SANTA BARBARA, CA – On December 15, 2020, the city of Santa Barbara changed a street name from “Indio Muerto” (Dead Indian) to Hutash, which means Earth mother. It was a significant change that reflected a history of the cities’ role in the nature of racism and colonial oppression in California.
Santa Barbara is a small city just 100 miles north of Los Angeles. It is a home of the Chumash people, who inhabit the area of once vastly populated communities in the entire West, before the invasion of the Spanish, Mexican and American people.
The history of the assault on the Indians from the time of the settler-colonial movement into California, is brutal, vicious and full of terror.
“The Anglo-American invasion of California became a flood after 1848, a flood which inundated both native and Mexican Californians. The years from about 1850 through the 1870s were unspeakably terrible for native Californians with at least 80,000 Indians of all ages dying within the span of one generation.”
The invaders’ murder machine included physical, social, mental, and psychological violence. Every act of civil society was aimed at a lower standard of the Indian because of land occupancy and slavery (both direct and wage). The destruction of the Chumash by the church Padres or Spanish government; the trauma, alienation, and psychological results were ever present and set the tone for the Anglo-Americans.
The Indians’ incarceration rate was high and much was played out in the peonage system of keeping the Indian in debt and enslaved.
The legal system neither prosecuted crimes by Anglo-Americans against Indians nor allowed testimony against Anglo-Americans of a crime against an Indian. It was a common belief that authorities such as judges, sheriffs, lawyers or deputized vigilante groups framed Indians as guilty or not innocent. “By virtue of an ‘Act for the Government and Protection of Indians’…the act specified: ‘In no case shall a white man be convicted on any offense upon the testimony of an Indian.’ ” This was state law. California was in essence a slave state.
The sentiment of the past that the only good Indian was a dead Indian reflects the street sign name Indio Muerto. That is why the energy went into changing the name. The majority of the Chumash bands agreed to the change. It was due! It was done.
To heal our communities from the genocide and the travesty of the history of colonial settlement and its effect upon the Indian, we need to challenge the racist attitudes and structural, procedural and social undertones that creates this name, Indio Muerto, and tell our stories!
Telling our stories can free us from oppression. When you know why you are poor, downtrodden, alone, depressed, and realize it is the system we live under, then one can free oneself and organize effectively. And with the spirit of goodness and courage to join others to better ourselves and create a world where all can fit. Long live Hutash Street!
