did not stop him from being an accessory to this crime against humanity.

During the 60 year mission period, as a direct result of these systemic forms of violence, plus new diseases and inhumane living conditions, the California Indian population plummeted from an estimated one million to about 20,000. Thus, it is no stretch to say Serra caused a near genocide here in California.

Serra also revered military power in ways that often sounded like he thought of soldiers and their weaponry as sacred. In Serra’s “Baja California Diary” he discussed at length the day he first celebrated mass at Mission San Fernando: “The soldiers fired their arms repeatedly, which added to the solemnity of the celebration. This time, the smoke of the gunpowder took the place of burning incense since we did not have any with us.” The consistent use of military power to extend the religious and territorial rule undermined the many sovereign ways of life known to California Indians—and this exploitation of California Indian sovereignty continues today due in large part to what Serra commenced.

In Serra’s zeal to convert California Indians to Catholicism, he also started the California prison system. As Tule River Yokuts and Pomo scholar Stormy Ogden states, “Once inside the mission system, the neophytes, as the Indian converts were called, were not free to leave. The conditions in which these Native people were forced to live can only be compared to a prison.” Thus, the California penal system begins with the 21 missions.

Active resistance

Many people believe that California Indians all happily accepted the Christian doctrine enforced in the mission system. While many did convert to Christianity, large numbers never did and resisted. Dunbar-Ortiz notes that “no mission escaped uprising…[and] without this resistance, there would be no descendants of the California Native people.” So, why are there so many laudatory accounts of Serra, yet so little public knowledge about, for example, the Chumash Revolt of 1824? This revolt started at Mission Santa Ines, spread to Mission Santa Barbara and Mission La Purisima. It was the largest organized resistance to occur during the Spanish period in California. Chumash people organized this revolt for months with other California Indians, including the Tongva and Tatavium people who came up from Mission San Fernando to fight. The notion that all California Indians willingly converted to Catholicism or stayed in the mission sites without coercion is a fiction.

Now, almost 250 years later, on Monday, June 22, the Serra statue was removed from the San Luis Obispo Mission by the diocese because they believe in safekeeping this monument. We ask his removal to be permanent based on the atrocities of the California Mission system. Some think permanent removal amounts to historical erasure.

However, permanently removing this statue would not erase California history any more than taking down the Berlin Wall erased German history. In fact, the work of removing Serra statues across the state activates a corrective history that stands to transform the “California Story.” The California Story is only an honest story if California Indians are at the center of it.

Join the Healing

Serra modeled the way in which religion is used as a justification for the enslavement of people and the exploitation of natural resources for the profit of empires like Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries. In our estimation, to honor him with a statue is to legitimate these histories. We owe it to ourselves and everyone living on the invaded and stolen Indigenous lands across the United States during this important time of revitalized truth-telling, to be more historically accurate. Doing so would honor the living descendants of those California Indians who were horrifically traumatized while they lived and died in the 21 mission sites. We welcome you to be part of the healing that needs to take place.

Wendy Lucas is a member of yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region; she holds a Master of Public Health degree from UC Berkeley. Jenell Navarro, Ph.D., is associate professor of ethnic studies at California Polytechnic State University; she holds a Doctorate in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University.

This story was originally published July 2, 2020 at 10:11 AM.