I participated, in a very minor way, in helping to change the name of the Kelseyville High School mascot so that it would no longer have the name "Indians" in it.

The reasons were very simple: it was the will of the majority of the local Pomo people, and their wishes and feelings regarding this matter appeared more important to me than a misplaced "pride" in the name of a team by local residents who could not even relate culturally to such name, not knowing much about Pomo culture and obviously not interested, believing it was alright to represent the Pomos with a mascot parodying the 1940s Hollywood version of an Indian from the plains.

Furthermore, the argument of those who did not want the change was essentially as follows: "We think we are honoring you, the Pomo people, with this 'Kelseyville Indians' mascot name, so we don't really care what you think or feel, get over it ... "

In other words we are the masters of the land and we make the rules ... This did not sound like respect to me, as a matter of fact I found it to be arrogant and insulting to the Pomos, and a thinly veiled expression of redneck racism.

Kelsey was not a nice person, and this has nothing to do with any of his living descendants, who are probably very nice people, so I do not mean to hurt or embarrass them and I apologize if I do. But even a plaque in Kelseyville somewhat acknowledges that he mistreated Native people. It does not say that he enslaved them, nearly starved them, murdered some of them, tortured some of them and molested young Pomo girls, including the daughter of a chief ... all abuses that lead to his and Charles Stone early demise at the hand of the Indians, which gave interested parties the excuse they were waiting for to commit yet another act of genocide in the state of California (Bloody Island), whose official and federally sanctioned policy was the extermination of native people in order to grab all (nearly all) the land and its resources. Am I going too fast?

Mistreatments of the Indians, abuses, provocations by criminals, no legal recourses or protection for the Indians whatsoever, exasperated Indians finally administering their own justice or implementing protective measures as any free people should, and then the official California policy of extermination came into effect, such as butchering up to 200 Indian men, women, elders, children, babies, as a payback for the killing of a couple of white people.

Of course the state policy of paying for Indian scalps (men, women, children, to the tune of $1 million) did not require any violent act on the part of the Indians to be implemented and taken advantage of by psychopaths. It was just another opportunity to make money without having to do any work, just murder, which the federal government approved, by reimbursing California.

Why is it that such ugly aspects of California history, such atrocities, are mostly suppressed, unknown to the nation, while almost everyone has heard of the Wounded Knee massacre? Is it because California represents the end of the American rainbow, the ultimate American dream land, and no one wants to

tarnish the immaculate fantasy of the golden state?

Some say why dig up such "cans of worms"... If the past is a "can of worms," why celebrate Columbus Day? The man was lost, he enslaved, killed, maimed and tortured hundreds of thousands of gentle, generous, welcoming Indians in order to get gold, he was a mass murderer of the likes of Cortez and without any conscience ... Is this something to be proud of?

How can America pretend to be the world moral leader when it not only will not clean up its past, but honors such murderers and thieves, lying about them in order to make them appear to be heroes, and teaching children that they are heroes? Logically, it would appear to only mean one thing, that Euro-Americans would do it all over again and in the same manner, if given the opportunity. This is what is usually known as not learning from the past.

If this is not the case, then why have a town, such as Kelseyville, named after what everyone could agree was a shady character at best, and someone who today would be charged and jailed for murder and child molestation? (He would not, today, be protected by the 1800's California Civil Practice Act, Section 394, which prohibited Indians from giving testimony for or against whites, assuring their abuse at the hands of the lowest and most brutal of the frontier population, and, because of the Pomos' inevitable retaliations and the subsequent outcries of the politicians and the press, the validation of the inhuman official policy of extermination).

Nothing has really changed in the way this civilization operates by the way: first create a problem (in this case the provocation and abuse of the Indian population by criminals who were legally protected), then offer the solution that facilitates the fulfillment of certain goals (here the attempted extermination of the Indians, so as to "clear the land" for "settlers" and for America to expend). How can we hope to have a clean and healthy future as a nation when we insist on keeping garbage in our basement and call it part of our history and heritage, and wave it in the air as a badge of honor?

If we are to remember that it is Kelsey and Stone who, by their abuses, were responsible for the Bloody Island massacre, we can also understand that honoring Kelsey with the name of Kelseyville is basically saying to the Pomo people that abuse and genocide were perfectly alright and justified, and it is keeping

the wounds they suffered open and unhealed, and festering among them, as it would be festering among Jewish people if Hitler was honored in Germany.

It is also saying to the world that America has two standards: one by which it treats its own Native people, and one by which it insists the world abides ... this is commonly known as hypocrisy. Of course America is not the only country to do so ... Canada, Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand do the same, but we are in America, and America does lead the world.

I do believe it is time to come to terms with the past, not out of guilt but out of a desire for a healthy future, and to change the name of Kelseyville. It is important because human beings, children among them, were butchered on Bloody Island without cause, and this past, rooted in greed, the most virulent form of racial hatred, and the immorality of this state and this nation's 19th century leadership, must be healed.

People who profess to follow any kind of religious law should be leading the charge on this, as I do not think the values they profess to uphold sanction criminality, and local religious leaders should be involved, to transcend politics and races and set an example of what it means to be human, to have a human heart, a living and functioning conscience, a spirit or soul.

It would seem to be a basic requirement of religious leadership, if organized religions are to be taken more seriously. It might also more properly define what it means to be American, if America is to be respected by the world for something other than its might, that is to say if it is to be truly respected rather than feared.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.

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Published: 25 July 2007