by HECTOR TOBAR
Native American activists hold a vigil near the construction site in January. PHOTO/Brian van der Brug
Work on La Plaza de Cultura y Artes near Olvera Street was halted in January after workers removed the remains of 118 people, mostly of Native Americans, at the site.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina dreamed for years of putting a cultural center and museum on the historic old plaza near Olvera Street downtown. If only she and the rest of the project’s planners had taken as long to research the site.
Last year, as the work got under way, a crew disturbed the eternal sleep of those buried in L.A.’s first Catholic cemetery.
In all, some 118 remains were dug up and carted away before community protests brought the digging to a halt in January. Many of those whose bones were unearthed were Native Americans who worked with and lived alongside L.A.’s first European settlers.
This week, I heard Molina apologize.
“It truly pains me that this … has unfolded in this manner and in this way. And I’m truly sorry for it,” she told those gathered at an L.A. meeting of the state Native American Heritage Commission.
For nearly two hours, she sat in the front row of the hearing room while several speakers called her a liar, and one associated her La Plaza de Cultura y Artes with “cultural genocide.”
To her credit, Molina sat and listened and took her medicine without a word of protest.
When it was over, the powerful Latina politico shook the hands of the commission members, whose ranks include representatives of the Luiseno, Chumash and other tribes. And she kept on apologizing.
“It’s a huge mistake,” Molina told me outside the auditorium. “What else can you do when you make a big mistake but apologize? Some will accept it, others won’t…. But it wasn’t done by intent or by design.”
Still, from what I heard at Monday’s hearing in downtown Los Angeles, she could have avoided all the pain and suffering by treating one of the city’s historic sites with the care it deserved.
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via Archaeology