After my dad died (when I was one year old) my mom would take me there every once in a while as a child.
I still have all those little silver saint medallions from these trips in my old bedroom at my parent's house.
I guess Father Junipero Serra (who held mass at the site) is set to be canonized by Pope Francis.
Sainthood for a missionary who allowed the mistreatment of the native tribes all in the name of acculturation for The Church?
My mom was sent from her reservation in Klammath Falls, Oregon to the Judson Academy in Scottsdale, Az for her boarding school experience.
My home town in Riverside has a similar school (Sherman Indian High School) which was created for the same purpose of teaching natives how to act like real Americans.
Even to this day churches are teaching the heathens how to act like real Americans.
The school's traditional multi-tribe Pow-Wows have been replaced by Christian prayer services in recent years.
Apparently the mulatto children in Louisiana were taught all that was right and good in the eyes of The Church as well...
C'mon Pope Francis, stop trying to appeal to the American Latino crowd and pick a better option than Junipero Serra.
Sen. Rand Paul insists that 'lack of assimilation' is the native Americans' big problem, the only think holding them back. As a member of the Borg collective, he's programmed - and expected - to say that.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see a little cosmic irony in which, one day, the Indians ride to the rescue of America. Not sure why they would, but... Kind of like how African-American culture is our chief music and fashion consumption export. I don't see us exporting Souza marches lately...
There was an old movie, 'Americathon' which had that as it's main plot line.
ReplyDeleteNative Americans weren't allowed to assimilate and were placed on reservations. Some of these reservations have become sites for casinos and in some towns they are the largest employers of non-natives.
In all honesty, I think the forced acculturation (neither side was ever fully assimilated) by both sides of my family helped me in the long run. The difference was that my father's side was able to retain their Creole culture separate from the Cajuns while my Native side seems to only recently have become more self-sufficient.
I like to ask people to explain exactly what the standard is that immigrants, or anyone, is supposed to assimilate to. They struggle to define it, but if left to sputter about, they will eventually get to either the idea that assimilation is silly, or that they mean all should assimilate to being white. Equally silly.
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