Week 3: Getting to Know Myself

Week three of the doctoral journey ends in approximately 3 hours.  This week had been filled with experiences of learning, but also a bit of feeling like I have had the same conversation for nearly three years. Tuesday was the first day of my Research and Evaluation course, and I left feeling like I heard a difference version of the conversation that Theresa and I have on a weekly basis.  The conversation on how to conduct research is something that brings me anxiety.  I don’t ever feel like I have received enough training or education to properly conduct research, but at the same time - through help from TJ - I feel like I am a better researcher than I give myself credit for.

This week’s classes have made me feel that SBIIS is the work that I should be doing, and especially the ways that this horrific history has impacted California Indian perspectives on education.  It is extremely important to understand the past so that you can learn and make positive changed.  I also realized that I need to take some time to really answer the question: why does research on SBIIS matter?  For me, SBIIS represents my family, but it also represents my understanding of why I have had the experiences that I have had.  The intergenerational trauma created a legacy that will last long after I am gone.  Those experiences are shared with many other California Native students and scholars.  For us to truly understand our community’s resistance to Western education, and for educators to understand how to provide quality educational resources to us that reflect our cultural values, me must understand - historically - how we got to this point.  How did colonization - and the educational structures that came with it - historically impact us?

SBIIS’s story isn’t just missing from research on California Indian educational history, it is also missing from California Mission history.  There is a belief that the Mission period ended after secularization, but Mission Boarding schools like SBIIS - and Saint Anthony’s were extensions or continuations of the missions system.  Realistically, the Mission era has never ended.  Even today, there is still a romanticization of the missions.  Yes, California Indians are being included in the narrative of the missions, and are even afforded opportunities to speak on Native experiences.  But what happens when California Indians aren’t around?

Another pet peeve of mine, is this concept of westward expansion.  Because of the way that history is taught in schools, there is the belief that the “pilgrims” landed on the east coast and slowly worked their way west.  There is great disregard for the fact that colonization was taking place on the west coast at the same time - actually probably prior - to the arrival of th pilgrims.  The other thing that people ignore is that California Indians didn’t just experience one wave of colonization, we experienced three: Spanish, Mexican, and American (you can add Russian for Northern California).  There is this perception, because of their strong hold over Indigenous peoples in Central American, that Spanish/Mexican colonization wasn’t a big deal.  Spanish colonialism was just as bad, as the colonialism of other European nations.

I realized at the end of class that I need to review my masters thesis through a critical lens.  I need to read each section to see how it may become my potential dissertation.  I need to really look at areas of weakness as well as areas of strength, and I need to be honest with myself.  I also need to explain that the experiences of students at Sherman Institute were different from students at SBIIS.  First, as a federal boarding school, Sherman served a wide variety of tribes; SBIIS - with the exception of a few students - primarily educated California Indians from tribes in Southern California.  In addition, SBIIS had the additional process of indoctrinating CA Natives into the Catholic faith.  One thing that I need to do in my archival research to to create the data base of students and tribal affiliations, to document what percentage of the population were California Indians, and from which particular tribes.  This may be difficult because “Mission Indian” was sometimes the identification.  Organizing and transcribing documents needs to be a priority. Many of the letters, school enrollment records, newsletters, and reports that I have have never been transcribed.