When Spanish soldiers and missionaries arrived in the land they called Alta California in the 1700s, they were entering an astoundingly diverse array of indigenous cultures’ homelands. Then deadly waves of epidemic diseases swept over the terrified indigenous populations — an outcome the Spanish had anticipated. Military and religious officials subsequently used a combination of bribes and physical force to incarcerate the survivors in filthy, disease-ridden, and crowded labor camps. By 1836, at least 100,000 aboriginal people had died as a result of the Spanish mission system.

On September 23, Pope Francis will canonize the father of that system, Junipero Serra, at a ceremony in Washington, DC. Serra will thus become a “saint” in the Roman Catholic Church.

To the descendants of those who survived the mission system, Serra’s canonization is essentially a celebration of genocide. It is a reflection of a society that “wants people to pretend that historical events do not affect our contemporary lives,” said Deborah Miranda, a member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Monterey Bay Area and an English professor at Washington and Lee University.

“Canonization instructs everyone, Indians and non-Natives included, the essential missionizing myth,” Miranda added, “which is that California Indians existed in a state of sin before Catholicism, that we needed to be saved, that even a 90 percent death rate was worth it because those dead ancestors went to their deaths safe in Christ, that indigenous religious and spiritual beliefs were not good enough, that we were, and still are, savage children in need of help to become civilized.”

Corina Gould, a Chochenyo Ohlone from Oakland whose ancestors were enslaved at Mission Dolores in San Francisco and Mission San Jose in Fremont, agrees with Miranda. “Making Junipero Serra a saint is basically a way of saying California Indians still don’t count,” she said. “It conveys that we’re still not considered full human beings.”

Of all the Spanish colonial leaders in California, Junipero Serra, who first arrived in California in the late 1760s, has remained both the most well-known and the most controversial figure. His statue stands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and in Washington, DC. The latter is one of two statues California is allowed in the National Statuary Hall Collection. The other is of Ronald Reagan.

Earlier this year, state Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) introduced legislation to remove Serra’s statue from the nation’s capital, prompting Governor Jerry Brown to intervene. During a July visit to the Vatican to support Pope Francis’ papal letter on climate change, Brown, who once studied to become a Jesuit Catholic priest, proclaimed that the Serra statue will remain where it stands “until the end of time.”

Serra’s canonization was originally proposed in the 1930s. Pope Francis fast-tracked the process earlier this year after it had languished for several decades, by eliminating the need to show proof of two miracles, asserting instead that Serra is an exception to the rules because he was such a great evangelizer.

Santa Clara University history professor Robert Senkewicz speculated in an interview that Francis may be attempting to appeal to his Latin American base. A demographic shift in the Catholic Church has occurred in the United States during the past several decades, and Serra is a celebrated figure among many Catholic Hispanics. According to a 2008 survey by the Pew Forum, 54 percent of Catholics in the American West are now Hispanic.

Indigenous groups and their supporters in the American Southwest and in Latin American countries have also opposed the canonization, however, and have held mock human rights tribunals in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Guatemala in which the Franciscan padre has been posthumously charged with genocide and torture.

In addition to his role in designing the mission system, Serra was involved in the murder and torture of indigenous people who did not willingly submit to the Spanish Crown’s program of conquest and religious conversion. During his tenure, the preferred methods of abuse included floggings with heavy leather straps (“Cat o’ Nine Tails”) or metal-tipped straps; staking out “bad Indians” in the sun for days; putting them in stocks; forcing them to attend Catholic services on pain of beating; and imprisoning them in fetid, disease-riddled rooms.

Some scholars have defended Serra’s individual character by pointing to instances in which he protected Indians from soldiers’ rape and abuse. Indigenous scholars and other historians counter that his overriding concern in these cases may have been preserving the Spanish Crown’s efforts to maintain a stable labor pool, which was threatened by soldiers’ kidnapping and murdering the people Serra and other padres maintained as slaves.

Overall, Serra wielded enormous political power because his missions served the economic and political purposes of the Spanish empire. These include production of the colony’s cattle and grain and providing a fortification against potential Russian or English expansion along the Pacific Coast.

Corine Fairbanks, director of the American Indian Movement of Southern California, has been organizing against Serra’s canonization since Pope Francis’ announced it in January. She notes that California’s public school system is still “saturated with the glorification of the mission system,” and that it remains a required part of fourth-grade curriculum. “The issue of Junipero Serra is bringing back to the forefront something that has been continuously operating since the Doctrine of Discovery, if not longer,” Fairbanks said.

Because indigenous cultures are inextricably linked to the lands they have historically inhabited, their survival necessarily depends on preserving those lands, which face countless threats at any given time. In California and beyond, contemporary indigenous people are engaged in battles over mineral rights, water rights, federal recognition, honoring of treaties, repatriation or honorable treatment of sacred sites, healthcare, language preservation, and more.

The struggle against erasure of indigenous culture and identity plays out in ways both public and personal. “My father grew up deeply ashamed of being Indian,” Miranda said. “He was taught by his parents and elders to hide it, to claim he was Mexican, to speak only Spanish and English, even though his elders spoke at least two indigenous languages at home well into the 1950s. He passed that shame on to me, and I’ve struggled mightily to shed it.”

Confronted by the glorification of a man who led a campaign of state terror against them, indigenous people and their allies are working to transform their grief into healing. On September 23, for example, Ohlone people and their allies are conducting a day of action and interfaith prayer at 1:15 p.m. at Mission Dolores in San Francisco.

Caroline Ward Holland, who is of Tataviam descent from what is now the Santa Clarita Valley in Southern California, has helped organize an 650-mile pilgrimage to each of the 21 California Missions to honor those who suffered and died at them, and to “assert California Indian rejection of sainthood for Junipero Serra.” The walk’s website is WalkfortheAncestors.org.

“We don’t want to forget, and we’re not going to forget,” she said during a September 8 visit to Mission Sonoma. “Until we make things right.”

A new report co-authored by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights details how the harms of mass incarceration extend far beyond prison walls with the criminal justice system trapping inmates’ families in poverty with a wide range of fines, fees, and debts. The report, called Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families, is the result of extensive surveys and focus groups that researchers conducted over the last year across fourteen states with formerly incarcerated people and their families. The project — spearheaded by the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center, Forward Together, and Research Action Design — quantifies the many financial burdens that families face when their loved ones are incarcerated and illustrates the various ways a prison sentence can send family on the outside on a downward spiral. 

The US spends $80 billion each year incarcerating more than 2.4 million people in jails and prisons, but the collateral costs that impact families have largely gone undocumented, according to the report. Working with twenty community-based organizations across the country, the researchers studied the many financial costs inmates’ families face, the resulting effects on physical and mental health, and the obstacles families encounter when their loved ones reenter society. The research team completed surveys with 712 formerly incarcerated people, 368 family members, and 27 employers and also conducted 34 focus groups with families of the incarcerated — collecting alarming data and stories on the devastating costs of incarceration on low-income people. 

[jump] For starters, convictions come with a wide range of fines and fees that each inmate must pay in addition to the time he or she is serving behind bars. My March 2014 cover story, “Unfair Punishment: Sentenced to Poverty,” explored this topic in-depth, illustrating how prisoners in California — including those convicted of low-level offenses — have to pay for all kinds of basic necessities and privileges behind bars, such as soap, deodorant, snacks, and phone calls. At the same time, they have to pay so-called “restitution fines” as part of their sentences, which can saddle formerly incarcerated people with debt for many years even after they are released. 

The Who Pays? reports documents how this system of fees ends up directly hurting families at a time when they may already be losing income and economic stability due to the incarceration of a loved one. Of the families the researchers surveyed, 48 percent said they were unable to afford the costs associated with the conviction. And when it comes to low-income families — those making less than $15,000 per year — 58 percent said they couldn’t afford these costs. The financial challenges continue after a prisoner is released; the research found that 67 percent of the formerly incarcerated people they surveyed were still unemployed or underemployed five years after they returned home.

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Inmates and their families have to pay a wide range of legal expenses, court fines and fees, and charges for phone privileges and visitations, according to the report. Those costs can add up to one year’s total household income for a family, forcing them into significant debt. Across families of all income levels, the average debt incurred for court-related fines and fees was $13,607, the report found. And maintaining basic contact with incarcerated family members carries a hefty price tag as well. More than one in three families surveyed went into debt to pay for phone calls and visits alone. Those who were unable to talk or visit their loved ones regularly also were much more likely to experience negative health impacts related to the incarceration. 

As a result of all these financial burdens combined, 65 percent of families in the survey said they were unable to meet their families’ basic needs. Additionally, 49 percent said they struggled with basic food costs, and 48 percent said they struggled to pay housing costs.

The study also uncovered that women are disproportionately impacted by these hidden costs of incarceration. In 63 percent of cases, family members on the outside were primarily responsible for court-related conviction costs. And of those family members paying the costs, 83 percent were women, according to the report. 

“This study confirms what society has ignored for too long — that already vulnerable families and the women who sustain them are being plummeted into greater poverty, stress, and strain when their loved ones are incarcerated,” Alicia Walters, movement building director at Forward Together, said in a statement. “Decades of bad policy have torn families apart, typically leaving mothers to make up the difference and bear the brunt of these costs.” 

Additionally, because funding for reentry services are so limited, families end up functioning as the primary resource for housing, employment, and health needs when their loved ones are released. The surveys found that 67 percent of families helped formerly incarcerated people find housing, and 18 percent of the families faced eviction, were denied housing, or did not qualify for housing once a formerly incarcerated family member came home. 

The report advocated for a number of solutions, including restructuring jails and prisons so that fewer people spend time behind bars and so that the lengths of sentences are reduced. The resulting financial savings should then be invested in community-based services that make it less likely people will reoffend — including substance abuse programs, stable housing, and job training. Additionally, the organizations advocated for removing the costs and other barriers that prevent families from visiting their loved ones behind bars. Regular contact with people on the outside can increase the likelihood of successful reentry, the report noted.

Ending discriminatory policies that make it hard for people reentering society to turn their lives around — and make it harder for families to support them — could also go a long way in creating a fairer system, according to the report. For example, many former inmates are denied public benefits, such as food stamps, or can’t pursue training or education due to their past run-ins with the law. And these restrictions also impact families who can risk losing support due to the criminal records of a loved one. 

You can read the full report at WhoPaysReport.org. The organizations are also hosting a launch event for the project tonight at 6:30 pm at Impact Hub Oakland (2323 Broadway, Oakland).

And here are some graphic highlights from the report: 

Stories you shouldn’t miss:

1. The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to consider a proposal tonight to raise the minimum wage to $19 an hour by 2020, Berkeleyside reports. The proposed increased, put forward by the city’s Labor Commission, would give Berkeley the highest minimum wage in the region. The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce is expected to oppose the plan — which was proposed by the Labor Commission without input from the city’s business community.

2. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada last winter was the lowest in more than five hundred years, the LA Times$ reports, citing a new study by paleoclimatologists in the journal Nature Climate Change. Although the four-year drought has had a punishing effect on water supplies on the state, scientists said that higher-than-normal temperatures also impacted the mountain snowpack. The snowpack accounts for at least one-third of California’s water supplies.

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3. A retired teacher with advanced multiple sclerosis died in the fast-moving Valley Fire that roared through Lake County over the weekend, ravaging two towns — Middletown and Cobb — and decimating the popular resort Harbin Hot Springs, the Chron reports. Barbara McWilliams, 72, was unable to flee from the blaze because of her illness.

4. Governor Jerry Brown warned that, because of climate change, wildfires and droughts likely will worsen in California in the decades ahead, the LA Times$ reports. There are currently three major, destructive fires burning in the state, and the Mercury News$ notes that the worst part of the fire season may be yet to come.

5. And the California building industry has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that had upheld the right of cities to require developers to include affordable housing in their condo projects, the Mercury News$ reports. The appeal stems from San Jose’s so-called inclusionary zoning law. 

Stories you shouldn’t miss:

1. A raging wildfire in Lake County, north of Napa County, destroyed Harbin Hot Springs, a popular resort, and ripped through the towns of Middletown and Cobb over the weekend, the Chron reports. The intense fire spread quickly through drought stricken areas, destroying hundreds of homes and forcing thousands of people to flee. The Valley Fire grew to 61,000 acres over night, and was one of three major blazes burning in dry California.

2. Another major fire, the Butte Fire, roared through Amador and Calaveras counties in the Sierra foothills, the SacBee$ reports. The 65,000-acre blaze destroyed 86 homes and enveloped much of the Sierra in thick smoke. Fire crews were also busy battling the Rough Fire, east of Fresno, which, at 129,000 acres, is the largest fire burning in the state.

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3. State lawmakers on Friday sent a landmark aid-in-dying bill to Governor Jerry Brown that would allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients, the Mercury News$ reports.

4. The state legislature also approved a bill that would expand unpaid family leave to include taking time off to care for siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, domestic partners, and parents-in-law, the SacBee$ reports.

5. And faced with staunch opposition from law enforcement lobbyists, the Assembly defeated legislation that would have banned the seizure of assets, including cars, cash, and property, in legal cases in which the person was not convicted of a crime, the LA Times$ reports.