In the fourth grade I learned that our California Missions were founded by the good friars who wanted to help the Indians live and save their souls when they died. The Indians’ views on this project were not discussed, nor were their descendants in evidence in Santa Cruz where I grew up. This was around 1948. America had won the war and made the world safe for democracy. The doctrines of American Exceptionalism seemed self-evident to my nine-year-old brain. Discovery of people for whom democracy itself was dangerous—that was not on my horizon. I was a little secular evangelist, convinced… [Continue reading]