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Intimate Oppressors and Redemption

Molly McGettigan Arthur

‘67 CSH, Associate of the Society of the Sacred Heart

Waking Up to Our Own History

Ecobirth- Women for Earth and Birth

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Native Land Acknowledgement

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My grandmother with my mother, Molly Fay, born 1913��

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Irradiated cow’s milk, sugar and lead-

Geez, they put lead in the milk cans!

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�My baby grandmother and my great grandmother�in 1887�in San Francisco��

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My great, great grandfather, General P. Edward Connor, Father of Mining of Utah and perpetrator of the Bear River Massacre, 1863, Idaho

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Site of the Bear River Massacre in Idaho, 1863 Northwestern Shoshone own it now.

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Bingham Canyon Mine today in Utah outside Salt Lake City. The largest manmade excavation in the world.

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War equipment created from minerals mined at Bingham Canyon Mine near Salt Lake City

Connecting my lineage with on-going pollution and societal violence

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My daughter at the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah in 2010, her legacy

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BayView Hunters Point Superfund site- cleaned up? How well? Because of a cluster of illness,

residents are fighting development there.

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Embedded harmful consequences-creating climate chaos

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The first colony of England was Ireland in the 1100s. Ethnic cleansing and religious persecution in the 1600s drove many Irish to emigrate to the American colonies, mainly as indentured servants.

How could Connor personally massacre Indigenous peoples, eye-witnesses said they saw soldiers raping women and killing babies, he was their leader. Where did the idea come from that it was right to be “The best Indian Killer of the West”, as Mark Twain called him?

So, I looked at Irish history - now I know why my grandmother, who went to Sacred Heart here in SF about 100 years ago always said we were Irish Catholic, not just Irish. I have learned that under Henry VIII in the 1500s, the first Protestant settlers were sent to Ireland, mostly from Lowland Scotland. From the mid-16th and into the early 17th century, crown governments carried out a policy of colonization in Ireland known as Plantations – they took the Gaelic/Irish peoples land and gave it to English protestants-wealthy men who supported those in political power. In 1649, Puritan Parliamentarian Cromwell landed in Ireland and mass killings completed the conquest of the Irish Catholic Gaels. The Protestant Anglican elites in Ireland imposed civil restrictions on the mostly peasant farmer Presbyterian Scots Irish, who became the largest group of immigrants to early Colonial America, and on the Irish Catholics who were not allowed to emigrate until 1790.

I understood better the oppression that Connor came from - which I would think had influence on his consciousness and beliefs. He perpetrated the persecution that the Irish Catholics had endured for centuries- the oppressed became the oppressor. Was there an ideology that under-girded this? I could call it “Othering”.

http://www.datesandevents.org/us-immigration-timelines/irish-immigration-america-timeline.htm

http://www.emmigration.info/irish-immigration-to-america.htm

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I also investigated my Spanish/Mexican/Californio/Mestizo ancestors and learned much about their ideologies and the consequences of their actions since California was colonized by the Spanish Empire in 1769. Ignacio Ferrer Vallejo came to CA in 1774 with the Moncado overland expedition. He was a soldier for the Spanish Empire and descended from Conquistadors who came to “New Spain” at the same time as Columbus voyages. He worked at 7 different CA missions. At one point, most of Northern California was held by his children thru the Mexican Land Grant system. His young wife-more that 20 years younger than he, was most importantly, also a “ pure espagnole”, who married him when she was 15.

The most well-known child of Ignacio’s 13 children, who were born in Monterey, CA, is Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. You know Vallejo street right below the school and the city of Vallejo.

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The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians -1850

I also read that Mariano Vallejo, at the first 1850 California legislative session was instrumental in negotiating the "Act for the Government and Protection of Indians” (look at the misleading language). The new California law controlled Indian labor, permitting the indenture of Indian children and mandating that all Indians work. On the word of any white person, any Indian deemed to be "loitering or strolling about" (homeless?) could be arrested and sold for payment of his fine to the highest bidder -to labor for a period of four months (debt peonage/slavery?). This law incited murder of Indian parents, so a “white” man could sell Indian children into bondage for a specified legal length of time(human trafficking?). This law opened the gates to local vigilantes, state militia and eventually even the US Army itself to perpetuate efforts for extermination of the Indigenous Peoples in California- I had searched with foreboding to find out that yes, my ancestor was deeply involved in this travesty of horrendous consequences and yes, this was the initiation of a period of genocide of California’s Native Peoples until the 1880s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_for_the_Government_and_Protection_of_Indians

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This is currently what is said in the San Rafael Mission store/museum. (pause) The patronizing padre, the infantilizing of the local tribes- but no mention of the average death rate in the California Missions as 80-90%. Nor that the California Mission system was a conquest and control partnership between the Spanish Empire and the Roman Catholic Franciscans. The Spanish monarchs wanted land and riches, the missionaries believed that the only way to “save” the Indigenous peoples was by destroying their way of life by incarcerating and enslaving them, destroying their social customs of family and marriage as well as their successful economy of relationship with their environment. The Padres considered themselves the “Fathers” of the savage heathens- by definition in those days- Fathers had authority of life or death over the members of their families.

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Family mementoes

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My Gramacita

Francisca Benicia Carrillo Vallejo McGettigan

My great grandfather,

Dr Platon Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo

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Foundational to the ideology that enabled my Vallejo family to maintain power and colonize other peoples with dominance and violence is the Doctrine of Discovery which specified that the entire world was under the jurisdiction of the Pope, as God’s representative on earth. One root of the Doctrine of Discovery lies in the Crusades of the Middle Ages, when Christians adapted the concept of the Chosen People for themselves and claimed the Promised Land to be anywhere they settled, which provided justification for the conquest and enslavement of other peoples as well as seizure of their land wherever they went. You can see 1823 on the timeline when the US Supreme Court determined that all US land was owned by the federal government based on the precedent of the Doctrine of Discovery. This is still true today-most of the federally–recognized tribes reservations in the US are not owned by the Indigenous Peoples but by the federal government.

And the Doctrine of Discovery is still being used in our legal system to justify government power- most recently in 2005, when Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote the summary using as precedent the case in 1823 that started with Catholic Popes justifying their expansion of Christianity through colonization and now is law of our land.

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Spanish Inquisition, brought to the “New World” in early 1500s

There is some evidence that the Vallejos were Conversos- Jews forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and persecuted by the Inquisition in Spain and in the “New World”. Waterboarding - the torture you can see on right, justified as legal by George Bush and banned by Barak Obama- it was associated with the Quantanamo Bay prison after 9/11. The first auto de fé (Burning)in Mexico was held in October 1528. The last execution in Spain was in 1826.

Through exploring my family’s history- I realized that laws were created and used for oppression, violence and horror and that Christianity was often used to justify it. It is a part of my inheritance and my lineage- both genetically and spiritually. The “othering” ideology had a long history. The soul corruption was spread to its adherents.

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Any Questions so far?

What lineage do you identify with?

Small Group Trio, 10 minutes, Break 10 minutes

So who were your ancestors who came to America? Where did they come from, what motivated them to leave their homelands and give up their traditions , family relationships and connection to their land? What ethnicities, what persecutions possibly drove them here? What did they lose in becoming American? How is that shown in our times and ourselves?How are we connected to their homelands and their journeys to America?

How does this ancestry affect your understanding of who you are, your lineage and your place in the world today? how does that influence your sense of self? Can you trace your ancestors to their countries of origin and their migrations across America- can you trace the historical ideologies from their origins to your own perceptions, possibly subconscious, today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiPq7C06zjQ&feature=emb_logo

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Sacred Heart of Jesus - Waters of Grace and Love

Madonna of the Society of the Sacred Heart

St Madeleine

Sophie Barat consecrated the Society in front of this painting in 1800

Original emblem of the Society of the Sacred Heart, embroidered by St Madeleine Sophie as a young girl

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St. Philippine Duchesne, brought the Society of the Sacred Heart to America in 1818. Her missionary desire was to minister to the Potawatomi.

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The RSCJ ran a school for Potawatomi girls for some 37 years, until 1879 on the Potawatomi Indian reservation in Kansas. The school was funded by the US government. They followed the Bureau of Indian Affairs curriculum and were inspected and had to report back to it. The Society was fully embedded in the system of “cultural genocide” by education- to turn Indians into civilized, Christian farmers who would then be worthy of citizenship.

https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2013/native-american-education/history-of-american-indian-education.html

Mission Schools:

Congress passes the Indian Civilization Act, which authorizes up to $10,000 a year to support the efforts of religious groups and interested individuals willing to live among and teach Indians. The act leads many to found so-called mission schools, which increase in number until federal officials stop providing direct funding for them at the end of the 19th century. Some mission schools continue to operate today.

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The only photo that the Society of the Sacred Heart has of any of the enslaved persons who worked for the school in Grand Cocteau, LA. Eliza “LIza” Nebbit (1811-1889)

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Enslaved populations in the Thirteen Colonies in 1770.

Colonialism is the backbone of white supremacy, enslavement and racism in the US

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Manifest Destiny� 1846 American Christian mission

Colonization became an American mythology - Manifest Destiny is the belief that white 19th century American settlers were chosen by God to spread democracy and Christianity across the continent, with historical connection to the Crusades and the Doctrine of Discovery, and especially with the New England white Protestant Puritans who carried with them a demanding sense of Providential Christian purpose.

The national narrative of Manifest Destiny was used by colonizers to subjugate the peoples they conquered in order to claim legitimacy for their colonizing practices. This kind of national mythic narrative can be seen as essential to nation-building- in this case defining the “true national” only through the definition of the “other” –like those being forced forward by the inexorable figure of Columbia (representing America). A woman used as propaganda- almost naked, pure white ethereal blond female bringing light from the heavens.

The doctrine of Manifest Destiny facilitated the geographic extension and economic development of the United States while confirming racist policies and practices. It institutionalized White Supremacy more firmly than ever as central to the U.S. definition of itself. The arrogance of asserting that God gave white people (primarily men) the right to dominate everything around them still haunts our society and sustains its racist oppression. Manifest Destiny was used to create a circle of power around the United States and influence other countries in that circle. Some current effects today can be seen in the desperate Migrant caravans trying to escape their dangerous home countries like Honduras and Guatemala.

Colonialism and its narratives were morally wrong- and there is no erasure of this immorality by excusing the behavior in terms of cultural or historical context.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/mandestiny.htm

http://soaw.org/resources/anti-opp-resources/108-race/482-what-is-white-supremacy

http://christianhegemony.org/the-doctrine-of-discovery-manifest-destiny-and-american-exceptionalism

https://www.shmoop.com/manifest-destiny-mexican-american-war/ideology.html

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One of these girls is my grandmother.

Any questions-

How is this connected to

La Frontera?

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Fay Family, 1954

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Thousands gather to counter the white supremacists who had marched on the University of Virginia Campus in Charlottesville, �August 16, 2017

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“The heart that breaks open �can contain the whole universe” �Joanna Macy

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Who is worthy of being called a saint? Who decides this?

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Berkeley Shellmound site prayer service in 2019

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Oliver Family 1929

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My granddaughters

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Searching for our heritage in California and Spain

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Death of refugee Alan Kurdi, a 3 year old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background.

2015 near Turkey

I can look to Mater Admirabilis as a model of fierce compassion and radical love in our culture now. I do not see her as submissive but as “present” and contained and confident in her authentic identity, as I attain to be. She has watched over so many generations- sheltering us in her heart. She evolves as our own needs and insights change about her. This is a heart- breaking and opening version of Mater. What does she mean to you, the Sacred Heart student of today?

I wish my generation had been more like her for your generation, I feel a responsibility to you, the future generation and

I apologize with heartfelt sorrow to you for the harms and destruction my generation has allowed over the last 50 years of my adulthood.

Alan Kurdi (born as Alan Shenu), initially reported as Aylan Kurdi,^[2]^[3] was a three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background^[4] whose image made global headlines after he drowned on 2 September 2015 in the Mediterranean Sea along with his mother and brother. Alan and his family were Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe amid the European refugee crisis (see timeline). Photographs of his body were taken by Turkish journalist Nilüfer Demir and quickly went viral, prompting international responses.^[5] Since the Kurdi family had reportedly been trying to reach Canada, his death and the wider refugee crisis became an issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election.

Mater image created by Min-ah Cho, https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/0031Q000025mlOpQAI/minah-cho

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There is a theme of transformation, flexibility, resilience in the symbols- Guadalupe is always changing according to the needs of her lovers

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Whom should I turn to,

if not the one whose darkness is darker than night,

the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid-

the deep one,

whose being I trust,

for she breaks through the earth into trees, and rises, when I bow my head,

faint as a fragrance from the soil.

Rainier Maria Rilke,

Book of Hours

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Any questions- see some connections with La Frontera?