In time, we may discover that no city, mountain, river, civilization, or human being has a sufficiently spotless history to merit commemoration.
Just in time for Columbus Day, California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation making Native American Day a paid state holiday, subject to legislative funding. The September 25 signing of AB 1841 is part of California’s ongoing effort to “reckon with its colonial past,” a project already undertaken by Los Angeles and San Francisco, both of which replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The state’s Department of Education, apparently reluctant to choose sides, encourages schools to recognize both holidays on October 12.
This is plainly inadequate.
California has spent years reconsidering the reputation of Christopher Columbus, whose principal offense was opening the Americas to Spanish colonization. Yet every September, Sacramento celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, during which Californians are encouraged to take pride in their connections to the civilization Columbus helped introduce.
Consider Mexico, whose name and cultural heritage are everywhere celebrated in California. For three centuries, Mexico was part of the Spanish Empire, the same enterprise that financed Columbus’s voyage. California itself was once Alta California, a province of New Spain. Its missions, presidios, ranchos, cities, and even its name bear witness to the Spanish imperial project.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento: Our geography reads like a Spanish colonial property inventory.
It is therefore insufficient merely to remove Columbus from the calendar. Consistency demands that California begin the more difficult work of separating its approved identities from the disapproved history that produced them.
I propose a state Commission on Ancestral Accountability, empowered to determine which Californians may celebrate their heritage without inadvertently celebrating colonialism. Applicants claiming Spanish ancestry must first acknowledge Spain’s complicity in Columbus’s voyages. Those claiming Mexican ancestry must disclose whether they are referring to pre-Columbian civilizations, the colonial viceroyalty, or the republic that emerged from Spanish rule. Claims of mixed ancestry will require additional documentation.
The commission will naturally need an appeals process, since almost everyone will turn out to be descended from both victims and perpetrators, frequently within the same family.
Nor should Indigenous ancestry confer automatic exemption. The Aztec Empire, for example, was not celebrated by all its neighbors, some of whom assisted Cortés in toppling Cuauhtémoc in 1521. We must therefore establish which Indigenous empires were sufficiently anti-imperialist to qualify for official recognition. As a first step, it’s imperative that California bans the popular Danza Azteca. Yes, California’s Mexican-American communities routinely feature the danza — in which dancers wear enormous feathered headdresses (often resembling birds), immense feathered wings, ankle rattles, and drums all in the service of elaborate ceremonial movements. But the Danza Azteca is itself weirdly colonial: its indigenous roots are genuine, but its modern form also reflects centuries of Spanish and Catholic influence. We can’t have that.
Once the commission has purified our ancestry, it can turn to California’s geography. San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Sacramento will obviously have to go. Renaming them for Indigenous peoples offers an attractive solution, though the commission must first establish that the honored tribes never conquered, displaced, enslaved, or otherwise mistreated their neighbors. Any evidence of territorial expansion, intertribal warfare, or insufficient respect for another people’s sovereignty should result in immediate disqualification.
The same standard must apply to California’s natural landmarks. Even the name of the Sierra Nevada is Spanish, and the Pacific Ocean received its name from a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain. We may eventually have to rename the ocean, though jurisdiction could present difficulties.
I recognize that this undertaking will be expensive. It will require historians, anthropologists, genealogists, cartographers, attorneys, diversity consultants, and a permanent staff to investigate the investigators’ own ancestors. Fortunately, California has considerable experience employing people to solve problems created by previous government employees.
In time, we may discover that no city, mountain, river, civilization, or human being has a sufficiently spotless history to merit commemoration. At that point, California will have achieved the perfect equality toward which its government has so long labored: Nobody will be permitted to take pride in anything.
And Sacramento will finally have enough work to keep it occupied for centuries.