Owning up to Genocide
Just over five years ago, Governor Gavin Newsom made a startling public admission: California is guilty. Now the state wants to do better.
A master of the public gesture, Newsom chose as his setting the dedication of a new museum of Native California in Sacramento that drew tribal leaders from up and down the state. James C. Ramos (Serrano/Cahuilla), the first Native Californian elected to the state assembly, opened the ceremony and set the stage with a blessing and a traditional bird song. Rising to speak, Newsom got right to it.
Apologizing for a history of lethal violence and atrocities by the brutal dozens against the state’s Indigenous peoples, Newsom said, “It’s called a genocide, that’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it, and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books.”
“California must reckon with our dark history,” he continued. “We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past, and begin to heal deep wounds.”
Newsom’s admission of state-sponsored genocide set off a burst of news media interest. Stories ran in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, East Bay Times, UPI, AP, Al Arabiya, indianz.com, High Country News, Indian Country Today, Huffington Post, Last Real Indians, and History.com. The attention was warranted by the unusual breadth of responsibility Newsom took: no public official had ever gone so far.
In 2013, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback apologized officially for the 1838 Potawatomi Trail of Death, when that tribal nation was forced out of Indiana and into Kansas, a trail-of-tears journey that killed over forty people, mostly children. A year later, on the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper apologized to descendants of the hundreds of Cheyennes and Arapahos targeted in that atrocity. In 2018, Alaska Governor Bill Walker offered an apology to his state’s Native peoples for a variety of wrongs, including the forced removal of children to Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools.
Never before, though, had a governor apologized for his state’s systematic, publicly funded, decades-long effort to annihilate its Indigenous inhabitants. Newsom’s admission charted new ground.
In part, what prompted Newsom to step out so boldly and definitively after well over a century of studied denial was the work of two California historians: Brendan Lindsay’s Murder State and Benjamin Madley’s An American Genocide. Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, read Madley’s book and was impressed enough to invite Madley to speak to tribal and political leaders at the state capitol. Later, Brown acknowledged the genocide by writing an endorsement for the paperback edition’s cover and website.
At the same time, Native California has been building a political, economic, and cultural renaissance that dates back to the 1968 Alcatraz occupation. Although the occupation foundered after 19 months, it gave new visibility to the grievances of Native Californians. That grew in the public outcry against making Spanish missionary Junipero Serra a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis I made Serra a saint anyway, but the protest driven by Native voices moved the word and the fact of genocide in California into the public arena.
The question still to be answered is whether Newsom’s apology sets the stage for a process that moves toward a just relationship between state government and tribal governments. The strategy to do that is being charted by the California Truth and Healing Council, which formed under Executive Order N-15-19 formalizing Newsom’s apology. The council is charged with documenting the historical and ongoing relationship between the state of California and its tribal citizens, with an eye to changing things for the better.
Fashioned after the South African and Canadian truth and reconciliation commissions, the California Truth and Healing Council is headed by Tribal Affairs Secretary Christina Snider-Ashatri (Dry Creek Rancheria of Pomo Indians). Membership comprises 12 voting members, three each from four geographical regions of the state, with one of each trio representing tribes lacking federal acknowledgement. Quarterly meetings over two days every three months include a “culturally appropriate wellness practitioner” whose role is to provide tools to process and heal from current and past trauma. After all, this is tough and painful work, and it faces a Jan. 1, 2025, deadline to deliver the complete report and action plan.
Whatever the council uncovers and recommends, the reality of California’s genocide against its Native peoples remains a public fact, impossible to ignore. Still, in this time when accusations of genocide fly fast and furious in almost every news cycle, you might be wondering: Just what is a genocide anyway? Next week’s post will turn to that question.
Cast out of Eden heads to Berkeley
On Thursday, July 11, 7 p.m., I’ll be reading from the book, taking comments and Q&A, and signing copies at Books Inc., Berkeley’s oldest independent bookstore, 1491 Shattuck Ave. (near Vine St.).
Summer reading sale!
Through the end of this month, the University of Nebraska Press is offering an amazing half off on thousands of titles, fiction and nonfiction alike. That includes Cast out of Eden and The Modoc War as well as such personal favorites as Katya Cengel’s From Chernobyl with Love, Susan Harness’s Bitterroot, and Melissa Fraterrigo’s Glory Days. Check here for full details, then have a half-priced ball filling out your summer-reading bag.
Newsome’s speaking truth to the people should be the bedrock of our politics and government. Not the ever spinning mis-truths we’re fed every day. Thank you, for doing your job, Governor!