Gov. Gavin Newsom offered an official apology to the state’s Native population on Tuesday for the genocide launched against their ancestors when California became a state.
In an executive order, the governor noted a “century of depredations and prejudicial policies” against American Indians in the state, commended and honored Natives for continuing their cultural and linguistic traditions, and offered an apology “for the many instances of violence, maltreatment and neglect California inflicted on tribes.” More than 100 tribes, some without federal recognition, still exist in the state.
The executive order includes the formation of a Truth and Healing Council to “bear witness to, record, and examine existing documentation of, and receive California Native American narratives regarding the historical relationship between the State of California and California Native Americans in order to clarify the historical record of this relationship in the spirit of truth and healing.” The council will be led by the governor’s tribal adviser and include representatives of California tribes along with members of state and local government agencies and other “relevant non-governmental stakeholders.”
Sophia Bollag at The Sacramento Bee reported:
“It’s called a genocide,” Newsom said at a ceremony announcing the state’s apology. “No other way to describe it... I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.” [...]
“We can never undo the wrongs inflicted on the peoples who have lived on this land that we now call California since time immemorial, but we can work together to build bridges, tell the truth about our past and begin to heal deep wounds,” Newsom said in a written statement.
As did reporters in other media, Jill Cowan at The New York Times noted that tribal leaders generally approved of the apology, but a number of them expressed some version of the truth that actions speak louder than words.
Debra Haaland, a New Mexico congresswoman who is Native American, said: “Anything we can do to right past wrongs I think is meaningful. This country was founded on genocide. For California it was a lot worse because it happened so much later than it did for the rest of the country.” [...]
“It’s important because it’s a first step in a process that has been a long time coming,” said Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Court. “We need to take a serious look as a state, as a country, about how we address these issues.”
“So many of these Indian communities are obviously devastated by all sorts of problems: poverty, alcoholism, abuse,” said Jonathan Hansen, a professor at Harvard who teaches about justice after mass violence. “To apologize, does it mean we commit some money here? Are we going to put our money where our mouth is?”
Unfortunately, even while pointing out the violence, including the allocation in the 1850s of significant tax funds for militia action against the tribes, none of the major press that gave extensive coverage of Newsom’s apology—the Bee, the Times, or the Los Angeles Times—made mention of one of the key components of how the genocide was carried out.
In addition to militias being funded to the tune of $1.1 million in 1851-1852 to kill Indians, another $410,000 was appropriated for more of the same in 1857. And in 1856, a scalp bounty was passed, a quarter for each Indian scalp—man, woman or child. In 1860 that bounty was boosted to $5. Many local communities passed their own scalp bounties.
With but a handful of exceptions, California newspapers up and down the state promoted the extermination. Here’s the Yreka Herald in 1853:
We hope that the Government will render such aid as will enable the citizens of the north to carry on a war of extermination until the last redskin of these tribes has been killed. Extermination is no longer a question of time—the time has arrived, the work has commenced, and let the first man that says treaty or peace be regarded as a traitor.
One book on the slaughter is Benjamin Madley’s An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873, which was published in 2015. In 2016, he wrote an op-ed column for the Los Angeles Times:
Will state officials tender public apologies, as Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did in the 1980s for the relocation and internment of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II? Should state officials offer compensation, along the lines of the more than $1.6 billion Congress paid to 82,210 of these Japanese Americans and their heirs? Might California officials decrease or altogether eliminate their cut of California Indians’ annual gaming revenueas a way of paying reparations? Should the state return control to California Indian communities of state lands where genocidal events took place? Should the state stop commemorating the supporters and perpetrators of this genocide, including Burnett, Kit Carson and John C. Frémont? Will the genocide against California Indians join the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust in public school curricula and public discourse? [...]
Decency demands that even long after the deaths of the victims, we preserve the truth of what befell them, so that their memory can be honored and the repetition of similar crimes deterred. Justice demands that even long after the perpetrators have vanished, we document the crimes that they and their advocates have too often concealed or denied. Finally, historical veracity demands that we acknowledge this state-sponsored catastrophe in all its varied aspects and causes, in order to better understand formative events in both California Indian and California state history.
The Truth and Healing Council provides an excellent opportunity to explore the past and look at the current circumstances for most California Indians. It will only be a success if the words spoken in its meetings lead to action.