Just a quick attempt to make some connections and hopefully make a point. It may be preaching to the choir, but I feel the need to do it. I read an op-ed this morning published in the LA Times a couple of days ago re: Serra. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-19/junipero-serra-statue

And I also signed onto a letter this past week that in part criticized the ways in which Daniel Feller's talk in the SHEAR online plenary both refused to engage with recent scholarship and dismissed/attacked other scholarship in a demeaning and disingenuous manner.

One connection between the op-ed and Feller's talk is absence. The absence of recent, and even not so recent, scholarship that matters and speaks to the issues at hand. In his talk and in the Q&A Feller did not engage with the critical work on slavery in an Indigenous context.

In the Hackel op-ed, the argument that removing Serra from the public sphere or marginalizing his presence in the narrative of American history will "whiten" that history implies that it is either Serra or Anglo colonizers who will be part of that history. I beg to differ.

Hackel's own colleagues at UC-Riverside are a powerful force in their engagement with California Indian Nations. Check out this link - https://diversity.ucr.edu/cinc-and-cahuilla-language

Or take a look at what has been happening in Los Angeles over the past several years. Mapping Indigenous Los Angeles is a tremendous project in which the Tongva peoples are telling their story. https://mila.ss.ucla.edu/?fbclid=IwAR16S_b8F9UtZOeKuVBnWhL8--0MyNJlMh5azVsDGUQsPxEoiwPoJkYA8pk

The bottom line is that so much work exists and has existed that tells a broader history of places and the people who have lived and continue to live in those places. As @BettyRbl and so many others have pointed out, the work is there and it is fantastic.

Marginalize the narrative of Serra and you know what you get? You open up space to California Indian Nations to tell their story, and in so doing our larger history is made better and more complete.

And it is not groundbreaking to recognize that the Jacksonian Era is built upon structures of slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and ethnic cleansing. Those histories cannot be separated from stories of Bank Wars, voting rights, and the like.They are entangled.

In that recognition open your eyes to those who have been making such arguments in their publications, talks, and other means for years or decades. The powerful work exists and the incredible scholars are here, and when our platforms don't welcome those voices we fail.