Native American community members raised a flag honoring the Kumeyaay Nation at San Diego Unified’s headquarters Friday for the first time in the school district’s history.
The flag was raised to commemorate Native American Heritage Month, which takes place during November. Nov. 24 will be Native American Heritage Day.
San Diego-area Native American students and local tribe members said the flag-raising is important to honor the indigenous Kumeyaay people as the original inhabitants of the land that is now San Diego County.
The Kumeyaay lived here for 10,000 years before the land was taken from them by European colonizers. Today Kumeyaay governments have jurisdiction over about 70,000 acres in East County in areas including El Cajon, Poway, Ramona and Lakeside, according to the Viejas Band, one of the 12 remaining Kumeyaay bands.
“The raising of the flag means San Diego is finally paying homage to the people who have taken care of all the land under the 12 bands,” Giovanni Thompson, a third-grader at Clay Elementary who is a member of the Colorado River Indian Tribe in Arizona, said from the podium at Friday’s event. “I hope this raises awareness of why our schools need to teach the truth of San Diego. Remember, all four directions of San Diego County is Kumeyaay land.”
The Kumeyaay flag is the sixth flag besides the national and state flags that San Diego Unified has raised in recent years. The district has also raised flags for LGBT pride, transgender pride, Black Lives Matter, Juneteenth and “Latinx/e” Heritage Month, which took place from September to October.
“Native American people, history, and culture is core to the story of the United States, being the first people to live and steward this land and having profoundly shaped our country’s character and our cultural heritage,” the San Diego Unified School Board stated in a resolution it approved last month.
“The San Diego Unified School District recognizes that colonial structures of oppression amounted in the death of millions of Native Americans, land dispossession, language and culture loss, diminished Native American knowledge and cultural authority, and has long standing impacts that Native American communities face today.”
The Kumeyaay flag that was raised Friday came from Bobby Wallace, a member of the Barona Band of Mission Indians, one of the 12 Kumeyaay bands, who was gifted the flag from his cousin. The flag displays the logos of each of the 12 Kumeyaay bands and its design was inspired by an elder from the Jamul tribe.
“We’ve been through a lot of pain, and this right here … San Diego Unified, thank you so much because that’s a sign of change,” Wallace said.
Several San Diego-area students performed pow wow dances at Friday’s ceremony, including a grass dance and a sneak up dance, which models movements after warriors who snuck up behind their enemies in battle. Wallace and other Kumeyaay members also sang takook, or bird songs.
The students represented many tribes across the country including the Apache, Northern Cheyenne, Navajo, Lakota, Colorado River and Mandan/Hidatsa.
San Diego students from several Native American tribes held the Kumeyaay flag before it was raised at San Diego Unified School District’s headquarters on Friday.
(Kristen Taketa / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
