Native students and their allies marched in Wednesday’s Walk to Rename in support of renaming buildings and streets honoring Junipero Serra on campus.
The students convened in the courtyard outside of Serra house in Stern Hall and walked down Galvez Mall to President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s office in the Main Quad, where they presented letters of discontent to administrators.
“To the window… to the wall… no more Serra Mall!” marchers chanted.
In an open letter co-signed by a coalition of “concerned Native students,” members of the Native community requested that the administration recognize that “the constant veneration of those in the past who mistreated [their] ancestors must cease” through Stanford’s renaming of buildings and streets commemorating Serra.
“The naming of buildings and streets after those who tried to eradicate our culture serves only to venerate the oppressors,” the protesters’ letter reads.
According to the students, the march grew out of discontent with inaction and lack of communication from the committee the University assembled early in 2016 to consider the Serra renaming issue. The Daily reported earlier this fall that the committee’s mandate has shifted since its creation, in what the group’s chair described as an effort to speed along an unexpectedly difficult process.
“The renaming committee created to discuss Serra’s rightful place on Stanford’s campus has been repeatedly delayed and now no longer seeks to form a recommendation on the street and three campus buildings named after Junipero Serra,” the letter explained.
Kiki Velez ’21 attended the march at the urging of Tyra Nicolay ’21, a resident of Muwekma and active member of the Native American community at Stanford.
Velez expressed her empathy for the Native community.
“I realized showing support for a community that’s marginalized on campus is really important to me because I come from a Hispanic background,” she said. “If there were a building named after a conquistador, someone who had conquered Mexico and slaughtered my relatives, I would want people to show up.”
Full story at The Stanford Daily.
What a bunch of poppycock! It is true…St Serra did punish the native peoples under his care…but he also protected them from abuse by the Mexican soldiers. Imagine if someone other than St Serra had led the colonization of California…it could have been much worse.
This reminds me of the Masonic persecution of the Church in Mexico, Portugal, France and Spain.
..As if these students have ever, for a nanosecond, been “oppressed”..
I was born in California.
Do I qualify for “native student” status ???
An excellent analysis of the Tantrum Theater of these Radicals:
“First 3 Phases Of The Downward Slope From Freedom To Communism
Communism first requires a vigorous program of preparing people to absorb its rhetoric, through laying groundwork in education, propaganda, and agitation.
Stella Morabito https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/07/first-3-phases-downward-slope-freedom-communism/#disqus_thread
Consider all the weaponized memes and slogans we swallow today that shape how we think: “woke,” “bend the knee,” and “cisgender” are just a few. All are meant to modify our thoughts and behaviors in everyday life
An especially aggressive abuse of language are new laws that enforce strange pronoun usages that destabilize the structure…
Michael McDermott is absolutely correct. The downward slope of K-through-college US education began in earnest in the 1960s—because communist groups knew they could never destroy an intellectually sound and morally-based society.
What is a specially astounding is the sock-puppet thinking of all of so-called educated young people. They can’t think for themselves without their commissar- propaganda-specialist indoctrinating them, telling them what to think and say.
Believe me…there aren’t many communists at Stanford…it’s too expensive. The communists hang out at San Francisco State. Since some in the Stanford community find St Serra’s name offensive, perhaps, his name could be replaced with that of Father Luis Jayme, the first Christian martyr of California. Father Jayme was one of St Serra’s associates and was murdered by the Indians living near the San Diego Mission. Jayme Square of Jayme Avenue sounds great to me.
Interesting how the architects of the culture of victimhood are now being targeted. Weinstein, Franken, now even Charlie Rose. Sure, they’re cads, but they responded to the hyper-sexualization of women that feminism demanded. So now the beast is turning on the masters. Even the Clintons are getting ready to be thrown out of the boat. The question is, who will the liberated, formerly oppressed groups like the gay lobby and “native Americans” be targeted by when they finally achieve control?
It’s the snake eating its own tail.
They should own up to the problem of the hostile element of some of the tribes who were murderous and merciless. I don’t see any Catholics demonstrating against the cut throats of the time who made a point of killing, in a cowardly manner, only the unarmed peaceful clerics and farmers. Maybe we should demand justice for those acts.