October 25, 2022 • 30 mins
California has always attracted dreamers. But the California dream had a dark side. From this complicated history, Marcus & Louis saw an opportunity to grow their movement. Sources:
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains graphic language, as well as descriptions of
violence and traumatic historical events that may be upsetting to some,
especially our indigenous listeners. Discretion is advised. Back in the nineties,
long before Marcus Ruiz Evans was born, Fresno was home
(00:22):
to two brothers named Patrick and Candido al Velando Vasquez, Vega,
part Yaki, Shoshone and Mexican. The brothers worked as laborers
in the cotton fields surrounding the city. Here's Patrick. We
picked all day along, from eight o'clock in morning till
five o'clock in the six o'clock in unity. We picked cotton,
(00:44):
you know, with the sax and everything. And that's how
I spent my summers with Grandpa, you know, teaching me
hard work. The days were long, but each night the
brothers came home to a household full of what they
loved most in the world. Music. Rampa was a famous
guitar playerback in Mexico years ago when he was younger.
(01:05):
He said, when you're tiling and you can reach that guitar,
you can have, you know, because that was just pride
and Joey played all the time. So I stood on
a chair and and you got on that evening. I
was playing it, you know, and you gave it to me.
So that's actually sounded on the guitar. M. When the
(01:26):
brothers were in their early twenties, they moved to Los
Angeles to pursue their dream of becoming professional musicians. They
formed a band playing top forty hits. I'll be on
the one the guitar and Patrick on the base. Most
of the popular clubs at the time were all the
Suns that Strip in West Hollywood. Well, they quickly learned
the performers with names like Vasquez Vega just weren't welcome.
(01:50):
You know. It was a big thing at the time,
getting hironing and white acts and and the strip. It
was a specutty white We went to audition from Bill
Gazari on don't see any guy, and Bill looked at it.
The said United Italian, said, you know when we can
be You said, well right now, and you're gonna be
(02:11):
Pat Vegas and you're gonna be Lolly Vegas. Pat and
Lolly complied. They dropped the Vascas from their names and
Vega became Vegas. All to become more possible as white
I wanted to work. You could have called me anything,
and I never played yet, so I don't give the
carbe jack rabbit. I would regatten your giant for a while.
(02:36):
They played alone, They hid their roots. They worked hard
to become as versatile as they could. They even did
a stint playing surf music. They wanted classical music. We
played some classically. They wanted to get Latin, Play Latin
if they wanted the country with their country. I played
(02:56):
a lot of country gigs railing for a lot of
indigenous people at the time. That was the only choice. Assimilate,
fit in, or be left behind. From Interval presents an
awfully nice this is the last resort I'm scat episode
three after the gold Rush. For many Americans, the history
(03:28):
of California begins with the gold Rush, the mass migration
of prospectors into the region that started in Here's journalists
Pat Morrison. So the gold Rush brought in people by
the tens of thousands who thought this is the place eureka,
the Greek word which is on the state flag of California,
meaning I have found it. There was as far as
(03:50):
the white gold rush settlers were concerned, nothing here before.
The truth is California has been inhabited for thousands of years.
It's the ancestral homeland of more than a hundred native tribes.
But then the colonists arrived. They came for different reasons,
to spread Christianity or to make their fortune, but in
(04:10):
the end they all needed one thing. Land. In this episode,
we're going to tell you the story of how that
land was taken, what it meant for the people who
originally lived there, and how today those people are fighting
to get that land back. The California Dream, while it's
been a dream for Europeans, it has been basically a
(04:30):
nightmare for California Indians because it's been built off our
backs and off our land. Calls and supporters often present
an image of California as different from the rest of
the United States as its own values and culture, and
it rejects the conservative ideas embodied by people like Donald Trump.
But beneath the surface of the California Dream is a
(04:51):
history that is a lot darker than most people know
and calls it's going to have to choose to reckon
with that dark history or repeat it. In the spring
of a U. S military captain named John Fremont led
(05:14):
an expedition into the wilderness of northern California, near the
present day town of Reading. At the time, California was
controlled by Mexico, but Fremont was a believer in manifest destiny,
this idea that the United States was destined by God
to rule all of the land in North America. California
(05:35):
would belong to the US soon enough. His stated mission
was just to survey the land, but he had been
armed by the U. S Department of War. Fremont got
word that a band of Native people were camping nearby.
Were they a threat? He didn't wait to find out.
He and his men traveled to the Sacramento River. It
(05:58):
surprised a group of wind to name Tives living along
the banks. Free Months men attacked, pinning the wind twos
against the water, firing on them with rifles, and then
butchering the survivors with axes. With nowhere to run, many
desperate women and children fled into the river, where they drowned.
(06:22):
Witnesses later estimated that as many as nine d people
were murdered in a single afternoon. Free Months attack was
the first recorded American massacre of California Natives, but it
was just the beginning. Here's Jolie Proudfit, the chair of
American Indian Studies at California State University, San Marcos. The
(06:44):
first two decades of the American occupation UM, the Native
population of California plummeted by nine percent. Bounties were paid
for the scalps of men, women, and children. None of
this was done in secret. The first Governor of California,
Peter Burnett, literally made genocide the state policy, saying, quote
(07:06):
a war of extermination will continue to be waged between
the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct. And
quote that wasn't some offhan comment, by the way, that
was his State of the State address, delivered at the
state Capitol in front of the California Congress. People are
often familiar with the image of the angel pointing west.
(07:30):
This notion of manifests destiny may have worked well for
white settlers, but for um, the original inhabitants of this land,
this was outright brutality and outright murder. As for Captain
John Freemont, the man responsible for the Sacramento River massacre, yeah,
he was elected California's first Senator in eighteen fifty In
(07:52):
eighteen fifty six, Fremont was nominated as the first presidential
candidate of a new political party, the Republicans. The second
Republican presidential kendidate, four years later was Abraham Lincoln. This
history of genocide and land theft laid the foundation for
(08:13):
our entire country, including California. In the decades that followed.
Most of the Natives who survived were sent to reservations,
often poor, isolated lands far from population centers. The result
was the indigenous people were increasingly invisible in the state.
Without them in the way, California could grow as big
(08:34):
as it could dream. Here's Pat Morrison again. The demographic
of California was Native American, and then the Spanish, and
then the Mexican and finally then the Yankees, the white
people who came to California and who molded and shaped
the image and the message of California into what they
wanted it to be at the expense of all of
(08:57):
the people who had been here before, all of the
marginalized people. They were essentially disappeared in the service of
this idea, this fantasy of California serve dudes with that
dude that they bag move skyp and and thing of
(09:22):
being mellow. The California gold Rush helps usher in a
concept known as the California Dream, that California was a
promised land where you could do and be anything. The
(09:43):
California dream has always even before the gold Rush, I
think conjured the notion of reinvention and self invention. This
is a place where your past didn't matter. Your future
is what mattered, your aspirations and your abilities. That is
the quintessential aspect of the American dream. And I think
California crystallized so wonderful plate for me tonight to have
(10:26):
heard and saying the Beach Boys and if you can
hear in the background, the girls are still hollering for them.
By the nineteen fifties and sixties, California's population was exploding,
envied around the world for its beaches, it's lifestyle, and
it's optimism. It was an image made popular by surf
rock groups like the Beach Boys, but more people meant
(10:48):
that California needed more housing, more highways, more farms, more land,
and the government they knew exactly where to find it.
Here's Jolie Proudfit again. We talked about the American period
with the gold Rush, with an influx of you know,
people coming from all over the world to get rich
(11:09):
with gold. And then the second wave was in the
nineteen fifties where people were moving from the Midwest to California.
So what did they need? More land? How did they
get it? Termination? In ninety three, Congress pass a new
policy towards Native people. It was known as Termination. Termination
(11:30):
did exactly what it said. It called for the end
of all recognition of tribes and the full assimilation of
Native people into American society. Reservations would be dissolved and
the land sold off. It was a different kind of genocide,
a cultural one, and once again it was all about
the land. The Termination Act terminated tribes from existing, so
(11:54):
they were no longer tribal governments. They no longer had citizens,
they know younger had tribal lands. These individual tribes no
longer were Native American. This was another period of time
for the federal government to take more Indian lands through
what they called liberating us through terminating our political legal status.
(12:20):
This pattern of genocide, land theft, in erasure is woven
throughout the story of California. Natives pushed off their reservations
immediately ran into another problem, redlining racist policies that restricted
where non whites could live in Los Angeles. For example,
if you weren't white, you couldn't live in up to
(12:41):
the properties in the city. This didn't just impact Native people,
of course. In l A, Black Americans were segregated into
communities like Watts and Compton. Residents face underfunded schools, few
job prospects, and an aggressive over policing of their communities.
On August eleven, the Beach Boys were in Hollywood recording
(13:04):
pet Sounds, their most celebrated album, but twenty miles away
in Watts, the tension between the police and the black
community finally reached a breaking point. It began with the
arrest by white officers of the California Highway Patrol of
(13:27):
two young negroes, one on a charge of drunk driving,
the other his brother, His passengers, their mother, who lives nearby,
came to the scene. There was an argument, there was
a scuffle. By then a crowd of several hundred negroes
had gathered. The story of police brutality quickly spread through
the community. This was the Watts Uprising, sometimes referred to
as the Watts Riots, six days of protest by black
(13:50):
residents that were met. With the deployment of nearly sixteen
thousand police in National Guard, all majority black neighborhoods in
l A were put under curfew. By the time it
was all over, nearly four thousand people had been arrested
(14:11):
in dozens had been killed, mostly shot by cops. Those
were the ugly early hours of this morning, as control
of a sort was finally imposed. This evening, Los Angeles
remains hot, quiet, tense, and dangerous, and twenty eight people
are dead. In the forties, Americans imagine California as this
(14:37):
untapped wilderness rich with gold, and all you had to
do was get there and claim your share. In the
nineteen fifties and sixties, California was sold as a land
of endless summer, a place where you could get a
great job, build the future, maybe even get famous. Call
Exit today is selling a version of that same dream.
That dream, the illusion of California is only possible because
(15:01):
of the land that was taken and the violent histories
that are hidden. As a kid, Marcus perceived racism as
something that happened somewhere else, and today he believes that
many of the problems that afflict the US aren't actually
California problems. We're just guilty by association. America is going downhill.
America doesn't have your values. California values and American values
(15:24):
are going to only increasingly diverge as time goes on,
so better to have a separation. But just as California
is surfing in hot rods, is also the wats uprising.
It's striking gold and its genocide. How you experience the
California dream has a lot to do with who you
are and what you look like. It's a dream that
(15:44):
was only ever meant for some. It's certainly not for
a guy like Patrick Vasquez Vega. You know, it's not.
It's not. It's just kind of fund of dream thing
Internet about me and the way it ships now and
the way it's it's the way I have earned and
seen it. It's it's it's not established for me. Throughout
the fifties and sixties, even after changing their name, the
(16:07):
Vegas Brothers struggled to break through with their music. To
get by, they found work as session musicians and songwriters,
helping to create hits for other artists, and along the
way they had to deal with all kinds of racist bullshit.
We were driving across Texas, you know, from gate to gate,
you know, and we're pulling to this one restaurant, just
(16:30):
sit down in the back and ording food, and all
of a sudden there's two guys walks and white guys walking.
They checked us out, and then they walked out, and
then they're about twenty minutes later coming with about ten guys.
They wanted to trouble. I couldn't afford to have one
of the guys heard, so we slipped out the back.
(16:50):
We jumped into cars and took off and they chased this,
you know. But but yeah, we had a lot of that.
Nothing was going to change the fact that we were
Native American that you know, we weren't twite, so so
there was a lot of prejudice all through this time.
(17:11):
Something was eating at Pat. He was tired, unfulfilled. So
one day I told a lie and I said that
said them through playing with I'm grateful people and and
got clubs, and I'm just I'm just sick of it.
I wasn't getting any and I wasn't getting any truth
out of it. I wasn't getting any satisfaction. I mean,
(17:32):
I wasn't really doing anything for myself or doing anything
for us, you know, we were doing it for everybody else,
and and and I wasn't getting any joy out of it.
At this point. The years of struggle were weighing on Pat.
But one night on stage, he had a breakthrough. One day,
(17:53):
I got up there and kind based when I thought
up and I heard this guitar player and then just
a chart point for I am playing the long stretched
notes and liud, I mean just crazy. And I turned
my head and it was Jimmy. The musician who had
joined Pat on stage was Jimmy Hendrix, debatably one of
(18:16):
the greatest guitarists of all time, who also happened to
be part Cherokee. He loved what we were doing, he
loved how we played. He just loved the way I
played Basement. He's the one that said, man, you guys
need to explore your roots. Man, I'm party in jin
he says. He said, I wish I could use mine,
And I said that's a good idea. And so we
(18:39):
went on pursued that and just went skying with that.
And so a short time later in the CBS records office,
a new kind of band was formed. Yeah, So we
were sitting at CBS Studios and secretary was headed fingers
on them capriat and said, who's what's the name of
(19:01):
the group. And I had this little piece of paper
in my water and looking at my wine and unwrapped
it like that root tank and I said red Bone
And she's just red Bone. What is that? It's a
name for Native American who's part Native American. They're half breed,
(19:25):
and they're calling him a half breed. You call him
a red bone And she says, typed red that it
now known as red Bone. Pot and Lolly didn't shy
away from putting their background at the forefront of their music.
They released their first album in nineteen, followed by three
more until in nineteen seventy three they dropped the song
(19:46):
that would define their careers, Come and Get Your Love,
was an international hit, and there was no mistaking Red
Bones heritage. From their hairstyles to their wardrobe. Their true
(20:09):
identities were finally on full display. Being Indigenous is the
(20:31):
only truth I knew. I wanted to be going to
play from my roots, you know, and people are all
going to the world accepted and appreciated because the honesty
is there and you can hear it Come and Get
Your Love has become a timeless classic, and it found
new life when it was featured in the opening credits
of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Red Bones success was
(21:00):
a game changer for Native representation in pop culture. Here's
p J. Vegas, Pat's son and a musician in his
own right, Come and Get Your Love man the amazing things.
It was the first Native American rock band to reach
top five and Billboard charts, And it's just something for
our people to really identify ourselves too, and to kind
of just show like we're here. Like you may think
(21:21):
that we're not here, but look this is Come and
Get Your Love. These are these are people. We didn't
see any of us on TV. We don't, you know,
we never saw any of us in the music industry
performing next to the great and everything called you know,
spaghetti Westerns back in the day. And then we're huge
in my father's era, and it was Italians playing Native Americans,
so there wasn't really anyone that they could look to
to have an example of what was possible. So when
(21:43):
my father and my uncle did that, that's the biggest accolade.
You know. What I mean is to Inspire. Pg's most
recent project is called Native State of Mind. His Dad
plays based on most of it YEA. For centuries, Native
(22:11):
people have lived as second class citizens in their own homelands.
They were killed in the state sponsored genocide, they were
enslaved and forced onto reservations, and finally they were pressured
to assimilate. But by the nineteen sixties, a new movement
was underway to fight back, to reclaim what was taken
from Native people, our culture, our rights, and our land.
(22:34):
It's known as Red Power. Today that idea lives on
in part through a movement called Land Back. They stole
the land, but they couldn't take our spirit. They fear
the end of their world, but they forget We are
building a future that belongs to us all. We are
(22:56):
the ones our ancestors prayed for. We are that we
are the land. Here's Jolie proudfit again. So the land
Back movement is really just putting front and center what
Native people always have wanted. It's our ability to be
self determined on our own lands and our homelands. We
(23:20):
lost millions of acres of land that we have not
been able to get back, and we want to have
our own political status, with our own language, with our
own customs and tradition. This is restitution. There's never gonna
be reconciliation without return of the land. Land Back offers
us a vision of what the future for Native people
(23:41):
could look like. This song was the first single off
my last album. I wrote it in support of the movement.
They say where you from the capital with Marty places
on the Constitution, with some bloody hands, fector business plan
and saw people's Marcus and Lewis have pitched a new
(24:02):
dream for California, a place that's more inclusive and just
than the United States. But at the same time, it
kind of just feels like a continuation of the system
that brought so much misery in the first place. So
why would any Native Californian support the calas a cause? Well,
so their credit, Marcus and Lewis have come up with
(24:23):
a proposal, but they come straightfor they live with the
place that we stand, so we're taking it take it
out back. Well. The plan to break California off from
the rest of the United States is back with an
interesting new twist. The leaders of cal Exit have announced
a new version of their scheme to create an independent California.
(24:45):
In this all federal lands in the state, which is
about half of all of California, will be returned to
American Indian tribes. Marcus Urrez Evans is co founder of
cal Exit and always game enough to come on our show.
We appreciate that he joins us tonightful Fristo, Marcus, thanks off. Come. Uh.
You know, the best thing to do for Native American
people would be to give them back all of the
land and everybody who's not Native would leave and then
(25:08):
petition to become an immigrant. Obviously, that's not going to happen.
So what we did at calex it was say, what's
the best thing that we could do that's not going
to fix genocide, isn't going to fix everything, not make
it all perfect, but what's the biggest leap that we
could make in the right direction. And we felt that
giving over half of California and basically uh, the American
(25:28):
control part to Native people who actually own the land
would at least be a step in the right direction.
Here's an interesting fact about California. Almost of the land
in the state is owned by the federal government. Under
Marcus and Lewis's plan, after calls it, all of that
land would be turned over entirely to Native people, meaning
(25:48):
that calls it wouldn't just create a new California nation,
it would also create other Native led countries at the
same time. It's honestly a pretty radical proposal. Here's Marcus.
So when you talk to the indigenous tribes here, which
we had before we announced that, we knew that they
would love it because it was like, Hey, you were
pushed off of your land and killed, You're gonna get
(26:09):
it all back. So we knew we were going to
pick up some allies to pick up some traction, and
we also knew it was the right thing. And as
far as do we really believe it, I wrote about
it in my book in two thousand twelve, before we
ever got famous, before I ever near Lewis. So I
always believed in this idea and that's documented. M So,
what should native people think about Marcus and Lewis and
(26:31):
calls It's offer pa Vegas for one kind of like
the idea I didn't be wonderful. I think that would
be a good gesture of of humanity and from America
in California would be beautiful. On one hand, land return
is something that we've dreamt of and fought for for decades.
(26:51):
Here's Julie proudfit again. The largest landowner in the West
is still the federal government. So there are many lands
that the federal guy from An owns that can be
returned quite easily to the tribal nations um in those
areas for them to manage for themselves, for their people,
for their future. But on the other hand, there are
(27:13):
plenty of reasons to be skeptical about collegs It's promises.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We've
had progressive, liberal, good hearted people trying to tell American
Indians what's in our best interests. That hasn't worked out
for us. Let's just say that Calleg's actually happened and
Marcus and Lewis follow through on their promise to give
(27:36):
the land back. How would it work. The federal lands
in California aren't all connected. What do we have dozens
or possibly hundreds of tiny countries scattered across the region.
Second calls isn't giving back Beverly Hills or San Francisco.
The lands owned by the federal government are mostly undeveloped. Finally,
a lot of the land calls is pledging to return
(27:59):
is currently used by other people, some of whom are
fighting their own battle for control. In fact, there's another
secession movement in California besides CALEXY, and it's growing fast.
But they're not trying to break away from the United States.
They're trying to leave California itself. Here in the rural
counties of northern California, some residents say it's time for
(28:22):
a new declaration of independence. They want to separate from
California and create a fifty first state, the state of Jefferson.
There's this big divide and it's not just COVID, and
it's not just politics, and it's not just the State
of Jefferson. It's just all mixed up. This is a complete,
unequivocal overthrow of the government. I think they're looking for
(28:44):
a civil war. I mean, I really do. I think
they're looking for an excuse to start using weapons. That's
next time on the Last Resort. The Last Resort is
(29:06):
an Interval Presents original production from Awfully Nice. From Interval Presents,
the executive producers are Alan Coy and Jake Kleinberg. Executive
producers from Awfully Nice are Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges.
Written and produced by Jesse Burton and Dana Bulut. Associate
producer is Suzanne Gaber. Project management by Kadi Kama Kat Editing,
(29:29):
sound design and mix by Nick Sabriano and Keiana McClellan
of Bang Audio. Post original music by My Boy Mattaway,
Yuki and Me, shoot Test Scott. Theme song by Me
shoot Test Scott and Sweet. Sound fact checking by Lauren Vespoli.
Script consultation by William Bauer. Operations lead is Sarah You,
Business development lead is Cheffi a Lenswig, and marketing lead
(29:52):
is Samara still Special. Thanks to Cecily Messa Martinez, I'm
your host, shoot Test Scott. For a full list of
the sources used in this episode, please check the show notes.
Make sure to follow, rate and review The Last Resort
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. Wrote what we
(30:12):
Do when we Want, I wrote the Wars. Yeah,
This episode contains graphic language, as well as descriptions of
violence and traumatic historical events that may be upsetting to some,
especially our indigenous listeners. Discretion is advised. Back in the nineties,
long before Marcus Ruiz Evans was born, Fresno was home
(00:22):
to two brothers named Patrick and Candido al Velando Vasquez, Vega,
part Yaki, Shoshone and Mexican. The brothers worked as laborers
in the cotton fields surrounding the city. Here's Patrick. We
picked all day along, from eight o'clock in morning till
five o'clock in the six o'clock in unity. We picked cotton,
(00:44):
you know, with the sax and everything. And that's how
I spent my summers with Grandpa, you know, teaching me
hard work. The days were long, but each night the
brothers came home to a household full of what they
loved most in the world. Music. Rampa was a famous
guitar playerback in Mexico years ago when he was younger.
(01:05):
He said, when you're tiling and you can reach that guitar,
you can have, you know, because that was just pride
and Joey played all the time. So I stood on
a chair and and you got on that evening. I
was playing it, you know, and you gave it to me.
So that's actually sounded on the guitar. M. When the
(01:26):
brothers were in their early twenties, they moved to Los
Angeles to pursue their dream of becoming professional musicians. They
formed a band playing top forty hits. I'll be on
the one the guitar and Patrick on the base. Most
of the popular clubs at the time were all the
Suns that Strip in West Hollywood. Well, they quickly learned
the performers with names like Vasquez Vega just weren't welcome.
(01:50):
You know. It was a big thing at the time,
getting hironing and white acts and and the strip. It
was a specutty white We went to audition from Bill
Gazari on don't see any guy, and Bill looked at it.
The said United Italian, said, you know when we can
be You said, well right now, and you're gonna be
(02:11):
Pat Vegas and you're gonna be Lolly Vegas. Pat and
Lolly complied. They dropped the Vascas from their names and
Vega became Vegas. All to become more possible as white
I wanted to work. You could have called me anything,
and I never played yet, so I don't give the
carbe jack rabbit. I would regatten your giant for a while.
(02:36):
They played alone, They hid their roots. They worked hard
to become as versatile as they could. They even did
a stint playing surf music. They wanted classical music. We
played some classically. They wanted to get Latin, Play Latin
if they wanted the country with their country. I played
(02:56):
a lot of country gigs railing for a lot of
indigenous people at the time. That was the only choice. Assimilate,
fit in, or be left behind. From Interval presents an
awfully nice this is the last resort I'm scat episode
three after the gold Rush. For many Americans, the history
(03:28):
of California begins with the gold Rush, the mass migration
of prospectors into the region that started in Here's journalists
Pat Morrison. So the gold Rush brought in people by
the tens of thousands who thought this is the place eureka,
the Greek word which is on the state flag of California,
meaning I have found it. There was as far as
(03:50):
the white gold rush settlers were concerned, nothing here before.
The truth is California has been inhabited for thousands of years.
It's the ancestral homeland of more than a hundred native tribes.
But then the colonists arrived. They came for different reasons,
to spread Christianity or to make their fortune, but in
(04:10):
the end they all needed one thing. Land. In this episode,
we're going to tell you the story of how that
land was taken, what it meant for the people who
originally lived there, and how today those people are fighting
to get that land back. The California Dream, while it's
been a dream for Europeans, it has been basically a
(04:30):
nightmare for California Indians because it's been built off our
backs and off our land. Calls and supporters often present
an image of California as different from the rest of
the United States as its own values and culture, and
it rejects the conservative ideas embodied by people like Donald Trump.
But beneath the surface of the California Dream is a
(04:51):
history that is a lot darker than most people know
and calls it's going to have to choose to reckon
with that dark history or repeat it. In the spring
of a U. S military captain named John Fremont led
(05:14):
an expedition into the wilderness of northern California, near the
present day town of Reading. At the time, California was
controlled by Mexico, but Fremont was a believer in manifest destiny,
this idea that the United States was destined by God
to rule all of the land in North America. California
(05:35):
would belong to the US soon enough. His stated mission
was just to survey the land, but he had been
armed by the U. S Department of War. Fremont got
word that a band of Native people were camping nearby.
Were they a threat? He didn't wait to find out.
He and his men traveled to the Sacramento River. It
(05:58):
surprised a group of wind to name Tives living along
the banks. Free Months men attacked, pinning the wind twos
against the water, firing on them with rifles, and then
butchering the survivors with axes. With nowhere to run, many
desperate women and children fled into the river, where they drowned.
(06:22):
Witnesses later estimated that as many as nine d people
were murdered in a single afternoon. Free Months attack was
the first recorded American massacre of California Natives, but it
was just the beginning. Here's Jolie Proudfit, the chair of
American Indian Studies at California State University, San Marcos. The
(06:44):
first two decades of the American occupation UM, the Native
population of California plummeted by nine percent. Bounties were paid
for the scalps of men, women, and children. None of
this was done in secret. The first Governor of California,
Peter Burnett, literally made genocide the state policy, saying, quote
(07:06):
a war of extermination will continue to be waged between
the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct. And
quote that wasn't some offhan comment, by the way, that
was his State of the State address, delivered at the
state Capitol in front of the California Congress. People are
often familiar with the image of the angel pointing west.
(07:30):
This notion of manifests destiny may have worked well for
white settlers, but for um, the original inhabitants of this land,
this was outright brutality and outright murder. As for Captain
John Freemont, the man responsible for the Sacramento River massacre, yeah,
he was elected California's first Senator in eighteen fifty In
(07:52):
eighteen fifty six, Fremont was nominated as the first presidential
candidate of a new political party, the Republicans. The second
Republican presidential kendidate, four years later was Abraham Lincoln. This
history of genocide and land theft laid the foundation for
(08:13):
our entire country, including California. In the decades that followed.
Most of the Natives who survived were sent to reservations,
often poor, isolated lands far from population centers. The result
was the indigenous people were increasingly invisible in the state.
Without them in the way, California could grow as big
(08:34):
as it could dream. Here's Pat Morrison again. The demographic
of California was Native American, and then the Spanish, and
then the Mexican and finally then the Yankees, the white
people who came to California and who molded and shaped
the image and the message of California into what they
wanted it to be at the expense of all of
(08:57):
the people who had been here before, all of the
marginalized people. They were essentially disappeared in the service of
this idea, this fantasy of California serve dudes with that
dude that they bag move skyp and and thing of
(09:22):
being mellow. The California gold Rush helps usher in a
concept known as the California Dream, that California was a
promised land where you could do and be anything. The
(09:43):
California dream has always even before the gold Rush, I
think conjured the notion of reinvention and self invention. This
is a place where your past didn't matter. Your future
is what mattered, your aspirations and your abilities. That is
the quintessential aspect of the American dream. And I think
California crystallized so wonderful plate for me tonight to have
(10:26):
heard and saying the Beach Boys and if you can
hear in the background, the girls are still hollering for them.
By the nineteen fifties and sixties, California's population was exploding,
envied around the world for its beaches, it's lifestyle, and
it's optimism. It was an image made popular by surf
rock groups like the Beach Boys, but more people meant
(10:48):
that California needed more housing, more highways, more farms, more land,
and the government they knew exactly where to find it.
Here's Jolie Proudfit again. We talked about the American period
with the gold Rush, with an influx of you know,
people coming from all over the world to get rich
(11:09):
with gold. And then the second wave was in the
nineteen fifties where people were moving from the Midwest to California.
So what did they need? More land? How did they
get it? Termination? In ninety three, Congress pass a new
policy towards Native people. It was known as Termination. Termination
(11:30):
did exactly what it said. It called for the end
of all recognition of tribes and the full assimilation of
Native people into American society. Reservations would be dissolved and
the land sold off. It was a different kind of genocide,
a cultural one, and once again it was all about
the land. The Termination Act terminated tribes from existing, so
(11:54):
they were no longer tribal governments. They no longer had citizens,
they know younger had tribal lands. These individual tribes no
longer were Native American. This was another period of time
for the federal government to take more Indian lands through
what they called liberating us through terminating our political legal status.
(12:20):
This pattern of genocide, land theft, in erasure is woven
throughout the story of California. Natives pushed off their reservations
immediately ran into another problem, redlining racist policies that restricted
where non whites could live in Los Angeles. For example,
if you weren't white, you couldn't live in up to
(12:41):
the properties in the city. This didn't just impact Native people,
of course. In l A, Black Americans were segregated into
communities like Watts and Compton. Residents face underfunded schools, few
job prospects, and an aggressive over policing of their communities.
On August eleven, the Beach Boys were in Hollywood recording
(13:04):
pet Sounds, their most celebrated album, but twenty miles away
in Watts, the tension between the police and the black
community finally reached a breaking point. It began with the
arrest by white officers of the California Highway Patrol of
(13:27):
two young negroes, one on a charge of drunk driving,
the other his brother, His passengers, their mother, who lives nearby,
came to the scene. There was an argument, there was
a scuffle. By then a crowd of several hundred negroes
had gathered. The story of police brutality quickly spread through
the community. This was the Watts Uprising, sometimes referred to
as the Watts Riots, six days of protest by black
(13:50):
residents that were met. With the deployment of nearly sixteen
thousand police in National Guard, all majority black neighborhoods in
l A were put under curfew. By the time it
was all over, nearly four thousand people had been arrested
(14:11):
in dozens had been killed, mostly shot by cops. Those
were the ugly early hours of this morning, as control
of a sort was finally imposed. This evening, Los Angeles
remains hot, quiet, tense, and dangerous, and twenty eight people
are dead. In the forties, Americans imagine California as this
(14:37):
untapped wilderness rich with gold, and all you had to
do was get there and claim your share. In the
nineteen fifties and sixties, California was sold as a land
of endless summer, a place where you could get a
great job, build the future, maybe even get famous. Call
Exit today is selling a version of that same dream.
That dream, the illusion of California is only possible because
(15:01):
of the land that was taken and the violent histories
that are hidden. As a kid, Marcus perceived racism as
something that happened somewhere else, and today he believes that
many of the problems that afflict the US aren't actually
California problems. We're just guilty by association. America is going downhill.
America doesn't have your values. California values and American values
(15:24):
are going to only increasingly diverge as time goes on,
so better to have a separation. But just as California
is surfing in hot rods, is also the wats uprising.
It's striking gold and its genocide. How you experience the
California dream has a lot to do with who you
are and what you look like. It's a dream that
(15:44):
was only ever meant for some. It's certainly not for
a guy like Patrick Vasquez Vega. You know, it's not.
It's not. It's just kind of fund of dream thing
Internet about me and the way it ships now and
the way it's it's the way I have earned and
seen it. It's it's it's not established for me. Throughout
the fifties and sixties, even after changing their name, the
(16:07):
Vegas Brothers struggled to break through with their music. To
get by, they found work as session musicians and songwriters,
helping to create hits for other artists, and along the
way they had to deal with all kinds of racist bullshit.
We were driving across Texas, you know, from gate to gate,
you know, and we're pulling to this one restaurant, just
(16:30):
sit down in the back and ording food, and all
of a sudden there's two guys walks and white guys walking.
They checked us out, and then they walked out, and
then they're about twenty minutes later coming with about ten guys.
They wanted to trouble. I couldn't afford to have one
of the guys heard, so we slipped out the back.
(16:50):
We jumped into cars and took off and they chased this,
you know. But but yeah, we had a lot of that.
Nothing was going to change the fact that we were
Native American that you know, we weren't twite, so so
there was a lot of prejudice all through this time.
(17:11):
Something was eating at Pat. He was tired, unfulfilled. So
one day I told a lie and I said that
said them through playing with I'm grateful people and and
got clubs, and I'm just I'm just sick of it.
I wasn't getting any and I wasn't getting any truth
out of it. I wasn't getting any satisfaction. I mean,
(17:32):
I wasn't really doing anything for myself or doing anything
for us, you know, we were doing it for everybody else,
and and and I wasn't getting any joy out of it.
At this point. The years of struggle were weighing on Pat.
But one night on stage, he had a breakthrough. One day,
(17:53):
I got up there and kind based when I thought
up and I heard this guitar player and then just
a chart point for I am playing the long stretched
notes and liud, I mean just crazy. And I turned
my head and it was Jimmy. The musician who had
joined Pat on stage was Jimmy Hendrix, debatably one of
(18:16):
the greatest guitarists of all time, who also happened to
be part Cherokee. He loved what we were doing, he
loved how we played. He just loved the way I
played Basement. He's the one that said, man, you guys
need to explore your roots. Man, I'm party in jin
he says. He said, I wish I could use mine,
And I said that's a good idea. And so we
(18:39):
went on pursued that and just went skying with that.
And so a short time later in the CBS records office,
a new kind of band was formed. Yeah, So we
were sitting at CBS Studios and secretary was headed fingers
on them capriat and said, who's what's the name of
(19:01):
the group. And I had this little piece of paper
in my water and looking at my wine and unwrapped
it like that root tank and I said red Bone
And she's just red Bone. What is that? It's a
name for Native American who's part Native American. They're half breed,
(19:25):
and they're calling him a half breed. You call him
a red bone And she says, typed red that it
now known as red Bone. Pot and Lolly didn't shy
away from putting their background at the forefront of their music.
They released their first album in nineteen, followed by three
more until in nineteen seventy three they dropped the song
(19:46):
that would define their careers, Come and Get Your Love,
was an international hit, and there was no mistaking Red
Bones heritage. From their hairstyles to their wardrobe. Their true
(20:09):
identities were finally on full display. Being Indigenous is the
(20:31):
only truth I knew. I wanted to be going to
play from my roots, you know, and people are all
going to the world accepted and appreciated because the honesty
is there and you can hear it Come and Get
Your Love has become a timeless classic, and it found
new life when it was featured in the opening credits
of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Red Bones success was
(21:00):
a game changer for Native representation in pop culture. Here's
p J. Vegas, Pat's son and a musician in his
own right, Come and Get Your Love man the amazing things.
It was the first Native American rock band to reach
top five and Billboard charts, And it's just something for
our people to really identify ourselves too, and to kind
of just show like we're here. Like you may think
(21:21):
that we're not here, but look this is Come and
Get Your Love. These are these are people. We didn't
see any of us on TV. We don't, you know,
we never saw any of us in the music industry
performing next to the great and everything called you know,
spaghetti Westerns back in the day. And then we're huge
in my father's era, and it was Italians playing Native Americans,
so there wasn't really anyone that they could look to
to have an example of what was possible. So when
(21:43):
my father and my uncle did that, that's the biggest accolade.
You know. What I mean is to Inspire. Pg's most
recent project is called Native State of Mind. His Dad
plays based on most of it YEA. For centuries, Native
(22:11):
people have lived as second class citizens in their own homelands.
They were killed in the state sponsored genocide, they were
enslaved and forced onto reservations, and finally they were pressured
to assimilate. But by the nineteen sixties, a new movement
was underway to fight back, to reclaim what was taken
from Native people, our culture, our rights, and our land.
(22:34):
It's known as Red Power. Today that idea lives on
in part through a movement called Land Back. They stole
the land, but they couldn't take our spirit. They fear
the end of their world, but they forget We are
building a future that belongs to us all. We are
(22:56):
the ones our ancestors prayed for. We are that we
are the land. Here's Jolie proudfit again. So the land
Back movement is really just putting front and center what
Native people always have wanted. It's our ability to be
self determined on our own lands and our homelands. We
(23:20):
lost millions of acres of land that we have not
been able to get back, and we want to have
our own political status, with our own language, with our
own customs and tradition. This is restitution. There's never gonna
be reconciliation without return of the land. Land Back offers
us a vision of what the future for Native people
(23:41):
could look like. This song was the first single off
my last album. I wrote it in support of the movement.
They say where you from the capital with Marty places
on the Constitution, with some bloody hands, fector business plan
and saw people's Marcus and Lewis have pitched a new
(24:02):
dream for California, a place that's more inclusive and just
than the United States. But at the same time, it
kind of just feels like a continuation of the system
that brought so much misery in the first place. So
why would any Native Californian support the calas a cause? Well,
so their credit, Marcus and Lewis have come up with
(24:23):
a proposal, but they come straightfor they live with the
place that we stand, so we're taking it take it
out back. Well. The plan to break California off from
the rest of the United States is back with an
interesting new twist. The leaders of cal Exit have announced
a new version of their scheme to create an independent California.
(24:45):
In this all federal lands in the state, which is
about half of all of California, will be returned to
American Indian tribes. Marcus Urrez Evans is co founder of
cal Exit and always game enough to come on our show.
We appreciate that he joins us tonightful Fristo, Marcus, thanks off. Come. Uh.
You know, the best thing to do for Native American
people would be to give them back all of the
land and everybody who's not Native would leave and then
(25:08):
petition to become an immigrant. Obviously, that's not going to happen.
So what we did at calex it was say, what's
the best thing that we could do that's not going
to fix genocide, isn't going to fix everything, not make
it all perfect, but what's the biggest leap that we
could make in the right direction. And we felt that
giving over half of California and basically uh, the American
(25:28):
control part to Native people who actually own the land
would at least be a step in the right direction.
Here's an interesting fact about California. Almost of the land
in the state is owned by the federal government. Under
Marcus and Lewis's plan, after calls it, all of that
land would be turned over entirely to Native people, meaning
(25:48):
that calls it wouldn't just create a new California nation,
it would also create other Native led countries at the
same time. It's honestly a pretty radical proposal. Here's Marcus.
So when you talk to the indigenous tribes here, which
we had before we announced that, we knew that they
would love it because it was like, Hey, you were
pushed off of your land and killed, You're gonna get
(26:09):
it all back. So we knew we were going to
pick up some allies to pick up some traction, and
we also knew it was the right thing. And as
far as do we really believe it, I wrote about
it in my book in two thousand twelve, before we
ever got famous, before I ever near Lewis. So I
always believed in this idea and that's documented. M So,
what should native people think about Marcus and Lewis and
(26:31):
calls It's offer pa Vegas for one kind of like
the idea I didn't be wonderful. I think that would
be a good gesture of of humanity and from America
in California would be beautiful. On one hand, land return
is something that we've dreamt of and fought for for decades.
(26:51):
Here's Julie proudfit again. The largest landowner in the West
is still the federal government. So there are many lands
that the federal guy from An owns that can be
returned quite easily to the tribal nations um in those
areas for them to manage for themselves, for their people,
for their future. But on the other hand, there are
(27:13):
plenty of reasons to be skeptical about collegs It's promises.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We've
had progressive, liberal, good hearted people trying to tell American
Indians what's in our best interests. That hasn't worked out
for us. Let's just say that Calleg's actually happened and
Marcus and Lewis follow through on their promise to give
(27:36):
the land back. How would it work. The federal lands
in California aren't all connected. What do we have dozens
or possibly hundreds of tiny countries scattered across the region.
Second calls isn't giving back Beverly Hills or San Francisco.
The lands owned by the federal government are mostly undeveloped. Finally,
a lot of the land calls is pledging to return
(27:59):
is currently used by other people, some of whom are
fighting their own battle for control. In fact, there's another
secession movement in California besides CALEXY, and it's growing fast.
But they're not trying to break away from the United States.
They're trying to leave California itself. Here in the rural
counties of northern California, some residents say it's time for
(28:22):
a new declaration of independence. They want to separate from
California and create a fifty first state, the state of Jefferson.
There's this big divide and it's not just COVID, and
it's not just politics, and it's not just the State
of Jefferson. It's just all mixed up. This is a complete,
unequivocal overthrow of the government. I think they're looking for
(28:44):
a civil war. I mean, I really do. I think
they're looking for an excuse to start using weapons. That's
next time on the Last Resort. The Last Resort is
(29:06):
an Interval Presents original production from Awfully Nice. From Interval Presents,
the executive producers are Alan Coy and Jake Kleinberg. Executive
producers from Awfully Nice are Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges.
Written and produced by Jesse Burton and Dana Bulut. Associate
producer is Suzanne Gaber. Project management by Kadi Kama Kat Editing,
(29:29):
sound design and mix by Nick Sabriano and Keiana McClellan
of Bang Audio. Post original music by My Boy Mattaway,
Yuki and Me, shoot Test Scott. Theme song by Me
shoot Test Scott and Sweet. Sound fact checking by Lauren Vespoli.
Script consultation by William Bauer. Operations lead is Sarah You,
Business development lead is Cheffi a Lenswig, and marketing lead
(29:52):
is Samara still Special. Thanks to Cecily Messa Martinez, I'm
your host, shoot Test Scott. For a full list of
the sources used in this episode, please check the show notes.
Make sure to follow, rate and review The Last Resort
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. Wrote what we
(30:12):
Do when we Want, I wrote the Wars. Yeah,
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