“It is called genocide. No other way to describe it.”
That was California Gov. Gavin Newsom on California’s “dark history” of violence against Native Americans. As it happened, the governor’s June 18 executive order did find another way to describe it.
“In the early days of California’s statehood, the relationship between the State of California and California Native Americans was fraught with violence, exploitation, and the attempted destruction of tribal communities,” reads Newsom’s June 18 executive order. The governor cites California’s first governor Peter Burnett in 1851 about a “war of extermination” between “the two races.”
Newsom’s order recognizes “depredations and prejudicial policies against California Native Americans,” but does not use the word “genocide.” Indeed, it notes that the Native Americans “resisted, survived and carried on cultural traditions, defying all odds.” Newsom apologizes but the order does not “create any rights or benefits, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity, against the State of California, its agencies, departments, entities, officers, employees, or any other person.”
So the government ruling class gets special protection, as Newsom pulls off an historical bait-and-switch. The governor appears unaware that violence against Native Americans did not start with California statehood. That violence and injustice reached its peak when California was part of the Spanish Empire.
Spanish missionaries such as Franciscan priest Junipero Serra were essentially the chaplains of Spanish colonialism. Under the Spanish encomienda system, native peoples were part of the land grants the conquistadores gave to Spanish settlers. The native peoples were required to work for the encomenderos, who considered them property. The white Spanish imperialists were also unabashed racists who exploited slaves from western Africa for mining and agriculture.
Ron Andrade, executive director of the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission, explained that Serra “decimated 90% of the Indian population.” Everywhere they put a mission “the majority of Indians are gone,” and, “Serra knew what they were doing: they were taking the land, taking the crops, he knew the soldiers were raping women, and he turned his head.”
Back on April 24, Gov. Newsom recognized a day of remembrance for the Armenian genocide, when the Ottoman Empire “began systematic extermination of the Armenian people.” Five days later, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Newsom and legislators hosted ten Holocaust survivors. So the governor should know better than to use “genocide” for actions of the U.S. State of California.
On the other hand, Newsom is a San Francisco Democrat, and as Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said, the San Francisco Democrats always blame America first. In similar style, Marin County Democrats seem unaware that the state of California, for all its faults, was not part of the Confederacy.
Marin residents have voted to change the name of the “Dixie School District,” reportedly named for Mary Dixie, a Miwok Indiana woman, because the word is linked with slavery and the Confederate South. A new name has yet to be established, but the district rejected “Marie Dixie Elementary School District” and “Skywalker Elementary School District,” a nod to Marin resident George Lucas of Star Wars fame.
Despite his oppression of native peoples, statues of Junipero Serra abound in California, and the highest point in Monterey County is Junipero Serra Peak. Downtown Los Angeles hosts the Junípero Serra State Office Building and Interstate 280 is known as the “Junipero Serra Freeway.” Governor Newsom and state Democrats are not proposing name changes to these public sites.
Known as “Governor McHottie” in the gay community, Gavin Newsom is not a judge or even an attorney. Still, back in March, Newsom saw fit to reprieve 737 murderers, every one convicted by a jury of his or her peers beyond a reasonable doubt. This came three years after California voters rejected a ballot initiative to eliminate the death penalty and approved an initiative to speed up executions.
Newsom’s reprieves included Mexican national Luis Bracamontes, who murdered Sacramento police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. In court, the previously deported felon said he wished he’d killed more cops, and yelled “black lives don’t matter!” at family members of the victims.
Newsom attended none of the murder trials but went on record, without any exculpatory evidence, that some of the convicted murders were surely innocent. Newsom is not a forensic scientist but readily opined that the DNA evidence in the case of convicted murderer Kevin Cooper might be defective.
Meanwhile, Spanish colonialism also lives on in city names such as San Diego, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara and many others. By the standards of the historical purge crew, these are due for some fundamental change. Los Angeles could become Mickey Mouse City and San Diego the Navy Base City. San Francisco could opt for “The City,” as residents call it now, or “Sanctuary City,” which it already is.
Governor McHottie likes it that way, and in his inaugural speech proclaimed that California would offer “sanctuary to all who seek it.” As they blame America, Gavin Newsom and California Democrats have made criminal illegals a privileged, protected class.
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