In the 1950s, after renovations were complete, visitors could wander into the chapel and see statues of saints and pictures of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the stucco walls. They could see the simple wooden pews that still filled the church and, outside, the stones once used to grind grain, and then wander through the Spanish-style garden with its large gray fountain, rose bushes and lemon trees that glowed in the California sun. Tour guides typically avoided the darker details of its history, of course, such as the 4,000 Salinan tribal members buried in a mass grave about 500 feet from the church — their deaths and disposal a final reward for their work in building the mission. At 9 years old, Castro first saw the burial site and its marker: A crudely made sign, better suited for a spaghetti Western, that just read “Indian Graves.”
“My parents would say they ‘got sick and passed away,’ ” recalls Castro. “Euphemisms. These ways of blunting the terrifying truth of it: That they died by the thousands building these missions.”
Less than 70 miles from here, thousands of tourists enjoy the iconic views of Big Sur. But Mission San Antonio de Padua still casts a pall over the Santa Lucia Mountains. In the wake of its construction, thousands of members of the Salinan tribe and other Indigenous people died of hunger, violence and slavery. Sacred sites were destroyed. Traditional foods were forcibly replaced by European staples, such as cattle. When the Mexican government took control of the region, Indigenous people were massacred to fulfill the Spanish land grants promised to colonists. Then the Americans came.
Assembly Bill 738, the Native American curriculum model, was sponsored by Democrat Monique Limón, a former school board member from Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, and passed with strong bipartisan support. “This bill would require the commission to develop, and the state board to adopt, modify, or revise, a model curriculum in Native American studies,” the legislation reads.
However, that requirement doesn’t come with funding for training, development, or even textbooks, leaving teachers with a difficult choice: Comply with the law on their own dime, or continue to downplay or ignore the atrocities committed against Indigenous people by settlers and colonists in the foundation of what is currently California.
“There is not one Indian in the whole of this country who does not cringe in anguish and frustration because of these textbooks,” Costo said during his 1968 testimony in San Francisco to the Special Subcommittee on Indian Education. Costo made these remarks after his involvement with the California Curriculum Commission. “There is not one Indian child who has not come home in shame and tears after one of those sessions in which he is taught that his people were dirty, animal-like, something less than a human being.”
If you don’t understand Legislature-speak, that means AB 738 wants to ensure that students today aren’t learning what students in the Rafferty era learned with regard to California Indians.
The bill passed, and Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law in 2017. But there’s one problem: The work to make it a reality in the classroom won’t really begin for another three years.
Limón said the Department of Education must first develop the curriculum, then present it to the state’s more than 1,000 school districts to figure out how to implement it in the classroom. That’s a slow process that can take years.
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