Los Angeles plans to remove Father Junipero Serra’s name from a downtown park across the street from Union Station.
As part of Los Angeles’ work to reckon with mistakes and wrongdoings in the city’s history, officials made the announcement on Monday, Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the city of Los Angeles. The park will be called La Plaza Park until a new name is officially adopted.
Serra was a Catholic priest from Spain who established California’s mission system and sought to baptize Native Americans. His sainthood in 2015 was protested by Native Americans, citing that indigenous people were brutalized, beaten and forced into labor for the missions.
“Los Angeles is a city of belonging that takes responsibility for the mistakes we’ve made in the past,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said. “Our indigenous brothers and sisters deserve justice and today we take a step toward delivering both greater cultural sensitivity and spaces for Angelenos to gather and perform their traditional ceremonies.”
A statue of Father Serra was toppled at the park during protests in June 2020.
The city will also work to establish an Indigenous Cultural Easement at the park, located at 540 N. Los Angeles St., as well as other areas across Los Angeles, to give local indigenous people spaces to practice traditional ceremonies.
There are 160,000 members of the American Indian and Alaska Native communities in Los Angeles, the most of any urban area in the nation, according
to a motion that Councilman Mitch O’Farrell introduced in June, aimed at having
the city begin steps to issue a formal apology to its indigenous communities.
The Indigenous Cultural Easement was recommended by the Civic Memory Working Group, which Garcetti convened in November 2019. The group — made up
of over 40 historians, architects, artists, indigenous leaders, city officials, scholars and cultural leaders — worked with community leaders, including LA City/County Native American Indian Commission’s Executive Director Alexandra Valdes, to create civic memory recommendations in its 166-page report.
“All land is indigenous,” said O’Farrell, who is a member of the Wyandotte Nation. “With the Indigenous Land Initiative, for the first time ever, we are putting Native American communities at the center of decision-making on issues related to our history and our future.”
