The "Mission University" Must Return Stolen Native Property
Santa Clara University proudly boasts the Mission history, occupies Native land, & hoards Native artifacts. There must be a reckoning.
Previous articles in this blog have discussed the dark history of the Mission Santa Clara, and the relentless resistance to colonization and genocide by the Native Californians.
As discussed, Santa Clara University sits atop the remains (and occupies existing remnants) of that Mission.
Considering the brutality and atrocity of what was done to Native Californians on the site, one would think the Jesuit school would approach the topic carefully and with deference to the harm - but instead the University brands itself as the “Mission” school, with an intact & operating Mission Church. SCU proudly brands its marketing materials with symbols of the history of colonization, slavery, and massacre.
Future articles will address some of the most significant issues with SCU’s conduct related to the conceptual history of Mission (the ‘Broncos’, the school colors, the fight songs, & more), but this article will focus on the history quite literally.
This article will discuss Santa Clara University’s seizure, hoarding, and colonial attitude towards its collection of Native artifacts and human remains as well as occupation of Native land. This article discusses SCU’s behavior related to the physical history of the Mission Santa Clara.
Ending the Normalized Practice of Grave Robbing
Grave robbing has been yet another indignity suffered by Native Americans and their descendants long after they were driven from their lands or killed. Hobbyists, collectors and even prominent researchers have taken part in the desecration of burial sites. Skulls, bones and antiquities were sold, traded, studied and displayed in museums.[2]
Native nations & tribes have fought back since the start of colonization. The Kizh-Gabrieleño of Los Angeles and Orange counties even went so far as to file a grievance with The Hague over desecration of Native Californian burials in Downtown L.A., an issue that continually plagues them in a region beset by high land values and relentless development.[8]
Today, when Native American cultural items or human remains are found during excavation, the Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act requires the work stop and actions taken to protect the site, for the excavators to consult with tribe(s), and to develop a plan of action with agreement from the tribes. [1] The act made it illegal to steal from the graves and required government institutions to return items in their possession.
In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law new protections for Native Californians, including a statute to make it easier for tribes in California to reclaim sacred artifacts and the remains of their ancestors that have been held by museums and other institutions for decades. "When you look at cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, there's no federally recognized tribe there but yet we know that there's ancestral remains of [Native] people in those areas.” [3]
A 2020 state audit of three campuses within the University of California system discovered the universities held close to 500,000 artifacts and remains that had yet to be returned to the respective tribes (a requirement guaranteed under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990).
"Those are the remains that we need to get back into the hands of the proper people, the proper tribes to be able to do a proper re-burial so then we can start to move forward with the healing.” [4]
Actions to begin returning artifacts have been underway for several decades now. In 1989, in what may have been the first action of its kind by a major California university, Stanford University decided to return the skeletal remains of about 550 Native Californians from its museum to elders of the Ohlone people. [5]
The Wiyot began seeking return of their ancestors in 2016 under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. University of California Berkeley (which held the remains at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology) denied the request, citing lack of evidence to substantiate their claim. Later, a 2020 state audit found the University of California had an inconsistent policy in how and when it repatriated remains. [6]
The Berkeley campus had a racial reckoning with the past in recent years, including its history with Native Americans. A professor named Alfred Kroeber had collected Native American’s remains for research. He was best known for taking “custody” of Ishi, a man he called “last of the Yahi," who emerged from the wilderness in 1911. The man was forced to perform as a living exhibit for museum visitors, demonstrating how to make stone tools and crafts. In recent years, the university finally stripped the name of Alfred Kroeber from the hall housing, anthropology department, and museum. [7]
Cutcha Risling Baldy, a professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University, said returning the sacred items provides healing to tribes. She criticized museums and universities that warehouse items that objectify Native Americans and reduce them to historical objects and artifacts rather than people.
“From a spiritual perspective, from a cultural perspective or even a human perspective, it’s hard to imagine the graves of your ancestors being dug up and then put into a museum,” Risling Baldy said. “It kind of creates a mythology around Native people that we are somehow specimens, rather than people and human beings.” -Cutcha Risling Baldy
Tribal Cultural Resources are tangible and intangible spaces and items holding great importance to the cultural heritage of Tribal Nations in including sacred and cultural landscapes, burial sites, shell mounds, artifacts, natural resources, stories and language.[9]
By returning pieces of land back to the Native Californians, it starts a process of healing for those ancestors of the Natives who were abused and whose burials are now being desecrated.
Santa Clara University as Proud Colonists
This topic is a complex issue that needs to be corrected one step at a time. [10] However, SCU is long overdue to even start the process. California universities are not only instructed by the state to return these resources, but their progress (or lack there of) is being audited and reported on by the state.[11] Meanwhile, SCU brags about its collection without shame or remorse.
“We (SCU) serve as the curator, preserver, clearinghouse, and research home for Mission history.”
-Chris Shay (Interim VP for Finance and Administration), Santa Clara University Master Plan Presentation, City of Santa Clara Planning Commission (2016).
The Santa Clara Cultural Resources department has a “10,500 sq ft curation facility, currently housed within the Ricard Memorial Observatory, provides storage for over 2,300 boxes of artifacts spanning the last 2,000 years.” [12]
The Cultural Resources program is responsible for artifact curation and writing the reports that describe archaeological findings for each construction project on campus. At the programs warehouse - the east and west wings, the domes, and the basement are currently being used for the curation of collections. Below the large, central dome are four rooms for administration, research, and processing collections for curation. [13]
SCU’s De Saisset Museum also hosts numerous Native Californian & Mission “exhibitions.” [14]
Serious discussion and reflection need to occur about SCU’s hoarding of Native artifacts. Some, if not all, of the remains and Native artifacts should be returned. SCU should consider volunteering to the oversight of the California government with the same repatriation program the state universities are part of today.
Returning Native Land
When a U.S. Land Commission was finally created in 1851 and began to rule on all land claims under the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo treaty with Mexico, Native groups were not notified and almost no Native Californian claims were submitted. Native homelands then “legally” became part of the public domain. [15]
In 1851, the federal government appointed a California Superintendent of Indian Affairs and eventually created reservations to which to move California Indians. There were no negotiations with the sovereign Native nations prior to the formation of these military reservations. No legal recognition or land titles were conferred. In fact, there was a great deal of confusion as to what was being done.
“They were administered by civilian agents who proved mainly to be corrupt men who charged the government for food and cattle they failed to provide to [the Native people].”
At that time, public opinion of settlers in California had grown increasingly hostile toward proposed Native reservations. James H. Carson wrote the following racist and imperial rant from the site of Camp Frémont. It was published in Stockton’s San Joaquin Republican newspaper in 1852:
Here, over these smoking ruins—here, over the graves of our murdered companions have the soft hands of the Commissioner grasped in friendship those of the incendiary, and the murderers of our people. And, here, these good Commissioners signed away to the Digger Indian all the right of the white man to the best portion of this desirable spot. Can these treaties stand? Will the settlers in California submit to it? No! Look among the graves there! One looks greener than the rest! It is poor old Wood’s grave! He was my old companion. We, together, explored the plains around, where the feet of the white man had never trod before. He was the first settler on the Four Creeks. He now sleeps there, murdered by the Indians, who, instead of being punished, have been pampered, fed, and enriched by the Christian hands of the Indian Commissioners.
Between 1834-1836, the Mexican government decided to turn the coastal missions into regular parish churches. In the following years, the vast mission lands were granted to prominent Mexican citizens—and the original Spanish plan to return the lands to acculturated Native people was ignored. [17] This included the land of the Santa Clara Mission, which was kept with the Catholic church who established a Jesuit college on the land that was once a thriving Ohlone and Tamien village.
Under International Law, it seems very likely the land that SCU sits upon belongs to the Native Californian people, and under the right political circumstances, where a claim under the law of territorial disputes between nations could be adjudicated, it’s possible SCU would be forced to return the land to the Native people.
A recent example of this is the 2019 United Nations Chagos Advisory Opinion & Resolutions. The International Court of Justice found that the UK and US had been illegally occupying the Chagos archipelago and ordered them to return it to Mauritius, as they were supposed to during the de-occupation movement of the 1960s. The court also instructed that even though there were very few Native Chagosians remaining after the UK’s ethnic cleansing, that they needed to be able to return to their islands. This case is interesting because this maybe the closest the UN has gotten to applying decolonization law to the United States (as the islands are used for a joint US-UK military base).[18]
The city of Santa Clara seems to be aware of this risk, and while it proudly brands itself as the “Mission City,” it concurrently attempts to distance itself as much as possible from the Mission Santa Clara property. In 1989, as part of a city quitclaim deed transferring more Mission land to SCU during the Route 82 modification, the city of Santa Clara wrote,
“The city [of Santa Clara] is desirous of relieving itself from all liability with respect to ownership of any portion of the Mission Murguia (3rd Mission) site.[19]
While Santa Clara University proudly markets the Mission Santa Clara, it also concurrently refuses to pursue registration of its buildings as historical resources or national historical sites. In registering the buildings, SCU could ensure those buildings are preserved and protected. The city of Santa Clara has pressured SCU to do so, even performing analysis of which buildings would qualify. SCU apparently refused.
One of those buildings was Bergin Hall, which SCU wanted to demolish, was only preserved because the city refused to approve permits for any of SCU’s other development if SCU demolished the historical building and disturbed even more 3rd Mission remains. [20]
SCU seems to care deeply about the “idea” of the Mission [eg, colonialism], but not the actual property the Mission sat upon - with the exception that SCU feels strongly the property remains in their sole possession, including any Native artifacts or remains.
Inadequate Land Acknowledgement
SCU has started offering land acknowledgements, but there is much room for improvement in the wording.
One states:
“We pause to acknowledge that Santa Clara University sits on the land of the Ohlone and the Muwekma Ohlone people, who trace their ancestry through the Missions Dolores, Santa Clara, and San Jose. We remember their connection to this region and give thanks for the opportunity to live, work, learn and pray on their traditional homeland. Let us take a moment of silence to pay respect to their Elders and to all Ohlone people past and present.”[21]
SCU states in another:
We pause to acknowledge that Santa Clara University sits on the land of the Ohlone and Muwekma Ohlone people. We remember their continued connection to this region and give thanks to them for allowing us to live, work, learn, and pray on their traditional homeland. We offer our respect to their Elders and to all Ohlone people of the past and present.[22]
In comparison, the Tamien Nation offers an example of a preferred acknowledgement for their land occupied by settlers, writing:
“We acknowledge that <city> is the aboriginal homeland of Tamien Nation since time immemorial and recognizes the continued persistence and resilience of culture and community despite the adverse impacts of settler colonialism. The Tamien Nation continue to have a relationship with the land; one of deep respect, agreement and reciprocity collaborating to help maintain balance. The <agency/institution/organization> acknowledges and supports Tamien Nation in solidarity and commitment to partnership advocating for a more equitable and inclusive future.” [23]
Land acknowledgment best practices advise using appropriate language:
Don’t sugarcoat the past.
Use terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, stolen land, and forced removal to reflect actions taken by colonizers.
Also, ensure to use past, present, and future tenses. Indigenous people are still here.[24]
It is also good to frequently remind the occupying community that a land acknowledgment alone is not enough. It’s merely a starting point.[25]
Comparing SCU’s statement to the best practices and the Tamien example, it’s clear SCU is performing more mental gymnastics to not take responsibility for its actions, or the history of genocide the Jesuits acquiesced to and SCU continues to subtly glorify.
At the most basic level, it’s problematic to only acknowledge the Ohlone and not the other tribes in the region, who were forced to the Mission via the El Camino Real slave route.
Next, it’s cringeworthy to state the Ohlone “trace their ancestry” through the Missions. That implies all Ohlone people were imprisoned at the Missions and denies the existed of rebels, freedom fighters, and the Native people who were able to avoid the Missions all together. It also denies the Ohlone’s ancestral land and life before the Mission.
The use of the past tense “we remember connection to this region” denies the current land claim, that Native Californians rightfully own the land SCU sits upon. Calling it a “traditional homeland” is nonsense. SCU should admit it’s Native land & Native property.
The phrase about the Ohlone “allowing SCU to live, work, learn, etc” on campus is disgusting. The Ohlone were kidnapped, forced into slavery, held in concentration camps, and then mass murdered with the intent of the extermination of their race. The Ohlone and other Native people are actively fighting to repossess their lands and their other property.
If SCU were to revise their acknowledgment to be modeled closer to the Tamien Nation example, it should look to acknowledge the Native presence and ownership of the land, at least pre-Mission. SCU should acknowledge the harm caused by colonialism. SCU should work with the Native people to improve the overall situation and then they could acknowledge that as well.
Restricted Access to the Land
The Mission Santa Clara Church only “welcomes” it’s “faculty, staff, & alums.” SCU says the Mission Church is a “Student Chapel,” and not a “Community Parish,” which is a bizarre way to describe a historical landmark.[6]
Santa Clara University posts in many locations that the campus is “private property.”
The walled-off Rose Garden adjacent to the Mission Church is not accessible to the public, and “commemorates the thousands of Ohlone, Californios and Rancheros who are still buried here.” [5]
The Santa Clara Mission cemeteries (with over ten thousand Native human remains) remain largely unmarked and invisible. While the cemetery associated with the 5th mission occupies a more protected space adjacent to the reconstructed Mission church, the low profile of both cemeteries within the modern landscape raises significant questions about how SCU and the City of Santa Clara acknowledge their colonial era heritage. [4]
Our sacred sites are vital spaces for Tamien people. Like our baskets, they are an interweaving of our land, stories, culture, religion, language and overall Identity that ties us to thousands of years of being. Access to these places is crucial for our sustainability as Indigenous people. It is also a Human Rights issue under Article 25 of the UN Declaration.”- Tamien Nation [1]
Further, any commercial photography on the Santa Clara University campus requires a permit (assumably also a fee, though no amount is posted publicly). SCU warns,
“The use of our campus for commercial photography unrelated to matters involving Santa Clara University are expressly prohibited.” SCU further restricts permits to: “current students, faculty, staff, or alums of Santa Clara University.” SCU says, “Unauthorized parties on campus will be removed.” Photography permits are to be requested through the Santa Clara Mission office. [7]
Photography on campus requires a permit, but further, can only be requested by someone directly associated with SCU. [8]
It seems extremely problematic that commercial photography is limited to only the SCU community. That means if a Native Californian wanted to take a photograph atop the Mission their ancestors were imprisoned at for the purposes of an advocacy group or for the press, they may not be allowed to do so if they would make any money from it. And if they wanted to attempt to ask for an exception, they do not even contact the university - the Native Californians are forced to request a favor from the Mission Church. It is insult upon injury.
Santa Clara University anthropology professor, Lee Panich, asked in a 2015 article about the Mission Santa Clara:
“Does the collective forgetting of the tragic consequences of colonialism on the part of modern landowners and residents reveal the entrenched structures of settler colonialism?
Can institutions that owns and manages California mission sites create interpretive materials that balance the efforts of the Franciscans alongside the suffering and hard-won persistence of Native Californians?
These questions and others are vital reminders that the tension, resistance, and accommodation over cemeteries and their commemoration, between native peoples and European American colonists, reverberate into our present day.” [3]
Native Californian sacred sites include sites of tragedy. It’s entirely possible, and expected, Native Californians would want to enter Mission buildings in order to mourn.
Forbidding access to Mission buildings from the descendants of those who were imprisoned at the Mission concentration campus is mind-boggling. It’s comparable to forbidding access to the sites of Japanese Internment or WWII Concentration Camps to the victim’s descendants.
“Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with their traditionally owned or otherwise occupied and used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.”
- United Nations: Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 25 [2]
Everything discussed in this article should be evaluated, audited, and discussed by a cross-functional group including representatives of the Native Californian tribes who lived on the site before colonization as well as the tribes who were trafficked there.
Santa Clara University should seek to start remedying the harm that has occurred - instead of proudly creating additional harm.
-Ashley
[1] U.S. Department of Justice, NATIVE AMERICAN SACRED SITES AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: A Training for Federal Employees and Contract Staff Developed under the Sacred Sites Memorandum of Understanding, https://www.justice.gov/file/952031/download
[2] The Guardian, ‘They are going to be at peace’: California university returns remains of massacred Wiyot Tribe members (2022), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/28/wiyot-tribe-remains-returned-california-ucb
[3] NPR, https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/941542606/california-assemblymember-expands-rights-for-native-american-tribes
[4] NPR, https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/941542606/california-assemblymember-expands-rights-for-native-american-tribes
[5] Muwekma, Repatriation, http://muwekma.org/repatriation.html
[6] NBC Bay Area, California Museum Returns Massacre Remains to Wiyot Tribe, (2022)
[7] NBC Bay Area, California Museum Returns Massacre Remains to Wiyot Tribe, (2022)
[8] Bethania Palma Markus, The “Golden State’s” Brutal Past Through Native Eyes, Truthout (2013)
[9] Tamien Nation, What are Tribal Cultural Resources?, https://www.tamien.org/cultural-resources
[10] Santa Clara University Digital Exhibits, History Of Peace And Violence At Mission Santa Clara, Santa Clara University
[11] State of California, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, The University of California Is Not Adequately Overseeing Its Return of Native American Remains and Artifact, Report Number: 2019-047, http://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2019-047/auditresults.html
[12] Santa Clara University, Cultural Resources (University Ops) , https://university-operations.scu.edu/cultural-resources/
[13] CRM: About Us, https://university-operations.scu.edu/cultural-resources/about-us/
[14] https://www.scu.edu/desaisset/collections/history/california/native-california/; https://www.scu.edu/desaisset/exhibitions/californiastories/
[15] David R. Stuart, The Native Peoples of San Joaquin County: Indian Pioneers, Immigrants, Innovators, Freedom Fighters, and Survivors, The San Joaquin Historian, San Joaquin County Historical Society (2016)
[16] David R. Stuart, The Native Peoples of San Joaquin County: Indian Pioneers, Immigrants, Innovators, Freedom Fighters, and Survivors, The San Joaquin Historian, San Joaquin County Historical Society (2016)
[17] David R. Stuart, The Native Peoples of San Joaquin County: Indian Pioneers, Immigrants, Innovators, Freedom Fighters, and Survivors, The San Joaquin Historian, San Joaquin County Historical Society (2016)
[18] ASIL, The Chagos Advisory Opinion and the Decolonization of Mauritius, https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/23/issue/2/chagos-advisory-opinion-and-decolonization-mauritius
[19] 1989: Indenture Quitclaim Deed & Agreement for Maintenance of Mission Murguia Site (Dec 5 1989)
[20] Carey & Co, Santa Clara University Draft Historic Resources Technical Report (October 23, 2015); Chris Shay (Interim VP for Finance and Administration), Santa Clara University Master Plan Presentation, City of Santa Clara Planning Commission (July 27 2016).
[21] SCU, Land Acknowledgement, https://www.scu.edu/diversity/resources/land-acknowledgment/
[22] SCU, Land Acknowledgement, https://www.scu.edu/diversity/resources/land-acknowledgment/
[23] Tamien Nation, https://www.tamien.org/tribal-territories
[24] Native Gov, Land Acknowledgment, https://nativegov.org/about/our-land-acknowledgement-statement/
[25] Boarding School Healing, https://boardingschoolhealing.org/resource_database/guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/
[26] Tamien Nation, Cultural Resources, https://www.tamien.org/cultural-resources
[27] United Nations, Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 25, https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html
[28] Lee E. Panich, “Sometimes They Bury the Deceased’s Clothes and Trinkets”: Indigenous Mortuary Practices at Mission Santa Clara de Asís, Historical Archaeology, 2015, 49(4):110–129.
[29] Lee E. Panich, “Sometimes They Bury the Deceased’s Clothes and Trinkets”: Indigenous Mortuary Practices at Mission Santa Clara de Asís, Historical Archaeology, 2015, 49(4):110–129.
[30] Santa Clara University, Mission Church: Visitor Info, https://www.scu.edu/missionchurch/visitor-information/
[31] Santa Clara University, Mission Church, https://www.scu.edu/missionchurch/
[32] Santa Clara University, Mission Church: Photography, https://www.scu.edu/missionchurch/photography-on-campus/
[33] SCU, Photography on Campus, https://www.scu.edu/missionchurch/photography-on-campus/