Indigenous grievances aired at hearing

On Oct. 12, more than 200 people packed a room in San Francisco’s City Hall to participate in a four-hour Native American Hearing, sponsored by the Human Rights Commission of San Francisco. That the meeting was being held on the “Columbus Day” holiday that celebrates European invasion and genocide in the Americas was not lost on anyone in the room.

The hearing was organized by Marcus Arana (Pikuni), a discrimination investigator for the commission, and a founder of the city’s LGBT community center. Arana told WW: “[This] is the first public hearing in San Francisco to hear all the issues facing Native Americans. It is an honor to be able to give back to the community, especially to bring voice to the original local people, the Ohlone, who are not recognized by the federal government, who have no recognized homeland.”

When asked by WW what the city might do in response to the testimony taken, Arana gave several examples of what he expects: “The schools lack a culturally competent curriculum. They lack Native teachers despite a huge Native community. It is fair to say many other communities receive financial support for community centers from the city, such as the LGBT center.”

Local Indigenous people planned for months just what needed to go on record that night. Their remarks, whether prepared or off-the-cuff, were eloquent and powerful. Most speakers were Native, but non-Native supporters also voiced their support of the struggles and aspirations of Indigenous peoples.

Francisco Da Costa set the tone when he opened, saying, “This land belongs to the First People of this area, known as the Muwekma Ohlone.” He said that the ancient funerary places, like the hundreds of shellmounds in the area, are those of the First People and that everyone should act out of “respect for Mother Earth, the shellmounds and most of all for the spirits of ancestors.” The shellmounds are sacred Indigenous burial grounds in Northern California that were desecrated by European settlers.

Corrina Gould (Carquin tribe of the Muwekma Ohlone), an organizer of the Shellmound Walk, thanked the ancestors and said the shellmounds represent the heritage of their children: “[The] cemeteries without headstones that are under Macy’s, where we’ve stood and prayed, are for the children. ... This is where your ancestors are.”

Perry Matlock, long-time shellmound activist, contrasted the respect with which European sacred stone circles such as Stonehenge are treated with the disgraceful hate crimes committed by Europeans on sacred Native American lands. He said the actions are “cultural genocide, acts of terrorism and ethnic cleansing” and called for the “preservation of all [Indigenous] cultural and grave sites.”

Mona Stone Fish (Mohawk) decried the disgrace of thousands of homeless people living on the streets of San Francisco and the misconception that “they choose to be that way,” saying, “Who starts out with that aspiration?” She chided the city on the fact that so many Native people are homeless.

Espanola Jackson, the spokesperson and liaison for the Ohlone Tribe, added that this hearing wasn’t the first time the Muwekma Ohlone had come to San Francisco’s government to seek respect for the sacred shellmound funerary places. For example, in 1992 a formal resolution had been passed regarding the shellmounds and there it sat, unenforced. “I hope this day [the city] will pass a stronger resolution and end the illegal removals of the contents and whole shellmounds in San Francisco.”

Ohlone speakers raised the fact that they cannot even legally pray at the beach, as is traditional for them. They called upon the city to legislate their right to do so.

A young man sang a song in his Native language that he had learned from his elders. He pointed out that before their land was taken away, his people had sung and performed sacred ceremonies close to the beautiful ocean coastline, and also said “youth is the future.”

A Mutsun Ohlone elder, Ann Marie Sayers, detailed the unnecessary difficulty the Ohlone have had due to the U.S. government’s contemptuous refusal to officially recognize them as a “real” Native American tribe. This has hampered Ohlone efforts to reclaim their lands and culture, not the least of which is carrying on ancient ceremonies essential to their lives. She said that the European settlers’ mission system had greatly contributed to the outright genocide of her people.

Santos Nic-Manaznilla of the Asociación Mayab spoke in Spanish instead of his Native Mayan language “because they only have a Spanish-to-English language interpreter.” He spoke about the economic hardships the North American “Free Trade” Agreement has caused his people, descendants of the ancient Mayans. The tens of thousands of economic immigrants forced to cross the deadly U.S.-Mexican border, the thousands now working in low-paying hotel and restaurant jobs, are mistreated and disrespected, often working 14-hour days, to provide the bare necessities for their families. Those workers all too often cannot get necessary medical care for themselves or their dependents. He talked about the indignity and harm the Indigenous youth are experiencing, growing up in a hostile city with poverty, crime and violence all around them, never learning the proud history they come from.

Ana Pérez, assistant director of the Central American Resource Center, spoke about the fact that Indigenous peoples, in both the South and North Americas, have never been compensated for their losses. She raised that the distinct cultures of Indigenous Mexicans are not respected when they are lumped into the generality of “Latin@” in the U.S.

Larry (Cheyenne/Arapaho) said, “Native Americans here have no basic human rights.” He spoke about the destruction of the environment, of the Sacred Mother Earth.

Lori Taguma (Lac Courte Oreilles), of the American Indian Child Resource Center, spoke of her need at one time to move away from the city back to the Reservation—to her cultural oasis. She recounted hearing her great-grandmother’s experience of being forcibly taken from her tribal home on her own land, to a non-Native, racist boarding school. She discussed the fundamental need for “California Indigenous people to identify with their own land base.”

A Miwok woman told about her own mother being taken away at the age of five to a boarding school. She stated: “No sacred site should be destroyed. ... Native American people used to be able to come to sacred sites for ceremonies.” She ended with, “Enough is enough; I challenge this commission tonight ... to affirm” the rights of the people.

Tony Gonzales, a leader of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), noted that San Francisco might inspire other cities to hold hearings with their Native American communities and take action too.

Another IITC leader, Bill Simmons, spoke about the “terrorism that first came with the desecration of the sacred shellmounds of the ancestors” and that celebrating Christopher Columbus is like celebrating Adolf Hitler.

Health concerns raised

Other speakers raised immediate needs within the local community.

Mark Espinoza, director of the Native American Health Center in the Mission neighborhood, discussed the center’s efforts to meet the needs of Indigenous people and any San Franciscans who enter its doors. He reviewed attempts by city agencies to close it down and “fold patients into other service centers” to save money.

Joan Benoit spoke of the work the Native American AIDS Project was doing to help local Indigenous people living with HIV/AIDS. San Francisco has the largest percentage of Native American communities with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. Benoit said that in order to continue, their efforts need more funding.

Rope Wolf, an Apache activist and member of the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits, spoke for the needs of people with HIV/AIDS, as well as Two Spirit people and those in the LGBT community.

Alexandra Monk (Metis), a local HIV/AIDS educator, told about the federal Centers for Disease Control prediction that deaths from HIV/AIDS in the U.S. could “wipe out the Native American population by the next century.”

Michelle Maas (Bad River Chippewa) discussed the mental health needs of the Native community. She urged Indigenous representation on all policy committees, saying, “The decisions made today impact the next several generations,” and that statistical discrimination by non-reporting “invisibility, omission and exclusion” is unacceptable.

Native students Eddie Dang (Tsalagi/Sauk and Fox/Native Hawaiian) and Christopher Gomora (Anishinabe) spoke of the need for cultural sensitivity in education. Gomora observed that classes at the City College were being “taught by the oppressors to the oppressed.”

Sally Ramon, a Tohono O’odham elder, advocated establishing a Native American Center where the local community of numerous tribes could safely go and practice important ceremonies. Mary Jean Robertson (Tsalagi) noted that currently the “Native American Cultural Center, with no location, is literally homeless.”

A respected professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, Andrew Jolivette, brought many recommendations for the commission to act on. He noted the extremely offensive and “inappropriate statue of Christopher Columbus still prominently standing in San Francisco,” and the need for an annual “Native American parade to celebrate their traditions.” He asked for the endorsement of a formal B.A. degree in indigenous studies at educational institutions, increased local funding where federal funds under the Bush Administration are drying up, and the removal of the name “Junípero Serra” from the highway honoring a genocidal Spanish Roman Catholic mission priest—and renaming it in honor of Richard Oakes, a Mohawk leader of the 1969 Alcatraz occupation. Jolivette asked for a Native American charter school, a Native American Resource Room in the main public library, and for a cultural center. He called for Native American graves to be protected and preserved in compliance with federal law regarding the “housing of Native American Indian remains.”

Others recounted their frustration with bureaucratic efforts to render Native peoples invisible. One Indigenous man spoke about statistics showing the groups of the many unemployed, which leave out the Indigenous identity of those who moved off their reservations for now non-existent jobs in the city. A teacher, Mishwa Lee, called for Indigenous educators in the schools, “not as unpaid volunteers, but as paid educators.”

Anita Mendez (Washo) spoke, as did Morrigan Shaw (Tlingit), Frank Cullum (Chickasaw), and Myra Smith, Alberto Saldenado and Thomas Reyes. Kim Shuck (Tsalagi) gave several examples of dehumanizing “art” depicting Indigenous people in public places, including a huge mural at Mission High School. Racist public art, sports team names and mascots are a part of the overall stress and lack of respect experienced by Native peoples. Shuck said, “I can understand why these things might seem small, but statistically we die in huge numbers from stress-related disorders such as heart problems, diabetes and hypertension.”

Ada Stevenson spoke about the 72 percent of Native American women who experience some kind of violence in their lives at the hands of white men.

A white couple visiting from Australia noted a recent Aboriginal victory there that included winning back a large portion of land taken from them by European settlers, including part of the city of Perth.

Hearing organizer Marcus Arana told WW: “The mayor’s office stated at the hearing that the mayor is looking at creating a community task force on the issues raised. Since then the mayor’s office has announced a policy symposium for Nov. 2. I have been requested to invite community leaders to participate and I have been requested to attend.”

It remains to be seen if the commission and other San Francisco governmental bodies will conscientiously respond to the many serious concerns of the Native American community. Many Nations of the First People are watching.

The full hearing can be viewed at http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=30