Words in Stone

"Alive/'ishsh" by Jana Asenbrennerova / The Chronicle

Carl Nolte offers a reminder about the original inhabitants of a re-activated Mission Bay:

“There are thousands of us,” said Andrew Galvan, who is a descendant of a Bay Miwok man named Liberato and an Ohlone woman called Obulinda who were married in Mission Dolores in 1802. Galvan is the curator of Mission Dolores and is not extinct.

“Missions, my lord, missions – that is what this world needs”

Father Junipero Serra

So wrote Father Junipero Serra, that great self-flagellator, to the Spanish Commandant General upon encountering the welcoming Ohlone Indians on the land that is now San Francisco. Congregations of Indians were struck with awe as Serra struck his body with chains, pounded his chest with stones, and burned it with hot candles.

He dreamed of a utopian 10-year apprentice program whereby, after intense “rehabilitation,” the native residents would have fully adopted the customs of European living and could be given back some of their land as devout Catholics. More after the jump…
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The Attempted Homicide of a Sanctuary

Photo by David Erickson

UPDATE 4/14/2010: Via Matt Baume, from StreetsBlog:

The PUC … proposes to terminate the creek in a manufactured wetland at the western end of Islais Creek Channel. The area is currently an asphalt lot just down the street from the headquarters of Mythbusters, used occasionally to store vehicles.

This would be a fantastic and appropriate honor for this spot. (And there is still more than just asphalt here!)

Once upon a time in 2001, there was a tiny plot of shoreline, Muwekma Ohlone Park and Wildlife Sanctuary, named after the native people who once populated the San Francisco peninsula. Guerrilla gardeners had, for years, nurtured this vestige of unlikely marshland amidst the industrial zone near Hunters Point.

More after the jump…
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