California governor calls Native American treatment genocide

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

JUNE 18, 2019 AT 4:07 PM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom formally apologized Tuesday for violence, mistreatment and neglect inflicted on Native Americans throughout California’s history, saying it amounted to genocide and pushing the state to reckon with its dark past.

The Democratic governor met with tribal leaders at the future site of the California Indian Heritage Center, where he also announced the creation of a council to examine the state’s role in campaigns of extermination and exploitation.

Throughout history, the California government was key to efforts to remove and kill Native Americans who lived on land that would become part of what is now the world’s fifth-largest economy.

“Genocide. No other way to describe it, and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books,” Newsom said.


Read more: https://mynorthwest.com/1422612/california-governor-calls-native-american-treatment-genocide/

[icymist]

1. It's about time!

K & R

[JoeOtterbein]

2. Would have been great...

...a century or so ago!

[BigmanPigman]

3. It started in CA over two hundred years ago,

The missionaries of the Spanish then Mexican settlers are the ones who hurt and killed the natives. It didn't happen in only CA. The entire country is guilty of this to a degree. Whether they were harmed for their land, their gold and other valuables, or their non-Christian souls the same results occurred....genocide.

[emmaverybo]

4. California once had the most dense population of Native Americans. I taught for most of my adult

life until retirement a very huge and diverse population. We often discussed social and political issues.
Only once did I encounter a descendent. There are 5,600 enrolled members of the Yurok tribe.
Did work for an elderly doctor, descendent of a cousin of a Native American to whom land had been granted, a Miwok.
He was writing a very long book to go to the Historical Society.
I was very young and thought him a bit mad.
I understood more when I started researching the real history of California missions, the Gold rush, the vigilantes etc.
California genocide was particularly effective.

[BigmanPigman]

5. When I became a teacher I learned about the

origins of CA and the Kumeyaay Indians and Father Junipero Serra and his missions. We didn't educate the students on the bad things that the settlers and missionaries did and that has always pissed me off about the state curriculum. I wrote to the State Educ Dept about this and about teaching Civics in school and never got any response back, EVER! Gov Newsom can do something about this too, but will he?

CA ranks 42 out of 50 states in the amount of money received from the state for each student...that is shameful! I thought we were so wealthy...doesn't show in the schools!

[emmaverybo]

6. I talked to folks who went into fourth grade to educate about Native American history. I had this

education at that same point as a California student. We drew the missions, wrote text from our
history books to accompany the art, and went on field trips. I lived near one of the missions and was mission mad.
Year later, these folks, sent by CA art council to hold special events like theatrical reconstructions,
daily life teachings, basket weaving sessions etc. told me it had been decided that the 4th grade
was a bit young to discover the brutal way Native Americans had been treated on the ground under their feet. The children might feel guilt, could experience trauma, that’s how gruesome and huge
the truth would be.
Germany makes teaching racism and ethnic hatred, its own past, mandatory. Children go on field
trips to concentration camps.
I know there can also be resistance to this enforced education that can find its way to current
immigrant classmates.
I do feel that Newsom has taken a good step.
And bravo for you!
Amazing that the money Ed has here does not show upon the classroom. Well, administration...

[cntrfthrs]

7. About.

Dammed. Time.

[The Mouth]

8. Hitler and especially Himmler admired

our treatment of the First Peoples.

It was an absolutely perfect model for what the Nazis tried to do in the areas of Eastern Europe they conquered.

And Hitler chided Roosevelt that he was only doing to the Jews and others what the Americans had done to the Native Americans a century or so previously, so who were we to criticize?

[phandancer917]

9. Agree....

...it is easy to throw stones if you ignore history -- sort of like most of Trump's old tweets undermining his current ones

Almost all nations are built on the blood of those that were there 1st - but the US compounded it by adding institutional slavery.