Acjachemen (Juaneño) tribal member, Stephen Rios discusses his experiences protecting Native American access to traditional resources, and his father's experience "assimilating" Native American children at Riverside's Sherman Institute for Indians. Recorded at Rios Adobe
San Juan Capistrano, California.
Transcript
Stephen Rios, I'm eighth generation from the Rios Adobe, here in San Juan Capistrano. The Rios Adobe is my home and this is where I live, and my family lives here as well.
To be a Juane±o in the 21st century ‚Äì that‚s an interesting question and it‚s not one that‚s just unique to me. Same question can be asked of a lot of native people, be they Juane±o, Luise±o, Cherokee, Pawnee; wherever you might be, there‚s, of course, native peoples all across the country.
But, for me in particular, it means being bicultural, if you will. Having a foot in two worlds. Being involved and being aware of my native roots, which go back many, many, many, many, many years; which I‚ll describe later. And also, being a part of the mainstream, dominant society, if you will.
My family line is from Feliciano Rios, who was the first Spaniard to come to the new country, if you will, with an expedition with Father Serra, who was here to establish the Missions. And when the Spanish soldiers arrived, there was no Spanish women with them and if a Spanish man was to marry or to take a wife or take a woman, he would be selecting and taking a native from this area. And this happened to be Acjachema, Juane±o people.
So, my line goes back, just on the post-contact period, from 1794. It goes back pre-contact period, Juane±o culture, to the original Putuidem village, which is the heart and the mother village of San Juan Capistrano.
We lost a good part of our Putuidem village, perhaps 10 years ago, when JSerra Private School was established on Camino Capistrano and Avery. There was clearly archeological evidence and oral and ethnography evidence that showed that this was one of the major parts of our mother village, which is Putuidem.
With regards to historical changes, my frame of reference is when I was a child and the freeway wasn't ‚Äì that‚s how old I am ‚Äì the freeway wasn't here and it was just Highway 101, which is El Camino Real, the King‚s Highway. So, I‚ve seen it transition from a highway to a freeway, to one signal in this town, and from fairly expansive farm lands and agricultural lands to now, when we have some significant development of not only commercial, but residential space. Where our last remaining agricultural lands are perhaps dwindled to less than 150 acres in this town. We no longer have orange groves, which were so prominent in our time.
We‚re down to very little agricultural and ranch land. So, this is where we are today. We‚re fighting to protect the open spaces that we have and as we talk a little bit more, I can tell you about some more specific projects that we‚re working on that preserve native lands.
Another interesting story that I had to tell you that‚s more Indian in nature is, my dad went to Indian boarding school. And it‚s called, ‚Sherman Institute for Indians.‚ It‚s a Bureau of Indian Affairs school and the purpose of these schools was to assimilate Indians. Take them off of their land, them away from their families, bring down their religion, bring down their language, and take the native and the Indian out of the Indian kids that went to school there.
So, my dad, like a lot of Indian kids, went to that school; and his job, when the new kids came off the bus, after my dad was a senior, he‚d been there for three years and had a little position of leadership, he told me the kids would come off the bus and they would go down this check-in line, you know, for registration, for your equipment, for your housing, where you‚re gonna live. And then, at the end of the table, was my dad. And the athletic director, who was also one of the head guys at school, said, ‚Alright, Dan, you‚re supposed to give all these Indian names non-Indian names. So, ‚Bill Standing-Rock‚ became, ‚Bill Smith.‚ Or, ‚Bill Runs-with-Wolf‚ became, ‚Bill Jones.‚
And it was so interesting how it was such an innocent task that was given to my dad, but it always bothered him for years later that he was part of the dominant society taking something so important away from a young Indian as his name.
I was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to be the Executive Secretary of California‚s Native American Heritage Commission. And that‚s a commission that was mandated and legislated into existence about 1980, so I was the first Executive Secretary. And one of the charges that we had was to protect Indian religion and Indian culture. And to do that, we had to allow access by the native people, to get to areas where they needed to be to gather resources like basket making, as you say. Or, like, to get to native materials so they can make flutes, or the can make weapons, or they can make tools.
So, my involvement with preserving Native American culture goes back many, many, many years; back to late 1978, 79. And it‚s important that Indians have access to these areas so they can not only gather materials, but they can have access to areas that are significant in a ceremonial, or religious sense. So, you can go where you can pray, where you know what spirits have come from and where spirits go and how they move. And so you can have access to these areas at special times to perform ceremonies.
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Original file was named calhum08_Stephen Rios1.mp4, which was renamed corcl_000084_prsv.mp4. An access file was produced from it and named corcl_000084_access.mov.