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[[newspaper article]]
Page 12
THIRD WORLD NEWS
DQU HISTORIC EDITION
Friday, April 2, 1971

Guest Editorial
Our Neglected Indian Heritage
[[article in 3 columns]]

In the Sacramento Valley, in the San Francisco Bay area in Southern California and throughout the state white people drive along the highways blind to the rich history lying on wither side kof the pavement. In Yolo County farmers plough away at their land with no roots taking them back beyond a generation or two and no knowledge of the heritage of their own place of birth. In Lassen National Park tourists drive for miles through a rich historical region and see virtually nothing, aside froml [[from]] exhibits in a small museum.
All over the state the story is the same. California's unique history, 20,000 years of it, is burfie history, 20,000 years of it, is buried by an avalanche of racism, ignorance, and greed.
For Indian people this racist neglect and destruction of the Indian legacy is not simply a matter of passing regret. It is an attack upon the very humanity of the Indian. Only white events are worth preserving! Only white history is worth studying! Only white cemetaries [[cemeteries]] are worth protecting. Only white-selected place-names are worth recognizing! Oh yes, Indian "relics" can be dug up, but they do not belong to the Indian People, they belong to the whites or to white-run museums that display them as a diversion for white visitors. And every one of the museums has the same bone-chilling message: the Indian people, a primitive people, were he e [[here]] but now they are all gone. They've been gone for a long time, why, don't you see, we don't even mention them after the arrival of the white man!
It is a very difficult experience to "grow up Indian" in California. Chances are that your family has no land because it was all stolen by the whites. Or perhaps they have 4.5 acres of marginal land in some socalled [[so called]] "reservation". (A gift of the fede al [[federal]] government, a "gift" of your own land.) And your family is poor and you have to live among, work for, and go to school with the verfy people, or their descendents [[descendants]], who took your land and who are now prosperous because of that fact. As you drive along the road you see the beaches where your people gathered shell-food, or the streams where they fished for salmon, or the oak groves where they gathered acorns, or the meadows where they rounded up game. And all of this beauty is now gone, and often is now being ruined by the same white people who deny you good jobs, in town, and make fun of you at school, saying "Hi Chief, how many did you scalp today?"
And in the midst of all this the white mandestroys [[man destroys]] all of the ancient village places, rips apart the cementaries [[cemeteries]] where your ancestors are laid to rest, desecrates the religious ceremonial sites, and buries beneath a cloud of indifference and ignorance all of the important places where significant battles, feats of strength, meetings, or work activities occurred. And all over the land he pretends tha t [[that]] no names existed and that no names existed and that he can re-nam [[rename]] all of the mountains, creeks, rivers, ridges, bays, and coves as he pleases, with names of no historical depth, with shallow names, with coined names, with commercial names. 
Asif [[As if]] there wee [[were]] no more Indians he stalks through the countryside like a monster digging up all of your sacred places for dams, or roads, or building sites, or just to gobble up to tools of your ancestors so that he can display them some where (or count them and store them in boxes).
Is it any wonder that many Indians are bitter: Is it strange that Indian children are alienated by the atmosphere of anti-Indianism that hangs like a fog over California, seeping into and poisoning eevery [[every]] institution that exists in this state? For the simple truth is that virtually ev ery [[every]] agency in this state state, from the Unibversity [[university]] to the Department of the State Beaches and Parks to the Committee on Geographic Place-names is so thoroughly anti-Indian as to wish to completely and totally eradicate his existence as a human being with feelings today. The Indian is a ghost, a ghost that reminds the white man of the depths of Hell into which he once descended.
The motto of the state and federal agencies concerned with history and place-names must indeed be "California is White! Always was White! Always will be White!"
How else can one explain the fact that the Division of Beaches and Parks Establishes parks which happen to include Indian sites of significance but virtually never erects a marker of uses the proper, ancient name for the place? Why is it that of the hundreds of the hundreds of state historical markers virtually none deals with any aspect of 20,000 years of Indian history? Why are no Indians on any state commission concerned with history, parks or place-names? Why does the white committee on Geographic Names continue to give new, invented names to places in Californis [[California]] and ignore the ancient place-names of the state?
Why are there no markers for Yolotoy (at Knight's Landing) which had 1.000 people in 1821, or Liwaitoy (at Winters), or Siuctu (at Santa Barbara), or Huchun (at Richmond), or for Wowol, Mokelumne, Ompin, and so on, ad infinitum?
Twenty thousand years of rich history cannot be ignored without trying. Someone must be consciosly [[consciously]] attempting to suppress the Indian heritage because it is os all around us that we trip on it daily. We know that racism is the reason.
In the last session of the legislature the Senate Finance Committee and the State Division of Natural Resources killed two bills which the Indian people had introduced to protect the native Californian heritage. Those bills would have required the commemoration of Indian sites and the preservation of ancient places names. They wo ld [[would]] have also established an Indain [[Indian]] board for the neglected California State Indian Museum with powers to set up a real educational program and authority to protect Indian artifacts. But the state agency bureaucrats (all non-Indians) lobbied behind the scenes to prevent Indians from having a voice in protecting that heritage.
All Californians were cheated by that defeat, just as all Californians are robbed of what has become a part of our common legacy when Indian history is ignored. Perhaps it is time for the white "conservation" organizations to give some attention to "human heritage conservtion [[conservation}" and help the Indians succeed in preserving California's rich historical legacy.

[[image]]
The only Indian America ever cared about 
Liberty
1936