Power & Public Memory : Shaping Legacy Monument Case Studies Discussion

Good evening everyone. I'm Allison Wyoff. I'm the director of exhibitions for the San Francisco Public Library System and it's really an honor to see all of you here. Uh thank you for joining us tonight at the main uh tonight's program shaping legacy monument case studies is the second in a five-part series power and public memory developed by the San Francisco Arts Commission to highlight the shaping legacy initiative. All programs take place on the first Wednesday of the month through November. So, please join us again here in this room at six o'clock um next month. Before we begin, I'd like to recognize that the San Francisco Public Library occupies the unseated ancestral homeland of the Ramos Alone, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that the Ram Tush Alone understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. So without further introduction, please help me welcome Angela Carrier, sen senior program manager at the San Francisco Arts Commission, who will introduce tonight's panelists. Good evening and thank you Allison and the San Francisco Public Library team for all your care and support in being able to bring this series to the library. Um it's wonderful to see you all here tonight. Thank you for joining us in person and we're grateful that this you know will also be recorded so those who weren't able to join can experience what we're going to hear from tonight. So before we get into the panels and the presentations, I did want to give some context and some background on the project so we can place um much of what you're hearing about tonight into the broader context of the shaping legacy project. So, in June of 2023, the Arts Commission was fortunate to have received a grant from the Melon Foundation um as part of their commitment to transform the nation's commemorative landscape by supporting projects that help represent the complexity of American stories. And San Francisco's among many other cities and municipalities who are being resourced to do this important work and shout out to some colleagues out there who helped support um getting this grant um for the arts commission. So with that funding we have shaping legacy which is a continuum of work that was seated with the continuous thread initiative the monuments of memorials advisory committee report and really decades of community feedback to from the community for the arts commission shaping legacy aims to critically examine the monuments and memorials and San Francisco civic art collection and to reimagine the future of monuments and memorials in our city. We believe that artists and communities can guide us to a place where monuments are spaces of inclusion, of belonging, and a recognition of our shared humanity. to ground us a bit in the project goals. Um the first is to engage communities that are under reppresented in the commemorative landscape to create opportunities for artists to reimagine monuments and memorials in public space through activations, interventions, and installations and to produce an audit report on the existing objects in the civic art collection. The image you see here is of artist KB Dwarte's Embassy of the Refugee, which is just outside the doors if you exit onto Fulton Plaza. This installation will be up uh for another few weeks through the end of August. And our first program in the series was actually his artist talk. So if you go to the library's YouTube page, you'll be able to learn more about his project and his process. Zooming out a bit, this is an aerial view of the objects in the collection that are identified as monuments and memorials. So you'll see a map of the city, the red marking where these objects are all around the city. Our first phase of the project was to really understand what we have in the collection and to learn more about these objects. The audit report um started in March of 2024 and was about a year of time that we spent working with HA advisors, new monument task force and for get me not history to really look at these objects to analyze information about each of them and to have some recommendations for the existing objects in the collection, future monuments and memorials, our policies and our programs. the copies. There's some copies of the report here that we have if you would like a paper copy and the full report is available online. It really features all the methodology, the data analysis, spotlights, and the findings and recommendations. Each object also has a tear sheet which really compromises like the bulk of the report going into deep historical summary, public reaction, and the contemporary context. One of the key parts of the report were the recommendations to the arts commission of what we should do. So, I'm not going to read through all of these, but I will focus on number six here, which is the current monuments and memorials. And the recommendation is that the arts commission should create participatory community-based planning processes for monuments and memorials with long histories of adverse public reaction. So, in order to address that recommendation, we identified five case studies. The first is the Christopher Columbus monument at the base of quite tower which was removed in June of 2020. The Francis Scott Keyi, General Ulissiz Sgrant and the Padre Huna Parisera monuments all in Golden Gate Park which were toppled by protesters in June of 2020 and the Dwey monument in Union Square. So, in February of last year, through a competitive request for proposals process or an RFP, the arts commission selected five community engagement consultants that would help guide the community engagement and artist activations around these five selected case study monuments. The consultants were to engage one community historian or a storyteller, hold community story circles, and work with two artists who would propose activations and host some free public programming. So tonight is an opportunity to hear directly from the individuals that have been part of this work. Some additional context and background on the objects before we get into that is that the four SC sculptures that were removed uh remain uh stored safely in undisclosed secure fine art storage facility. And of the CA five case studies, the monument that is still standing is the Dwey monument. We recently completed a long-term plan um conservation project on the Dwey monument that began um due to concerns around the public safety and structural stability of the monument. I do want to note that that work is happening in tandem with our shaping legacy's critical um examination of the monument. So noting that these projects happening in close proximity revealed the gaps in our process and the importance of proactively communicating with uh community around these objects and their status, especially the case study um community partners you'll be hearing from today. The care of these works extends just beyond the cleaning and the repair, but also to the communities that are harmed through these works. So we want to make that clear that we understand that. So any decisions regarding these objects, the removal, the relocation or the reinterpretation are going to be made through an open public and transparent process that follows the arts commission's guidelines and presented to the arts commission for final approval. What we do know is that the shaping legacy project has provided us a platform to interact with community to hear directly from the people that are affected by these works and resource artists to propose alternative artworks, commemorative rituals and a collective experience to really reimagine the monument. So looking to the future and beyond this moment, the voice of community as always is really going to be integral to our process. And with that, I would like to introduce our panelists in order of how they'll be presenting tonight. We have Lauren Barton, artist with the California Migration Museum. Paul S. Flores, a community storyteller with Youth Speaks. Lisa Ruth Elliot, the co-director of Shaping San Francisco, Raquel Randon Diaz, the director of Soma Filipinas, Jade Fong, program and projects lead with the American Indian Cultural District. So our format tonight is that each presenter is going to come up and have 10 minutes to share their process for their community story circles, their artist interventions and activations, and then tell us a bit about their learnings and recommendations going forward. And then following all of their presentations, um we'll have an opportunity for a lively round table panel discussion that will be guided by our moderator this evening, uh Sarah Monka, the director of native ecology at the association of Ramatouch Alone. And while we won't have time this evening, unfortunately, for the incredible visual media and videos that were produced by the artists that you'll hear about more tonight, I invite you to join us next month for our program on Wednesday, September 2nd, when we're going to be able to experience those creative works here on the big screen behind us for a little shaping legacy mini film festival. So, with that, I would now love to invite Lauren up for our first presentation. >> Hello. Thank you for having me here. My name is Lauren Barton. Um, and I am one of the artists that work with the California migration uh museum on the Christopher Columbus project. Um, so a little bit briefly about um the migration the California migration museum. They are a um a wall-free museum. They are a museum that focuses primarily on audio tours that activate the history of specific neighborhoods in California. They have several projects down in Los Angeles and a couple here in the Bay Area. Um, and the idea of uh one of the premises of uh the California Migration Museum is that the museum um activates the city that you can be on a city block for example listening to a short audio uh clip about a space um that helps it uh kind of connect history to the living spaces. And so, um, we found the Christopher Columbus project to be a really interesting space because there's very little contextual information, um, there now at Quite Tower where the the statue was primarily in the beginning. Um, and one of the products that we created together, um, me along with the museum and another artist, David de Fior, um, is a a series of audio tours that you could click on in short, um, kind of snippets and hear things about North Beach and the surrounding area. Um, all of which focus on a history of migration in the area rather than some history of Columbus um, itself. And um one of the reasons we did that is because of the the kind of desires that came out of the communities that we interviewed. So just to show you [clears throat] a quick little screenshot of what the website looks like. If you were to um interact with our material, you could find it on a QR code. You could uh have it on your phone while you're walking around among other products. Um okay. So, um, my activation, and I'll talk a little bit more about the story circles in a minute, but my activation, um, was primarily about trying to create a little space between the pain of the Columbus monument itself and all of the things that came up around it um, and its removal and help prompt discussions that might invite us to imagine what a future might be there. um a way that is respectful of history and inclusive. Um our story circles were were held um over the course of about a year and a half and we collaborated with several organizations here in San Francisco. So um a big thanks to Italian community services in North Beach, Lasala um in San Francisco, an Italian um school and um Il Museo Italiano um who they functioned as our historian to help us think about the history of Italian migration in San Francisco. Um we conducted several story circles that invited different generations um of migrants. So, we had um quite a few people that were born and raised in North Beach that had a different kind of historical understanding of that monument and that space, but also quite a few people um that were brand new to uh San Francisco from Italy and that have a different experience of migration and experience of the city. Um most of our groups were pretty small because we really wanted to have a chance to hear everybody speak. So typically we would prompt um you know a question and go around and hear everybody's response to it with um you know extra ample time um for elaboration and dialogue. Um and some of the things that we found was that um the Columbus statue itself was divisive for many reasons. Um it was never an easy or uh fil symbol for Italian migration and um especially with newer um newer second and third generation um Italian-American migrants they understood that it had nothing to do with their experience but there was definitely a feeling of wanting some kind of um representation of the history of Italian-American community in San Francisco and the plinth as that stands now is not necessarily an empty space. It does still have an inscription around the bottom that says Christopher Columbus and this empty um kind of empty plinth. Um and so there was definitely a desire for something else though certainly no consensus on what that would be. Um there was definitely a recognition that Columbus was problematic in many different ways. Um, one of the ways has to do with the history of Italian fascism and uh the producer of that the sculptor of that um of that monument as being not really representative of what our community stands for. Um, and then um a strong desire to see something about Italian migration that's in the context of larger migration here in the city. So, not an isolated [laughter] walledoff neighborhood that North Beach is not ever has ever been isolated, but something that's more integrated within a broader history of migration. Um, okay. So, my interpretation of that was to create um a a temporary monument, something that was um one day long, that was soft, that was not bronze, that was not hard. I used botanical dyes um to create something that felt a little bit like clouds, which is a motif that I use a lot as an artist. Um clouds, wind, weather are um something that ignores borders that unites all of us, but also has a tenuous connection to the history of navigation. It's a little bit of my own private joke about how Columbus supposedly got here, even though he never got here. Um, and I use botanical dyes like indigo, weld, um, coachil and matter that have complicated histories in um, in the colonial era and are still part of our kind of everyday life. Um, so the statue was installed on the plinth um, on the June 25th which is the day to commemorate the end of fascism in Italy. So, it was a day that's important for Italians, even if it's not necessarily broadly recognized. The other part of my activation was a map, um, a folded map. There are copies of this in the back if anybody's interested. Um, and the map expanded on the cloud motif. It has an archive of wind names from around the world and a QR code that brings you to um, the website and a video project. Um and the illustrations in the map activate some of the things that came up in story circles. So people's private experiences of immigrating here. Um so the other artist that worked on this project with us was David and um he is a filmmaker and he helped create a couple of short films. So, um, one of them is a a 360 interactive film that if you're standing at the the site of the former monument, you can move with your phone around um, the monument and it'll point you in the direction of certain historical kind of events or key sites um, in the area. Um, I included some clips of that that points a little bit also to the history of um, Italian migration more broadly. Um, so our, um, with the video, with the popup sculpture, the map, and the website, um, we kind of aimed to address some of the things that came up in our story circles. Um, but we definitely feel there's more to be done. Um, so ideally, this project creates more dialogue. We definitely felt like the story circles and the dialogue that was produced from it created healthy space um from the the 2020 removal of the monument and um imagining new things like a really necessary dialogue and a a reimagining of what could be there. Um hopefully the video project something like this can um spread and be used in ways that go beyond the specific site. Um our um some of our recommendations would be to continue to think about the possibilities of that plinth. Um in in so many ways it is useful to not forget what we put there and uh why and why it was problematic. Um but without context it remains a painful site I think for a lot of people. And so we have a desire to um think about um not necessarily erasing the plinth, but providing more context at the physical site for people that are experiencing it. Um there's definitely um a desire for there to be something else, not even necessarily there at Quite Tower, but somewhere um perhaps in North Beach that might represent a history of Italian migration, but always within a larger context. Um, yeah, I will leave it there. Thank you so much. >> Thank you to the the public library and uh thank you to Angela and the San Francisco Arts Commission and to the folks that um I collaborated with particularly Youth Speaks. I don't know if anybody from you speaks is in the house right now. I just came from work, so I'm still transitioning into this part. Um, my name is Paul Flores. I am a writer, poet, um, theater maker, cultural, uh, arts director in the Mission District and have been working in San Francisco as an artist for 31 years. Um, and I think that that gives people and myself and those like me the a little bit of a um kind of uh feeling of um like we have some say in in how our city's represented and what represents us in this city. And many of the people that um we gathered to discuss the Francis Scott Key monument also felt that way. they felt very um very uh connected to San Francisco and took the questions of monuments very personally. So I just want to keep that in mind in your in the context of discussing you know these monuments which some people think are really important and others feel should be removed entirely. It's a very personal conversation. I want to let you guys know that. Um yeah so we're talking about the Francis Scott Key monument. Okay. So, um, a couple things maybe. Do you guys know who Francis Scott Keyi is? Um, this is the author of, uh, The Star Spangled Banner. Um, you know, written, uh, initially as a a a piece of history um, documenting the War of 1812 with Britain. U, so we're talking long time ago. um Francis Scott Keyi was watching the the Battle of Baltimore outside his window. Um see, you know, naval battle, the United States wins and oh, yay, you know, it was such a crazy battle. And so he wrote about it and made it sound, you know, the the bombs bursting in air and whatnot. um uh that that uh made him famous basically because once the the the poem which I think is called the defense of Fort McKinley or something like that, Mckenry uh becomes the Star Spangled Banner and next thing you know u this relatively unknown writer becomes um a famous uh you know national hero. Uh, and most of us know the first couple verses of uh, the Star Spangled Banner, you know, but probably most of us don't know verse three. And um, verse three specifically threatens the lives of slaves and hired soldiers if they fought against the United States. Specifically saying they will kill them, terrorize them, and um, do all kinds of horrible things to slaves and hired soldiers. Why slaves and hired soldiers? because Britain offered freedom for slaves who would fight against the United States as well as anybody who would um choose to fight for uh for Britain um against the United States. So if any American or you know somebody who didn't agree with the United States fought uh with the British side, they would be murdered and killed. But they specifically said slaves, specifically threatened slaves. Um, and so a lot of people believe that, you know, this this kind of uh identifies um uh a racism within uh within uh Francis Scott Key. Not only that, but he did promote slavery. Uh did did uh eventually have slaves. So there is plenty of of evidence to say that uh Francis Scott Key was not looking out for the um uh healthy lives of black people. Uh so when it was torn down in uh 2020 as a response and in solidarity with the protests um of uh the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, uh a lot of folks, you know, saw uh the connection in the two, right? You have state sponsored violence against black people. Um and it goes so far back and yet these monuments in our city celebrate the same people who promoted that violence. Um so folks believed that they should tear it down and on Junth of 2020 uh some San Francisco residents and other protesters went and pulled it down. Um so I gathered three different talk circles uh that were representing three different communities in San Francisco. for sorry we because our our performance was was very much also a specific community. Um so my job was to convene the community to talk about um what do you think about this this monument? Why did it get brought down? What's your what's your perspective? And what kind of monument would you like to see that represents your own community? So um we met with uh three three different um communities. Native community, the Asian community, and the Latino community. uh and they were all different artists mostly or activists in the in the Latino community. Many of them were were amazing people who've contributed a bunch to our communities such as Martha Estraa who's one of the founders of Carnival which is almost 50 years old. Um you see Andrea Maldonado also a uh immigrant activist and artist. Jose Rojas a muralist and the editor of Tealote Erica Cardos was there to give some archival background and and and updated news and of course DJ Aana with her children. Uh she was one of the uh artists who participated um in in the uh activation or articulation of these story circles into art and she created some visual stuff. Um, sorry, I'm not going to be able to get really detailed. Uh, also we met with the Asian community and you can see that's John Jen right there. Um, who shared his own um process on the uh uh anthem. His whole idea is we need to create a new national anthem. and he uh created this presentation about the different times throughout history in which people of color have performed the national anthem in the United States and how they've um often been greeted with booze and criticized uh because people say they change it or make it more culturally specific. You know, we're talking about Jimmyi Hendricks with his guitar at at Woodstock or you're talking about um uh Whitney Houston or or Marvin Gay or uh the the recent singing of the national anthem in Spanish, everybody gets pissed off. um is that kind of proving the racism uh that is existent in our community. Uh yes, Jenny Lim was there too speaking about you know different perspectives how Asians feel about national identity. Um some of the uh findings that that we came up with uh based on uh these story circles were that um folks wanted to see families represented um uh in in monuments. Non-white histories should be featured in this new monument. uh we wanted to acknowledge uh nature and maybe not be a person. The monument shouldn't necessarily be human. It can be a symbol, a corn or um a drum that represents more unifying ideas. Um we could needed to see more women uh represented in monuments. Want to see more more women who have contributed to San Francisco like you know uh Koncha Saledo uh or Ruth Oasawa. Um uh also we wanted it to be interactive. Is there a possibility that the monuments didn't have to be so static? Could monuments have interaction? Um uh again more more ideas about the acorns, salmon, uh guitar, something joyful and um the idea that these monuments should also be like uh sites of programming, cultural programming. So the final performance uh of we had young people from you speaks um basically uh addressed the issue of national identity um based on the lead uh artists which included Aana uh Sierra Gordon and the You Speaks artists and including Joan Osado right there Joan from US Speaks was also in involved and theer Walker's video uh young people took the um instructions from our lead artists and created a multi-disiplinary performance called I pledge allegiance to the struggle. It was so dope. I got to tell you, it was so fresh. It was dance, it was music, it was poetry, um it was percussive, and uh all the artists participated. You know, we had Aana who's not a performing artist, she's a visual artist, but she also, you know, contributed her um piece in the in the poem. And then you also had teenagers from high school, from different schools in the city. And then you have Cece in the middle who was um leading the project. Uh that's it. Um so yeah, that's what that's what we did. I'm sorry. We're a performing arts project, so it would have been really good to be able to show you what we do to represent monuments in a performative manner, but uh anyway, thank you. Um next um participant, come on up. Thank you so much. [applause] >> Hello everyone. My name is Lisa Ruth Elliot and I am the co-director of Shaping San Francisco. For us, the project of investigating public memory is an important area of engagement we've embarked on at Shaping San Francisco within our almost 30-year project. We've done this through public discussions on our historical walking and bicycle tours and via our digital archive found.org. We are really encouraged through this project that a reckoning of our public memorials and monuments is part of this historic moment that we're all living together. And as community historians, we have a commitment um to telling the long history of place, this place, a pre-American history that goes much farther back than the urban environment and the communities we recognize. And we also have a dedication to re-examining the truths that have been promoted as part of this past. And so over the last year with the guidance of the association of Ramatu Shaloni whose presence and work within Yolamu reminds us of all the layers that have been imposed on this landscape and its unique histories. We've been able to revisit the truths of who the figure of Janiposa was and what his actions meant for the place. this place and its peoples. And additionally, we have invited our in we invited into our community engagement process those San Franciscans whose indigenity to place has been disrupted over the centuries through the very much related genocides and colonial takeovers within Alta California and throughout the Americas. So, we invited them to speak about memory through displacement of culture and people. and we enthusiastically proposed our involvement um in the process that Angela talked about in shaping legacy San Francisco monuments and memorials. And I'm here to tell you about our year-long process as community engagement consultants or as I like to say the year of poking the Alta California bear. Um so our case study included a uh folk life-based community-led process centering on memory practices. This was developed through a participatory action process or PAR, you'll hear me say that again, process. Um, community members lead this process. They act as researchers identifying and documenting memory keeping practices rooted in their own lived experience, cultural knowledge, and community relationships. This process was guided and facilitated facilitated by our storyteller Adriana Kamarina. And through this, each participant identified their focus through reflection, dialogue, and collective inquiry. Adriana created this comprehensive workbook, which you see the uh first page of here on the right. And there's a description of where we were taking the idea of folk life from from the work that Adriana has done. And um rather than being assigned topics through this process, people were we worked with were supported in recognizing existing practices within their own lives and communities um as forms of memory. And this workbook can be adapted from here to become a tool for other community processes. And it's a valuable output of our case study. In our community outreach process, indigenous community me researchers explored everyday practices from their own cultures that carry collective knowledge. Um, we had three separate groups as well. Um, we had they included members of the urban relocated Native American communities, Mayan migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, and urban youth. and their research invites reflection on how genocide, relocation, and migration continue to erode indigenous ways of knowing and how communities continue to protect and hold on to these ways of knowing. Their outputs took multiple forms including video, live practice, which actually included a really wonderfully tasting gumbo, um, constructed objects, oral reflection, visual work, and this reflected the project's commitment to non-extractive, culturally grounded approaches to documentation. All of what the researchers were working with was insanely connected to Earth, to the ground. that was very grounded. And in the context of asking what should be done with the topple juniperosa statue, the par research outputs shifted the focus away from replacing a monument to a colonizer and toward the living practices of relocated indigenous people who already sustain memory. Adriana hosted an afternoon event at 500 cap street where our researchers presented to each other offering an opportunity for the groups who had met separately to learn from one another. And here you see Joseé Gongorapat whose live installation documented a mul tunik an ancestral path marker and rest point found along walking routes in the forest of Yucatan used by composinos tending their milpas as part of shaping San Francisco's free public discussion series. As you can see we offered space for our researchers to share their findings with an audience outside the case study and this is archived online for wider viewing. We also had other public programs. Our regular programming schedule and formats integrated an additional public discussion and a walk exploring memory keeping. Our free public talk, the priest, the imperialist and the sculptor. Uh in that talk Chris Carlson and I offered information and perspective on the statue its sculpture and the commissioning of it by the white supremacist ideals of James Felin. Jonathan Guerrero, Rammitush and Chumash took us deeper into the mythmaking of the figure of Sarah and our Kaminata which is documented here from the Prescidio to Mission Dolores took us along a pathway that took topography into consideration and approximates a long trod route between the two first permanent colonial settlements. Here we invited attendees to not only note features and constructions and histories along the way, but to reflect on their own sense of how memory is held. We invited two artists into the case study, Chris Cuadrad and Kim Shak. Chris or L7. His artist activation uses multimedia technology to create alternative statue representations emerging from the rubble of what had been torn down. His collection of visual collage art uses the stories of indigenous life of Yilamu, reinterpretations of the statue, reflections on the specific missions Sarah is credited with starting, and imagery foregrounding landscape in place of inserted mythmaking. And you'll have the opportunity on September 2nd when you come back here during the mini film fest. and it will include a screening of Chris's film, which is a multimedia visual and sound sculpture. It's based on collected ephemera, photographs, video footage, and sourced miniature replicas of Sarah in which he investigates the act of rep reappropriation to rebuild the memory and of this person of this myth uh of Sarah and in a meditation on a talking monument. There's a lot to um use there including he brings in Rammitush language in Kim Shuk's artist activation which was called roughly 100 relocated urban baskets contemplating the absence of juniper oera she utilizes her handwoven baskets as a primary technology for Kim and other indigenous people. Padre Juniperosa is a symbol of the worthlessness of indigenous people's lives, past, present, and future. And in continuation of our PAR research process, centering lived experiences, knowledge, and memory practices of communities impacted by colonial legacies, and displacement, Kim promotes the message for the indigenous communities of San Francisco and beyond through her work to say, "You are no less than your ancestors." in Golden Gate Park in March 2026 near the music concourse. The space of the plinth which also was emptied on Junth 2020 and the landscape around the former location of the statue became the site of Kim actively here placing her almost 100 baskets in an array and the installation was photographed by Doug Salin. Postcards showing her installation include a poetry response on the back to the toppled statue and also as a result of her own durational project over months of basket creation. I will just note that each basket is a mathematical equation in itself. The poem here that you see and you can pick up one of these in the back as well back table. The poem is an extension of her ongoing mission project in which she writes a poem at each individual Spanish mission she she visits. Her work with basketetry, it shouldn't go unsaid, extends a point of reflection on materiality. We heard about that in Lauren's presentation. Something that's softer, something that might go away, and why does it have to last so long in bronze? Um, and it also is a reflection on the legacy of the Sarah statue and others like it. Thank you for listening. [applause] Good evening everyone. Magangabis Lahat. I'm Raquel Redandias, the director of Soma Bulpinas, the city's Filipino Cultural Heritage District. We're also recognized um designated by the state through the California Arts Council. Um I wanted to start off our sharing today with a poem from Oscar Porandanda which is one of the artists that we worked with on this project and he wrote it uh specifically um for the shaping legacy project um in particular to Dwey. It's titled contingb which means a little stone a little earth contingb monumentto from the earth from stones that build simple in its constituents. Basic in its ingredients not a lot of everything. Nothing greedy here, just enough to make it combination a foundation of unity and strength and a sentinel for the ages. From out of ashes, the truth conting monument. Let us remember this because monuments can cover things more permanently, hide and legitimize a lasting erasure. Monuments are also used to proclaim a truth indivisible as their structures. In this spirit, we open the discussion of this monument and its contents and the message itself of having monuments for with them they carry the ever vigilant weight of history. So our project um is on the Dwey monument which is of all the other projects the only remaining monument standing um of the projects not in the whole city um but it's in the middle of uh Union Square which is kind of like you know the center um of downtown San Francisco. uh and um from the beginning I think we set out to um with the project make sure that it's a collective process of educating ourselves about that history um and also um coming up with alternatives to this monument our history reclaimed is in Filipino translates to the site of reclaiming and rectification. And so we wanted the um this was the title of the final activation that we held at Union Square on April 23rd. It gathered over 200 community members and it was um it involved uh dance, music, performance, poetry um and it was really a beautiful uh reclamation of the space and uh we'll we'll show some some photos shortly. So, this is a photo um on the left of a dance performance by by Kim Requesto. Um [clears throat] and she's dancing on um on bamboos. And it was um really a dance performance involving sword to really represent the resistance of the Filipino people um against, you know, the US empire that the monument represents. Um to the um to the to the right is John Callaway um who performed a piece um from his uh Buffalo Soldier project. He is a descendant of a buffer soldier, which is one of the black Americans who went um to fight to volunteer for the Filipino-American War, but ended up defecting to the side of the Filipino Revolutionary. Um and um um John Callaway and also the Afro Filipinex project did a amazing performance to close at the celebration. And then to the below them is Oscar Puranda who is the uh the poet that wrote um the poem I read previously uh during 2020. Actually this small plaque was installed at the bottom of the base and it was an initiative from years before from um Filipino and American World War II veterans that aimed to um to put on record the Filipino American War. Um and you know while it was very important effort um it still fell short of telling the true story of what happened in the Philippines. So and um as part of our story we held three story circles. one focused um on seniors. Um the one on top that was held at YBCA and then bottom to the left was uh with community partners Filipino American Historical Society San Francisco chapter and the Malai movement um San Francisco and then to the right is um with the League of Filipino students in SF State as well as Adakbayan City College. So we wanted to make sure we had multigenerational um community circles. This is um part of the historic circles is really our historian MC Klas giving a history of what the monument represents and the the myth or the uh the truth that it that it hides. And this is again on April 23rd there was um not just dance but uh procession ritual um at Union Square that involved all the different community members and community partners um and um placing these are signs that the community members mostly the youth um made themselves to um teach about the true history of what happened um in the Philippines with the doing monument. And for those not familiar with the DUI monument that basically it was built as a war trophy for the US um as a permanent reminder and celebration of the US rise to imperial power and its colonization of the Philippines. It was funded by Adolf Espreckles who was a sh uh sugar baron who was a big proponent of the colonization of the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, um Kuba for um as a source for for sugar basically. Um and just uh days before um this reclamation actually there was a massacre of 20 uh people um and you know two Filipino Americans, one a beloved community member at Negro um which was a sugarcane um growing community um that produces that produces sugar that's um ma basically mil over here um at Crockett CH. And so, um, this, you know, I think it was not, I mean, I think it just speaks to how this monument is not just a thing of the past, but it really continues to be an open wound for the Filipino community. Uh, this is was our closing. Every, you know, Filipino event has to close with a photo. Um, so this is our closing photo with, um, all the different community members that joined us today. So from the story circles there were many um ideas of um what we can do to continue to to rectify the record. Um and the you know of course amongst the top amongst them is to complete removal of the Dwey monument in Union Square uh or to revise the existing text and to erect erect of new monuments and interpretive additions to the existing monument. Um, I won't go through all of it, but um, public education was very important to make sure that not just Filipinos, but you know, this is American history. This is San Francisco history for all for everyone to be able to to learn this um, in our schools, not just in in the community. Um, as well as community-led tours and um, ceremony. um official um taking accountability um of so removing existing comm u monuments, street names and war trophies citywide that celebrate and relate to the colonization of the Philippines. A formal resolution for the city of San Francisco acknowledging the role of the city. Um as well as um for the city of San Francisco to take affirmative steps to correct the history in the public realm. So, I wanted to end with this um which is an article we saw recently. Um I think Angela mentioned it earlier. Um um basically uh a month after our event in April the city had undertaken a um retrofit or of the new monument that cost over quarter of a million dollars in public funds um to restore it to its full. I mean, I I understand that part of the the effort is to ensure safety uh for the public, but basically, if you read the Chronicle article, it restores it to its full glory. And so, um, just recently we had a meeting with, um, with the arts commission to talk about this and how it was really, um, hurtful and harmful for us to see this article, uh, for us for that news not to be communicated to us, but to really question should we be spending so much money to restore these monuments that, you know, um, you know, on one hand, we're questioning really the whether we should even have these monuments. And so even the even we would even pose whether it's worth it for us to to restore it for safety purposes, right? Why don't we just remove them all together so we don't have to worry about you know them falling on anyone? Um so um I mean you know we want to end with this because we really want to have this be an ongoing conversation not just um with the art commission but with the city because this was capital I think capital funds that was used to restore this mural and it wasn't even um public art funds and also uh for the community to you know be able to um to give input on how we should continue to to continue the shaping legacy project beyond the melon funding. Thank you. [applause] Hello everyone. My name is Jade Fong and I'm the programs and projects lead of the American Indian Cultural District. Um and I'll be talking about our mapping genocide project. So first of all, what is the American Indian Cultural District? Oh. Um, it is the nation's only city and state recognized um nativeled cultural district dedicated to recognizing, honoring, and celebrating American Indian uh American Indian legacy, culture, people, and contributions. And our cultural district spans uh borders um part of the mission district. And so um the AICD mapping genocide project started in I believe 2021 and [snorts] it examines the San Francisco's legacy of commemorating the ideologies and individuals who spearheaded the genocide and displacement of American Indians um through public art in the civic arts collection and the street names in San Francisco. So you can see on the map here on the left uh we identified 36 street names and 10 statues and really this project uh was really driven by the artwork created by our two artists Jackie Fawn and Redbird Willie. Uh Jackie was commissioned to uh eight art illustrations to that prompted reflection of the untold brutality imposed by uh on the native peoples while celebrating the strength and resilience of survivors both historically and today. And I mean really um I mean a picture is worth a thousand words, right? And I I I feel like this was um uh more impactful to show than you know throwing a research paper. But so to start this off, Jackie Fawn was commissioned to do four illustrations based off of the extensive research done by our community uh historian. And so through these four um illustrations she made in partnership with SF MoMA, [snorts] uh we created a cedar structure of the four illustrations of the map and we hosted our first community story circle uh which happened in the middle of their uh this 10day run uh at SF MoMA. And these community story circles really questioned uh asked um around 50 native community members and some allies um did they know about these histories before? Uh what do they think now that they know? What should change? What do they think should happen to these statues, monuments, and street names? Um and so you see um Jackie and Rebrey were also there and present uh for a artist panel. And so, um, we hosted a second community story circle at Fort Mason, which, um, create, uh, was for, uh, four the four next illustrations that Jackie would do. Um, and these comprised of, um, um, the topics were the California mission system, the California Gold Rush, Ulys Ulyses Srant, and Henry Hick. And um you see Sarah, our moderator there was there. Um so for example we show we gave a little um history 101 on Grant and basically while Grant was president of the United States he enacted the Indian peace policy which created the reservation system which forcibly removed um forcibly removed Native Americans out of their ancestral home homelands forcibly force them to assimilate. We also showed the real life statue that was present at uh Golden Gate Park. And you can see on the right was Jackie's creation based off of the two uh community circles. And um based off community results such as uh create more nativeled art, relocate existing statues, restore the land, and expand education. Uh we can see she was really uh influenced uh for for example the b you can see the bison uh knocking down Grant and Grant has a little pool of blood underneath him. Uh on the bottom right you can see maybe it's bigger on this side. On the bottom right you can see um the California gold rush and the effects on on on the environment. Uh but you also see her theme of native resilience on the top on the lower left hand side. But these were the four illustrations that um she created based off of the two community circles. Next, Redbird Willie create was commissioned to create a uh a statue and a community mural. And so this was one of the community uh mural vision sessions that uh he conducted >> [snorts] >> uh in tandem with our community culture and land stewardship program in partnership with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. um and he asked the community members what kind of themes and messaging and imagery he would like to see in the in this uh community mural. And so here you can see his the result of that. Um his mural concept celebrates indigenous resilience and cultural continuity focusing on the deep connection with the natural world. The main scene features a mother and daughter gathering food symbolizing intergenerational knowledge and the nurturing role of women. And you can see uh the circles are basket designs and they anchor various themes such as ancestral wisdom, the occupation of Alcatraz, the missing and murdered indigenous people and contemporary activists. Um it als there's also uh the turtle sculpture that he created uh which the earth is the back of the turtle the wooden um component and the earth encompasses the north and south America uh which represents the unification of all indigenous peoples who experience the joys and hardships of life without borders or boundaries. Um, and the turtle is inspired by the Irakcoy turtle island and Redbird himself is inspired by the renown San Francisco artist, uh, Benny Bufano's animal sculpture work. We also did a film premiere again at SF MoMA in February of 2026. Um, and the film premiere really encompassed the two vision murals plus a couple of one-on-one interviews we did with community members that really encaps encapsulated um, our mapping genocide project. And you can actually see this and the whole exhibition here at the library um September 9th uh right here at the CR Theater. So come on by if you would like to learn more about this and see the whole works. Um but yes, so overall recommendations that we found were one reconsider existing sites whether it's uh reinterpreting um relocating or removing the the the statues on a case-by case basis. uh create nativeled art, whether that be new memorials, temporary art, performage, and signage. Um restore the land and and create more gathering spaces. This was a really uh common theme that was brought up um for the results of the community vision circles. uh whether it be native gardens, parkways, waterways, ecosystems, and just creating overall gathering spaces that you can that um one of Jackie Vaughn's illustrations depicted. And then four, another uh popular theme that reoccurred was expanding education, whether it be uh maps, walking tours, QR codes, um expanding K to2 education. Um it was really uh important to um one one of our um participants stated that you know even though she's Native American, she didn't know anything about Native history really other than you know the one Trail of Tears that we learn and it wasn't until she went to college actually and took a course that she actually learned more about um Native history. So yeah, that's all I have. Thank you. [applause] I don't have slides. Um, but there's a lot of really good slides up there. Um, hello everyone. Thanks for coming out and enjoying uh uh joining us this evening for an interesting dialogue and conversation. My name is Sarah. I'm very honored to be the director of native ecology with the association of Ramatus Shaloni. um which means that uh for the most part I get to work with the homebased tribe here which is really lovely. It also means I do a tremendous amount of interfacing with state and um city agencies on a lot of different topics. Um but really I think for the most part one of the reasons why Angela called me um is because I'm an artist. I'm a cultural artist and I have actually before I even knew anything about working with the Ramatosh um I've been a community artist in the San Francisco Bay area since I could walk or dance if you will. As native folks we have um a a profound uh kind of knowledge system experience that's really different than the dominant narrative. And one of the things that I find so inspiring about projects like this, shaping legacy or um whether it's individual projects that each one of you have talked about over an overall movement of work or body of work that comes together to address a moment like this is just this reimagining this reconnection to what it means to restore ourselves back to all of the other ways of know being that we have in this world. Right? For the most part, what we're talking about is how do you thoughtfully, critically engage with dominant narrative because what you see here is a representation of all of the people that the dominant narrative doesn't address. And let's face it, in a moment, in a time that we're in right now in our current system, whether that's in relationship with the government system of the United States or globally, what we're finding is the danger of letting the dominant narrative run away with us and the potential of the rippling effects of not having a space where we can critically examine that and address it in meaningful ways. And as native folks, I got to tell you, pushing back of that dominant narrative is really important to us. It's not important because, you know, we need that level of activism anymore than we ever have in the beginning or that this time calls for it any more than any other time. Because let's face it, since the beginning of the first time when that colonization effect happened on this continent, we have been trying to find a balanced narrative. It is something we've been in process with for a very long time. And the reality of it is is that everywhere across this planet that is a conversation that has happened. There has since human beings rose and became sticky human beings. Let's face it, we're messy. Ever since that has happened, there has been a dominant voice and a non-dominant voice. And how do we find the balance? And the reality of it is is that the arts play a really really critical role in that space because art is like a finger on the pulse of any moment in who we are as artists. We're here to share narratives. We're here to uplift stories, look at storycapes, understand the impacts that that dominant narrative is having on our daily lives, and then find ways to share it. Cuz let's face it, not everybody can hear you when you're standing and yelling. Not everybody can. We get it. I personally don't like being yelled at. Just ask my mom. But the reality of it is is we still need to hear it. If we can't make it to the front line of a march or a civic gathering, how else can we engage? And art has a really powerful way of engaging that moment for us. It enacts our thought process and our transformation. Think any one of you think about a moment you stand in front of e whether it was like a dance moment or a painting, a photograph, a conversation with a traditional artist, a basket waving, whatever that moment was, it inspired a critical thinking transformative process. We've move art moves us mind, body, spirit, all of the aspects of a complete human. Not just what's in the head alone, what's in all of the ways that we have to engage. What I am most moved by in this process of this project is that San Francisco Arts Commission reached out into community and said, "We get it. We don't understand all of the way the quality of the conversation that we need to have in order to get to a really critical conversation about some really important moments in history. Greg Castro, cultural director for Ramatoshaloney, was interviewed around some of these projects and was asked, why are monuments such a problem? And everybody was really expecting, I think, a long- winded kind of angry answer. And Greg gave a really short explanation. I found it really powerful. He said, "Listen, monuments standing by themselves aren't necessarily a problem. The problem is is that they become a truth and that we accept that truth as the only position of that moment. It's not a balanced position of history. For those who are fighting for monuments to stay where they are because they're historical experiences. The problem with them is that they're not a complete truth. There was snapshot. Again, art is meant to be a finger on the pulse. Does that mean that we don't listen to the heartbeat or rhythm of that movement? Not at all. But it does require of us to critically analyze it and ask really good conversations about how we correct that narrative. So my first question for each one of you, I'm sorry, long- winded intro here. My first question for each one of you is that you have in so many ways spoken about what it means to sit at the feet of of the community. You know, kind of circle around the campfire and have a conversation and talk with a lot of honesty about the reality of those experiences. Do you find that difficult to have those conversations? I think a lot of people worry about when we get there that when we get to that part it gets messier and therefore harder to get to solution. Is that true? I see. No. No. It wasn't hard to sit with community. Why not? This is why it's hard to have truth conversations, right? And we're here having a round table. Remember Angela said round table dialogue. Roundt dialogue. That means any one of us are here to answer the question. Not anybody in particular. And I I didn't call anybody out on purpose. Let me even deepen it because each one of you talked about the difference between talking with youth and talking with elders. It's intergenerational dialogue. I often find that I'm not going to lie, in our native community, intergenerational dialogues are sticky. They're not simple. Elders don't always agree with youngers. Younger don't always agree with elders. And there's a difference between an elder and an older. We get to that too, right? This is what I mean when people say, "Hey, when you do community engagement work, it's hard and it's hard to achieve." And one of the reasons they point to that is that getting to the truth of that dialogue and intergenerational conversations is difficult. Did you find it difficult? I see one. Yes. What was hard? >> Does this work? Can you hear me? Yeah. I found it I found it really difficult. Um because so there's the intergenerational um conflict. There's um born here versus just got here conflict. In my community in the Italian and Italian-American community, there's a conflict between being Italian and Italian. [gasps] there's a um a language conflict. There's even within the Italian community there's a conflict of north south and then there's um very much a conflict around monuments and whether they um what they mean and what they're for even particularly in Italian culture right um there's also a big conflict about uh fascism and whether it's history or present um in terms of monuments and how to talk about that. And um I think because I'm I'm an artist and not a community organizer, I'm listening in all of the story circles and very concerned with hearing the widest point of views, listening to people that I know I don't necessarily agree with and hearing what they have to say and then thinking what what will my voice be like? What am I going to put on on the monument in you know to replace that? um that will not necessarily be a a truly democratic work of art, but will be what I think needs to be there. Um that's that was hard for me. >> Yeah. >> But really valuable like the the um the most valuable part of the entire project was everybody sitting in a room and listening and then thinking about it and having follow-up emails and follow-up conversations. And um for sure the dialogue was the most important part. >> Just reminded me of um how there is sometimes a specific generational um perspective on history. Uh, I remember we were we were talking about the national anthem and the oldest person in the room was like, "Well, why should we change the national anthem? Doesn't it make you feel something when you when you when you listen to it? Doesn't it like make you feel something?" Like, isn't that important to remember? You know, and some of the people in the room are kind of like, I don't feel that. You know what I mean? And um this gentleman who I respect and who I invited, I heard him though. He was he was like, "Yeah, there's there's problematic elements in the in the in the anthem and there's um we have problems when you know when new stories about historical figures surface, we want to change everything quickly, but but think about how the anthem makes you feel when it gets sung." And he was like really speaking from his own perspective, right? like I feel very proud and I get emotional when I hear it and and I felt that before, right? Um when I was a little more naive, I guess. And and I and I wanted to respect his perspective, right? I wanted to let him talk about that. Talk about your your emotional experience of listening to the national anthem knowing everything that we just talked about right now. And and he did. And I thought that was cool. Not every nobody really agreed with him, but I like that this opportunity to let that out in our community. He was Latino, you know, another Latino guy. And um I felt like it was necessary for us to be able to listen to each other about these issues when we don't really talk about them um in groups that we can trust, you know, like everybody knew each other in one way or another. Oh, everybody knew each other in one way or another in the in the groups that we if it if you didn't know someone directly, you knew somebody who knew somebody. >> Um, and and I felt like we gave respect. It was it was respectful. And that's important too when you have these types of conversations that people are willing to listen to differing opinions in out of respect. And so I feel like that was important. We had to have intergenerational conversations because of that, right? We want to see the different perspectives and we want to practice that. Um at the same time the older people can learn from the youngers. >> I think in our case we started from um Adriana our storyteller convened the groups and instead of coming to uh questions from um maybe the um assumed place of a focus group of what do you think about this? We started with what are you curious about with memory and and customs and things you hold over time? What is important to each person was really the basis of curiosity. And each of our researchers then were invited to go out into their own community and and further inquire of the people that they were close to and that they engaged with that they met on the street or in their church or in their family and and go deeper into something maybe they hadn't thought of in a community perspective before. So was it hard? It was maybe hard for them sometimes to get the courage up to be some of them were more softspoken but actually people were really into it. [laughter] All of our researchers were very excited to find something out for themselves that they were asked their own opinion on. And I think this is where we start to come into this is me talking now but into a balance of perspective because how can we start to speak truth to power if we don't understand our own strength and we don't understand our own opinions and our own curiosities and our own places of st of joy and and what we hold over generations. And that becomes then that solid place from which we come to a um sitting at the feet of a community a statue dominant narrative. So for I think our researchers also we found they wanted to meet more. So we had our our set meetings and then we had more and and they wanted to come together. they wanted to meet people from the other groups and there are still conversations and outings happening between Atriana and individuals and people within the group. So I think it shows that these processes can be the start of a longer conversation. >> No, I really appreciate that and and the theme is rising, right? When you open the door and you make people feel comfortable, they feel heard, trust starts to gather in the room, people start to let their curiosity lead and ask good questions. Create space for people to have alternating opinions and feel like it's okay to have those alternating opinions and not get attacked for that, right? And be able to have a place to explore that in a healthy dialogue. You guys are starting to talk an awful lot about some healing mechanisms and what it sounds like to set in some conversation with communities that are really trying to explore some of those troubled ouch spaces and how to start to navigate some some of the ways through that. Does that sound familiar to you too? I mean for our story circles actually surprisingly there was not I would I would say there was no conflict at all. I think there's a lot of different perspectives and opinions on what we could do and I think when we we didn't um set out to come up with recommend like official formal recommendations that's why our recommendations were it's more like these are the things that came up and so I um so we really wanted this phase to be really more about hearing out all the ideas so you have conflicting ideas um from taking down the monument or keeping it but um doing more um countermonuments or reinterpretive texts, you know. Yeah. So, so I think there's a lot of different perspectives on what are the things we could do. I think um so but I think and then you know in the future we definitely want to continue this work to try to um come up with unified recommendations as a community. And um maybe just as as kind of related to this um the plaque that I showed um that has been installed and that was um that was uh championed by World War II veterans um who whose perspective were definitely not necessarily against empire you know but really wanted to put on record the Filipino American war the civilians lives lost um but you know the plaque so they you know 10 years ago they actually came to sum Filipinas and asked for our support for the plaque for when they were um um going to the arts commission for approval. Um and at the time they were they were told that they can only have a an interpretive um signage because the DUI monument is an artwork and it's an artwork you can't you know touch it. So they asked for our support and I read the plaque and I was like can we make some tweaks to the language and they said no is a whole committee we we negotiated it all and you know it can't be changed and um and so respectfully we couldn't support it um and and I felt really bad and conflicted about that because I know they you know felt really strongly it was something that they had worked on for for years they had fundraised for. Um but um a funny story is that Oscar who's a poet um feature that we worked with when you ask him about the plaque because he did that was to his generation. He was like yeah I was part of that committee but I think I went to the restroom when they finalized the last text. So he's like the lesson is don't leave until the [laughter] end of the meeting. >> Got to wait for your vote. So all that to say is that I think when it comes down to actually formalizing and unifying on recommendations and also then getting the city here to do it, I think it's going to be much more there's going to be a lot more conflict and contention and um yeah, so it goes back to your first point which is um we're always combating the dominant narrative and so while this shaping legacy process is important in terms of kind of really hearing from everyone when it comes to actually combating that dominant narrative of like for example, yeah, we have to res we have to spend the money and restore this thing, right? Um because, you know, for whatever reason, right? Um I think that's kind of where the the rubber hits the road. So >> where those narratives are, so much of this work, as we have all been talking about is kind of been seated for many years. Folks in community have been wondering about monuments for a long time, right? Folks in community have been wondering about how art can be part of a narrative shift. And a lot of times in native community, we find one of the biggest requests that we have is how does this become sustainable and actionable beyond now, right? How do you make it grow? So what's the hope? Where can any one of these recommendations or any one of these places potentially lead to? Right? If you could pick something out right now, what would what would the hope be? Next step, what action would you want people to take? >> Um, that's a really big question. [laughter] >> Yeah. Um yeah, I think um that comes with a lot coming from like you know certain native communities. You have this conversation and there has been hope and then that hope is kind of destroyed in in history. But uh I think the hope is is that with these partnerships uh that we have today with the city with SFAC uh that now we're really talking about this now um we're you know getting some funding to actually um have these community circles and and hear the feedback and actually make recommendations to the SFAC for um what our community uh thinks. And you know our our vision circles were ran by our monuments and me memorials committee advisory committee and across the board uh pretty much everyone was in agreeance like yes this is a dark truth but this is very important and um I think the main things were um expanding education was really the most important thing um I I believe out of our focus groups and so with that partnership with the city Um, we hope not only that not only like our recommendations for relocating the statues will happen, more native art, but really expanding that education, expanding that K to2. Um, yeah, >> thank you. Oh, she's waving one minute, you guys. We have to wrap up, but I I I want to thank you all. I That is the hope right there. It is. We're trying to ed we're trying to change the narrative. It's not a complete story. So, can we complete the story? And how can we complete the story? Because the reality of it is is even in our own communities, we do. We hear people say, "You don't necessarily have to take down the monument, but can you fix the signage? Can you complete the narrative? Can you add another piece of additional art next to it on the plinth? Or maybe put a plinth next to it? we don't know that's got like a sunflower or a salmon or some other way of acknowledging the completeness of the story and why the completeness of the story matters. And it matters because we every single one of us are not the same. And it matters because the dominant narrative can never accurately represent a global citizenship. And the reality of where we are in our current space is that each one of us, regardless of where our ancestral feet call home, is that we're in community and we're trying to be good people doing good things in community. And part of that call of bringing us together is those stories that inspire us to be good people in community. and share that for many generations hopefully to come. All the reasons why we gather in circles and talk. Thank you everybody. Thank you for this work. Thanks for coming together tonight. Please pick up flyers and booklets and additional information. Please stay engaged with this series and wherever Shaping Legacies takes us next. Get home safe. Thank you.