Protecting Immigrants

Photography Courtesy of Julian Lucas
Originally Published for Vice Media ©2014

There are some very good bills just introduced in the California Assembly and Senate seeking to provide some protection for immigrants. California’s AB 49 and SB 48 aim to keep federal agents from detaining undocumented students or their families on or near school property without a warrant. While these bills, if passed, would not override federal law, they would work to make it safer for children of immigrants to attend school by making it harder and more time-consuming for agents to enter schools or daycare centers. It is limited—it would delay arrests, though it would not stop them.

In 2014, Murrieta, California, became the site of intense protests as demonstrators clashed over the arrival of buses carrying immigrant families. Protesters held signs with messages like “Save our children from diseases” and “U.S. citizens don’t get a free pass—why should illegals?” These slogans reflected the fear and resistance some Americans feel toward undocumented immigration, even as immigrant families seek safety and stability. That divide remains stark today.

It is important to keep students in school learning, documented or undocumented—not only for their future but for ours as well. Education is one of the most effective tools to create opportunity and stability, both for individuals and for communities as a whole.

There is also the fiscal side of things to consider. Right now (this changes in 2026), the money our schools receive is tied to attendance. Fear of detention or deportation discourages parents from sending their children to school, which not only disrupts their education but also puts school funding at risk.

Currently, 12% of California students have at least one undocumented parent. These children are part of our community and deserve access to a safe and stable education.

Contact your California Senator or Assembly member and ask for their support for AB 49 and SB 48. President Trump intends to “make good” on his campaign promises. Californians need to step up and do what we can.

Update: as of late Tuesday, January 21, 2015, the Trump administration has, according to Newsweek, " reversed longstanding policies that restricted immigration enforcement at sensitive locations such as schools, churches, and hospitals."

Find Your California Representatives
California Legislative Information

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Pamela Casey Nagler is currently finishing her book, A Century of Disgrace: The Removal, Enslavement, and Massacre of California’s Indigenous People 1769 - 1869.

Virulent Racism and the Valley's First Settlers

Sadly, when reviewing the white history of the Pomona Valley, it pretty much always arcs back to a virulent racism.

By Pamela Casey Nagler

Agricultural laborers
Eagle Rock, California 1901-1910

Los Angeles Public Library Legacy Photo Collection

Published 10/30/2023 | 1:14pm PST

William T. "Tooch" Martin has generally been touted as the first Anglo settler of Claremont. On June 5, 2023, local historian John Neiuber wrote in the local Claremont Courier:

"Which brings me to William “Tooch” Martin, known as the first Anglo settler in Claremont . . . William T. “Tooch” Martin was a justice of the peace, civic leader, and Los Angeles County Supervisor. Tooch purchased 160 acres in Claremont that he farmed and where he built a house for his wife and seven children near Indian Hill and 11th Street. He was first a teacher, then justice of the peace, founded the Masonic Lodge in Pomona, was a civic leader, and was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.”

Unfortunately, as it turns out, Tooch Martin, led a vicious anti-Chinese campaign in Pomona.

The Progress, the local newspaper of the Pomona Valley of Feb. 25, 1886, urged everyone to join in supporting “the policy of boycotting Chinese manufacturers, labor and industry of all kinds.” The newspaper claimed that by neither buying from nor hiring Chinese, residents would find “an effective cure of the Asiatic curse.”

A couple of days later, The Progress reported that on Feb. 27, most of the leaders of the then-unincorporated community convened on a Saturday night to form the Pomona Branch of the Anti-Chinese Association.

Led by the future Los Angeles County Supervisor William T. “Tooch” Martin as chairman, the organization authored a pledge urging every resident to sign and affirm that “I am in favor of all lawful means for the expulsion of the Chinese from the Pacific Coast, and I hereby pledge myself that I will not employ Chinamen directly or indirectly nor purchase the produce of Chinese labor.”

According to an April 7, 2014 article written by Joe Blackstone and printed in the Daily Bulletin, titled, Anti-Chinese hysteria enveloped Pomona in mid-1880s, “one action taken in 1886 encouraged employers of Chinese laborers to find ‘competent white labor’ by turning to a group called the White Labor Bureau.

Photo attributed to William T. “Tooch” Martin, though some people have questioned this attribution. The photo appears to be a picture of a mountain man in his hunting lodge at Mt. Baldy, whereas Los Angeles County Supervisor Martin was generally viewed as more urbane than that.

On April 8, the Progress reported that the Anti-Chinese Association’s steam laundry committee had met and determined $5,000 would be required to open such a plant in Pomona. Steps were to be taken to sell 500 shares of the future business at $10 each.

Martin and businessman W.R. Carter joined W.F. Reynolds in a project to cultivate an extensive garden to raise vegetables to sell to the community. Reynolds would provide the land, allowing residents to avoid buying vegetables grown by the ‘Mongolians,’ as the Progress called them.

Ultimately, for obvious reasons, Pomona’s Chinese population soon went elsewhere, its abandoned shacks between First and Second streets later removed.”

The Progress reported that on April 15, 1886, “one of our leading Chinese, ”Ah Wong, pointed out what he saw as the real cause for the conflict - US citizens wanted the Chinese to cross the Pacific Ocean to labor for them, but the US citizens did not want the Chinese to live among them. Wong said,

“It is not the fault of the Chinaman. It is American man’s fault. American man sell steamboat ticket (to Chinese). It makes him dollars. American man likes those dollars. Chinaman likes to work. American man likes cheap-working man, It is not the fault of the Chinaman; it is the big fault of American man. American man likes dollars, also does Chinaman. You understand?”

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LINKS
Anti Chinese Hysteria Enveloped Pomona in Mid 1880s
Village parking, ‘Tooch’ Martin, and the end of Claremont

Pamela Casey Nagler is currently finishing her book, A Century of Disgrace: The Removal, Enslavement, and Massacre of California’s Indigenous People 1769 - 1869.

Genocide Explained: A History of the Term

Illustration by Julian Lucas

By Pamela Casey Nagler
Published 10/21/2023 | 10:37am PST

“a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups” - Rafael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who coined the term, genocide, and lobbied tirelessly for international law to cover the destruction of groups.

The word, genocide repeated often, in various contexts, has a distinct meaning and a distinct history. 

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, coined the term in 1943 from genos (Greek for family, tribe or race) and cide (Latin for killing), as a reaction to the Armenian Genocide in WWI and the Holocaust or atrocities in Axis-occupied Europe during WWII - the Nazi regime’s treatment of Poles and Jews - but it was intended to be extrapolated to cover many other situations including the European conquests in the Americas that began in the 1490s. 

Lemkin defined genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole, or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group:

"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation.

It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization by the oppressor's own nationals.”

According to Lemkin, genocide can refer to mass killing, but it also refers to such coordinated actions as removal and assimilation, the threat to the security of a people and their exposure to substandard living conditions. Genocide refers to government-sanctioned activity, rather than the act of independent individuals against other individuals.

In 1947, the Secretary General of the newly formed United Nations, pursuant to its Economic and Security Council Resolutions, assigned Lemkin to head a committee charged with drafting a law to define, prevent and punish the crime of genocide. As the head of the Committee, Lemkin clarified, and expanded, who was protected under his definition of genocide. Formerly, he had referred to “national” or “oppressed” groups, but he updated his list to include “racial, national, linguistic, religious, political” groups - with economic groups implied.  

Lemkin defined policies as genocidal if they worked for the destruction of a group and/or prevented the preservation and development of the group. He characterized genocidal policy in three interrelated ways: physical, biological and cultural - not arranged in any particular hierarchical order.

According to Lemkin’s definition, physical genocide included more than outright and direct extermination, but also including “slow-death measures” such as, subjection to conditions like improper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care; excessive work likely to result in debilitation or death; mutilations and biological experiments for other than curative purposes; deprivation of the means of livelihood by confiscation and looting, curtailment of work; denial of housing and supplies otherwise attainable to other inhabitants of the territory.

He defined biological genocide as including involuntary sterilization, compulsory abortion, segregation of the sexes or other obstacles to marriage as well as other policies that were intended to prevent births within a target group.

He defined cultural genocide as the imposition of an alien national pattern on a target group, and he included all policies aimed at destroying how a group defines themselves, forcing them to become something else. Among these destructive acts, he included the forced transfer of children; the forced and systematic exile of individuals who represented the group; the prohibition of the use of a language; the systematic destruction of books printed in the national language; the disruption of religious works; the prohibition of new publications; the systematic destruction of national or religious monuments (or their diversion to alien uses); and the destruction or dispersion of objects of historical, artistic, or religious value including objects used in religious worship.

Lemkin’s draft, submitted initially to the UN’s Economic and Social Council,  was eventually reviewed by a seven-member committee. The delegate from the Soviet Union managed to have political groups removed from the list, while the delegate from the United States managed to eliminate or ‘gut’ the cultural genocide category for obvious reasons - it stood as an indictment of the way the US Government had treated, and continued to treat Indigenous People. In spite of these revisions, the final draft, though diluted, still retained many of Lemkin’s original ideas.  

The 1948 United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history, but now places the crime of genocide under the jurisdiction of international law. Its Second Article defines the crime of genocide as occurring if any of the “following acts were committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” It included killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

According to the UN, persons - rulers, public officials or private individuals - committing these crimes could be punished. 

Since the 1940s, others have suggested other kinds of genocide - mathematical or bureaucratic genocide and environmental genocide. Mathematical or bureaucratic genocide refers to the deliberate miscounting of numbers of people affected and environmental genocide as a result of local, unwanted land use (LULU). 

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Pamela Casey Nagler is currently finishing her book, A Century of Disgrace: The Removal, Enslavement, and Massacre of California’s Indigenous People 1769 - 1869.

Thanksgiving: Countries Are Built Both on Myth and Reality

This engraving, depicting a scene from the Pequot War, shows a militia as they attack and ultimately set fire to an encampment that belonged to the Pequots, in what became Mystic, Conn., 1637. Bettmann

By Pamela Nagler
Published 11/21/2022 12:00 Am PST
Updated 11/22/2022 9:41 Am PST

Whereas Columbus’ so-called ‘discovery’ of America has become our nation’s creation myth, a feast between Pilgrims and Native Americans has become our nation’s covenant myth. We repeat it, reenact it, celebrate it as Thanksgiving because it tells us that there was some kind of tacit agreement between Indigenous nations and the English colonists, though this is not the truth.

The true story of Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower and the Pilgrims began a few years before they arrived in 1620. Previous to colonization, European fisherman, explorers and slave traders had already visited the continent’s east coast. The true story of the European invasion did not begin as a story of fellowship, but rather a story of captivity and plague. 

Before Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, English enslavers had kidnapped Squanto, actually named Tisquantum, a Paxtuxet Native from the region. They took him and a handful of others to England to labor and be viewed as an oddity. While in Europe, a disease killed his people - likely imported by the Europeans - possibly smallpox or a parasitic disease brought by the rats that the Europeans brought with them. When Tisquantum returned to his homeland, he returned to find that his entire population of his village were dead, and that he was the last living Paxtuxet.

Tisquantum became extremely important for the Pilgrims - along with the Wampanoag. It is unlikely that the Pilgrims could have survived without the support of him along with the support of the Wampanoag nation. Tisquantum surprised the Pilgrims with his ability to speak English, and he quickly became their ally, serving as their guide, interpreter and teacher. He taught them how to plant corn with fish for manure. He taught them the best locations to catch fish, and guided them to other sites that helped them survive. He helped them trade with other indigenous peoples.

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had been rough for the Pilgrims. On the way, they became sick with various diseases, including scurvy. Less than half survived, and only four women. Though they landed in late fall, most did not emerge from the ship until March. Those who could, took care of the sick. 

The Pilgrims had few good reports to send back to England.
However, about a year after the Mayflower landed, in December of 1621, Pilgrim leader Edward Winslow submitted a brief report of a feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag to their investors, the London Company, back in England:

“And God be praised, we had a good increase . . . Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling; that so we might, after a more special manner, rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. They four, in one day, killed as much fowl as, with a little help besides, served the Company almost a week. 

 At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our Arms; many of the Indians coming amongst us. ‘And amongst the rest, their greatest King, Massasoyt, with some ninety men; whom, for three days, we entertained and feasted. And they went out, and killed five deer: which they brought to the Plantation; and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain, and others . . . These things I thought good to let you understand . . . that you might on our behalf give God thanks who hath dealt so favourably with us.” Hanc

There were clear motives behind Winslow’s description of a bountiful harvest, a successful hunt and a three-day feast with friendly Indians. It was embedded in a report to convince investors back in England that the Colony was a worthy investment in spite of the many, dismal reports of sickness, death and hardship.

However, this momentary peaceful event belies the truth. Relations between the Indigenous people of this region and the Pilgrims quickly disintegrated into fierce and extirpative warfare that set the stage for even more extirpative warfare in the future.

Shortly after this feast, the Pilgrims began constructing a palisade for self-defense against the Native Americans. By February of 1622, the colonists had constructed a stockade eight feet high and twenty-seven hundred feet long that ringed their entire settlement that they had built on top of the hill. In the next year, they expanded this fort, adding six cannons. 

That year, 1623, the Pilgrims heard rumors that their Native American neighbors planned to attack them, so they attacked first. They invited the Massachusett men to a “peaceful summit,” and proceeded to ambush, poison and murder them. The Pilgrims cut off one of the warrior’s heads, and brought it back to their fort for public display, along with a flag drenched in “Indian blood.”

In 1630, even more English colonists arrived - a whole different group of Puritans - and not long after, in 1636, war, the Pequot War, broke out between the newly-arrived and the Native Americans.

Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford wrote about a major battle within  this war, the Mystic Massacre, in which few indigenous people escaped. Some 400 -700 Native Americans were  either roasted in a fire that the Pilgrims set, or they were hacked by swords:

“Those that scraped [escaped] the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw [run through] with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escapted. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. 

It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie.” 114, Stannard

In spite of the sheer numbers of murdered Natives, the rivers of blood and the stench, Mayor Governor Bradford considered it a “sweet sacrifice.”

After this, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop reported: “There was a day of Thanksgiving kept in all the churches for the victory obtained against the Pequot, and other mercies.” 123, Winthrop

In England, thanksgivings were somber days of prayer, fasting and private reflection - in New England, the Puritans often called thanksgivings to commemorate massacres and the mass murder of Indigenous people.

To the South, the Dutch learned from the Puritans about both massacre and taking body parts as trophies, and in 1643, the Dutch Governor Willem Kieft of the village of Manhattan, New York, ordered the massacre of the Wappinger People, a previously friendly tribe. The Dutch killed 80. Afterwards, they kicked around their severed heads like soccer balls on the village streets. One Native was castrated, skinned, and then forced to eat his own flesh, while the Dutch watched and laughed. 

In 1675, the Puritans launched another war - King Philip's War. The Pequot War had been more of a local action, but King Philip’s War involved the entire region and various Indigenous nations. It  is still considered the bloodiest war per capita in US history. It was never certain that the Puritans would win, but on June 20, 1676 the Puritans governing council held a meeting to determine a way to “express thanks for the victories in War with the Heathen Natives.” They proclaimed June 29 a "day of public thanksgiving,” saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled.”

Later, in 1704, Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Dudley declared a “General Thanksgiving for God’s infinite goodness to extend his favors . . . In defeating and disappointing . . . the expeditions of the Enemy Indians against us. And the good Success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands.” Overdine

Some eighty years later, in the late 1780s, when things looked bleak for the rebel forces who fought against the English, General George Washington sent out a plea to all that “supported the cause of Freedom” for a day of prayer and thanksgiving to rally everyone’s spirits. The Revolutionary War was also a war against Native Americans and thanksgivings came fast and furious after the Europeans and the English colonists waged war against them. Massacres were coming around with such frequency that, as President, Washington consolidated them into a single day, and in 1789, he proclaimed November 26th to be observed annually as a Day of Thanksgiving. 

Not all the states observed it, and neither did the Presidents who succeeded him, but to offset the bleak days of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln revived the tradition. Struggling to unite his divided country, Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving. This time, the other Presidents followed.

1960s Black family at dining table with turkey saying grace praying.

Some 40 years after President Lincoln’s Proclamation to celebrate Thanksgiving, US satirist, Mark Twain commented in his article, The Dervish and the Offensive Stranger, how odd it was to designate a day to celebrate the Native American genocide:

“Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that . . . the exterminating had ceased to become mutual, and was all on the white man’s side, hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it, and to extend the usual annual compliments.”

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LINKS

Hanc, John. The Plymouth Hero You Should Really Be Thankful for This Thanksgiving: Without Edward Winslow, we probably wouldn’t even be celebrating the holiday. Smithsonian Magazine November 21, 2016.

Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Winthrop, John. The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.

What is Cadiz? And why does it matter to the people of the Pomona Valley?

. . . The true story (with plot twists) of how a private corporation is trying to water-mine the Mojave Desert - and how Pomona Valley got involved

Photography Courtesy of Julian Lucas

By Pamela Casey Nagler
Photography Julian Lucas
Published 10/24/2022 12:00 Am PST

The story of Cadiz begins in the 1980s, when British investor Keith Brackpool arrived in California after pleading guilty to criminal charges relating to securities trading in Britain.

In 1983, Brackpool teamed up with others to locate water sources for development and sale to municipalities. Studying satellite images with a geologist, he located an aquifer in the Mojave, and proceeded to buy up a patchwork of creosote scrub for the private corporation he founded: Cadiz, Inc. 

Brackpool remains connected to Cadiz today. He was appointed to the board in 1986, served as CEO from 1991 to 2013, and as board chair from 2001 to 2022. As founder & chair of Cadiz, Brackpool makes $626,111 a year. There are no executives at Cadiz getting paid more.

In the 1990s, Brackpool hatched a plan to store trillions of gallons of Colorado River water beneath the Cadiz tract and to extract water from its underlying aquifer that they would ship to California neighborhoods via a pipeline. He began courting the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the agency which serves 26 Southland public water agencies, including our local Three Valleys Municipal Water District that serves the communities of Pomona, Claremont, LaVerne, San Dimas, Glendora, Covina, West Covina, Charter Oak, Hacienda Heights, Diamond Bar, Walnut, City of Industry, La Puente and Rowland Heights. 

Although MWD seriously considered the partnership, in 2002, it bailed. They said that the project lacked economic feasibility and the requisite natural resources.

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik acknowledged the scheme had “a sort of shimmering authenticity, like a desert mirage.” But while Cadiz promoted the project as an answer to our water shortage, the Colorado River simply has no surplus to store.

In 2005, Cadiz sued the Metropolitan Water District for "stopping the project in its entirety,” costing MWD $3.1 million and 3 ½ years of legal resources. It was a lawsuit that MWD ultimately won.

However, none of this stopped Cadiz from continuing to propose new plans, seek new investors and partners. From 2011 to the present, according to OpenSecrets.org, Cadiz has spent nearly 7 million dollars lobbying government officials. Open Secrets calls the majority of Cadiz' lobbyists ‘revolving door’ lobbyists - that is, lobbyists who used to work for the government. 

In 2009, Cadiz proposed supplying water to Southern California neighborhoods, pumped from their Cadiz aquifer “before it evaporates,” and delivered via a pipeline. In 2012, Orange County’s Santa Margarita Water District approved Cadiz’ environmental documents. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors followed suit.

Thus began Three Valley’s involvement with Cadiz. That year, Three Valleys voted to “reserve supply and storage from the [Cadiz] project in the event it is constructed,” wrote Three Valleys board member Brian Bowcock in his October 7, 2022 COURIER Readers’ Comment.

In the meantime, Cadiz faced several lawsuits from various environmental groups.

In 2015, the LA Times’ Bettina Boxall wrote that, “Cadiz has acknowledged that over the long term, the project will extract more groundwater than is replenished by nature.”

At this time, federal scientists expressed concern that the operation could dry up springs vital to wildlife on the nearby Mojave National Preserve and other public lands. Experts disagreed over exactly how much groundwater there is underlying the Cadiz tract, how much the company could legally pump out, and how pumping could affect neighboring aquifers with the contamination of carcinogenic minerals. 

In 2015, the Metropolitan Water District continued to refuse to have any ties to Cadiz. Their official statement, "We are not pursuing any negotiations or conversations at all.”

That same year, United States Senator Dianne Feinstein voiced her opposition, declaring it folly to draw down the aquifer. “I remain concerned the Cadiz project could damage the Mojave Desert beyond repair … We need to use water more responsibly, not less, and the Cadiz project is a bad idea.”

Jay Cravath, cultural director of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, warned that pumping water at Cadiz would take water from springs on the tribe's ancestral lands. He said that the company is using "fuzzy math" to justify its goals. “It is greedy and narcissistic of them to take what is there from its natural and rightful place,” Cravath said.

In 2016, appointees of the Trump administration were determined to waive environmental concerns and fast-track projects like Cadiz, and, in a momentous decision, the Bureau of Land Management approved Cadiz’ pipeline permit.

As a result of this decision, in June 2019, the Three Valleys Board approved a study of the Cadiz Water Project’s impact on nearby Bonanza Spring, the largest fresh water spring system in the Mojave. This, in spite of the fact that, one year prior, in 2018, two scientific studies were published in Hydrology and Environmental Forensics that substantiated that nearby Bonanza Spring is, in fact, connected to the aquifer that Cadiz wants to pump, and that Cadiz’s proposal to pump the aquifer is unsustainable. According to the study in Hydrology, Cadiz is planning to pump 10 to 25 times more each year than is annually replenished. Water-mining at Cadiz’ proposed level would most likely, in almost every scenario, cause Bonanza spring to dry up. 

While additional environmental review sounds appropriate, the study that Three Valley’s voted to support does not meet the standards of unbiased, peer-reviewed analysis. Led by Anthony Brown of Aquilogic, Inc., a longtime advocate for Cadiz, his Aquilogic study  has all the earmarks of an “in-house” promotion. In May of 2015, Brown wrote an op-ed for San Bernardino’s Press Enterprise, “Time to Get the Cadiz Project Flowing.”

 “Their concerns are that a private corporation should not be able to degrade lands, flora and fauna held in the public trust.”

Just last month, on September 13, a federal court threw out Cadiz’ pipeline permit, stating it was approved without tribal consultation or a proper review of the environmental impacts on nearby national parks, national monuments and Native American sacred sites. Their concerns are that a private corporation should not be able to degrade lands, flora and fauna held in the public trust. Representatives from various organizations, including the Native American Land Conservancy, National Parks Conservation Association’s California Desert Program, Mojave National Preserve Conservancy and Sierra Club, among others, have lauded this decision.

Again, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein weighed in: 

“This is a major win for the Mojave Desert. For decades, Cadiz has tried to avoid the federal permitting process in order to drain a vital desert aquifer. If successful, it would rob the desert of its most precious resource: water. Everything that makes our desert special – from the iconic Joshua trees and breathtaking wildflower blooms to the majestic bighorn sheep and rare desert tortoises – would be lost.”

Just one week after the federal court decision, the Three Valleys Board emerged from a closed session, announcing that it had voted to terminate its role in the Cadiz study. While this sounds like something to celebrate, board member Bowcock reminded us that walking away from the Cadiz study may expose Three Valleys to legal action. “They’re going to sue us. And rightfully so,” he said.

Thus far it appears Cadiz hasn’t produced the study, nor have they paid the more than $1 million they promised to Three Valleys. Differing amounts have been mentioned, but it’s very difficult for the public to determine what has or hasn’t been paid. Bowcock told the COURIER “We never did see it … We never received $805,000.”

Cadiz’ official response to September’s federal court ruling is “it will have no impact” on the completion of what they now call the “Cadiz Water Conservation and Storage Project.” 

Cadiz plans on moving forward, seeking new investors and new partnerships. However, their press release includes the disclaimer that these kinds of investments and partnerships come with “significant risks and uncertainties.”

Stay tuned.

Pamela Casey Nagler is a Claremont resident.

Indigenous Day 2022: Freedom Fighter and Resistance Leader Hatuey

Bust from the statue of Taino Chief Hatuey (~ / 1512) in Baracoa, Cuba. Hatuey was burned alive by Spanairds for leading a defense of his homeland against Spanish invaders.

By Pamela Nagler
Published 10/11/2022 6:00 Am PST

October 11 is Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day depending on where you live and what your perspective is. To say the least, celebrating Columbus these days can be a very complicated business. Too many people have read his journals and studied the history, too many people have examined the meaning of discovery, to fall into those old tired tropes of Columbus hero worship. Columbus statues have been removed in Chicago, Mexico, NYC, Boston, Baltimore and many other places including LA. 

Suffice to say, there remains much to deconstruct about Columbus landing on the island he called Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic) where he and his men proceeded to massacre and subjugate the Taino - all by his own admission. 

But Columbus’ sphere of influence was vast. Even in his own time, the Spaniards extended their reign of terror beyond Hispaniola to include other islands Columbus misnamed the West Indies, the present-day Caribbean Islands. 

When potential landowner who later became a Dominican Father, Bartolomé de las Casas arrived on the islands, in 1509, Las Casas explained how Columbus influence other Spaniards who “perpetrated the same outrages and committed the same crimes as before, devising yet further refinements of cruelty, murdering the native people, burning and roasting them alive, throwing them to wild dogs and then oppressing, tormenting and plaguing them with toil down the mines and elsewhere.” 26, penguin 

And, in 1511, when the Spaniards invaded Cuba, the story was really no different from the earlier stories on other islands, except for maybe, one singular figure emerged - Hatuey, a leader of Native resistance.

Earlier, Hatuey, a cacique or leader had fled his homeland of Hispaniola, arriving in Cuba with canoes holding 400 of his people. Las Casas reported that Hatuey warned the people of Cuba:

“we have to throw them [the Spaniards] into the sea . . .They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. Incapable of matching us in valor, these cowards cover themselves with iron that our weapons cannot break.” 28, penguin

Hatuey and his people battled against the Spanish, but the Spanish managed to capture him. Before tying him to a stake and burning him alive, the Franciscan Father preached to him about the everlasting life and the consequence of Hell if he did not accept the Christian God. Hatuey, in turn, asked the Father if Spaniards went to heaven. Las Casas reported:

“When the reply came that good ones do, he [Hatuey] retorted, without need to further reflection, that, if that was the case, then he chose to go to Hell to ensure that he would never again have to clap eyes on those cruel brutes.” 28-9, penguin

After Hatuey’s execution, the Spaniards continued to massacre large settlements of Cuban Natives - the Arawaks. Of those that they did not enslave or murder, some attempted to flee, but others chose death by suicide: “Men and women hanged themselves and even strung up their children.” 30, penguin They saw this as an alternative to being tortured or worked to death.

Children, without their parents, died of starvation. The Spaniards pursued those who ran away, until Las Casas noted that the “whole of the island [of Cuba] was devastated and depopulated . . . transformed . . . into one vast, barren wasteland.” 30, penguin

Present-day Cubans are forthright about their colonial history. A bust of Hatuey sits in front of the oldest Church in Baracoa, in the main town square of the first city the Spanish colonized. Some tour guides will tell you that the nearby Yumurí River, lined on each side by sheer limestone cliffs, means ‘beautiful river,’ but others will tell you that Yumurí means ‘I kill myself’ because this is where the Arawaks threw themselves off of the ten-story drop-offs to escape the oppressions of the Spanish. The coffee plantations on Cuba display the chains, shackles and goads next to the excavated farm implements at ground level, just downstairs from the colonists’ former opulent dwellings upstairs.

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REFERECES

Casas, Bartolomé de las. Nigel Griffin, trans., Anthony Pagden, intro. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. 1st Edition. London: Penguin, 1999. pages 26-30. 

What it Means to Live on Indigenous Land

Illustration from De Agostini Collection/DEA/M. Seemuller/Getty Images

By Pamela Nagler
Published 5/31/2022 8:51am PST

It was in 1958 when then US Senator John F. Kennedy wrote his best-seller, A Nation of Immigrants, that he advanced the notion that the United States could be best understood through its immigrants - excluding the reality of millions who had neither lived the immigrant experience personally - nor lived it generationally through the experiences of their ancestors.

Indigenous people were already here when the immigrants arrived, and it was not long after the immigrants or settler-colonists arrived that they demanded the import of enslaved people from Africa to labor for them.

It is a myth that the US is a nation of immigrants, but based on this untruth, our nation has constructed a national story that continues to perpetuate itself - morphing into new constructs. It is, at the heart, a false story used to justify the primacy of our nation’s position in the world, and it has permeated our textbooks, been taught in our schools, been circulated by our politicians, and has contributed to our national rhetoric and the way we think about ourselves. This myth forms the basis for what we call American Exceptionalism - a belief held by many that the United States is so inherently different, so uniquely superior, its values so exceptional, that our political system - and our history - is beyond comparison. It’s a distorted view that is useful to prop up our regime because it tells us - and everyone else - that our country is both destined - and entitled - to play a distinctly positive role on the world stage.

Mitt Romney, in his acceptance speech as Republican nominee for President, in 2012, said, “Optimism is uniquely American. It is what brought us to America. We are a nation of immigrants.”

Former President Barack Obama, speaking at a Nevada high school in 2016, said, “We are a nation of immigrants, and that means we are constantly being replenished with fighters who believed in the American Dream, and it gives us tremendous advantage over other nations.”

That same year, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton evoked the Statue of Liberty, when she said that it serves to remind “us of who we are and where we came from. We are a nation of immigrants and I am proud of it.”

Nicholas Galanin "Never Forget" art installation, part of Desert X outside Palm Springs, California, in 2021.

All this rhetoric masks the violence involved when settlers first arrived here and killed, raped, removed indigenous people so that they could live on their land. Further, it whitewashes the truth that their new settlements were often built or propped up with the labor of the enslaved.

The more accurate lens to look at the foundations of our nation is not through the lens of immigration, but through the lens of settler-colonialism. And even though settler-colonists may have called themselves immigrants from time to time, they were not. They did not move to new places to live among those who already lived here. They did not come to assimilate - to learn their language and customs - they came for land and opportunity that they could not find in their home country - and the removal of the indigenous people was part of their so-called 'immigration.' 

Contemporary Rebecca Dunbar-Ortiz tells us:

“The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism. The objective of settler colonialism is to terminate Indigenous people as nations and communities with land bases in order to make the land available to European settlers. Extermination and assimilation are the methods used. This is the very definition of genocide.”  

And so there it is. As a nation, we tell ourselves stories to motivate ourselves, to move ourselves forward, to justify our actions and our history. By refusing to tell the authentic stories of our real origins, by refusing to utter the actual word, genocide - state-sanctioned murder and erasure - we are refusing to acknowledge what’s at the root of the problems we face today. Institutional racism, wealth and income inequality, poverty and the unhoused, lack of access to resources, the destruction of our environment also define us as a nation, but our country, rooted in fraudulent narratives, dismisses who ‘we’ really are. Sly hint - we aren’t only immigrants. And even at that, the immigrant experience is a widely divergent one.

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REFERENCES
Dunbar-Ortiz’ Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler-Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

STILL HERE - “Ehkwashim!”

Text Pamela Nagler
Photography Julian Lucas
Published Dec 6, 2021 9:52am PST

The Original People of the Los Angeles Basin & the Channel Islands (4,000 square miles). The Los Angeles Basin has always been well-populated. Sometimes we fall into a habit of thinking that the Native people who lived here, before the Spanish, Mexicans, U.S. citizens came, were few, primitive, isolated and without technology, but nothing is farther from the truth.  

The Los Angeles Basin was heavily populated then, just as it was now - and the people who lived here were well-connected to each other through trade and culture that extended westward to the islands (they were navigators who negotiated the sea in plank canoes) and westward to the American Southwest and up into the northern regions and south to Mexico and Baja California.

There was an extensive network of trails - just as there’s an incredible network of highways and roads and freeways today. There is also a widely circulated belief that the people of the Los Angeles basin are extinct, but this is simply not true - they are still here, living and working amongst us - some 4,000.

The indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin lived in a patchwork or mosaic of ecosystems - a few miles to the South, it was desert; to the east it was mountains; to the west, it was ocean. Ten miles one way or another, people spoke slightly differently, harvested somewhat differently, hunted in different places, celebrated somewhat differently - according to their environment and customs. This is not so different from the towns and cities that dot Southern California’s landscape today.

Living in 100 or so villages or rancherias of 100 people or so, the original people had no name in common for the 5,000 who lived here, but they had names for other people who lived elsewhere - mountain people, desert people, coastal people - but those who inhabited these rich river valleys fed by rivers and springs from the mountains, self-identified by their village or rancheria rather than their linguistic group.

Make no mistake - this area was not a desert until we made it one. The story of the original ones who lived here is the story of rivers where the foliage was so dense, a squirrel could hop from tree to tree from Los Angeles to Long Beach and never touch ground. Families would wake in the morning and bathe in the river, warming themselves by the fire as they combed their hair and prepared for the day.

In the case of those who lived in Pomona, they called themselves Toybipet, the inhabitants of Toybingna - located nearby were the rancherias of Cucamonga and Asuksangna (Azusa).  On the Pomona High School campus, there is a graveyard for 118 bodies buried at what’s called the Palomares Cemetery. In 1837, Californio Ygnacio Palomares received a Mexican land grant for Mission San Gabriel’s Rancho San Jose - a vast cattle ranch. Palomares Adobe, located nearby, was located right next to a Native rancheria because that’s what the Spanish/Mexican colonists did, locate their rancho near a Native rancheria so they could take advantage of Native labor. When Ygnacio Palomares arrived, he reportedly said that the valley was filled with Natives.

Courtesy of Julian Lucas 2021

Since 2006, four organizations have claimed to represent the people of the Los Angeles basin: the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe, the Gabrielino/Tongva Tribe, the Kizh Nation (Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians); and the Gabrieleño/Tongva Tribal Council. Tongva comes from an Gabrielino informant at the turn of the last century. Kizh means ‘people of the willow houses.’ Gabrielino refers to the fact that they were descendants of those who lived at the Mission at San Gabriel. 

In recent years, the state of California has broadened its History-Social Studies framework to include more information about Native Californians - how they lived before colonization, how they were affected by the arrival of settlers, and how it is important that California public schools teach that missions were “sites of conflict, conquest and forced labor.”

The people of the Los Angeles Basin never ceded their land to Spain, to Mexico, to the U.S. We live and work and play on their ancestral lands.

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Pamela Casey Nagler, Pomona-born, is an independent scholar, currently conducting research on California’s indigenous people, focusing on the Spanish, Russian, Mexican and US invasions between 1769 and the 1860s. The point of studying this history is to tell us how we got here from there.