L.A. city officials announced Monday—Indigenous People’s Day in California—that Father Junípero Serra y Ferrer’s name would be removed from a downtown park across from Union Station.
Serra, an 18th Century saint canonized by the Catholic Church in 2015, was a missionary from Spain who sought to baptize the Native American population of the New World. He is credited with establishing California’s controversial mission system.
Native Americans protested Serra’s canonization, characterizing his missions as military installations—bases of operations for the European subjugation and genocide of indigenous Californians. Protesters also charged that Native Americans were brutalized and forced into labor for Serra’s Franciscan missionaries.
“Historians agree that [Serra] forced Native Americans to abandon their tribal culture and convert to Christianity, and that he had them whipped and imprisoned and sometimes worked or tortured to death,” said a 2015 story in The New York Times.
Historian Barry M. Pritzker, author of “An Encyclopedia of American Indian History,” wrote that starvation, overwork, and torture inflicted by Serra’s mission system was a driving force behind the decimation of Native American populations on the West Coast.
“Los Angeles is a city of belonging that takes responsibility for the mistakes we’ve made in the past,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said of the decision to rename the park, located at 540 North Los Angeles Street.
The city will decide on new name at a later date, with “La Plaza Park” used as a placeholder in the interim.
The city will also establish an Indigenous Cultural Easement at the park and at other locations across L.A. where local indigenous groups can practice traditional ceremonies.
The Indigenous Cultural Easement was recommended by the Civic Memory Working Group—made up of over 40 historians, architects, artists, indigenous leaders, city officials, and others who worked with community leaders, including the L.A City and County Native American Indian Commission’s Executive Director Alexandra Valdes, to write a 166-page advisory report.
“Our indigenous brothers and sisters deserve justice and today we take a step toward delivering both greater cultural sensitivity and spaces for Angelenos to gather and perform their traditional ceremonies,” Garcetti said.
Related
