00:00:00.356 --> 00:00:04.106
(pensive instrumental music)

00:00:42.802 --> 00:00:45.552
(birds chirping)

00:00:55.108 --> 00:00:57.941
(kids chattering)

00:01:04.320 --> 00:01:05.940
- [Speaker 1] If you want your murals,

00:01:05.940 --> 00:01:08.070
I say, come and get them.

00:01:08.070 --> 00:01:09.450
We don't want them,

00:01:09.450 --> 00:01:11.040
but you don't own our schools.

00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.661
And you don't get to decide
what our kids see and learn.

00:01:13.661 --> 00:01:16.590
(crowd disagrees loudly)

00:01:16.590 --> 00:01:18.480
- [Speaker 2] Over 2,000
students have to go

00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:20.040
to this school every day.

00:01:20.040 --> 00:01:21.487
Students should never have to hear

00:01:21.487 --> 00:01:23.880
"I'll meet you at the dead Indian."

00:01:23.880 --> 00:01:26.250
- [Speaker 3] Those murals in that school

00:01:26.250 --> 00:01:28.620
are a national treasure.

00:01:28.620 --> 00:01:33.620
Art's role is to make us
uncomfortable with the status quo

00:01:33.720 --> 00:01:37.560
so that we can be about
the business of change.

00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:39.510
- [Speaker 4] Our children
deserve to come to a school

00:01:39.510 --> 00:01:42.510
where they feel honored and respected

00:01:42.510 --> 00:01:44.040
and they feel safe.

00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:46.590
- [Speaker 5] If you support this mural,

00:01:46.590 --> 00:01:48.870
you have a colonized mentality.

00:01:48.870 --> 00:01:50.310
- [Speaker 6] I didn't
appreciate being called

00:01:50.310 --> 00:01:54.300
a white supremist because I'm
for keeping those murals up.

00:01:54.300 --> 00:01:55.950
I'm speaking as an elder

00:01:55.950 --> 00:01:59.237
of a First Nation of peoples of Oklahoma.

00:02:00.137 --> 00:02:03.496
(pensive instrumental music continues)

00:02:12.099 --> 00:02:16.065
(pensive instrumental music continues)

00:02:18.723 --> 00:02:20.485
- That mural's up at the-

00:02:20.485 --> 00:02:22.770
(protesters drown out speaker)

00:02:22.770 --> 00:02:25.920
That was done during the WPA period.

00:02:25.920 --> 00:02:28.830
These are murals opposed to racism,

00:02:28.830 --> 00:02:30.647
opposed to imperialism.

00:02:30.647 --> 00:02:33.187
- The only reason the
microphone is on is to drown out

00:02:33.187 --> 00:02:34.846
the voices of the people down there.

00:02:34.846 --> 00:02:38.763
(protesters drown out speaker)

00:02:41.057 --> 00:02:43.974
(crowd chattering)

00:02:48.360 --> 00:02:51.390
- To portray a Native
person face down, dead,

00:02:51.390 --> 00:02:53.550
you are trapping their
spirit and their soul

00:02:53.550 --> 00:02:55.560
so they cannot move on.

00:02:55.560 --> 00:02:57.270
That is what this mural has done.

00:02:57.270 --> 00:02:59.760
It has trapped us in an era of the past

00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:03.690
where we are now invisible
and we no longer have a voice.

00:03:03.690 --> 00:03:05.400
- Now, this, this is a slippery slope.

00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:08.400
If you censor these murals,
what, where do we stop?

00:03:08.400 --> 00:03:09.600
There are other murals in the city

00:03:09.600 --> 00:03:11.850
which could easily be censored.

00:03:11.850 --> 00:03:14.130
- It's not a matter of censorship.

00:03:14.130 --> 00:03:16.260
It's a matter of human right.

00:03:16.260 --> 00:03:19.500
The right to learn without
hostile environments.

00:03:19.500 --> 00:03:22.170
Even the best intentions do harm.

00:03:22.170 --> 00:03:27.170
- We should be teaching about
the mural and what it means.

00:03:27.240 --> 00:03:30.300
I, as a half-Native American Indian,

00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:32.790
see no problem with the mural.

00:03:32.790 --> 00:03:35.580
It depicts what happened.

00:03:35.580 --> 00:03:38.820
Everything was whitewashed
when I went through school.

00:03:38.820 --> 00:03:40.860
- I'm a student at George
Washington High School,

00:03:40.860 --> 00:03:42.870
and I'm here to stand
up against the racist

00:03:42.870 --> 00:03:45.780
and demeaning "Life of Washington" murals.

00:03:45.780 --> 00:03:47.670
It's very hard to walk past these murals

00:03:47.670 --> 00:03:50.460
depicting the racist stories
of America's Founding Father,

00:03:50.460 --> 00:03:52.320
even if it is the truth.

00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:54.360
Generational trauma follows us.

00:03:54.360 --> 00:03:57.420
If our school district
seeks out social justice,

00:03:57.420 --> 00:04:00.390
then we will paint over
these murals or cover them.

00:04:00.390 --> 00:04:01.360
- It pains me

00:04:02.940 --> 00:04:05.990
that we would become complicit in a move

00:04:05.990 --> 00:04:08.643
to do a redaction of history.

00:04:11.640 --> 00:04:12.963
History is history.

00:04:14.250 --> 00:04:15.820
And I hope that this board

00:04:16.770 --> 00:04:20.850
would leave that mural alone.

00:04:20.850 --> 00:04:23.490
It tells the whole truth

00:04:23.490 --> 00:04:28.290
about Mr. Washington being
complicit in the slave trade,

00:04:28.290 --> 00:04:31.980
about what he did to the Native Americans.

00:04:31.980 --> 00:04:36.487
- My son always tells me
when we go into the school,

00:04:36.487 --> 00:04:39.802
"Mom, don't tell them I'm Native."

00:04:39.802 --> 00:04:41.220
(crowd responds with sympathy)

00:04:41.220 --> 00:04:45.840
And I can't imagine him
walking into that school,

00:04:45.840 --> 00:04:49.590
being told, "Meet me at the dead Indian."

00:04:49.590 --> 00:04:51.630
It's not right.

00:04:51.630 --> 00:04:53.403
Personal testimony.

00:04:54.330 --> 00:04:57.033
Right now, I feel, I feel so angry.

00:04:57.870 --> 00:05:00.660
Again, here we are
fighting, fighting, fighting

00:05:00.660 --> 00:05:02.373
for what's right for the kids.

00:05:03.990 --> 00:05:05.163
Paint it down.

00:05:18.877 --> 00:05:21.240
- "The Nation" invited me to write a piece

00:05:21.240 --> 00:05:25.377
about the "Life of Washington"
mural by Victor Arnautoff.

00:05:26.850 --> 00:05:30.330
And I began to just dig
into the story behind it.

00:05:30.330 --> 00:05:31.350
And I realized

00:05:31.350 --> 00:05:34.050
that most of the
complaints were not coming

00:05:34.050 --> 00:05:35.100
from the students,

00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:37.260
they were coming from
various groups, you know,

00:05:37.260 --> 00:05:38.640
some Indigenous groups,

00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:40.800
some African American groups.

00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:42.240
But then there's this other piece,

00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:44.940
we had to find out who's Victor Arnautoff.

00:05:44.940 --> 00:05:49.023
Like where'd he come from,
what are his politics?

00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:53.583
Victor Arnautoff has an
interesting colorful history.

00:05:57.780 --> 00:06:00.000
Russian emigre ends up coming

00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:01.833
to San Francisco to study art.

00:06:03.180 --> 00:06:04.303
And who does he study with?

00:06:04.303 --> 00:06:08.463
He studies with Diego Rivera,
the great left wing muralist.

00:06:17.430 --> 00:06:19.280
And that's how he becomes a muralist.

00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:24.090
And he begins to make these amazing murals

00:06:24.090 --> 00:06:27.420
that are consistent with
the times in the 1930s,

00:06:27.420 --> 00:06:30.690
that is Popular Front politics,

00:06:30.690 --> 00:06:32.910
leftist politics.

00:06:32.910 --> 00:06:35.853
He's making work about the
unemployed, about labor.

00:06:39.330 --> 00:06:42.450
And so by the time he is
selected to do this mural

00:06:42.450 --> 00:06:46.293
at George Washington High School,
he's a well-known leftist.

00:06:49.830 --> 00:06:51.720
You ask a question,
well, do we actually know

00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:55.950
what it means to be a
Communist artist in 1935?

00:06:55.950 --> 00:06:57.690
Well, when you start to
dig into that question,

00:06:57.690 --> 00:07:01.320
you discover that to be a Communist artist

00:07:01.320 --> 00:07:04.320
in the age of the Popular Front means

00:07:04.320 --> 00:07:08.940
to elevate the Founding
Fathers and to claim them

00:07:08.940 --> 00:07:13.050
as somehow representing a
radical democratic tradition.

00:07:13.050 --> 00:07:17.670
The other narrative is that
George Washington is our hero.

00:07:17.670 --> 00:07:18.720
You don't, you can't destroy (laughs)

00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:20.850
a mural of George Washington.

00:07:20.850 --> 00:07:22.525
He's the founder of the country.

00:07:22.525 --> 00:07:26.108
(reminiscent string music)

00:07:31.410 --> 00:07:33.840
- Everyone was telling
me as a child growing up,

00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:37.893
George Washington is like
a friend to the Indians.

00:07:39.360 --> 00:07:43.230
And you don't hear about the
breakup of tribal systems,

00:07:43.230 --> 00:07:45.063
the stealing of tribal land.

00:07:46.530 --> 00:07:48.150
During the Revolutionary War,

00:07:48.150 --> 00:07:50.520
George Washington ordered the destruction

00:07:50.520 --> 00:07:52.530
of Iroquois towns and crops,

00:07:52.530 --> 00:07:55.683
and therefore was known as the
Town Destroyer by the Seneca.

00:07:59.100 --> 00:08:01.350
When I first heard about
the mural controversy,

00:08:01.350 --> 00:08:03.210
it was sort of wrapped up in a lot

00:08:03.210 --> 00:08:05.220
of the other controversies we've had

00:08:05.220 --> 00:08:07.800
around Confederate monuments
and other racist monuments

00:08:07.800 --> 00:08:09.750
that have been taken out

00:08:09.750 --> 00:08:13.230
of the public domain.
(crowd cheering)

00:08:13.230 --> 00:08:14.490
And it turns out that

00:08:14.490 --> 00:08:17.130
it's a lot more complicated, obviously.

00:08:17.130 --> 00:08:19.500
What's complicated about these murals is

00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:22.740
that they do attempt,

00:08:22.740 --> 00:08:25.290
or as far as I know, a very early attempt

00:08:25.290 --> 00:08:27.030
to reframe our understanding

00:08:27.030 --> 00:08:30.030
of the infallible nature
of our Founding Fathers

00:08:30.030 --> 00:08:32.730
to say, this is who Washington was.

00:08:32.730 --> 00:08:34.140
He was a slave owner.

00:08:34.140 --> 00:08:37.380
He did participate and actively direct

00:08:37.380 --> 00:08:40.110
at times the genocide of Native Americans.

00:08:40.110 --> 00:08:43.740
And that is a hard image to reconcile

00:08:43.740 --> 00:08:45.720
with the image that we grow up hearing

00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:47.970
about our Founding Fathers.

00:08:52.710 --> 00:08:56.280
- Arnautoff wanted to make it clear

00:08:56.280 --> 00:09:01.280
that George Washington was
not without contradiction,

00:09:02.040 --> 00:09:04.470
and that the country itself was born

00:09:04.470 --> 00:09:07.510
through its great rhetoric

00:09:09.210 --> 00:09:10.750
of liberty and freedom

00:09:11.670 --> 00:09:14.070
in the contradiction of slavery

00:09:14.070 --> 00:09:16.473
and the genocide of Native Americans.

00:09:17.970 --> 00:09:21.420
But the idea of liberty

00:09:21.420 --> 00:09:23.640
is a great idea.

00:09:23.640 --> 00:09:28.640
The ideas that the Founding
Fathers articulated

00:09:29.880 --> 00:09:32.070
are some of the most important ideas

00:09:32.070 --> 00:09:35.013
that human beings have ever devised.

00:09:36.090 --> 00:09:38.490
- We had a young person come

00:09:38.490 --> 00:09:41.970
and give testimony at one
of the community meetings

00:09:41.970 --> 00:09:45.090
and her perspective when
she saw the mural is that

00:09:45.090 --> 00:09:48.390
it perpetuates three
stereotypes for Native people.

00:09:48.390 --> 00:09:49.770
You're either dead,

00:09:49.770 --> 00:09:52.560
you're a sellout or you're a savage.

00:09:52.560 --> 00:09:54.930
So on that level,

00:09:54.930 --> 00:09:57.660
that image of the dead Indian
perpetuates this concept

00:09:57.660 --> 00:09:59.371
that we no longer exist.

00:09:59.371 --> 00:10:04.140
(crowd chattering in the distance)

00:10:04.140 --> 00:10:06.660
- I don't have a strong
opinion towards it, frankly,

00:10:06.660 --> 00:10:10.380
but I do feel that
having the history there

00:10:10.380 --> 00:10:13.950
for everyone to see and to
know what Washington did

00:10:13.950 --> 00:10:17.130
from a realistic viewpoint

00:10:17.130 --> 00:10:20.400
would be good for really
any history class.

00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:21.540
- I was thinking that,

00:10:21.540 --> 00:10:24.360
but one of my friends is offended

00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:27.840
and I guess she cares more than I do.

00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:30.960
So I wouldn't really mind if
they were removed, you know,

00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:33.870
just to make life better for her, I guess.

00:10:33.870 --> 00:10:34.860
Yeah.

00:10:34.860 --> 00:10:35.693
Yeah.

00:10:36.540 --> 00:10:38.670
- [Newscaster] Today's
controversy is not new.

00:10:38.670 --> 00:10:39.900
In the mid-sixties,

00:10:39.900 --> 00:10:42.720
some African American students
spoke out against the murals.

00:10:42.720 --> 00:10:45.180
The school board then
refused to destroy them.

00:10:45.180 --> 00:10:47.640
Instead a 19-year-old
artist named Dewey Crumpler

00:10:47.640 --> 00:10:50.100
was commissioned to create
a new mural display,

00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:51.570
an alternative mural.

00:10:51.570 --> 00:10:53.317
- It was the students who said,

00:10:53.317 --> 00:10:56.610
"We want a Black person
to paint this mural."

00:10:56.610 --> 00:11:00.000
And I showed them some work I'd done.

00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:01.983
And they said they wanted me to do it.

00:11:03.180 --> 00:11:06.270
I explained to the students

00:11:06.270 --> 00:11:09.270
that those murals that
Arnautoff painted was a critique

00:11:09.270 --> 00:11:11.310
on American history.

00:11:11.310 --> 00:11:14.730
So that's why murals were
extraordinarily important

00:11:14.730 --> 00:11:16.353
as teaching vehicles.

00:11:17.250 --> 00:11:18.850
Now, the West

00:11:19.860 --> 00:11:24.630
very often viewed them socio-politically,

00:11:24.630 --> 00:11:27.213
and so they were a bit too didactic.

00:11:28.140 --> 00:11:32.430
But Michelangelo was didactic as hell.

00:11:32.430 --> 00:11:34.443
I mean, this here,

00:11:36.570 --> 00:11:39.022
that's some didactic shit.

00:11:39.022 --> 00:11:42.540
(choir vocalizing angelically)

00:11:42.540 --> 00:11:45.363
One of my high school
teachers said, "Look,

00:11:46.350 --> 00:11:50.373
if you want to learn anything
about mural painting,

00:11:51.720 --> 00:11:53.350
you need to go to Mexico

00:11:55.410 --> 00:11:57.062
and check that out."

00:11:57.062 --> 00:12:00.395
(expressive jazz music)

00:12:07.410 --> 00:12:11.640
And that's when I went to all these places

00:12:11.640 --> 00:12:13.980
where these great murals were

00:12:13.980 --> 00:12:16.040
and I was so mesmerized

00:12:16.040 --> 00:12:17.400
it was crazy.

00:12:17.400 --> 00:12:20.100
So I saw this and I said,

00:12:20.100 --> 00:12:22.113
now this right here,

00:12:23.040 --> 00:12:25.980
this is mural painting

00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:28.080
in a way that

00:12:28.080 --> 00:12:30.510
that really is so overwhelming.

00:12:30.510 --> 00:12:32.520
This is what

00:12:32.520 --> 00:12:33.823
I want to do.

00:12:34.732 --> 00:12:35.665
This is it.

00:12:35.665 --> 00:12:39.832
(expressive jazz music continues)

00:12:47.740 --> 00:12:52.080
(expressive jazz music fading out)

00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:55.230
Once I got back from Mexico,

00:12:55.230 --> 00:13:00.230
I started studying the Arnautoff
murals much more closely.

00:13:00.870 --> 00:13:03.660
You can see Diego Rivera's influence

00:13:03.660 --> 00:13:05.927
all through those murals.

00:13:05.927 --> 00:13:10.510
(expressive jazz music)

00:13:11.640 --> 00:13:15.180
The organizing of my mural required

00:13:15.180 --> 00:13:17.940
a way to link those works together

00:13:17.940 --> 00:13:21.453
that could speak to Arnautoff's murals.

00:13:22.980 --> 00:13:25.270
I saw

00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:28.360
its form

00:13:29.910 --> 00:13:34.140
as the chains

00:13:34.140 --> 00:13:36.510
would be broken through heat,

00:13:36.510 --> 00:13:38.523
through the power of friction.

00:13:46.080 --> 00:13:50.340
At the time, Alcatraz was under siege

00:13:50.340 --> 00:13:54.813
by Native Americans making
a stance on that island.

00:13:56.130 --> 00:13:58.143
And to me, that was heroic.

00:13:59.760 --> 00:14:01.930
So I put that

00:14:03.210 --> 00:14:06.240
lifting of Turtle Island out of the earth,

00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:10.653
out of the waters of San
Francisco into the firmament.

00:14:16.410 --> 00:14:17.243
Let's see.

00:14:21.510 --> 00:14:26.510
A maker's role is to create
some sense of instability

00:14:26.760 --> 00:14:30.030
so that you can ask the question

00:14:30.030 --> 00:14:31.290
why,

00:14:31.290 --> 00:14:32.700
who,

00:14:32.700 --> 00:14:33.533
what.

00:14:34.830 --> 00:14:38.187
You can't do that making nice imagery.

00:14:38.187 --> 00:14:40.770
(uneasy music)

00:14:48.769 --> 00:14:52.186
(uneasy music continues)

00:14:59.435 --> 00:15:02.869
(uneasy music continues)

00:15:02.869 --> 00:15:05.619
(birds chirping)

00:15:13.565 --> 00:15:16.982
(uneasy music continues)

00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:28.410
- This is the site of the
Great Wall of Los Angeles.

00:15:28.410 --> 00:15:30.690
It's a half-mile long mural,

00:15:30.690 --> 00:15:34.020
which depicts the social,
cultural, political histories

00:15:34.020 --> 00:15:36.423
of Los Angeles and the
State of California.

00:15:38.610 --> 00:15:41.850
The Great Wall of LA was painted
by primarily young people

00:15:41.850 --> 00:15:43.200
who had been arrested at least once

00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:45.840
and were coming from the
juvenile justice system.

00:15:45.840 --> 00:15:46.980
A lot of the young people

00:15:46.980 --> 00:15:49.680
who worked on the mural were learning

00:15:49.680 --> 00:15:52.470
about their own histories
for the very first time.

00:15:52.470 --> 00:15:55.020
And of course those histories
are really traumatic.

00:15:56.070 --> 00:15:59.460
Just to my right, there's an
image of a Native American,

00:15:59.460 --> 00:16:02.850
an Asian American, and an
African American being lynched

00:16:02.850 --> 00:16:04.533
on a tree during the Gold Rush.

00:16:06.510 --> 00:16:08.250
When they were being painted

00:16:08.250 --> 00:16:09.450
these histories weren't being told.

00:16:09.450 --> 00:16:14.100
And I think that's been the
great trick of white supremacy,

00:16:14.100 --> 00:16:16.710
right, is to disappear itself,

00:16:16.710 --> 00:16:18.180
doesn't exist.

00:16:18.180 --> 00:16:20.820
Those atrocities never happened.

00:16:20.820 --> 00:16:22.830
And so when these histories
were being painted

00:16:22.830 --> 00:16:25.170
on the Great Wall of LA the fight wasn't

00:16:25.170 --> 00:16:27.150
to keep those histories
from being depicted,

00:16:27.150 --> 00:16:30.058
the fight was to tell those stories.

00:16:30.058 --> 00:16:35.058
(calm guitar music)
(birds chirping)

00:16:42.695 --> 00:16:46.528
(calm guitar music continues)

00:16:55.170 --> 00:16:56.880
- I use paint to tell my stories.

00:16:56.880 --> 00:16:57.813
I'm a storyteller.

00:16:58.920 --> 00:17:01.020
In other words, I'm not a dancer

00:17:01.020 --> 00:17:02.880
and I'm not a traditionalist

00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:05.160
in the sense that I don't weave baskets.

00:17:05.160 --> 00:17:07.290
I'm kind of an okay bead worker,

00:17:07.290 --> 00:17:08.730
but I don't have time.

00:17:08.730 --> 00:17:09.563
I paint.

00:17:09.563 --> 00:17:13.324
(calm guitar music continues)

00:17:21.207 --> 00:17:25.040
(calm guitar music continues)

00:17:27.023 --> 00:17:30.810
Before everybody was
telling our story for us.

00:17:30.810 --> 00:17:32.940
So to be part of a group of people

00:17:32.940 --> 00:17:35.070
that are telling our own stories,

00:17:35.070 --> 00:17:38.610
correcting misinformation about history,

00:17:38.610 --> 00:17:40.260
that's important

00:17:40.260 --> 00:17:44.850
and artists have their
place in that, always have,

00:17:44.850 --> 00:17:48.780
in the face of this resistance
that doesn't want to hear

00:17:48.780 --> 00:17:51.537
what really happened for instance
here during the Gold Rush.

00:17:51.537 --> 00:17:54.620
(somber violin music)

00:17:55.680 --> 00:17:57.870
Here was really bad.

00:17:57.870 --> 00:18:00.900
This is ground zero for
California Indians, I think.

00:18:00.900 --> 00:18:03.753
And some of the stories we've uncovered,

00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:06.060
just hideous,

00:18:06.060 --> 00:18:09.871
searing losses and families wiped out.

00:18:09.871 --> 00:18:13.788
(somber music continues)

00:18:17.880 --> 00:18:19.950
My first painting that had to do

00:18:19.950 --> 00:18:23.190
with my tribe was a painting
I did of Molly Lowry.

00:18:23.190 --> 00:18:25.233
She would've been a great aunt of mine.

00:18:26.190 --> 00:18:29.220
And I went to my father

00:18:29.220 --> 00:18:30.540
and he's the, to me,

00:18:30.540 --> 00:18:32.730
the ultimate authority on
what I'm permitted to do

00:18:32.730 --> 00:18:35.763
in terms of revealing stories
that are this painful.

00:18:37.980 --> 00:18:41.700
I asked him about telling
Molly's story in a picture.

00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:44.533
And he said, "I think you should."

00:18:48.330 --> 00:18:50.490
They have her age
somewhere between 8 and 11.

00:18:50.490 --> 00:18:51.570
We're not sure how old she was,

00:18:51.570 --> 00:18:53.550
but she ran away from the boarding school

00:18:53.550 --> 00:18:56.010
with some other girls, older girls

00:18:56.010 --> 00:18:58.530
in 1918, in December,

00:18:58.530 --> 00:19:00.080
in the Sierra, the High Sierra.

00:19:02.760 --> 00:19:04.983
And she froze to death,

00:19:06.060 --> 00:19:07.650
and another girl died, too,

00:19:07.650 --> 00:19:12.390
because she had to have her
frostbitten feet amputated.

00:19:12.390 --> 00:19:13.560
And you just gotta wonder

00:19:13.560 --> 00:19:15.660
what makes little girls
run away from the school

00:19:15.660 --> 00:19:17.883
in the dead of winter wearing sweaters.

00:19:21.510 --> 00:19:23.220
It turned out they had an abusive matron

00:19:23.220 --> 00:19:25.923
that was strapping them,
hitting them with belts.

00:19:27.570 --> 00:19:30.210
And right now the boarding school

00:19:30.210 --> 00:19:33.660
or what I like to call the
detention reprogramming centers

00:19:33.660 --> 00:19:35.373
that they sent our children to,

00:19:36.660 --> 00:19:40.470
they're starting to reveal
all these unmarked graves,

00:19:40.470 --> 00:19:43.650
these mass graves with
the little children.

00:19:43.650 --> 00:19:45.990
But we're very familiar
with stories like that

00:19:45.990 --> 00:19:48.090
from our elders who went to these schools.

00:19:49.470 --> 00:19:51.780
These are stories, some
of them very painful,

00:19:51.780 --> 00:19:53.430
from our family,

00:19:53.430 --> 00:19:56.550
but they chart the lives that we lived,

00:19:56.550 --> 00:19:58.560
how our lives were changed at contact time

00:19:58.560 --> 00:19:59.883
and on from there.

00:20:01.620 --> 00:20:04.020
And we honor that little girl now.

00:20:04.020 --> 00:20:05.400
We are able to cry for her,

00:20:05.400 --> 00:20:06.423
sing for her.

00:20:07.590 --> 00:20:09.090
You know what I mean? Our way.

00:20:14.040 --> 00:20:16.230
- My grandmother went to a boarding school

00:20:16.230 --> 00:20:17.640
when she was young along with all

00:20:17.640 --> 00:20:19.740
of her brothers and sisters.

00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:23.021
And I think that had a massive impact

00:20:23.021 --> 00:20:25.440
on a break in knowledge,

00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:29.580
between what her father
could have taught her

00:20:29.580 --> 00:20:31.680
and what she was able to teach me.

00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:35.730
And it introduced a lot of
silences into our family.

00:20:35.730 --> 00:20:38.490
So it's whatever was
filtering into pop culture,

00:20:38.490 --> 00:20:40.980
into mainstream American
consciousness was standing in

00:20:40.980 --> 00:20:43.380
to fill in the gaps of what I knew

00:20:43.380 --> 00:20:45.900
and what I didn't know about who I was.

00:20:45.900 --> 00:20:49.350
- Our school system doesn't
talk about the brutality of it.

00:20:49.350 --> 00:20:51.360
Children are only taught
about the Mission system

00:20:51.360 --> 00:20:53.520
as being a place of refuge,

00:20:53.520 --> 00:20:57.540
a place to save Native people,
to show them the word of God.

00:20:57.540 --> 00:20:59.850
It doesn't tell you the actual truth

00:20:59.850 --> 00:21:02.520
of what happened in the Mission system,

00:21:02.520 --> 00:21:06.153
the history that was so
devastating to Indigenous people.

00:21:09.780 --> 00:21:14.640
We don't learn about the
state-sanctioned militias

00:21:14.640 --> 00:21:16.200
that were sent throughout California

00:21:16.200 --> 00:21:18.210
to actually hunt down Native people

00:21:18.210 --> 00:21:19.803
and sell their scalps for $5.

00:21:22.170 --> 00:21:24.180
- One of the things that I've learned

00:21:24.180 --> 00:21:26.340
as an Indigenous person in looking back

00:21:26.340 --> 00:21:28.800
at the history of the United States is

00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:32.670
that Native Americans have had
to be incredibly resourceful

00:21:32.670 --> 00:21:33.810
in order to survive.

00:21:33.810 --> 00:21:36.560
Resilience is baked into our DNA.

00:21:48.780 --> 00:21:51.450
My experience with the
"Early Days" monument

00:21:51.450 --> 00:21:53.520
actually goes back to my childhood

00:21:53.520 --> 00:21:55.410
when I grew up in San Francisco

00:21:55.410 --> 00:21:57.810
and I used to walk all
around the Civic Center.

00:21:57.810 --> 00:22:00.300
My mom used to work
around the Civic Center.

00:22:00.300 --> 00:22:02.580
So I passed by that monument

00:22:02.580 --> 00:22:07.580
quite often (laughs) and I
remember seeing that image

00:22:08.130 --> 00:22:11.640
of a cowering Indian
underneath a missionary

00:22:11.640 --> 00:22:15.030
and thinking it was weird
when I was a little girl

00:22:15.030 --> 00:22:17.460
and not really liking it,

00:22:17.460 --> 00:22:20.460
and feeling awful about it.

00:22:20.460 --> 00:22:24.300
And it really did hurt
my self-esteem I think.

00:22:24.300 --> 00:22:27.300
Even though I was never
ashamed to be Native American,

00:22:27.300 --> 00:22:29.250
all these external markers were telling me

00:22:29.250 --> 00:22:31.503
at some point in time it was shameful.

00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:34.980
The "Early Days" monument was meant

00:22:34.980 --> 00:22:38.160
to project a certain
history of California,

00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:41.490
a certain white Founding Father history.

00:22:41.490 --> 00:22:43.500
And I think that that sort of whitewashing

00:22:43.500 --> 00:22:46.533
of history was encapsulated
in the monument.

00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:50.550
- When I first saw the
"Early Days" statue,

00:22:50.550 --> 00:22:54.420
I think what was pretty
shocking was a physical,

00:22:54.420 --> 00:22:57.000
visceral reaction that I had to it.

00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:00.090
I was overcome with a lot
of hurt and anger and fear,

00:23:00.090 --> 00:23:02.280
and I actually started crying.

00:23:02.280 --> 00:23:05.730
And coming from a small
town in the Central Valley

00:23:05.730 --> 00:23:09.570
where we didn't have
public art to a large city,

00:23:09.570 --> 00:23:12.810
I didn't have a vocabulary
for it at the time.

00:23:12.810 --> 00:23:15.660
I think that what I was feeling
was some historical trauma

00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:20.220
that was coming through
in seeing the subjugation

00:23:20.220 --> 00:23:23.310
of Native people presented
in the way that it was.

00:23:23.310 --> 00:23:26.940
And for me I think the statue
actually politicized me.

00:23:26.940 --> 00:23:29.880
So I have kind of a love-hate
relationship with the statue

00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:31.950
in a sense that it really woke me up

00:23:31.950 --> 00:23:33.270
into what was going on

00:23:33.270 --> 00:23:36.210
and how I could get involved
in an urban setting,

00:23:36.210 --> 00:23:39.180
and really kind of set me on a trajectory

00:23:39.180 --> 00:23:40.923
in my life that I carry today.

00:23:42.376 --> 00:23:46.793
(crowd chanting in a Native language)

00:23:49.710 --> 00:23:52.470
To see the statue removed was a feeling

00:23:52.470 --> 00:23:54.090
of not only of triumph and victory,

00:23:54.090 --> 00:23:55.955
but it was also somewhat somber.

00:23:55.955 --> 00:23:59.538
(crowd chanting continues)

00:24:07.514 --> 00:24:11.097
(crowd chanting continues)

00:24:14.902 --> 00:24:19.902
All of our ancestors, they
all are buried under the city.

00:24:20.280 --> 00:24:23.250
When they got through
murdering the Ohlone people,

00:24:23.250 --> 00:24:24.720
they got our Miwok people,

00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:27.780
our Pomo people, our Maidu people.

00:24:27.780 --> 00:24:29.913
That's what we walk on every day.

00:24:31.320 --> 00:24:33.210
Now that that statue is gone,

00:24:33.210 --> 00:24:35.190
some of that healing can start.

00:24:35.190 --> 00:24:37.830
We can breathe, we can repair

00:24:37.830 --> 00:24:40.112
and we can grow and we can heal.

00:24:40.112 --> 00:24:44.529
(crowd chanting continues)

00:24:46.650 --> 00:24:49.683
- I was really glad when
the statue was removed,

00:24:51.360 --> 00:24:53.339
because I think it was
a very harmful image

00:24:53.339 --> 00:24:55.650
of Native Americans.

00:24:55.650 --> 00:24:57.895
It was harmful for me when I was a kid.

00:24:57.895 --> 00:24:59.745
(crowd chanting continues)

00:24:59.745 --> 00:25:02.495
(crowd cheering)

00:25:09.386 --> 00:25:13.303
(steady electric guitar music)

00:25:22.860 --> 00:25:25.290
- What is the ascendant theme here is

00:25:25.290 --> 00:25:27.483
that we are still here.

00:25:28.770 --> 00:25:30.450
We are not dead.

00:25:30.450 --> 00:25:32.640
We're not an ethnographic remnant waiting

00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:34.743
to be pushed off the stage of history.

00:25:36.330 --> 00:25:40.980
We are very much a people and
communities with a deep past,

00:25:40.980 --> 00:25:43.560
but also an active present,

00:25:43.560 --> 00:25:45.663
and rather insistent on a future.

00:25:46.500 --> 00:25:51.500
And what you see in this
gallery is the engagement,

00:25:51.570 --> 00:25:55.290
the intersection between being Native

00:25:55.290 --> 00:25:57.720
and being of the Native community

00:25:57.720 --> 00:26:01.743
and yet being part of a
larger non-Native society.

00:26:02.850 --> 00:26:05.760
And I remember when my father was saying,

00:26:05.760 --> 00:26:07.650
I brought you back to Oklahoma

00:26:07.650 --> 00:26:09.450
because I want you and your brother

00:26:09.450 --> 00:26:11.283
to be raised as Cheyenne.

00:26:12.390 --> 00:26:14.280
That was my objective,

00:26:14.280 --> 00:26:16.710
but never think that I think

00:26:16.710 --> 00:26:20.790
the Cheyenne will ever
again be the cultural island

00:26:20.790 --> 00:26:23.580
that they were for much of their history.

00:26:23.580 --> 00:26:25.380
That's not going to happen.

00:26:25.380 --> 00:26:29.910
And just as my father's art
spoke to his generation,

00:26:29.910 --> 00:26:32.670
the art that you see here
speaks to a generation

00:26:32.670 --> 00:26:35.253
that began probably in the late sixties.

00:26:36.180 --> 00:26:39.900
And it began on a small island
in the San Francisco Bay.

00:26:39.900 --> 00:26:44.370
And it spread from there
to many, many other places,

00:26:44.370 --> 00:26:47.370
not only in California, but elsewhere.

00:26:47.370 --> 00:26:48.630
I mean, think of it,

00:26:48.630 --> 00:26:51.000
think back over the last generation

00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:52.210
when at one point

00:26:53.100 --> 00:26:58.020
any American art that smacked
of political expression

00:26:58.020 --> 00:26:59.820
and political viewpoint

00:26:59.820 --> 00:27:03.393
was considered political
art, which was not quite art.

00:27:04.500 --> 00:27:08.373
I think that that is in
retreat quite honestly.

00:27:10.950 --> 00:27:12.480
- This is the wildfire,

00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:14.700
which we've just come
through the worst summer

00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:18.720
with the Dixie Fire taking
out much of my homelands

00:27:18.720 --> 00:27:20.580
up in Plumas and Lassen County.

00:27:20.580 --> 00:27:23.760
So I envisioned the
destruction of the roundhouse.

00:27:23.760 --> 00:27:26.040
The roundhouse is the main character

00:27:26.040 --> 00:27:27.633
in all of these pictures.

00:27:29.400 --> 00:27:32.040
I use symbolism a lot myself,

00:27:32.040 --> 00:27:33.492
and again that's the Renaissance.

00:27:33.492 --> 00:27:35.430
If you decode the "Primavera",

00:27:35.430 --> 00:27:38.280
I mean, there's so much,
especially when they cleaned it,

00:27:38.280 --> 00:27:40.290
all of a sudden so much more content

00:27:40.290 --> 00:27:43.830
and narrative that they knew
and all the flowers and all;

00:27:43.830 --> 00:27:46.020
there's nothing that didn't
have a reason to be there

00:27:46.020 --> 00:27:47.163
that wasn't symbolic.

00:27:49.560 --> 00:27:50.393
And again, I think

00:27:50.393 --> 00:27:52.440
this artist might have
been using some symbolism

00:27:52.440 --> 00:27:56.040
to subvert the narrative a
little bit more sympathetic

00:27:56.040 --> 00:27:57.490
to the Native side of things.

00:27:58.470 --> 00:28:00.840
I mean, Washington was a surveyor

00:28:00.840 --> 00:28:03.810
that saw this as his real estate,

00:28:03.810 --> 00:28:06.030
mapping out the country,

00:28:06.030 --> 00:28:08.550
so it sort of symbolizes the initiation

00:28:08.550 --> 00:28:10.773
of the dicing up of our continent.

00:28:12.480 --> 00:28:15.212
When I look at that dead Indian,

00:28:15.212 --> 00:28:17.670
I put myself in the place of the artist

00:28:17.670 --> 00:28:19.563
while he was actually creating it.

00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:24.720
First thing I notice
is the Indian is prone.

00:28:24.720 --> 00:28:25.773
He's not supine.

00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:30.930
So his identity's been protected, I think.

00:28:30.930 --> 00:28:35.460
I don't think you can paint a dead person,

00:28:35.460 --> 00:28:37.020
especially one that's been victimized

00:28:37.020 --> 00:28:39.270
and not feel some kind of compassion.

00:28:39.270 --> 00:28:41.190
So my feeling is, in this mural,

00:28:41.190 --> 00:28:43.920
especially in the black and white people,

00:28:43.920 --> 00:28:45.183
the ones without souls,

00:28:46.290 --> 00:28:47.550
if you really look at it,

00:28:47.550 --> 00:28:49.230
it really tells the story the right way:

00:28:49.230 --> 00:28:51.540
these people were stepped on.

00:28:51.540 --> 00:28:53.070
They were robbed of their country.

00:28:53.070 --> 00:28:54.810
It's saying that.

00:28:54.810 --> 00:28:58.290
So I think the artist
created a little subversion

00:28:58.290 --> 00:28:59.123
within his work.

00:28:59.123 --> 00:29:01.050
It's not the first time that's happened.

00:29:01.050 --> 00:29:02.790
So if they just reinterpret it,

00:29:02.790 --> 00:29:04.240
I think they should leave it.

00:29:05.940 --> 00:29:09.270
- Well, I think truth is
hard to look at sometimes,

00:29:09.270 --> 00:29:12.840
but that is truth as far as I'm concerned.

00:29:12.840 --> 00:29:15.900
And I think that particular institutions

00:29:15.900 --> 00:29:19.440
in public society have
a special responsibility

00:29:19.440 --> 00:29:21.330
to create very wide boundaries

00:29:21.330 --> 00:29:23.280
when you're dealing with tough subjects.

00:29:23.280 --> 00:29:26.640
And so I'd rather have
a vigorous, pointed,

00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:31.080
even controversial discussion
about what that represents

00:29:31.080 --> 00:29:34.241
than simply try to eradicate it.

00:29:34.241 --> 00:29:37.241
(upbeat rock music)

00:29:42.490 --> 00:29:46.323
(upbeat rock music continues)

00:29:54.600 --> 00:29:58.050
- There's this ambivalence
and contradiction

00:29:58.050 --> 00:30:01.320
at the heart of American
national identity.

00:30:01.320 --> 00:30:03.870
I think you can call it
kind of a secret obsession

00:30:03.870 --> 00:30:06.213
Americans have with Native people.

00:30:07.380 --> 00:30:08.580
So how do we understand that?

00:30:08.580 --> 00:30:10.143
How do we make sense of that?

00:30:11.100 --> 00:30:13.380
Why does this country need

00:30:13.380 --> 00:30:16.743
to build this imaginary Indian?

00:30:18.090 --> 00:30:21.990
Elvis is in here twice, 'cause he's Elvis.

00:30:21.990 --> 00:30:23.670
That's one of them.

00:30:23.670 --> 00:30:25.083
Cher of course.

00:30:26.280 --> 00:30:29.643
And here we have Native American Barbie.

00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:32.790
The Tomahawk missile is interesting

00:30:32.790 --> 00:30:36.750
because it's been used in
so many different conflicts.

00:30:36.750 --> 00:30:38.490
So it's an ancient idea

00:30:38.490 --> 00:30:41.643
of taking on Native names for weapons.

00:30:42.840 --> 00:30:44.550
There were ships named Pocahontas

00:30:44.550 --> 00:30:46.323
on both sides of the Civil War.

00:30:48.990 --> 00:30:53.700
Since the late 1940s,
by Pentagon directive,

00:30:53.700 --> 00:30:57.060
every helicopter used by
any of the armed services

00:30:57.060 --> 00:30:59.550
will have a Native name of an individual,

00:30:59.550 --> 00:31:02.070
or a tribe, or a place.

00:31:02.070 --> 00:31:03.360
The Apache helicopter,

00:31:03.360 --> 00:31:06.510
of course we couldn't get
an actual Apache helicopter.

00:31:06.510 --> 00:31:07.800
And so there are Apaches

00:31:07.800 --> 00:31:09.390
who hate the fact there's a helicopter

00:31:09.390 --> 00:31:10.770
that kills people with their name.

00:31:10.770 --> 00:31:13.710
There're Apaches that
think that's fantastic.

00:31:13.710 --> 00:31:17.130
Since I'm an enrolled member
of the Comanche nation,

00:31:17.130 --> 00:31:19.590
I went to some effort to get a model

00:31:19.590 --> 00:31:24.330
of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter.

00:31:24.330 --> 00:31:26.070
I understood tribal officials were upset,

00:31:26.070 --> 00:31:29.340
'cause there was so much
attention to the Apache helicopter

00:31:29.340 --> 00:31:30.967
and they would say, they would make calls,

00:31:30.967 --> 00:31:34.080
"Why isn't there a Comanche helicopter?"

00:31:34.080 --> 00:31:36.210
It cost $6.9 billion.

00:31:36.210 --> 00:31:38.943
And they ended up with only
two Comanche helicopters.

00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:43.890
What I learned through doing this project

00:31:43.890 --> 00:31:45.900
as we went deeper and deeper is

00:31:45.900 --> 00:31:49.500
this obsession takes a form of people

00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:51.723
generating these images,

00:31:52.740 --> 00:31:54.600
advertising, movies,

00:31:54.600 --> 00:31:57.450
you know, all kinds of pop culture, memes.

00:31:57.450 --> 00:32:01.080
And a lot of that is stereotypical.

00:32:01.080 --> 00:32:04.533
And a lot of it's disrespectful.

00:32:05.820 --> 00:32:07.170
On some level, it doesn't really have

00:32:07.170 --> 00:32:09.240
to do with us, with Native people.

00:32:09.240 --> 00:32:11.043
It's its own thing.

00:32:12.155 --> 00:32:17.078
So I came to understand
romanticism as a form of racism.

00:32:19.020 --> 00:32:20.370
If you think

00:32:20.370 --> 00:32:23.340
we love Native Americans
and they are just great;

00:32:23.340 --> 00:32:25.260
and we love them when they're acting

00:32:25.260 --> 00:32:27.960
like we think their
ancestors were acting like,

00:32:27.960 --> 00:32:29.490
you know, a hundred years ago,

00:32:29.490 --> 00:32:32.760
that Native people generally are noble,

00:32:32.760 --> 00:32:36.123
that we can teach the world
about the environment;

00:32:38.580 --> 00:32:42.543
ultimately it makes us
less than fully human.

00:32:43.410 --> 00:32:46.980
And so with the mural
controversy, San Francisco,

00:32:46.980 --> 00:32:49.770
it's unquestionably a significant work

00:32:49.770 --> 00:32:51.600
by a significant artist.

00:32:51.600 --> 00:32:54.000
It's meant to be a provocation,

00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:54.963
which was as,

00:32:56.580 --> 00:32:58.710
at the moment of its
creation, as anti-racist

00:32:58.710 --> 00:33:00.783
as anything could possibly be.

00:33:02.070 --> 00:33:05.310
I find myself aligned with the people

00:33:05.310 --> 00:33:08.463
who say keep it up and teach it.

00:33:10.320 --> 00:33:14.283
But I'm not a student
in that school, and I,

00:33:16.350 --> 00:33:18.063
I think that, um,

00:33:19.650 --> 00:33:22.563
it's a bit wistful to
think that can still work.

00:33:25.366 --> 00:33:28.366
(cars whooshing by)

00:33:30.780 --> 00:33:35.680
- This school is one of the
most unique schools in America

00:33:36.578 --> 00:33:39.740
in that it has artwork that spans

00:33:40.682 --> 00:33:43.770
from the very early
part of the 20th century

00:33:43.770 --> 00:33:46.870
all the way till now and that

00:33:47.880 --> 00:33:50.823
that this school, unlike many,

00:33:51.990 --> 00:33:55.230
has that kind of artistic breadth

00:33:55.230 --> 00:33:57.900
and all of the work in the buildings,

00:33:57.900 --> 00:34:01.020
including Sargent Johnson's are

00:34:01.020 --> 00:34:04.890
among the great works in America,

00:34:04.890 --> 00:34:09.890
and it's so horrible that
they have been neglected.

00:34:10.266 --> 00:34:13.183
(crowd noise)

00:34:17.430 --> 00:34:18.600
- [Principal] Hello, welcome.

00:34:18.600 --> 00:34:20.130
- Hello, how are you?
- [Principal] Good.

00:34:20.130 --> 00:34:21.450
- Are you the principal?
- I am.

00:34:21.450 --> 00:34:23.177
I saw you coming up, so
I thought I'd greet you.

00:34:23.177 --> 00:34:24.518
- Oh, well...
- I'm okay.

00:34:24.518 --> 00:34:29.518
- Okay.

00:34:33.690 --> 00:34:35.403
It's not as bad as I thought.

00:34:39.841 --> 00:34:44.174
(people chattering in the distance)

00:34:48.979 --> 00:34:51.812
(door slams shut)

00:34:55.032 --> 00:34:58.680
(people chattering in the distance)

00:34:58.680 --> 00:35:00.393
See, to be right up on it,

00:35:02.130 --> 00:35:03.310
to be right in it

00:35:05.070 --> 00:35:07.833
like I was as a kid,

00:35:08.970 --> 00:35:10.113
God darn,

00:35:11.130 --> 00:35:13.480
because I haven't been
this close to this mural

00:35:15.480 --> 00:35:16.683
since I painted it.

00:35:20.250 --> 00:35:22.710
Man, let me tell you this.

00:35:22.710 --> 00:35:27.710
I'm looking at how I
painted it as a 20-year-old.

00:35:28.680 --> 00:35:31.920
You know, you do things when you're a kid

00:35:31.920 --> 00:35:36.780
and you don't really completely
know what you're doing

00:35:36.780 --> 00:35:39.810
and that it is possible for it to hold up.

00:35:39.810 --> 00:35:44.550
Like I don't feel ashamed
of having made it,

00:35:44.550 --> 00:35:46.590
even though, you know,

00:35:46.590 --> 00:35:49.443
I could have done some things much better.

00:35:56.130 --> 00:35:59.850
At first, I was incensed with this,

00:35:59.850 --> 00:36:03.960
but once I really understood

00:36:03.960 --> 00:36:06.990
in a much more sophisticated way,

00:36:06.990 --> 00:36:09.900
how the language of art operates.

00:36:09.900 --> 00:36:13.110
And in this case, you can see

00:36:13.110 --> 00:36:15.240
that he is looking

00:36:15.240 --> 00:36:19.440
not at these people.

00:36:19.440 --> 00:36:22.113
He is looking into the future.

00:36:22.980 --> 00:36:27.000
That's why his eyes are pointed away.

00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:31.980
My body is here, but my mind is liberated.

00:36:31.980 --> 00:36:34.910
And that's where he is.

00:36:34.910 --> 00:36:37.993
(gentle piano music)

00:36:46.991 --> 00:36:49.233
(gentle piano music continues)

00:36:49.233 --> 00:36:52.150
(crowd chattering)

00:36:53.596 --> 00:36:57.027
(crowd chattering)

00:37:07.470 --> 00:37:11.640
- Today is a good day, as hopeful as I am,

00:37:11.640 --> 00:37:13.803
to end white supremacy,

00:37:15.120 --> 00:37:19.530
to pay it forward to all of
us who are misrepresented

00:37:19.530 --> 00:37:22.203
and abused in those mural panels.

00:37:23.670 --> 00:37:26.220
We Indigenous people are not exotic people

00:37:26.220 --> 00:37:29.910
of paint and feathers to be ogled at.

00:37:29.910 --> 00:37:34.888
We are not savages and all
the real Indians are not dead.

00:37:34.888 --> 00:37:37.638
(crowd cheering)

00:37:38.700 --> 00:37:39.870
- My name is Tamaka.

00:37:39.870 --> 00:37:43.203
I'm a teacher of the
Oklahoma Choctaw language.

00:37:44.370 --> 00:37:46.770
I'm against taking those murals down

00:37:46.770 --> 00:37:49.320
for one reason and one reason only.

00:37:49.320 --> 00:37:52.380
Those murals are our visual history

00:37:52.380 --> 00:37:55.830
that a genocide was there.

00:37:55.830 --> 00:37:58.110
It shows it in those murals.

00:37:58.110 --> 00:38:02.910
To take those down, you're
taking a visual record away.

00:38:02.910 --> 00:38:06.750
- I am an upcoming junior at
George Washington High School.

00:38:06.750 --> 00:38:08.490
I believe that the school murals should be

00:38:08.490 --> 00:38:10.590
permanently removed from this high school.

00:38:10.590 --> 00:38:11.850
We deserve respect.

00:38:11.850 --> 00:38:13.830
We deserve to feel safe and supported.

00:38:13.830 --> 00:38:15.810
I don't want this mural in our school.

00:38:15.810 --> 00:38:17.610
Honor the vote, paint it down!

00:38:17.610 --> 00:38:18.836
Thank you for listening.

00:38:18.836 --> 00:38:21.586
(crowd cheering)

00:38:25.320 --> 00:38:26.610
- The School Board is entitled

00:38:26.610 --> 00:38:29.430
to cling to its deliberate
misinterpretation

00:38:29.430 --> 00:38:31.140
of Victor Arnautoff's work,

00:38:31.140 --> 00:38:35.490
but a wiser national public
knows how brave it is even today

00:38:35.490 --> 00:38:37.650
to acknowledge the exploitation

00:38:37.650 --> 00:38:40.920
upon which our nation was and is based.

00:38:40.920 --> 00:38:44.460
To constantly describe
our high school students

00:38:44.460 --> 00:38:46.140
as forever in need of protection

00:38:46.140 --> 00:38:49.140
from provocative ideas
is more obscene to me

00:38:49.140 --> 00:38:51.660
than anything you could put up on a wall.

00:38:51.660 --> 00:38:52.620
- I'm sorry;

00:38:52.620 --> 00:38:54.220
we are done with public comment.

00:38:55.680 --> 00:38:56.850
Commissioner Lopez.

00:38:56.850 --> 00:38:58.860
- I think I need to start by saying

00:38:58.860 --> 00:39:01.710
how exhausting it's
been hearing the months

00:39:01.710 --> 00:39:05.223
of arguments rooted in
white supremacy culture.

00:39:06.240 --> 00:39:09.780
As a classroom teacher, I'm
a teacher for social justice.

00:39:09.780 --> 00:39:13.140
Protecting property over people
is white supremacy culture.

00:39:13.140 --> 00:39:14.640
That's the bottom line.

00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:18.210
- It's not an undue term to use right now

00:39:18.210 --> 00:39:19.650
that this is reparations.

00:39:19.650 --> 00:39:24.540
That basically, basically,
if we can do our small part

00:39:24.540 --> 00:39:27.030
after offending not just one culture,

00:39:27.030 --> 00:39:29.520
but many cultures for 70 years

00:39:29.520 --> 00:39:31.443
with this mural or set of murals,

00:39:32.520 --> 00:39:35.160
it's about time that we
stood up and paid for it.

00:39:35.160 --> 00:39:37.230
And this is one way we can do it.

00:39:37.230 --> 00:39:39.540
- The discussion about the
Washington murals is relevant

00:39:39.540 --> 00:39:42.150
in that it is an effort by outside actors

00:39:42.150 --> 00:39:45.660
to dictate for our
children, mine included,

00:39:45.660 --> 00:39:49.080
what they should see and what
stories they should be told

00:39:49.080 --> 00:39:51.933
by people that aren't
from their community.

00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:55.110
This mural is not historic.

00:39:55.110 --> 00:39:56.460
It is a relic.

00:39:56.460 --> 00:39:59.010
It is a remnant from a bygone era.

00:39:59.010 --> 00:40:00.470
- It's like, I don't get it.

00:40:00.470 --> 00:40:03.750
I don't get why people are
like standing up for this.

00:40:03.750 --> 00:40:07.150
You know, like there are
Black and Brown boys dying

00:40:08.340 --> 00:40:12.180
and people are making
noise around, you know?

00:40:12.180 --> 00:40:13.410
And I was just confused.

00:40:13.410 --> 00:40:15.134
I was like, well, what are
we supposed to be doing?

00:40:15.134 --> 00:40:17.490
Is this a smoke screen?

00:40:17.490 --> 00:40:18.780
Is this the okey-doke?

00:40:18.780 --> 00:40:20.250
Like they say back in the hood,

00:40:20.250 --> 00:40:21.720
is this the okey-doke?

00:40:21.720 --> 00:40:24.060
Are we supposed to like
get caught up in all this,

00:40:24.060 --> 00:40:27.390
so we could really be
confused about the issues

00:40:27.390 --> 00:40:31.247
that are really impacting
our kids of color?

00:40:31.247 --> 00:40:33.300
- Ms. Caskill, roll call vote.

00:40:33.300 --> 00:40:35.310
- [Clerk] Clarification.

00:40:35.310 --> 00:40:39.000
Mr. Chairman, we are voting
on Mr. Sanchez's amendment,

00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:39.833
correct?
- Yes.

00:40:39.833 --> 00:40:42.330
- [Clerk] It's been
duly moved and seconded.

00:40:42.330 --> 00:40:43.530
Thank you.

00:40:43.530 --> 00:40:44.370
- Thank you.

00:40:44.370 --> 00:40:46.800
- [Clerk] Ms. Collins.
- Yes.

00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:48.450
- [Clerk] Ms. Lamb.
- Yes.

00:40:48.450 --> 00:40:49.980
- [Clerk] Ms. Lopez.
- Yes.

00:40:49.980 --> 00:40:51.660
- [Clerk] Mr. Moliga.
- Yes.

00:40:51.660 --> 00:40:52.500
- [Clerk] Ms. Norton.

00:40:52.500 --> 00:40:53.907
Mr. Sanchez.
- Yes.

00:40:53.907 --> 00:40:55.110
- [Clerk] And Mr. Cook.
- Yes.

00:40:55.110 --> 00:40:56.186
- [Clerk] It's six ayes.

00:40:56.186 --> 00:40:57.510
(crowd cheering)

00:40:57.510 --> 00:40:58.443
- Thank you.

00:40:58.443 --> 00:41:01.298
(crowd cheering)
(crowd chattering)

00:41:01.298 --> 00:41:04.048
(uneasy music)

00:41:13.928 --> 00:41:17.511
(uneasy music continues)

00:41:18.660 --> 00:41:20.940
- Well, the School Board of San Francisco,

00:41:20.940 --> 00:41:22.860
in their infinite lack of wisdom,

00:41:22.860 --> 00:41:25.800
decided that they were going
to get rid of these murals.

00:41:25.800 --> 00:41:28.500
They were going to rip those murals down,

00:41:28.500 --> 00:41:30.930
then they were going to paint
over them and God knows what,

00:41:30.930 --> 00:41:33.330
but they were going to
destroy them for all eternity.

00:41:33.330 --> 00:41:34.800
Where do we stand now?

00:41:34.800 --> 00:41:37.380
- We're still fighting, and our goal is

00:41:37.380 --> 00:41:39.540
to mobilize the community to say,

00:41:39.540 --> 00:41:41.310
don't cover them up.

00:41:41.310 --> 00:41:43.020
Let people see them.

00:41:43.020 --> 00:41:46.530
Let's build an educational
curriculum that responds to it.

00:41:46.530 --> 00:41:47.975
That's what we want to do.

00:41:47.975 --> 00:41:51.558
(uneasy music continues)

00:41:59.475 --> 00:42:03.058
(uneasy music continues)

00:42:11.730 --> 00:42:13.301
- I wanna state from the outset

00:42:13.301 --> 00:42:16.260
that this is not a debate.

00:42:16.260 --> 00:42:18.960
This is a forum to sum up where we go

00:42:18.960 --> 00:42:21.510
from the point of the
School Board's decision

00:42:21.510 --> 00:42:24.153
to destroy the 13-panel mural.

00:42:25.530 --> 00:42:29.160
Looking specifically at
George Washington High School,

00:42:29.160 --> 00:42:31.080
I'm not without sympathy

00:42:31.080 --> 00:42:34.440
for those who say the images
in the mural are hurtful;

00:42:34.440 --> 00:42:38.910
however, these feelings
do not justify censorship.

00:42:38.910 --> 00:42:42.720
What is behind trying to pit
seemingly progressive allies

00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:44.220
against each other?

00:42:44.220 --> 00:42:47.404
This is identity politics
gone off the rails.

00:42:47.404 --> 00:42:50.321
(crowd applauding)

00:42:53.250 --> 00:42:55.770
- Victor Arnautoff was one

00:42:55.770 --> 00:43:00.210
of the most prolific New Deal
artists in San Francisco.

00:43:00.210 --> 00:43:03.660
In all of the large murals at
George Washington High School,

00:43:03.660 --> 00:43:06.780
Arnautoff presented a counter-narrative

00:43:06.780 --> 00:43:09.600
to the prevailing high
school textbooks of the day.

00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:11.414
- [Protester] Why do you
think it's important...

00:43:11.414 --> 00:43:12.604
- [Crowd] No! No!

00:43:12.604 --> 00:43:14.426
- You are disrupting.
- [Crowd] Shame!

00:43:14.426 --> 00:43:15.543
- You are disrupting.

00:43:15.543 --> 00:43:18.771
- [Crowd] Shame, shame, shame, shame!

00:43:18.771 --> 00:43:20.597
- Get out.
- Get out.

00:43:20.597 --> 00:43:21.807
- Get out!
- Get out!

00:43:21.807 --> 00:43:23.873
- You are opposed to education,

00:43:23.873 --> 00:43:25.290
you are a censor,

00:43:25.290 --> 00:43:26.911
you are a totalitarian-

00:43:26.911 --> 00:43:28.674
- Why are you censoring the words

00:43:28.674 --> 00:43:31.328
that I was speaking of
Native American students

00:43:31.328 --> 00:43:33.561
directly impacted by this mural?

00:43:33.561 --> 00:43:37.230
- They don't have a rational argument.

00:43:37.230 --> 00:43:39.630
That is their argument to disrupt.

00:43:39.630 --> 00:43:41.460
- I'm a licensed psychologist.

00:43:41.460 --> 00:43:43.500
The trauma is real.

00:43:43.500 --> 00:43:45.930
Why don't you believe the trauma is real?

00:43:45.930 --> 00:43:49.080
My daughter can't go there.

00:43:49.080 --> 00:43:51.810
Why don't you believe,
answer the question!

00:43:51.810 --> 00:43:53.130
- Get the hell out of here!

00:43:53.130 --> 00:43:54.810
You came to disrupt.

00:43:54.810 --> 00:43:55.643
You came to disrupt.

00:43:55.643 --> 00:43:58.319
- I came to tell you that the trauma

00:43:58.319 --> 00:44:00.145
- of my daughter-
- Out! Out! Out!

00:44:00.145 --> 00:44:01.513
- Genocide!
- Out! Out! Out!

00:44:01.513 --> 00:44:02.753
- Genocide!
- Out! Out! Out!

00:44:02.753 --> 00:44:03.898
- Genocide!
- Out! Out! Out!

00:44:03.898 --> 00:44:05.177
- Genocide!
- Out! Out! Out!

00:44:05.177 --> 00:44:06.547
- Genocide!
- Out! Out! Out!

00:44:06.547 --> 00:44:09.214
(crowd yelling)

00:44:18.713 --> 00:44:22.410
- I think if people assert
something is triggering,

00:44:22.410 --> 00:44:24.210
if they feel like they are personally hurt

00:44:24.210 --> 00:44:26.010
by a presentation

00:44:26.010 --> 00:44:28.740
or an image, you can't debate that.

00:44:28.740 --> 00:44:30.820
You have to accept that that's how

00:44:32.160 --> 00:44:34.050
that individual feels.

00:44:34.050 --> 00:44:37.350
At some point, the intentions
of the artist don't matter.

00:44:37.350 --> 00:44:39.450
It's about how it's received.

00:44:39.450 --> 00:44:41.250
It's in the world.

00:44:41.250 --> 00:44:46.250
And I think the idea of it
being something to teach,

00:44:46.950 --> 00:44:49.790
you know, I feel like those are...

00:44:51.030 --> 00:44:52.380
It's like the idea of nuance;

00:44:52.380 --> 00:44:54.963
it's sort of a quaint notion now.

00:44:57.900 --> 00:45:02.010
- The definition of trauma
is that it is a repetition

00:45:02.010 --> 00:45:04.530
and sometimes the outright repetition

00:45:04.530 --> 00:45:06.420
of the violent event itself.

00:45:06.420 --> 00:45:09.930
Sometimes it's the
internalized repetition,

00:45:09.930 --> 00:45:12.210
the way that we see something happening

00:45:12.210 --> 00:45:13.920
again and again in our mind's eye.

00:45:13.920 --> 00:45:17.100
And I think for urban Indigenous people

00:45:17.100 --> 00:45:21.780
it's seeing a person's name
on a school that you go to,

00:45:21.780 --> 00:45:24.960
the courthouse that you
have to go do jury duty at,

00:45:24.960 --> 00:45:26.760
and knowing that history,

00:45:26.760 --> 00:45:28.890
and sometimes being the only
person that knows that history

00:45:28.890 --> 00:45:30.240
or feeling like you're the only person

00:45:30.240 --> 00:45:31.740
that knows that history,

00:45:31.740 --> 00:45:33.420
that I think exacerbates a trauma

00:45:33.420 --> 00:45:34.620
over and over and over again.

00:45:34.620 --> 00:45:36.300
It can seem mundane.

00:45:36.300 --> 00:45:39.480
It can seem like I'm just
walking into a building,

00:45:39.480 --> 00:45:41.370
but it's the cumulation of these things

00:45:41.370 --> 00:45:44.493
that can, I think, over
time lead to traumatization.

00:45:45.450 --> 00:45:47.400
And I think it's important to realize

00:45:47.400 --> 00:45:49.920
that these things aren't benign.

00:45:49.920 --> 00:45:52.203
Cumulatively, they can lead to real harm.

00:45:53.640 --> 00:45:56.640
- Indigenous activists have
I think a really powerful

00:45:56.640 --> 00:45:58.470
and compelling point

00:45:58.470 --> 00:46:01.833
about the way the mural
depicts Indigenous people.

00:46:03.960 --> 00:46:08.010
But we have to be really
careful and judicious

00:46:08.010 --> 00:46:10.830
about what we identify
as traumatizing or not.

00:46:10.830 --> 00:46:15.300
Trauma becomes the easy way

00:46:15.300 --> 00:46:20.300
to justify the erasure of
things you just don't like.

00:46:20.656 --> 00:46:23.820
(birds chirping)

00:46:23.820 --> 00:46:25.710
- I think this notion
of protecting children

00:46:25.710 --> 00:46:28.230
from their own histories
and their own traumas,

00:46:28.230 --> 00:46:30.360
I think it's an important one to consider.

00:46:30.360 --> 00:46:33.460
But at the same time,
it's really important

00:46:34.380 --> 00:46:37.230
to give people the opportunity
to know their own histories

00:46:37.230 --> 00:46:41.520
and to know where their own
traumas might come from.

00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:44.160
And it depends on what
children you're protecting.

00:46:44.160 --> 00:46:45.560
I grew up in public housing.

00:46:46.650 --> 00:46:48.300
I witnessed drug abuse.

00:46:48.300 --> 00:46:49.740
I witnessed gang violence.

00:46:49.740 --> 00:46:54.740
I witnessed people being shot,
I witnessed police brutality.

00:46:54.930 --> 00:46:56.790
My family was a victim
of police brutality.

00:46:56.790 --> 00:46:59.703
I lost an uncle to police violence.

00:47:02.370 --> 00:47:05.370
Is a depiction of
violence going to shock me

00:47:05.370 --> 00:47:07.440
or traumatize me further?

00:47:07.440 --> 00:47:10.530
No, it's going to affirm my experience.

00:47:10.530 --> 00:47:12.030
And it's going to let me know

00:47:12.030 --> 00:47:13.890
that there's a historical
precedent for this,

00:47:13.890 --> 00:47:16.500
and this is something
that should be addressed.

00:47:16.500 --> 00:47:18.480
These images motivated me

00:47:18.480 --> 00:47:22.470
to go out into the streets
to protest and to understand

00:47:22.470 --> 00:47:25.200
that it wasn't just me
that this was happening to.

00:47:25.200 --> 00:47:26.370
It wasn't just my neighborhood.

00:47:26.370 --> 00:47:29.800
It wasn't just my family, but
this was a systemic issue.

00:47:29.800 --> 00:47:32.883
(soft ambient music)

00:47:38.850 --> 00:47:41.767
(crowd chattering)

00:47:49.122 --> 00:47:53.039
(soft ambient music continues)

00:48:01.470 --> 00:48:03.780
- It breaks my heart to think
about painting them over,

00:48:03.780 --> 00:48:06.630
because I think they are
stunning works of art.

00:48:06.630 --> 00:48:09.810
And I don't know if I would
want to paint them over,

00:48:09.810 --> 00:48:11.756
but I definitely think that

00:48:11.756 --> 00:48:14.943
the difficult material should
be covered from students.

00:48:17.820 --> 00:48:19.380
I think it's a difficult question,

00:48:19.380 --> 00:48:22.173
and I don't know what side
I actually come down on.

00:48:24.900 --> 00:48:28.473
- Art is a extraordinary,

00:48:29.490 --> 00:48:32.820
extraordinary and powerful instrument.

00:48:32.820 --> 00:48:36.600
And that's why it's always difficult,

00:48:36.600 --> 00:48:40.050
because art gets in the mind,

00:48:40.050 --> 00:48:42.043
it deals with the mind.

00:48:42.043 --> 00:48:44.960
(crowd chattering)

00:48:50.002 --> 00:48:51.807
(camera clicking)

00:48:51.807 --> 00:48:54.890
(gentle piano music)

00:49:15.246 --> 00:49:19.163
(gentle piano music continues)

00:49:26.479 --> 00:49:30.396
(gentle piano music continues)

00:49:33.660 --> 00:49:35.760
- We are changing the narrative.

00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:37.380
We're not going to stand for imagery

00:49:37.380 --> 00:49:40.143
that perpetuates the
idea that we're defeated.

00:49:41.520 --> 00:49:43.770
We will probably likely
have this conversation

00:49:43.770 --> 00:49:45.030
for another couple of decades

00:49:45.030 --> 00:49:49.792
until there is something more
permanent done to address it.

00:49:49.792 --> 00:49:54.792
(gentle piano music continues)

00:50:04.140 --> 00:50:07.170
- What we do with these murals,
what we do with these names,

00:50:07.170 --> 00:50:08.730
what we do with these institutions needs

00:50:08.730 --> 00:50:11.280
to be part of a longer process

00:50:11.280 --> 00:50:13.680
of restitution, of reparations,

00:50:13.680 --> 00:50:16.230
of understanding how we
can be better relatives

00:50:16.230 --> 00:50:17.550
to each other.

00:50:17.550 --> 00:50:20.490
- It's not about choosing a side.

00:50:20.490 --> 00:50:21.960
You know, we are taught

00:50:21.960 --> 00:50:23.580
that there are two sides to every story.

00:50:23.580 --> 00:50:25.290
There's not two sides.

00:50:25.290 --> 00:50:27.720
There are multiple perspectives.

00:50:27.720 --> 00:50:29.310
The truth of the matter is that

00:50:29.310 --> 00:50:31.710
no one person can tell the story,

00:50:31.710 --> 00:50:33.780
no one group could tell the story.

00:50:33.780 --> 00:50:36.200
Every story that we tell is incomplete.

00:50:42.170 --> 00:50:45.837
(upbeat instrumental music)

00:50:54.593 --> 00:50:56.993
(upbeat instrumental music continues)

00:51:07.254 --> 00:51:11.754
(upbeat instrumental music continues)

00:52:09.749 --> 00:52:14.249
(upbeat instrumental music continues)

00:52:34.728 --> 00:52:39.728
(upbeat instrumental music fading out)