Hello. My name is Cesar Barragan, and I am a junior at Larchmont Charter School at La Fayette Park Place in downtown Los Angeles. In my American Literature class, we have been studying and talking about the connections between storytelling and identity; for example, we recently read various fiction and nonfiction texts about Native Americans and California mission history. This topic has been of particular interest to me since I started learning about it in the fourth grade, where the California Board of Education requires all teachers in the state to educate students about the California missions.

The reason I am starting this petition is because I have just learned the truth about what really happened surrounding the missions in the eleventh grade, not the fourth grade. Around the 1760’s, Native Americans were forced into practicing a new religion and culture and essentially stripped of their identities by the Spanish; these were the same actions that were taken by the Spaniards to eradicate the cultures of the Mayans and Aztecs in the 1500’s. In 1769, the first mission was founded by Junipero Serra, who went on to found eight more throughout California. Spanish soldiers forced Native American to the sites of the missions, where they became slaves, built the missions themselves, and were forbidden to leave.

We were never taught what truly happened during the missionization of California, and students in my class also questioned why we were never taught this in fourth grade.

Why now? Why, after seven years, were we finally taught what truly happened to Native Americans? Was it because we were too young to understand? If so, I learned about the horrors of the Holocaust and the slave trade in third grade, and I wanted to do something about it; the whole class wanted to take action. What makes the missions of California any different?

Teaching ignorance instead of the truth is harmful to students, no matter their age, and the identities of those forgotten by history. The California missions were concentration camps for native peoples.

They were beaten, whipped, maimed, burned, and tortured. We learned about slavery and the Holocaust when we were eight and nine years old, and while we never went in depth, we knew horrible things happened.

So, the question stands: Why now?

What we have realized is California mission history is almost always taught by focusing on the missionary’s perspective and experiences, rather than those of the Native Americans.

The fourth grade California mission standard does not require teachers to teach how the Native Americans were truly treated. Out of the eight requirements in the standard, only three have to do with Native Americans, requiring teachers and students to discuss and describe their daily lives, relationships the Spanish soldiers and missionaries, and Native American geography, economic activities, legends, and beliefs. Additionally, California teachers traditionally teach about mission history through the California Mission Project, where students are asked to build mini-models of the buildings, for example, without learning the truth.

Would teachers ask students to build models of concentration camps and slave plantations without teaching what really happened?

My brother is in fourth grade.  I intend to not only pass along this knowledge to my brother, my own blood, but everyone, including parents and children, who probably haven’t been exposed to the extreme violence upon which the missions were founded and maintained. I will be waiting for the mission project to be assigned, and without a doubt, will be speaking to his teacher about how crucial it is for students to know not just one side of the story.

All teachers need to start educating kids about what really happened in California missions when the topic is first introduced to fourth graders and as a requirement, not as an option.

We need to tell the stories of all people, not just a select few. It is time to take action. It is time to respect and tell the whole story of the California missions. Native Americans and their history, not matter how harsh and brutal, are a part of history.

Native Americans deserve to have an identity.

History can repeat itself, and without confronting history and without learning and teaching about everything in the past, we allow for negative cycles to continue. In other words, we are to blame.  

We demand change. We demand actions be taken by the California Board of Education to revise the fourth grade mission standard to not allow for silence and ignorance to be taught in our schools and to our children. We demand the untold histories and the voices of Native Americans be heard and respected.

Join us!