Contesting History Curriculum and the Legacy of Junipero Serra in California, USA and in Mallorca, Spain

• In Event: Highlighted session: Indigenous research and theoretical proposals: towards resistance, decoloniality, and resurgence

Proposal

The ‘discovery’ and colonization of the Americas defined a ‘global vision of modernity’ that covered or concealed the non-Western peoples it subordinated (Dussel 1992). Within this history, the colonization of California began with the arrival of Franciscan missionaries and the establishment of California’s mission system, which was founded by Junípero Serra and lasted from 1769 to 1850. During this time, the First Peoples of California were enslaved and forcibly converted to Catholicism. Many died as a result of brutalization. In 2015, Pope Francis canonized Junipero Serra despite widespread protests by Native populations and allies in California and beyond. In both Spain and California, the paradigm of the ‘discovery’ does not assume historical responsibility and perpetuates the coloniality of knowledge and power (Quijano 1992). And, should we take, Santos’s (2014) conceptualization of ‘cognitive justice’ into consideration, the question of whose knowledge is considered valid and worthy of transmission has a strong correlation with the question of whose version of history counts. Drawing from unique ethnographic research with educators in Mallorca, Spain and with Indigenous educators in California, USA, we aim to provide a critical comparative analysis of what struggles for cognitive justice entail in different local and national contexts. In California, Fourth Grade Mission Curriculum has long been an area of contention that may be used to educate Californians about the lands they inhabit and Indigenous Peoples or to uphold colonial metanarratives of history and knowledge that continue to denigrate past and present realities of Indigenous peoples. In Mallorca, Spain (Junipero Serra’s birthplace), the notion that Serra is a ‘civilizing’ hero remains prevalent in schools and society. Nonetheless, educators have recognized that they have yet to hear the testimonies with of Indigenous peoples. We demonstrate how the study and teaching of history has strong implications for how future generations will regard the past and the present, as well as how we may address global coloniality and cognitive justice, including within the origins of colonial projects themselves.

Authors

• Miye N. Tom, Independent Scholar

• David Abril, Grupo INTER, National Distance Education University, Spain