Sacramento must respect Native American history by replacing Junipero Serra statue

Sacramentans rightfully take pride in the beauty and history of Capitol Park, honoring California and the nation’s past, including those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for state and country.

Thousands of visitors come to the park every year. As legislative colleagues — one African American, the other Native American — we, too, appreciate its beauty and symbolism. We also share a heritage of slavery, murder and oppression.

That shared heritage and love for California bring us together in common purpose.

During protests following the death of George Floyd, the Capitol Park statue of Junipero Serra was toppled. Black Americans understand the pain of monuments to Confederate leaders who fought to preserve human bondage and white supremacy.

Very little of California Native American slavery during the mission period is captured in our history books. Spanish friars and the military subdued and enslaved California’s Native Americans. Later, the state’s earliest leaders, aided by the federal government, embarked on a deliberate policy of genocide as defined by post-Holocaust human rights tribunals.

One product of this shameful history is that only one California Native American has been elected to the Legislature since we became a state in 1850.

It is past time for California to honestly examine the mission period’s devastating impact on our state’s First Americans. Serra founded nine missions, and 12 more were created after his death. He unquestionably symbolizes that era. Contemporary archives document his active role in the treatment of Natives captured at his outposts.

Serra’s Capitol Park monument — created and maintained with state funding — was dedicated in April 1967. Since then, and since the controversy over Serra’s canonization in 2015, his legacy has come under increasing scrutiny.

Some argue that Serra should not be judged by today’s values. Yet as early as 1530, Spanish King Carlos I forbade slavery due to mistreatment of Indians. In 1537, Pope Paul III issued an edict trying to end massacres and enslavement of Indian peoples.

French Navy captain Jean-Francois de Galaup, upon arriving in Monterey Bay in 1786, was appalled by the missionaries’ abuses of Native Americans, writing, “Corporal punishment is inflicted on the Indians of both sexes who neglect the exercises of piety, and many sins, which in Europe are left to Divine justice, are here punished by irons and stocks.”

Also admonishing Serra over the brutality was Spanish Governor Felipe de Neve.

Cities across the country, and even some Catholic institutions, have removed tributes to Serra. Even before Serra’s canonization, Pope Francis apologized for the “many grave sins committed against the native peoples of America” and asked for forgiveness.

This is why we are authoring Assembly Bill 338 to replace the Serra statue with a new monument created with input from Sacramento-area Native Americans and paying tribute to the story of the tribes that once inhabited our region.

California Native Americans were captured and placed in servitude, harshly punished or killed for disobedience or attempted escape. They and their children were sold into forced labor, and families were separated and sent away to build the missions.

It is time the Native people get to share their untold story. Replacing the Serra statue would finally give them a voice.