California Indian Genocide and Resilience | Bioneers

Summary

The script discusses the erasure of California's Indigenous history, starting with the 1453 Papal Bull that deemed Indigenous people without souls and fit for slavery, leading to Spanish missions and cultural destruction. It details the brutal methods used to convert and control Indigenous populations, including raids, forced labor, and cultural suppression. The narrative continues through Mexican rule, American expansion, and the ongoing struggle for recognition and preservation of their history and culture.

Takeaways

• 📚 The script discusses the inadequacy of historical education regarding Indigenous Californian culture, which was reduced to a single page in third-grade history books.
• 🏛 The history of Californian Indigenous people is rooted in a 10,000-year-old culture, which is often overlooked in favor of the narrative starting with the Spanish arrival in 1769.
• 🕌 The script traces the origins of California Indian history to the Papal Bull of 1453, which deemed Indigenous people as heathens and justified their enslavement and land theft.
• ⛪️ Junipero Serra is revealed not as a benevolent figure but as an enforcer of the Papal Bulls, aiming to dismantle Indigenous culture and assert control over their lands.
• 👥 The missions' true purpose was not evangelism but the forced conversion and cultural erasure of Indigenous people, often through brutal means.
• 🔗 The script describes the violent tactics used to bring Indigenous people to missions, including early morning raids targeting women to draw out the rest of the community.
• 🚫 Once at the missions, Indigenous people were subjected to strict controls, including prohibitions on language, clothing, and cultural practices, and were often separated from their families.
• 🤝 The script highlights the enslavement and forced labor of Indigenous people during the Mexican period, as they were made to work on large ranches.
• 📜 The California state government actively opposed the ratification of treaties that would have provided land rights to Indigenous tribes, instead pursuing a policy of extermination.
• 💰 The script recounts the payment of bounties for Indigenous scalps and the state-sponsored violence against Indigenous people, including the formation of dragoon squads.
• 🏫 The boarding school system is mentioned as a tool for cultural assimilation, where Indigenous children were separated from their communities and forced to abandon their traditions.

Q & A

What did the third-grade history education in California traditionally include?

Traditionally, it included very little about the Indigenous people's history, focusing only on missions, acorns, primitive tools, and the arrival of the Spanish.

What significant historical event is mentioned to have initiated the California Indian history according to Valentin?

The issuance of the Papal Bull in 1453 by Pope Alexander, which declared all Indigenous people to be heathens, pagans, and savages, and subjected them to perpetual slavery.

What was the primary goal of Junipero Serra's mission system in California?

The primary goal was not evangelization but to fulfill the dictates of the Papal Bulls, which involved taking the land and possessions from Indigenous people.

How did the Spanish soldiers capture Indigenous people during the mission period?

They would conduct early morning raids, targeting women to form human chains, knowing that children would follow their mothers and men would eventually come to join their families.

What restrictions were placed on Indigenous people once they were in the missions?

They were not allowed to speak their language, wear their clothing, or sing their songs. Men, women, and children were separated to break the culture.

What was the impact of the Mexican period on Indigenous people in California?

The Indigenous people were enslaved again to work on huge ranches with cattle, pigs, horses, and sheep, which ruined their environments.

What happened to the treaties negotiated by the federal government with California tribes?

The State of California opposed their ratification, sent lobbyists against them, and eventually had them sealed for 50 years, sabotaging the treaties signed by the tribes.

How did the State of California plan to deal with the 'Indian problem' during the gold rush?

The State planned for extermination, paying bounties for dead Indians and employing militias to hunt them down.

What was the policy passed by the government in 1923 regarding Indigenous people?

The policy aimed to extinguish their religion, making it illegal to practice their religious customs, sing their songs, or use their regalia.

How did the boarding school system contribute to the historical trauma of Indigenous people?

It was a part of the assimilation process where Indigenous children were taken from their families, often experiencing abuse, and were forced to abandon their culture and language.

What is the current struggle of Indigenous people in California to preserve their culture and history?

They are working to revitalize their languages, practice their religions, protect sacred sites, and change mainstream historical records to include their true history.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Suppressed Indigenous History

Loren discusses the limited and distorted education they received about their history in school, which omitted the rich 10,000-year-old culture and the dispossession they faced. Valentin highlights the unspoken dark history of California, beginning with the Papal Bull of 1453 that deemed Indigenous people as heathens, leading to their enslavement and the appropriation of their lands by Spain and Portugal. The narrative continues with the arrival of the Portola expedition in 1769 and Junipero Serra's brutal mission system aimed at cultural destruction rather than genuine evangelization.

05:00

🏭 The Inhumanity of Missions and Enslavement

The paragraph details the cruel methods used to bring Indigenous people to missions, including capturing women to force the rest of the community to follow. It describes the harsh conditions within the missions, where cultural practices were forbidden, families were separated, and there was continuous abuse and rape. The narrative extends to the Mexican period, where Indigenous people were enslaved to work on ranches, and the American period post-1848, which saw further violence and the California government's efforts to exterminate Indigenous people, including the rejection of treaties and the payment of bounties for Indigenous scalps.

10:01

🗣️ The Fight for Recognition and Preservation

Loren and Corrina discuss the unrecognized sovereignty of California's coastal tribes and the historical use of missions as a land-grabbing strategy by Spain. Valentin reveals the fabricated narrative created to justify the enslavement and cultural genocide of Indigenous people, while Loren talks about the financial incentives provided by the state to exterminate Indigenous people. The paragraph also touches on the resilience of the Indigenous people who survived by hiding and the importance of passing on their history and spirituality to future generations.

15:02

🔥 The Destruction of Indigenous Culture and Religion

This paragraph covers the government's policy in 1923 to eradicate Indigenous religion, the imprisonment of religious leaders, and the confiscation and sale of sacred regalia. It discusses the internal conflict within the community as they struggled to maintain their cultural practices alongside imposed Christianity. The paragraph also emphasizes the reemergence of Indigenous spirituality and the importance of revitalizing their cultural practices and language.

20:04

🌿 The Connection to Ancestral Lands

Corrina talks about the historical trauma caused by the continuous desecration of Indigenous burial sites and the importance of protecting their sacred sites. Marshall emphasizes the need for the truth to be recognized and for active steps to be taken to change historical records and educate the public about the true history of Indigenous people. The paragraph underscores the responsibility to protect their cultural heritage and the land as a反击 to the historical attempts at genocide.

Keywords

💡Indigenous people

Indigenous people are the original inhabitants of a land, having lived there since well before the arrival of other populations. In the context of the video, the term refers to the native populations of California who had a rich culture and history that pre-dates the arrival of Europeans. The script mentions how these people were labeled as 'heathens' and 'savages' by the Papal Bull of 1453, leading to their persecution and enslavement.

💡Papal Bull

A Papal Bull is a formal declaration issued by a Pope that addresses various matters. In the video, the term is used to refer to a series of bulls issued starting in 1453, which declared Indigenous people to be without souls and justified their enslavement and the theft of their lands. This had a profound impact on the history of California's Indigenous peoples, as it set the stage for their exploitation and subjugation.

💡Mission system

The mission system refers to a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish colonial powers in the Americas to spread Catholicism and control indigenous populations. In the video, it is mentioned that Junipero Serra was the founder of the California mission system, which was not primarily about religious conversion but about land and resource control, leading to the brutal treatment of Indigenous people.

💡Cultural destruction

Cultural destruction refers to the deliberate effort to dismantle and eradicate the cultural practices, beliefs, and identity of a people. The video describes how the Spanish missions aimed to destroy Indigenous cultures in California by forbidding native languages, clothing, songs, and separating families, which was part of a broader strategy to assimilate them into the Catholic faith and Spanish way of life.

💡Enslavement

Enslavement is the state of being owned and controlled by another, often forced to work without compensation. In the video, it is discussed how Indigenous people were enslaved by the Spanish missions and later by Mexican rancheros, who used them as a labor force without rights, leading to significant suffering and abuse.

💡Extermination

Extermination refers to the deliberate and systematic effort to annihilate a group of people. The video discusses how the state of California had a policy of extermination against Indigenous people, offering bounties for their scalps and organizing militias to hunt them down, which resulted in the deaths of thousands.

💡Treaties

Treaties are formal, legally binding agreements between nations or groups. The video mentions that the U.S. government negotiated 18 treaties with California tribes, which were supposed to cover 8.5 million acres, but these treaties were opposed by the state of California and were never ratified, leading to further dispossession of Indigenous lands.

💡Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. The video uses this term to describe the state-sponsored violence and policies aimed at wiping out California's Indigenous population, including massacres, bounty systems, and forced removals from their lands.

💡Historical trauma

Historical trauma refers to the collective emotional and psychological wounding of a group or population caused by traumatic experiences that have occurred over a long period. In the video, the term is used to describe the lasting impact of colonization, enslavement, and extermination on Indigenous people, which continues to affect their mental health and well-being.

💡Cultural revitalization

Cultural revitalization is the process of renewing and strengthening the cultural practices and identity of a people. The video discusses the efforts of Indigenous people to revitalize their culture and religion, which were suppressed for generations, through language programs, singing, and teaching the next generation about their history and traditions.

💡Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and are dominant in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. The video connects the historical destruction of Indigenous cultures to patriarchal systems, where land and women were considered property to be controlled and exploited.

Highlights

Loren discusses the lack of comprehensive history taught in schools about the Indigenous culture and their dispossession.

Valentin explains that California Indian history predates the Spanish expedition and is rooted in a series of Papal Bulls starting from 1453.

The Papal Bulls declared Indigenous people to be heathens, pagans, and savages, and justified their enslavement and land theft.

The missions in California were not about evangelization but about fulfilling the dictates of the Papal Bulls to take land and possessions.

Junipero Serra's role was to destroy Indigenous culture and forcefully convert them to Catholicism.

The Spanish missions operated by capturing Indigenous women to draw their families to the missions against their will.

At the missions, Indigenous people were forbidden from speaking their language, wearing their clothing, and practicing their culture.

Valentin describes the brutal treatment and enslavement of Indigenous people by the Spanish soldiers.

The Mexican period continued the enslavement and environmental destruction by granting large ranches to the well-connected.

The American period brought a new wave of settlers and the discovery of gold, leading to further conflict with Indigenous people over land.

The California government opposed the ratification of treaties that were meant to protect Indigenous lands.

The state of California had a plan for the extermination of California Indians, including paying bounties for dead Indigenous people.

Children were kidnapped and sold into indentured servitude, which was a form of slavery.

Corrina discusses the lack of federal recognition for coastal California tribes and the impact of the missions.

Loren talks about the government policy in 1923 to extinguish Indigenous religion and the cultural schizophrenia it caused.

Marshall shares his family's history of hiding their Indigenous identity due to the threat of violence.

Corrina reflects on the historical trauma and the responsibility to protect sacred sites and Indigenous culture.

The speakers emphasize the need to share the true history and fight for recognition and change.

Transcripts

LOREN: We used to have one page -

third grade history -

one page. That's all we got.

Missions, some acorns maybe or something,

primitive tools, and then you turn the next page,

Spanish.

So that's all we were taught in school.

That's all I was taught in school

when I was growing up.

Nothing about we have a 10,000-year-plus culture

rooted in this community, in this part of the world,

in this environment. Nothing about that.

And of course nothing about how we were

dispossessed of that life.

Nothing about that, of course.

VALENTIN: The true history of California

has never been told.

The history of California is really disgraceful

and shameful.

California Indian history does not begin

with the Spanish expedition coming into California in 1769.

California Indian history actually begins with

Pope Alexander issuing the Papal Bull in 1453

that said all Indigenous people,

all Indigenous people around the world

are heathens, pagans, and savages;

that Indigenous people have no soul;

that Indigenous people are the enemies of Christ;

that Indigenous people were to be put

into perpetual slavery;

that Indigenous people, their property and possessions

were to be taken from them.

That's what started it all.

There was a number of other papal bulls.

I believe there was 4 in total

over the next 50 years

issued by other subsequent popes as well.

The final Papal Bull gave Portugal,

the Southern hemisphere, to go out and conquer,

to claim those lands for Portugal,

and to turn and make them Christian nations.

The Northern hemisphere was given to Spain

so they could claim those lands for Spain.

And claim them as Christian nations

for the Catholic Church.

That's where the Mission period started from.

Then it went into Africa,

India, Indonesia,

the Pacific Islands, and then the Americas.

And that's what brought the missions to California.

In 1769 the Portola expedition came up,

and that's what opened the way through.

When they came in, when the missions came in,

a lot of people think that Junipero Serra was here

to evangelize, to proselytize,

to turn those Indians.

Nothing could be further from from the truth.

Junipero Serra came to California

to fulfill the dictate of those papal bulls,

to take the land, to take the possessions.

Junipero Serra was the founder of the California

mission system, first of all.

Prior to coming to California

he was in Mexico.

And he was working down there.

Part of the community he worked with was

a Jewish community that came from Europe.

And they brought them to the New World

trying to take the Jewish out of them

and they promised to become Catholic.

They were looking for a place to survive.

And so whenever he was working with the Jewish

in Mexico, he never could believe that

they truly converted.

And so whenever he came to California,

he was convinced that he had to break the culture

before they would truly convert.

And that's why he was so brutal.

So when they came here they looked to destroy

our humanity, our spirituality,

our culture, and our environments.

The way they would capture the Indians,

a lot of people talked about how

the Indians came to the missions voluntarily.

We have in our oral history,

and it's documented as well,

the soldiers would go out and do an early morning raid.

They would identify the village site that they were--

where they would have the raid,

and then the soldiers on horseback

would attack that village site.

And they would target the women.

They would capture the women.

And they would tie them together

thumb to thumb to form a human chain.

Once all the women were captured

they'd start marching them back to the mission.

And when they marched back to the mission

they knew the children would naturally follow

their mothers.

And they knew that it just a matter of

a short period of time before the husbands

and the men would come in to be with their families.

That's how many, many Indians were taken to

the missions at the beginning of the mission period.

Once they got to the mission they couldn't speak their language.

They couldn't wear their clothing.

They couldn't sing their songs.

The men, from the women, from the children

were separated.

That was to break the culture.

The children--they did not want the parents

passing that knowledge onto the children

until the parents were converted

or the children were converted to Catholicism.

There were whippings, brutality.

I said they separated the women.

The soldiers did not bring their wives or families,

and there wasn't a lot of other women here for them.

And so they would go into that woman's barracks

and just rape the women continuously.

There was slavery.

There was absolute slavery.

The Indians were not allowed to leave.

They were totally controlled by the Church.

That went on to the Mexican period.

There was no labor force here.

They were giving these huge land grants

to the Mexicans who were well connected.

And what they would do is they wanted to get

these huge ranches with cattle, pigs, horses,

sheep, and they were totally ruining the environment

of the Indigenous Peoples,

destroying the environments.

There was no labor force here.

So once again, the Indians were enslaved.

There's a story in San Juan Bautista in 1839.

One of the Indians tried to run away from one

of those ranchos.

They ran out and lassoed him by the neck

and dragged him all the way back,

and left his body there

to terrorize and put fear into the Indians,

that if you run away, this is what's going

to happen to you. That was slavery.

Then came the American period,

the California period.

The year that California became a state in 1848,

that was the year they discovered gold.

Now you have thousands of people from across

the United States and around the world

coming to California to go stake their claim

to their riches.

And they're going up into the mountains

and the Indians were trying to protect their lands

and prevent people from going to their lands.

So all of a sudden we have an Indian problem.

The federal government had a solution

and the California government had a solution.

The federal government was they negotiated treaties,

18 treaties for all California tribes,

covering 8.5 million acres north to south.

Our tribe signed that treaty.

The commissioners that were sent to negotiate

those treaties signed.

They were sent to Washington to be ratified.

The State of California did not want those treaties to be signed.

They passed a resolution to oppose the ratification

of those treaties.

And then they sent a delegation of

California state Senators

to lobby against the

treaties being ratified.

After a period of time, the governor ordered

that those treaties be sealed for 50 years,

and they were never signed.

Our treaties that we signed were

sabotaged by the State of California.

The State of California had their own plan.

They wanted extermination.

The governor in the very first State of the Union

said that there will be a war against the

California Indians.

That is to be expected.

That was their plan.

A couple of years later, one of the very first

treasury bonds that was paid by the State of California

was to pay for the extermination

of California Indians.

Today, they issue bonds for railroad improvement,

for waterways,

for housing,

for schools, for parks.

Can you imagine issuing a bond to pay for the

extermination of California Indians?

They were paid bounty money.

They were paid 25 cents to $5 bounty.

It was pretty average for every dead Indian.

They paid military, militias, rather,

to go up into the mountains to find the Indians

and to kill them.

They were paying people to hunt down human beings

to kill them.

After that period of time, they passed laws to where

they could kidnap the children,

because once again they're trying to

get the Indian out of the children.

It wasn't uncommon for them to kill the parents

and take the children and to sell them.

The prices that I hear are boys typically

would sell for $150 and they were used

for very hard labor.

Girls, there wasn't a lot of females,

there wasn't a lot of women here in California

for the men that were here,

and so girls, they sold for a higher price.

They were sold for $300.

And they were sold for very bad purposes,

to be used by those people

in most cases.

There was indentured servitude.

Indentured servitude is slavery.

There's records of Indians being enslaved

in California into the 1930s.

That's less than 100 years ago.

People were born, people are alive today

when there was legalized Indian slavery

here in California.

This history's never told.

CORRINA: It's really difficult to understand

because many folks aren't taught history,

and what the relationship is to American Indians

in this country.

So there's federally recognized tribes.

That means that they have a relationship

with the United States government,

as sovereign nations. Right?

So that means it's a relationship like

you could say France has with America.

Right? Those are two sovereign nations

that are able to sit down at the table

and work things out.

There is no federally recognized tribes

along the coast of California that was

touched by the missions.

So the missions happened because

Spain actually wanted the land,

because Russia was coming down to the Bay.

And so they really wanted to have a land base.

And so they used this fool, Junipero Serra,

to create these missions to hold the land. Right?

He created the first 9 of the 21 missions.

My ancestors were enslaved in two,

both Mission Delores in San Francisco

and Mission San Jose in Fremont.

So our nations got destroyed in a bunch

of different kinds of ways.

VALENTIN: When the missions were closing,

the very last padre presidente of the mission system -

Payeras was his name -

he wrote to his superiors in Mexico City

and said, We need to find a way to explain

what we've done here.

All we've done is baptize and made

sacraments and bury the Indians.

He says there's no Indians along the

coast of California.

We need to come up with an alibi in

excuse of what happened.

And so they started saying that the Indians

came to the missions voluntarily.

They came for a better life.

They came to learn agriculture.

They came to find God.

That's why the Indians came to the missions.

Weren't they lucky?

LOREN: The State wanted to commit genocide

and one of the ways to do that was to pay

for it to be done.

So Peter Burnett, the lieutenant governor,

and John McDougal, the second governor,

the first full governor of California,

and they were appropriating about $1.6 million of 1850 money,

so I don't know what that would be worth today,

to exterminate the California Indian.

Dragoon squads were formed immediately.

Anybody who had a rifle was supported to go out

and hunt Indians down.

So the way that this was tallied was by the scalp.

So a buck, means an Indian man is a buck,

and a squaw and a child

were worth different amounts.

And then the counties were given money by

the State of California.

So I'm from Del Norte County,

the last county in California on the coast,

going into Oregon,

and so Del Norte County received funds from Sacramento,

then the men would bring in their scalps from the train,

and then be paid off for those.

We do have--

The courthouse was burned to hide all the records

in the county back in the '40s,

but it was interesting how these scalp

receipts have survived. There's 11 of them.

And it says right on the register,

Del Norte County, and it's kind of that

waxy, real nice paper from the past,

and on the front it's black ink if they got

to pay full price,

and they flipped it over and wrote it in red ink

if they owed them money for interest

for scalps that they had turned in

they didn't get paid for that day.

The last Indian that we have documented -

of course, any Indian that was still living traditionally

is called a renegade.

So the last one of our tribe

was run off in the brush in 1902

and shot in the back of the head

and buried in a shallow grave

there at Hiouchi California.

And then we hid out in the brush

around our area.

My great grandmother's generation hid up

in the mountains, and built real temporary

housing, lived up there amongst--

we call them [NATIVE WORD]

You guys might think they're mythology,

but we call them Bigfoot or Sasquatch

in the English language.

We call them [NATIVE WORD]

-and lived amongst them for a while

until they got done butchering off the coast area.

And so they finally got to go back into the flat lands

at the end of that.

But that's why I'm here.

That's where-- I descend out of that.

It happened on both sides of my family.

My father is from the Trinity River.

And of course, unfortunately,

there was literally gold nuggets in the bottom

of the Trinity River,

so every Indian got wiped out in that canyon.

They decided to make Hoopa Valley a reservation,

and so they started dumping all of the residual populations

of Indians onto this one concentration camp

named Hoopa Valley.

That was established later in 1864.

So our people were taken there as well,

and so on and so on.

So it was just a really rugged time.

So scalping was just a way to do that.

So it was a win-win for the guy with the rifle.

So that's where the turning point was.

Things like nits breed lice,

so therefore you must kill the children.

Better dead than red, that was another one.

So those two quotes were coined right there

in southern Oregon in reflection to the

California Indian situation.

So our first massacres under these orders

of the Governor McDougal and Burnett, both,

is that we started getting our first genocidal acts.

Our first one was to setup the town of Crescent City.

So they destroyed the town of Taa-'at-dvn at the peninsula.

And then they setup Crescent City.

And then they decided the next year to get all

the rest of the capitals.

Because our land used to be broken up into regions

called [NATIVE WORD],

and each [NATIVE WORD] has a capital,

and all of its suburbs were loyal to that capital.

So they destroyed [NATIVE NAME]

and then they decided in December

to destroy Yan'-daa-k'vt.

So we have an old religion.

So for thousands of years, hundreds of years,

people would pilgrimage to our center of our world

or axis mundi,

because we believe in Genesis.

We believe the Earth was made and we were

put here with laws to live by.

So our people would come there

on this pilgrimage down the coast

from Yurok territory, our territory,

from way up the coast, and then come in this

huge celebration.

Hundreds of people would arrive.

So the settling population of Crescent City

looked north, just about whatever that is - 9 miles -

and thought, Oh my.

They're thinking they're being attacked by the Indians.

Well the Indians were just coming to worship Genesis.

So they decided to destroy Yan'-daa-k'vt.

So it was in December of 1853,

it's the second single mass killing

of Indians in American history.

450 people died that night there.

And so of course we lived in wooden plank houses,

so they set them on fire.

They burned well.

And as the people escaped into the darkness

and dived into the pond near there,

they were shot dead, shot down and killed.

MARSHALL: 60 years ago, my father told me

Don't tell them you're Indian.

Don't tell them anything.

If somebody asks you your origin,

you tell them you're Italian

or you're Mexican,

or you're Spanish.

And I was too young to understand why.

That's only 60 years ago.

And he told me that because his father

experienced the massacres up there in Weaverville,

up there in the Trinity Alps.

His people were killed in front of his face,

and he didn't want that for his grandchildren.

CORRINA: Just recently, probably in the last

couple of months, I went and talked to

the matriarch of our families - my auntie.

She just made 80 years old.

And I went and talked to her about

doing some stuff with the family.

And she began to tell this story.

And I remember I was sitting in her living room,

and her oldest daughter was there,

my cousin, she's about 4 years older than me,

and another one of her daughters was sitting next to us.

And I said, Auntie, I said,

I was like, How was it in boarding school?

Because she went to Chemawa. All her--

My mom and my uncle.

My mom and my uncle are dead.

So the three of them went to Chemawa Boarding School together.

And she said she had a good time there,

she said because she could be Indian there.

And she said around the age of 12 years old

they took me out of there

and they put me-- they sent me to

San Leandro.

And if you guys know the Bay Area,

there's Oakland and then there's a little town,

San Leandro, right next to it.

She said, They sent me to San Leandro

and I got to stay with this really nice white family.

And this really nice white family, they wanted to

send me to school, not just watch their kids,

but to send me to school.

And San Leandro School District said no

because I was too dark.

She's still alive in Oakland right now.

Her daughters had never heard that story

until we sat down and had that conversation.

Because it hurts. It's so painful.

This is not that long ago. Right?

She was born in the '30s.

This was not that long ago that this happened.

LOREN: So in 1923,

the government had passed a policy

to extinguish our religion.

And it was illegal for us to practice our religion.

They had the authority to come onto your reservation

and take your leaders and throw them in jail,

confiscate your regalia and sell it off

to whomever they wanted to,

and then you were told, You will never dance like this again.

So I was growing up in this schizophrenia.

And my head man that taught me to sing,

he taught me the prayers for Genesis,

he was a Christian too.

But I caught him one time confessing.

He was saying, Well, you know, sisters and brothers,

I think we turned our back on this a little

too quickly, he said.

We should have took longer time to think it through

before we threw it all away.

And from that point on he never, ever looked back.

He taught us to sing. He taught us to dance.

He taught us to pray. He gave us the teachings.

He taught us all the mythos that goes with our cosmological

view of the world.

And except for [INAUDIBLE] stories.

I'm not going to tell you "Coyote Stories" stories

because they're just nonsense.

But he loved to sing gambling songs and so on.

But the point is that we started reemerging

out of the ashes,

and I still believe we're in the ashes phase.

We are trying to shake loose out of this

repressive historical traumatic experience

and embrace our spirituality

and the beauty of our spirituality.

MARSHALL: Our religions,

our ways of life,

our ways of celebrating life and celebrating

imminent times in our lives,

they were obliterated.

We weren't allowed to practice our religion.

We weren't allowed to sing our songs.

We were taught to speak English.

We were taught to speak Spanish in the missions.

We were taught to shut up.

We didn't say anything.

So in our hearts the religion stayed alive.

In our--In the ancestors that survived this Holocaust

those stories still live.

Those stories are now being told to our babies.

And those babies will reincarnate that religion,

and they will reincarnate the practices of their ancestors

in the future. And it's already being--

It's already being brought back through

some of the language revitalization programs

in the state, along with the first thing that comes

after the language is the singing.

After that then becomes the teaching and the doctrines

of what they're singing and dancing about.

CORRINA: Right now I'm trying to breathe.

And I hope all of you will take a deep breath with me.

And let it go.

Because what we just heard

and what I'm just re-experiencing

is historical trauma, and it's very difficult

to sit here and to know that I wake up every day with that,

and that Indigenous people all over this continent do,

all over this world.

And I think that I love to imagine

what this would have been like

prior to contact.

How beautiful our people lived.

And how we could have survived for thousands of years.

And how these other people came here

and really wrote down that we were wandering around.

They found us wandering around.

And I always say, Goddang,

for thousands of years we wandered around

bumping into trees? What the hell?

[LAUGHTER] Right?

But in a short amount of time, all of that is gone.

We're talking about less than 200 years.

We were colonized by 3 different groups of people

in a very short amount of time.

What does that look like and feel like,

and how do you unpack that?

And that when we look at this entire destruction

of the world, we have to look at patriarchy.

When we look at that we have to say

what happened, because there's relations that we have

with this land, and when other people came to this land,

they thought about it in ways in which it was property.

And in their territories, women were also property,

so thereby they were rapable.

It was a way for them to destroy us.

But prior to that, what did it look like?

So if you ever lived in the Bay Area

I was absolutely blessed to always be here in my land,

but I wake up every day wondering if they're going

to destroy any more of our burial sites,

if they're going to pull up any more of our ancestors.

So every single day that they're doing those things

inside of our territory, we have to wonder.

And it continues to pull the scab off

of the historical trauma that's still there.

My ancestors had village sites

all around the Bay.

And along with those fishing village sites

we had things called shellmounds.

And in those shellmounds we buried our ancestors.

It was like anybody else in the world.

We didn't have cemeteries that were far off,

but we had our ancestors right next to us.

And we buried in a way that these mounds became

bigger and bigger and bigger.

And on the top of those mounds

we would have ceremonies,

and we could light fires,

and we could send signals all across the Bay.

My job as an Ohlone woman,

as a woman in my village sites,

as a grandmother and a mother,

is to ensure that we protect those places.

Those original teachings come from those places.

Those are our spaces of--our points of reference.

Our original stories come from there,

the way we're supposed to be in balance with the land,

how we are supposed to--

how there's a reciprocity between

the people and the land.

It's not an ownership, but it's a responsibility

of how we take care of one another.

And when you look at the Bay Area now,

you could say, Where would these sacred sites be?

Because these mounds were older than the pyramids in Egypt.

And these places still exist,

even if there's parking lots on top of them,

or buildings.

So it's my responsibility then to protect what's left,

because if we don't, then the genocide is permanent.

MARSHALL: The truth has to come out.

It has to be told. It has to be recognized.

We need to be able to talk about

what the next steps are.

So I'll fight in court.

I'll fight on the street corner.

I'll carry a sign.

I'll protest.

It's the time to get active again.

It's the time to start to talk in front

of these kinds of forums.

It's time to change the mainstream school system historical records.

It's not going to be easy.

It's not going to be fun.

It's not going to be cheap.

We're going to need all your help.

We're going to need everybody to align

and look at these things.

And this true history has to be told.