The below letter will be printed on the back cover of The Owl. In addition to signing this petition, we call on you to share the below concerns with Santa Clara University’s administration. Copy/paste the following letter and email it to our acting president (PRESIDENT@SCU.EDU).

 

Dear Santa Clara University Administration, Board of Trustees, and President,

I am writing to express my concern for the lack of awareness our student body has regarding our school’s history and significance in the disruption and decimation of Native culture. Below is an essay chronicling Santa Clara University’s continued ignorance and mistreatment of the Native American community, and some requests that we believe would help heal some of the wounds our school and mission are responsible for.

 

“It was reserved for the Church, through her missionaries, to civilize and Christianize the unlettered and barbarous savages, who were scattered over the great expanse of the newly discovered land… How joyous must have been the thought to the hearts of these poor Red Men, to know that their abject wretchedness could not deter the Mother Church from coming to their assistance” (1). This is an excerpt from The Owl, vol. 1, no. 1.

It takes only a few seconds to locate these sentiments in old Owl issues. If art reflects the psyche of a community, this was ours up until the late 1950s. And these sentiments are not a thing of the past. As of writing this, the “Historical Information” page on SCU’s website is a contemptibly brief 500-word essay (that you may or may not stumble across if you’re looking for it) where you’ll find the only mention of local indigenous people (2). And it is not posed as the history of the Ohlone, but rather the history of “the iconic mission”. In this article, more is said about the history of a building than of an entire group of people with thousands of years of local roots. They are treated like a footnote, a blip in California’s history defined only in relation to the mission, a building that was created for the purpose of ethnic cleansing, under the guise of Christianization. This “Historical Information” page contains the following: “Sadly, historical accounts reveal harsh punishments (by modern standards) of withholding food, corporal punishments, and imprisonment for wayward converts”. By modern standards. It is 2022, and we are blatantly defending slavery, forced conversion, and genocide by claiming that these punishments are only subjectively harsh and must be viewed through “the lens of the times”. So strikes the banality of evil, and with it, the cancerous fallacy that because evil acts were everyday life 200 years ago, evil was not occurring.

For some, the mission is a building that symbolizes the strong foundation our school is built on. Historically, the missions represent the systemic erasure of Native culture -- where the padres tried to obliterate thousands of years of languages, traditions, and skills. There was nothing noble about the missions. Nothing admirable. If they were not so linked to our school’s religion, they would not be so romanticized and mythologized by us. You would instead hear the true stories of the mission; how in the 1830s, a Native hero by the name of Yozcolo (3) freed hundreds of prisoners from the Mission’s monjerio (nunnery) -- located where O’Connor Hall now stands (4), where Native girls were subjected to sexual abuse and “flogging” (5); how this hero was later murdered by colonists and his severed head displayed upon a lance outside the mission (Santis, Community Heritage Lab). These are the kinds of “harsh punishments (by modern standards)” our school refers to. An on-campus speaker of Ohlone heritage once raised a thought-provoking question: Why is our logo a mission? If this building is such an important symbol of our school, what does that say about our ability to reconcile with the past? I’ve often wondered how a Native Californian from the 1700s would react to our school today, to know that the building synonymous with the genocide of their people is now a selling point for an institution that does not recognize their story; to know that the building of their rulers, their murderers, their enslavers, is being used as a symbol of pride.

Our campus is built on thousands of indigenous bodies. This is no figure of speech. Over 7,000 Native Californians are buried under this school’s land (6). There is no recognition of this fact on our grounds nor on our official website. On all the historical plaques around our campus, the only subtle reference to the Ohlone people is not on the sites of their burial grounds or their rancherias (these locations are currently UNMARKED), but on the site of the old mission church, where they are referred to not as OHLONE, but as mere “dwellers”.

It would be one thing if our willful ignorance were benign. But it isn't. The Ohlone are still here. They continue to fight marginalization while this school, whose student racial diversity page disturbingly bears no mention of Native American demographics (7), continues to build on and benefit from their rightful homeland.

 

OUR REQUESTS:

1. We request the creation of a scholarship for Native American students (we have heard this is already in the works). We also request that an option be added to the “Giving” page on our website that allows donors to easily give to the Native Indian Education Fund (INVEST IN THE COMMUNITIES WE MARGINALIZED).
2. We request that the school erect signage around campus acknowledging the historical realities of the mission and Native populations. This project would include the creation of commemorative monuments around both burial sites on campus (one in the Rose Garden ~2,000 burials~ and the other at the grassy area at the end of Franklin Street ~5,000 burials~). Most importantly, the establishment of a plaque outside the mission church that honors the Native people who were subjugated.
3. We request that the school remove the current “Historical Information” page on the mission website. In its place, we request that a page dedicated to the true history of the Ohlone be published. The anthropology department is currently creating an informative page on this subject--we request that it, or a similar page, is integrated into the main website. This page must not be buried, but easily found and linked in the “About SCU” page. It is appalling that this has not yet been done.
4. We request that the school make a formal and legally-binding promise to the Ohlone people to never build on the geographical areas where their ancestors are known to be buried (the areas listed on #2).
5. We request that a formal tribal advisory council be created with paid staff positions. This representation is vital to a school with such a dark history.
6. Finally, we request that a formal apology be made to the Ohlone people on behalf of the school and the mission church. The Ohlone History Working Group had asked this of the school in 2019 and, in utter disrespect, their requests were ignored (8)

To cover up past evils is to condone them entirely. This marks one of the most significant opportunities for our community to grow. Please do not continue to ignore it. Make measurable actions to acknowledge and address our wrongs.

This message was written by the editor of The Owl, Ross Wylde (rmacneil@scu.edu), with input from the president of NACC (Native American Coalition For Change), Alec Corn (acorn@scu.edu). TO VIEW THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE, VISIT THE HOMEPAGE OF SANTACLARAOWL.COM.

 

References

1. Santa Clara University Student Body. (1869). Vol. 1, No. 1. The Owl, 3.

2. Santa Clara University. (n.d.). Historical Information - Mission Santa Clara de Asís.

3. Santis, G. A. F. (2014, August). Native American Response and Resistance To Spanish Conquest in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769–1846 (Thesis). San José State University.

4. Community Heritage Lab. (n.d.). SCU Native History Tour. Google Earth.

5. Sepulveda, C. (2018). Our Sacred Waters: Theorizing Kuuyam as a Decolonial Possibility. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 7(1), 46.

6. Cemetery and Rose Garden History. (n.d.). Santa Clara University Digital Exhibits.

7. Santa Clara University. (n.d.). Key Findings - Diversity. Santa Clara University - Office For Diversity and Inclusion.

8. Loftus, L. (2019, September 7). Reconciliation. Santa Clara Magazine.