A Kumeyaay comic book rewrites California's history and inspires a hopeful future

Episode 11: Kumeyaay Comic Transcript 

Julia Dixon Evans: In 1769, Father Junípero Serra founded the first Spanish mission in California — just a couple of miles from our KPBS studio. Back then, California was home to an estimated 300,000 Indigenous people — where for centuries they had been farming, hunting, trading, making music and art and creating complex cultures deeply tied to the land. But the arrival of the Spanish brought disease, forced labor and abuse. Then came the Gold Rush, where California's governor called for a war of extermination against the Indigenous people. By 1900, only 16,000 remained in the state, a staggering 95% reduction. This was the California Genocide.

Ethan Banegas: My name's Ethan Banegas. I'm from the Barona Band of Mission Indians, also part of the Kumeyaay Nation. I'm a professor at San Diego State and a father, brother, family member, community member to many.

Evans: Ethan is the lead writer of a Kumeyaay comic book that published late last year. He worked on it with a team of other educators and Kumeyaay historians. It doesn't just celebrate the Kumeyaay's rich culture and traditions — it tells their story, from their ancient roots in California to the centuries of injustice and resistance that followed. These are all things that have played a huge role in Ethan's life but have been largely overlooked outside the reservations.

Banegas: There was an occasion during my thesis for my undergraduate history paper and I wanted to do it on Kumeyaay history, and another student next to me did hers on the Gold Rush. This is the aha moment for me 'cause I remember telling her and my teacher and everyone else that the Gold Rush is not something that should be celebrated. That was the beginning of the California Genocide, perhaps the worst demographic disaster in history — California Indians. So we do our research, we come back and she tells me I'm wrong.

Evans: OK, like, to your face?

Banegas: Yeah. She tells me I'm wrong and my teacher's sitting there and she's got a doctorate. Because we experienced the California Genocide when we're young, as we get older through our communities, through our trauma, so it is personal. And so here I am in a room being told that I'm wrong and a professor not saying anything. Talk about really feeling alone.

Evans: The comic is full of great, approachable illustrations and fascinating stories that seem primed for readers of all ages. But Ethan and his team are especially eager to see it used in classrooms. Teachers can even hang up pages as posters. Maybe then, when these topics come up, Ethan hopes that kids like him might feel seen.

Banegas: I wonder how much better my life would've turned out if I just had someone or something in those moments to be there with me instead of feeling like I was wrong when I knew I was right. So I knew as a young person, and I think that's just how I would say for a lot of Native people, you grow up in Native families on reservations, and you just know these things are true, but you don't have any way or material to support it. So I think that's why this comic is a real game changer for people like me growing up in today's world. They have this comic now to go to bat for 'em.

Evans: From KPBS Public Media, this is The Finest, a podcast about the people, art and movements redefining culture in San Diego. I'm Julia Dixon Evans.

[Theme Music]

Evans: Ethan's comic book is separated into two parts: One is called "Beyond Gaming" and the other,  "Our Past, Present, and Future."  Ethan draws a connection between the comic's style and the Kumeyaay's long standing tradition of visual storytelling through rock art. One illustration is of what may be the most famous Kumeyaay rock image. It looks like it's supposed to be a ship, but we can't know for sure.

Banegas: In the beginning of "Beyond Gaming," there are two paragraphs. I'll read them for you. It says, "Visual storytelling has been part of the Kumeyaay tradition since time immemorial. Petroglyphs are found in caves and on large boulders throughout San Diego County. Some scholars speculate a petroglyph of a ship in East County San Diego is the oldest graphic representation of a recorded event in U.S. history."

1542 is first contact in San Diego of Spanish and Kumeyaay. And so I thought it would be interesting to put this particular image of what appears to be Cabrillo's ship in 1542. It is highly debated. There's no way you'll ever know. And on it, I actually put a joke on here. So I have my daughter staring at her phone and I tell her, what do you think? Does it look like the first Spanish explorer ship? And she says, looks like a Subway sandwich to me.

Evans: I love that part.

Banegas: You do?

Evans: Yes.

Banegas: Right on.

Evans: It does. I see it.

Banegas: Cool. The sandwich or the ship?

Evans: No, I see the sandwich too.

Banegas: Yeah. So I think it's a great introduction to the actual medium of comics. And we have rock art all over. Almost all tribes have petroglyphs. And so there's a lot more than people realize just in their own backyard. I heard on Cowles Mountain, for example, there was an astrological circle to align with the stars. And people were just, I think it just got moved or trampled upon 'cause they didn't know what it was.

An image also is about imagination. When I think of this comic, one thing that it really opened for me was my imagination. And when you go to academia, for me, that right side of my brain started to die — that wants to create. And that left side just dominates — the facts, this and that. And after a while it actually gets kind of empty, you know? And that's what I felt with my career going forward 'cause I was just reading history books, doing that without using my imagination and my creativity.

So when I look back at this comic and someone drawing on a rock, it's the same thing. They're using their imagination. They're, hey, I saw this ship. And here's a person writing on the rock. Maybe he's a runner that ran from the bay to the desert and he's showing his grandpa, this is what the ship looked like. And then the whole village comes and looks at it and they can now see kind of what he sees.

An image can say a thousand words. For example, we have a picture of the Mission Indian Federation, page 16 of "Our Past, Present, and Future." There's just one little sentence: "In 1919, a grassroots group called the Mission Indian Federation was formed to promote Native self-determination." And what I really like about this image and this movement is oftentimes Native Americans are not, they're not represented in a way that they have their own agency. They create their own futures. And we shape our future just as much as the government does. So oftentimes history is written as we are victims, we are passive, and we just, things just happen to us. But what I like about this page in general, as well as the Mission Indian Federation, is this is us creating and fighting for our own future.

Sometimes it's futile and we lose, but even when you lose, you win. For example, my dad was at Alcatraz and he's right here, he's right below that symbol, cutting a cake with his grandmother, Lenora Banegas. She's the original Banegas of Barona.

Evans: That section in the comic reads: "In 1969, Larry Banegas, who was a lifelong advocate for human rights, represented the Kumeyaay Nation during the Occupation of Alcatraz, when 89 Native American protesters took over the abandoned prison on the island of Alcatraz to highlight ongoing broken treaties by the U.S. Federal Government."

Archived news clip: The early morning peacefulness of Fisherman's Wharf was shattered suddenly by the rhythmic beat of Indian tom-toms as American Indians representing the Blackfoot, Mohawk and Sioux tribes gathered to claim what they felt was rightfully theirs: the abandoned federal prison, the Island of Alcatraz, in the center of San Francisco Bay.

Evans: It was a monumental event that Ethan feels is often misinterpreted by historians.

Banegas: So this was the beginning of the Red Power Movement in 1969. And if you read books, it's often perceived as a failure because, OK, they took over the island, I think it was more than a year, and then they got removed. And that was it. But the truth is, the requests that they had for Alcatraz actually came to fruition in the form of tribal colleges. So our tribal college, called the Kumeyaay College wouldn't exist without Alcatraz.

Evans: Huh. Yeah.

Banegas: That's where I started. I teach at San Diego State now, but I cut my teeth at Kumeyaay College teaching history. So those are the type of things, those nuances, the details that get lost often. Actually, I used to teach Alcatraz was a failure. Because that's what I was reading. And then I realized like, well wait a second, all these movements and all these resistance movements, they have some successes. You just have to find the silver lining.

Evans: One of the most recent events covered in the book is a new wave of activism. It goes all the way back to the early years of contact between the Old World and New World in California. Junípero Serra, the priest who founded California's first mission and 20 others, is sometimes hailed as a hero who brought Christianity to California. But for many Indigenous Americans, Serra is regarded much differently. This tension reached a boiling point in 2015, when Pope Francis made Serra a saint. Francis spoke about him in glowing terms at his canonization ceremony in D.C. — the first ever to happen in the United States.

Archived news clip: Saint Junípero Serra…He was the embodiment of a church which goes forth, a church which sets out to bring everywhere the reconciling, tenderness of God.

Evans:  This issue is especially personal for Ethan. He's Christian himself, and he's a historian at the San Diego History Center, which runs the Junípero Serra museum.

Banegas: Yeah, so there's a couple of moments where I'm like, it's really challenging for me as a human being to discuss and talk about — this is the hardest thing for me. And I actually chose Indian gaming — and that was my masters — 'cause I didn't want to have this conversation. Well, here I am. Right?

Evans:  Sorry.

Banegas: No, no. I mean, you know, we have plans and the creator has others.

I went to USD, and in that college they celebrate the mission period. I got my theology degree in Father Serra Hall. It's the best degree I've ever had. I wouldn't change a thing, but I was the only local and Indian in USD for 10 years. It's different now. But I felt alone to begin with, and now I felt intellectually and almost spiritually alone because I don't really fit in there, in that world. And the problem with USD — and Catholicism, in general — is when you celebrate Father Serra, you're missing the whole point that he participated in cultural genocide and actual genocide on California Indians, and Pope Francis beautified him in 2015. And we have all this evidence.

The other thing I want to talk about is Father Kino of the Sonora Missions. He did not believe in corporal punishment. He did not believe it was OK to whip Indians, and he's probably gonna be made a saint soon. And the Indians there have a much better view of Father Kino. So it's important to have that as a context. Father Serra did believe in corporal punishment. He whipped Indians on a regular basis.

Indians and people who are Father Serra apologists, they all agree on one thing. And this is that once you were baptized and brought into the mission, you are now not allowed to leave. So when they say that, it's like, well, wait a second, isn't that slavery? And then they use terms like forced labor. It's like, I'm sorry, but semantics doesn't matter to Indian people. When you say you cannot leave and now you're forced to work for no money, that's a form of slavery, carceral labor, prison labor, etcetera.

One of the things that I learned in my research that was not very well known is Sherburne Cook of Berkeley discovered in the '70s, really good professor, that almost all the missions had extreme food deficits. San Diego was the worst at an average of 1,000 calories a day. They were pushed like beasts of burden. And one of the things I'm realizing in my research is San Diego was actually one of the worst ones because it was the first, because it had the least amount of calories and the padres didn't know how to farm here. They were practicing agrarian techniques that could only be successful elsewhere.

But what you have here is a disaster. And San Diego was an epic failure. The mission itself, it didn't have any baptisms for one year. So by the padres' own metrics, it was a failure. If it was a disaster, if it was unsuccessful, if Indians were not getting baptized 'cause they didn't want to, 'cause you couldn't speak the language, if the Indians were also being starved and pushed to work too hard, how is Father Serra a saint? How does any of it make sense?

The fact that Father Serra was canonized, there's only one explanation, and it's just like me sitting in that classroom is no one was listening to the Indians. No one cared. The Pope didn't care. And now that we have a voice, and now that we have — and this is why gaming is so important — we finally have money. We finally have political power. We finally have lobbyists in Sacramento and Washington. Now, you're going to hear our voice.

Archived news clips: The 18th century Spanish Missionary is an unpopular figure among Native Americans…

Members of the Kumeyaay Nation rallied outside the San Diego Hall of Justice…

Our tribe and most other California tribes would never accept the canonization of Serra. We will continue to research the truth about Serra and the Missions, and we will make this information available to the public.

Banegas: And that's what this comic is about. This is our response to all that being silenced. Again, this is the hardest thing for me to talk about, but I feel like this is something I must.

[Music]

Evans: So the comic breaks down 10 specific turning points or beliefs in Kumeyaay culture. And yeah, the first point is less of a turning point and more like a foundation: "We have been here since time immemorial." Can you talk about the word choice there and what you mean by that?

Banegas: It's kind of a landmine, but I'll try. I try not to shy away from too many of those.

The reason why Natives you choose time immemorial is partly has to do with the Bering Strait theory. We were only here for — and I did air quotes right there — for 12,000 years, 13,000 years.

Evans: The Bering Strait theory holds that there was once a land bridge that connected Asia to Alaska, that was long understood as the way that humans first migrated to the Americas sometime between 12,000 and 20,000 years ago — and eventually made their way towards California. But others say that human history in the Americas stretches far beyond that.

Banegas: And there were a couple earlier archeological finds. One was in Chula Vista, the Cerutti Mastodon site, that puts human beings back to 130,000 years ago. A lot of this has to do with how anthropology has treated us. This has a lot to do with repatriation. When the dates get moved and pushed around, and say they find a body, remains, they'll say, oh, that's not Kumeyaay and the museums and the colleges will keep the remains and they'll keep the artifacts or items. A lot of it has to do with our fight with anthropologists and with museums and universities, so we try to make it real clear that we've been here forever in your terms.

And this also has to do with our creation story. In our creation story, we say that human beings came from Avi Kwa Ame. It's in Needles, California. Joe Biden actually made this a national monument in 2021. Almost all the tribes in this area believe that we come from Avi Kwa Ame or Ghost Mountain, Spirit Mountain. For those kinds of reasons, we debate the Bering Strait theory, but what we're really trying to do is show doubt into Western thought and this kind of OK we know type of thing. And I think that's where I kind of sit when it comes to how long we've been here. I think it's more important to understand a, our creation story, and then b, science is still figuring itself out. They don't know when Natives were here — not completely. That's why most Natives, correctly, say time immemorial.

Evans: Is this something that you grapple with as someone who is spiritual and also as someone who is academic, a historian, like squaring away that coexistence of a creation story and history, science?

Banegas: Yeah. I mean, when I was going through college, no one really was doing that. No professors. You take theology over here and then you take history over here, and all these ideas would have their separate compartments. One of the things I think about what makes Indigenous wisdom different is we don't do that. Everything's connected. It's bringing in Indigenous wisdom and theology and shedding light in a different way to almost, to make it more vibrant.

Evans: Today, many Native American reservations are known for casinos and gambling. For the Kumeyaay, however, this industry is not just a source of income and autonomy, it's also a continuation of their ancient connection to the game of peon. In the "Beyond Gaming" section of the comic, the characters tell the story of peon, and its origins in the creation story, where a shrewd, trickster coyote plays a central role.

Banegas: So essentially what you're doing is you have two teams, and you can see that on page 18. Notice that they're holding up the bones. There's white and black bones. So you're singing and it's up to the other side to pick where the bones are at the end of the song. But it can go on forever, like 12 hours. Essentially it's a guessing game, using trickery. And that's why the coyote is so important. And the bone is actually the coyote bone. It's the ankle, the ankle bone in the coyote that's used. So you're trying to get that power from the coyote because the most important thing was to win.

A long time ago, the pots were $600 and this is when we were the poorest people in San Diego. The whole village would be going crazy, singing, come on, you gotta win. Because if they lost, they would actually like hurt. One of the main themes in the comic is how culture changes, 'cause now our pots are funded by our casino revenue — $2,000, $3,000 — and people play of course 'cause it's a grip of money, but it's like zero stakes now.

Evans: Can you talk about how the game references or reflects Kumeyaay culture?

Banegas: Number one is getting together: community. So you have board game night. Isn't that better than sitting around and watching TV? So that's really the point of peon in general, is all of us gathering on a regular basis with other tribes. And you get to meet all your family and sometimes you reconnect 'cause you live so far. So this is that one time of the year for sure, in a gathering where we all get together for not just one day, but like three or four.

Evans: Peon is a part of a larger Kumeyaay culture revival. In the comic, one character says she learned in school that "California Indians" were "culturally extinct." And Ethan told us that was inspired by a real-life experience of one of his co-writers. But Ethan, along with many others, is living proof that this idea is wrong. He notes, though, that due to the mission system the Kumeyaay culture suffered more than other Southwest tribes like the Navajo, who still have a significant number of speakers of their language.

Kumeyaay culture certainly never fully disappeared. And now, it's growing. One example is bird song, a traditional kind of Kumeyaay singing. In the comic, it says that in the 1970s, there were only a few people in the world that could perform bird song. Now, there are dozens, performing at events and teaching it to others.

The comic book celebrates and is also a part of this cultural revival. And across the U.S. as a whole, there seems to be growing awareness for the issues Ethan raises. University of San Diego, for example, changed the name of Serra Hall, it's now Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall, honoring the controversial missionary alongside the first Native American saint.

Banegas: Yeah, I think it's a great time to be alive. We're working on our land acknowledgement right now at UCSD. We finally have a presence on campus. Whatever people may think of land acknowledgements, at least they know we're here. As far as our culture goes within our tribe, the bird singing is something that people want to aspire to at a young age. The way to measure the vitality of any culture or language is how many young people are doing it.

So we did a comic release in Barona, and we had a singer, Donovan. He had two kids next to him. That gives me hope. Our college at Kumeyaay College, we have language classes, we have history classes. But as far as our culture goes, we are also having gatherings. For example, "Beyond Gaming" the setting is in 2007 when our traditional gathering came back to Barona.

Evans: Both comics are actually connected inside one book: one printed upside down at the end of the other. The central page is shared between the two stories, set at a gathering as a group stands around a fire. The comic reads: "The reason why we need to bring back our ceremonies, our gatherings and our games. Past and present together make a strong, resilient future. Only this can heal our people."

Banegas: What it is is there's a lot of leaders in our community — not just Barona, but all over — who are starting our ceremonies, who are starting our gatherings, so whoever wants to, you can seek them out and they'll teach you. So I think it's a very hopeful moment for us.

Evans: And this comic is part of that, right?

Banegas: Yeah, absolutely.

[Music]

Evans:  A special thanks to Ethan Banegas for his help with this episode. You can find links to more sources, illustrations from the comic book and a full PDF download of the book on our episode page at KPBS.org/TheFinest.

There's also an immersive exhibit for the comic at La Jolla Historical Society on view until the end of August. It features large-scale images of the pages, art by local students and much more.

Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It really helps new listeners discover the show. And best of all, if you can think of anyone in your life that might like The Finest, please share it with them.

Next week on The Finest, we hear the story of three friends who grew up in Southeast San Diego during an era of rising crime and aggressive policing. In art, they found an alternative to gang life, but, in their case, staying out of trouble landed them in it.

Isauro "Junior" Inocencio: I open it up and it's the police, and I'm like, oh. They come in, they take everything. They take my old pictures, my old yearbooks, anything that was tagged on and on their way out, they turn around. They're like, oh yeah, we also got a warrant for your arrest.

Evans: The Finest is a production of KPBS Public Media. I'm your host, Julia Dixon Evans. Our producer is Anthony Wallace, who also composed the score. Our audio engineer is Ben Redlawsk and our editor is Chrissy Nguyen.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.