Nov. 6, 2025 7 AM PT <\/p>\n
To the editor: To an Indigenous person, this article was a breath of fresh air, a light in the darkness of California\u2019s Indigenous history (\u201cElk are again roaming on lands that California has returned to the Tule River Indian Tribe,\u201d<\/a> Oct. 29). Thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom for the return of 17,000 acres of ancestral land to the Tule River Tribe.<\/p>\n The first elected California governor, Peter Hardeman Burnett, infamously declared<\/a> that a \u201cwar of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct.\u201d His administration<\/a>, using the precedent of the Doctrine of Discovery, facilitated the removal of Native Californians from their lands, enabled their effective enslavement through indentured servitude and contributed to a state-sponsored genocide<\/a>. His state policies included funding militias to kill Natives, leading to a catastrophic decline in the California Native population, which dropped from an estimated 150,000 in 1846 to around 30,000 by 1873. Tragically, it is a microcosm of our nation\u2019s Indigenous abuses.<\/p>\n This history is anathema to our claim of American exceptionalism and is what the present administration wants to eliminate from our national parks, museums and history books. We can\u2019t claim greatness until we have the integrity to at least admit our injustices.<\/p>\n Harold Printup, Mar Vista<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nov. 6, 2025 7 AM PT To the editor: To an Indigenous person, this article was a breath…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2672,7,9,8,8863,27779,27782,2072,27781,27778,1510,11836,27780,2211,8851,27783,21732],"class_list":["post-40910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-administration","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-claim","tag-darkness","tag-doctrine","tag-editor","tag-funding-militia","tag-indigenous-history","tag-land","tag-light","tag-native-californians","tag-race","tag-removal","tag-state-policy","tag-tule-river-indian-tribe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}