Contribution short abstract:

How has tourism and environmental extraction/stewardship affected memory and public history regarding the Native peoples of Alta and Baja California? For the majority of industrial colonization, Native Californians have been depicted as declining or erased- only recently has this begun to change.

Contribution long abstract:

How has tourism and environmental extraction/stewardship affected memory and public history regarding the Native peoples of Alta and Baja California? For the majority of industrial colonization, Native Californians have been depicted as declining or erased- only recently has this begun to change.

In the Spanish era of colonization, the institutional missions and presidios incorporated Native participants into the Spanish civilizing mission- as civil subjects or neophytes. As Mexican gained independence and the US acquired California, this changed. Anglo-Americans physically and rhetorically removed tribes from Alta California as an obstacle to Manifest Destiny. Mexico, especially under the Porfiriato, used the language and politics of industrialization to dismiss traditional forms of Indigenous life or assimilate Baja Californian peoples into the increasingly globalized Mexican economy- erasing them outright in the eyes of many colonial participants.

Since the era of imperial expansion, much of popular culture and public memory has reflected these attitudes about Alta/Baja Natives: either declining to near obliteration or erased altogether in favor of imperial settlement and industrialization. Only recently has this begun to change.

This presentation will consider the urban environmental memorialization of colonial efforts, eco-tourism, and murals of the areas in question.