Junipero Serra's (1713-1784) establishment of the Mission System in Spanish California brought untold suffering to the Indigenous peoples of Coastal and Central California who were often held against their wills.

Many of the Indigenous people interned at California Missions were brought there forcefully and without consent. According to Padre José Altimíra, Padre Narciso Durán of Mission San José "was in the habit of making raids for converts... forcibly seizing [Indigenous people], and even killing those who resisted." Another account details how an Indigenous woman was shot and killed "while running away" from one of these raids "with [her son] in her arms."

At the missions, Indigenous people were often brutalized and tortured. A number of primary accounts from both Indigenous and European sources attest to padres' routine whipping of Indigenous men, women, and "Even...little children of 8-10 years." One woman from Mission Santa Ines reported her grandmother had been "whipped ‘till her buttocks crawled with maggots" after escaping from the mission. Another man who "ran away to escape dying of hunger as his mother, two brothers, and three nephews had done... [was] subsequently sentenced... to receive from 25 to 75 lashes and to work in shackles at the presidio from two months to a year."

Missions were also home to routine and systemic sexual violence. Many of these crimes were committed in the missions' monjerios—locked dormitories where young women were held against their wills. An account from Mission San Buenaventura, for instance, details how one priest regularly visited the monjerio raping the imprisoned women and girls one at a time. Another account details how Indigenous Ipai and Tipai people would often "go to the woods and experience hunger...so that the soldiers [at Mission San Diego de Alcalá  would] not rape their women as they have already done so many times in the past." 

Speaking of the Mission System and 2015 canonization of Junipero Serra, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (whose ancestors were interned at Missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista ) wrote "our current Tribal members continue to suffer from the impact of cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, which is otherwise known as historic trauma... It is incomprehensible for us to think that you would canonize [Junipero Serra]."

Speaking of her support for the removal of statues of Serra, Mendivil Salazar of the Akimel O'odham and Yaqui nations stated: "Seeing a statue on traditional territories where trauma occurred is painful, It rips [Indigenous] people apart."

While it is too late to hold Serra and his fellow padres responsible for the atrocities they committed against the Indigenous peoples of California, it is not too late to end our deification and romanticization of them and their missions. We owe it to both the individuals interned at the missions and their living descendants.

We are thus calling on you to begin the process of removing the statues of Junipero Serra at Santa Clara University, Junipero Serra High School, and on Interstate 280 outside the city of Hillsborough in addition to changing of the name of Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo and Junipero Serra Boulevard. It is imperative that this process is undertaken in close communication with representatives of the local Ohlone community whose ancestral homelands encompass modern San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.