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CV Equity Team » Past History & Heritage Messages

Past History & Heritage Messages

FROM NOVEMBER 2022
 
As CVUHSD continues its growth as an equitable organization, it is essential that we see and honor one another beyond stereotyping media representations and "historical" accounts that are incorrect, incomplete, and untrustworthy.
 
This November, please join us in learning more about the histories and cultures of the diverse peoples who once inhabited the Americas in numbers we will likely never know because of the history of extermination, removal, theft, betrayal, and abandonment intentionally perpetrated against them by colonizing forces in the form of foreign and domestic agents, as well as state and individual actors. 
 
According to Dr. Jared T. Stokes, Public Health Advisor, Office of Tribal Affairs, as of last year, there were
 
574 federally recognized Tribes in the United States. 
However, numerous others are still advocating for recognition. 
Although many Native Americans still reside on reservations, approximately 71 percent live in metropolitan areas. 
To date, Tribal citizens constitute about 2.5 percent of the total U.S. population. 
Despite [Indigenous peoples]/Alaska Natives living among the larger society, 
much of their history has been forgotten or overlooked.
 
In CV, however, we can choose to learn, remember, and teach.
 
 
NATIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH 
RESOURCES YOU MAY FIND ILLUMINATING AND USEFUL
 
1) National Native American Heritage Month Slide Deck-Equity Team Workshop 2021
 
2) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS_The First Peoples of California
 
3) FILM WEBSITE & LIST OF SCREENINGS_Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting
 
4) AUDIO & VIDEO RESOURCES_Native American Heritage Month
 
5) IG REEL_A Brief Introduction to the Native People of Martha's Vineyard
 
 
 
 
 
 
FROM OCTOBER 2022
 
CVUHSD Family:
 
Today, California is home to 1.5 million Filipino Americans and boasts the largest Filipino American population within the US. 
 
The month of October is dedicated to the celebration of Filipino American History. According to the Filipino American National Historical Society, the year 2022 brings together several important milestones, as noted on the card above, along with the commemoration of the day, 433 years ago, when Filipino sailors mandated into the Spanish navy stepped onto the California shore at Morro Bay from aboard the vessel, Nuestra Senora de Esperanza, on October 18, 1587. 
 
The first permanent settlement of Filipino immigrants was forged on the banks of Louisiana's swampy Lake Borgne around 1763. These marshlands had long been favored by "maroons" (Blackfolks freeing themselves from the condition of slavery to live independently in fiercely protected settlements), as well as small bands of outlaws of various backgrounds, including by some accounts, Filipino sailors who freed themselves from forced service in the Spanish navy. The difficult terrain and relentless mosquitoes made the area a reliable refuge from most pursuers. Filipino immigrants, or the "Manilamen," as they were then called, settled the area and built its reputation as a fishing village. 
 
Although Filipino sailors stopped in California in the late 1500s, there is no record of Filipino residence in the state until 1781. Antonio Miranda Rodriguez, categorized in the census as "Chino," was initially a member of the multiracial, multiethnic expedition that would found El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles, the Spanish settlement which would become Los Angeles. (It is critical, of course, to note the existence of the many diverse Indigenous peoples who had lived in this region, all over the continent, and throughout the Americas for up to thousands of years before the arrival of European colonizers, including the Spanish, who violently usurped ancestral and unceded lands, plundered resources, and inflicted permanent injury on Native bodies, lives, and cultures.)
 
When El Pueblo de Los Angeles was actually established, however, Miranda Rodriguez was not present. His daughter had contracted smallpox, and he opted to remain in Loreto for two years, finding employment as a gunsmith. He never made it all the way to Los Angeles, in fact. He was instead assigned to the Spanish military fort at Santa Barbara, and served as its armorer.
 
In 1992, the late Dr. Fred Cordova and his wife, Dr. Dorothy Laigo Cordova, founders of the Filipino American National Historical Society, introduced a resolution from the FANHS Board of Trustees which dedicated October to the celebration of the Filipino American identity. A decade later, in 2009, the US Congress officially recognized the celebration.
 
The CVUHSD Equity Team wishes everyone a very happy and enlightening Filipino American History Month!
 
Links to Learn More:
FROM OCTOBER 2022
 
Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day 2022, CV Family!
 
Today, we direct our attention to the Americas as the original and rightful home of diverse Native peoples and cultures. In doing so, we must acknowledge the longstanding, intentional infliction of violence, trauma, and injustice upon these peoples, their lands, and their lifeways by governmental and individual agents. We can never ignore the unsavory realities of Indigenous displacement, death, impoverishment, and in too many cases, complete extinction, which these actors catalyzed.
 
Below are some resources you may find helpful for your own knowledge and for sharing with others. Please look forward to more resources in a couple of weeks for Native American Heritage Month! 
 
FROM JANUARY 2023
 
The beginning of "I Have a Dream" just doesn't get the attention that the pinnacle of the speech does, but it contains a frank demand that rings remarkably contemporary, even some 59 years later. In the opening paragraphs of the legendary speech, King compares this country's failure to make good on its debts to Black citizens to a "promissory note" in default. 
 
His rhetorical approach here, though not the soaring oratory we associate with the most famous bits of his speeches and sermons, is nonetheless crafted to land with impact. He launches the comparison pulling no punches. "In a sense," he states plainly, "we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check." King's demand is for justice, or for equity, as we might say today. By identifying the particular injustice reserved for formerly enslaved people and their descendants and by unflinchingly presenting a reparative course of action, King reveals himself as a key architect of "equity" as we know it today.
 
Though the term, "equality," was much more in use in King's day, a look at his approach throughout his public life provides evidence that it was deeply anchored in equitable practices. Traveling from community to community, King routinely held town halls and open forums in which he could hear directly from residents about the specific harms they were suffering. Whether he was joining with Black Alabamians to desegregate public transit in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, or leading 250,000 folks from all over the country in 1963's March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom, or railing against the expansion of the US military complex and its predation on the nation's poor youth of all backgrounds in 1967, or taking up the cause of 13,000 horribly exploited Black sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968, King made sure to listen to people, to understand their needs, and to develop effective campaigns to wrest justice from the powerful, the willfully ignorant, and the hateful. He understood that there was no magic involved: "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle."
 
The CVUHSD Equity Team salutes Dr. King not only as a "drum major for peace...and for righteousness," and not only as someone who "tried to give his life serving others," but also as a major forerunner in the work for equity which calls us today. 
 
And let us not forget that the ultimate purpose of equity is the freedom to pursue health and happiness in dignity and safety. The true purpose of equity is liberation. Dr. King reminds us even now: "There is nothing greater in all the world than freedom. It's worth going to jail for. It's worth losing a job for. It's worth dying for. My friends, go out this evening determined to achieve this freedom which God wants for all of His children."  
 
 
Some Resources: