This article was published in News From Native California, Spring 2020, and appears at the permission of Juan Ávila Hernandez, retired lecturer in the UC Davis Department of Native American Studies. You can view the original article online. 

The bear-sized, reflective black granite slab monument standing prominently at the front of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts on the UC Davis campus originated about 200 miles south in the Central Valley homelands of the Western Nim, Nim, Chukchansi Yokut and Tachi Yokuts peoples.  It now stands in the Northern Valley on Patwin land, on the UC Davis campus, and is engraved with the history of burial desecrations, Patwin spirituality and the prayer of Elder Bill Wright of the Cortina Indian Rancheria - Indigenous truths that rarely reach the public with such permanence.

On September 26, 2002, a group of nearly 200 supporters joined UC Davis Native American Studies faculty and staff, Cortina Indian Rancheria Chairman Charlie Wright, campus officials and members of the ad hoc committee convened in 2000 to address the burial desecrations and raise public awareness of the campus’ Patwin heritage and Native American community, to celebrate the public unveiling of the historic marker.  

The unveiling of the “prayer stone” is the latest step of a campus-wide plan which includes the placement of basalt stone obelisks at eight locations to give testament to Patwin heritage and world views on sharing of food, government, family, leadership, athleticism and spirituality. The first phase of the plan, called the Native American Contemplative Garden and located in the University Arboretum near the UC Davis School of Law, was completed in 2011. While the recognition of the UC Davis campus as Patwin land and the installation of two of the elements of the plan are historic accomplishments, they came about because of the continuing desecrations of California Indian gravesites.  While this practice had occurred for decades on the UC Davis campus, the efforts of this committee and a uniquely supportive chancellor was the first time the university supported such organizing efforts and conceded that the university occupied Patwin land.

On January 18, 2000, the campus California Aggie newspaper published an article that shocked and upset many in the UC Davis Indigenous community. The article described how university officials had arranged for a group of about 30 local middle school students to tour an open trench that exposed Patwin sacred cultural items during the first phases of the excavation for the new Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. UC Davis campus officials, Anthropologists, private contractors, parents and middle school teachers were pleased and excited with the experience. The “exposure to the site was great,” according to the UC Davis officials and middle school teachers who organized the gravesite tour. The children closely viewed “animal bone fragments...disk beads...used as money” and other “culturally relevant materials,” according to the article.

UC Davis Anthropology Professor Monique Mulder called the graves “cultural deposits.” Leader of the tour, John Nadolski of the archeological firm, Pacific Legacy,  a “San Francisco-based cultural resource management company,” touted the benefits of visiting exposed Patwin gravesites. He said, “The more (kids) learn about other cultures, the more they will appreciate that kind of diversity.”

The UC Davis Native American Studies Department and indigenous community members responded quickly with anger, disbelief and unity. The first campus meetings gathered over 30 members of the community including NAS professors, graduate and undergraduate students and staff.  Participants volunteered to take on different key responsibilities. UC Davis undergraduate, Laura Mayo and myself, I was a graduate student in the History Department, agreed to manage and organize the group’s efforts. NAS Professors David Risling Jr., George Longfish, Ines Hernández Ávila, Stefano Varese, Martha Macri and Victor Montejo were active members, as well as NAS graduate student Sheri Tasch and Staff of American Indian Descent (SAID) member Micki Eagle.      

Most importantly, the group members decided that we needed to consult California Indian people of this land – no Patwins were either enrolled or employed at UC Davis – and specifically Patwin people in order to proceed.

Risling Jr. recommended that we meet Bill Wright, the Elder Dance Captain and Sweat Doctor who lives on the Cortina Indian Rancheria with his family and had been in the leadership for California Indian spiritual and healthcare rights for decades. As a child, Bill and his two sisters were sent to the Stewart Indian Boarding School in Carson City, Nevada, and did not return home until his last year of schooling when he attended Arbuckle High School.

One cold and dark night, Dave Risling Jr. and I drove on highway I-5 North from Davis to Williams and then county roads to the Cortina Indian Rancheria to Wrights’ home to speak with him about the desecrations, the tours organized by the university and to ask for his support. Our first meeting with Wright went relatively well. Luckily, Risling Jr. vouched for me. Wright asked me direct questions as the Elders do: did I know my language? Did I know the rules of my ceremonies? I must have answered sufficiently because the next time I went to meet to Wright and his family to report of the group’s progress, I went alone and I was welcomed. Principally, because Wright respected Risling Jr. as a long time and dedicated community organizer and founder of some of the most prominent and indomitable Indian organizations in the state and country, Wright agreed to support our group. Together with his family, the Wrights became the moral center of the campaign to honor Patwin and Native Americans at UC Davis.

On the UC Davis campus, members of the Native American community promote the ideal that we thank the spirits of the land where the university currently resides whenever we walk, run, teach, study, work and celebrate on this land. We ask the spirits of the original people for permission to be here and we thank and pray for the Patwin people, especially those of the Cortina, Colusa and Yoche Dehe communities for their friendship and support. We pray for their health, ancestors and future generations. As Wright said at his opening prayer of the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, “we respect you.”

Our group agreed that Wright would guide us and that we would reach agreement by consensus and not majority rule. We crafted a petition for a meeting with then Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef, gathered signatures at the annual Pow Wow and organized the meeting. At the beginning, our group was at tremendous odds with the administration. Many felt that unearthing the burials was a human rights violation. It struck some of our members as insulting, bewildering and inhuman that we had to argue that disturbing the final resting place of Indigenous people was an immoral act. At one meeting, Wright made salient points regarding his traditions. “My people have ceremonies to keep themselves in balance with the earth,” he said. These were meant to “keep joy in your life. See the joy in things so that your spirit will be healthy. Be good to one another. Pray for them that they will see the light one day.” Pat Wright, Bill’s wife, stated that the grave disturbances hurt the souls of those removed as well as their relatives who cried over their bodies. The disruptions of the graves continued to cause profound spiritual pain to their descendants as well, she said. The meeting was contentious: officials denied that children were allowed to view open graves despite the news story and photographs. “The graves were a hundred yards away! Those were deer bones they viewed!” one administrator argued.                                   

“Yes, from a grave!” I recounted. 

The university had followed state law regulating the disturbance of graves during public construction projects. Once the graves were uncovered, university officials contacted the Native American Heritage Commission (NAHC), the state commission created by California Indians in the early 1980s. UC Davis officials then contacted the Most Likely Descendent from the Cortina Indian Rancheria who allowed the bodies to be removed and studied. These were later reburied at an undisclosed location.

Despite the bureaucratic and legal complexities, our group of ten members, which now included the UC Davis Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Environmental Planner, Director of the Arboretum, Campus Landscape Architect and Campus Planner, was determined to make a positive and lasting impact for the Patwin people, California Indigenous people and other Indigenous peoples of the campus and region. Throughout the process, we had to keep pushing:  I recall at one early meeting in which Risling Jr. and I met with the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. The construction was continuing and Risling Jr. promised the Vice Chancellor that he would “get Indians to come down from the mountains” and occupy the site if the administration was not willing to strike an agreeable resolution. Shortly after, we gained the full support of Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef and the entire campus.

Our first summer of organizing, we raised $150,000 from 12 campus departments and administration officials and developed a campus-wide plan to include cultural markers at eleven locations to honor the Patwin people and all Native Americans.

The essential message was that this land was, is and will be Patwin land.

In 2005, after agreeing that the Contemplative Garden would be the first goal of the Honoring project, the group developed and publicized a Request For Proposals in a national search – as per university regulations – reviewed all applicants and selected a Davis-based company, Far Western Anthropological Research Group, Inc. as the developer of the garden and campus-wide plans. 

Throughout the years, we all worked to stop the further desecration of Patwin burials, to end the tours of gravesites and to educate the larger community about the true history of California. 

It is our hope that Wright’s words on the historical marker will help inspire more Indian people to enter higher education and help others to reflect on his vision. A portion of Wright’s prayer is engraved on the historical marker:  “I know that the spirits from this land hear me, and they have a right to be angry for what was done to them. But we will give them our respect, and they will respect us, as earthly people.”