Comments on Pomona’s Torchbearers Song

The following is an extract from an e-mail sent on 10/7/2008 by Professor Deena J. González, Chair, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and a former Pomona College faculty member.

“My conversations about all of this took place in the 1980s and with then-President David Alexander and with faculty colleagues; concerns were several:

(a) The song is reminiscent of all odes of that era and up to the Civil Rights movements, told from a distinctive "colonizer" voice or tone.

(b) The inaccuracies were a testament to the verses' meaning and direction---the Gabrieleños of the San Gabriel Valley were not "braves," as they were peaceful, rancheria indigenous peoples living in small settlements and villages. Braves is more appropriate to Plains Indians and others in the Southwest as well, and suggests warrior status; most of California's indigenous population did not have or create warrior cultures; many did not have "chiefs" or lords.

(c) At the time in the 1980s, Pomona had at least 5 Native American students, doing well; they formed a group or club, and they similarly recoiled when they heard what students and faculty fondly referred to as the "tom-tom" song---it was a bit much to be in attendance at something so clearly deriving from a particular historical moment and reenacted repeatedly (I've written about this, the reiterative quality of racialized dialogue in the 19th Century); the reiteration leaves or implants the same message---that is, "we are this, or this is our history." My problem and message was "well, not all of us."

I thought it was therefore exclusionary and I would not have wanted relatives or friends at events featuring this history over others, that is, what had Pomona done to advance knowledge about the native peoples of the region? Or to create a new role with its history in mind?”