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El Camino Real & the Doctrine of Discovery

At the close of General Synod, we traveled to San Luis Obispo, California to meet up with Michael's brother Robert and Robert's girlfriend Anne.  We traveled along the coast out of Los Angeles through Santa Barbara.  

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Shortly outside of LA we noticed a bell-like shape on a pole beside the road.  We thought it was an old light and thought nothing of it.  A while later, we spotted another one.  By the third, we were curious, as they didn't seem to be lights, but were clearly bells.  So, Michael Googled, and we learned that they are historical markers for El Camino Real, the old Spanish road in California that connected all the missions.

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In San Luis Obispo we visited the mission and its museum and gardens.  On our way back to LA we visited the mission in Santa Barbara.  Anne, who grew up in California, told us about an elementary school project of creating a replica of a mission.

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In San Luis, reading about the missions and the road, a connection was made for me.  The missions and the road were part of the effort of the Spanish kingdom to assert its possession of California.  This resonated with some things I had learned at General Synod.

One of the resolutions which came before Synod was a repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery.  This was a Christian doctrine which granted European kingdoms rights of possession based upon their discovery and settlement of land.  In other words, theological justified robbery of indigenous peoples.  This doctrine has persisted in international law and continues to influence aspects of American law and court cases adjudicating Native rights.  The National Council of Churches, the Unitarians, and the Episcopalians have also, in the last two years, repudiated this doctrine.

At Synod, I attend the educational briefing on this resolution, in which professors well-researched on the topic discussed it.  During their presentation, they mentioned how European and American explorers would mark territory as part of their attempt to claim it under the doctrine (Lewis and Clark branded trees) and that small settlements would be established to solidify the claims.  Often European nations would dispute the same land, so every effort had to be made to assert one's claim.

In San Luis, reading the information about the missions and the road, I realized that that is precisely what they represented.  The theological work of the church meeting was connecting with the site-seeing of the vacation.  Oh, and General Synod passed the resolution.

The Spanish claimed possesion of this territory which was where the Chumash lived and had for thousands of years.  The missions and the military presidos built in the settlements as well (below is the presidio for Santa Barbara) were used to control the Chumash people.

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In the cemetery of the Santa Barbara mission, a placard stated that 4,000 Chumash were buried there.  Spanish settlers had gravestones with names.  Not the Chumash, who were unidentified and must have been buried in a mass grave.

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