(CAL)amity

UC Berkeley Hastings School of Law needs to change its name. A founder of a school dedicated to justice turns out to have been a mastermind of massacre.

Thomas Fuller, the journalist for a piece in the NYTIMES had this to say about the vast gulf between truth and teaching in his daughter’s textbook:

“‘The large numbers of people who immigrated and migrated to California led to more problems for California Indians,” the textbook said, adding that “settlers often moved onto Indian lands, and many Indians were killed in conflicts.’

What I learned from subsequently reading a dozen books on the subject, interviewing leading historians who study that era and poring through documents at the California state archives was how understated the textbook was.”

“Bauer told me he had visited Sutter’s Fort, the Sacramento Gold Rush landmark, when he was in high school. He noted that Indians were barely mentioned during the tour. He and many other historians believe that the way California history is taught needs to be changed to include more of the dark realities of what happened to Native peoples.” - Thomas Fuller

I think it’s time we reckon for real with what has gone on before. How else can we move forward? Our teachers, our students, ourselves need to learn the truth.